Music

Bus station plays Alvin and the Chipmunks non-stop to deter homeless

by Jeremy Mersereau

Just in time for the holidays, here’s a feel-good story that will warm the cockles of your heart, provided you’re Ebenezer Scrooge circa Chapter 1 or some kind of selfish, green, joyless monster, like… like… what’s he called again? Oh yeah, the Just for Laughs goblin.

Like Uber and Snapchat, anti-homeless technology is always relentlessly innovating. Unlike Uber and Snapchat, the goal is to disrupt the sleep of as many down-and-out itinerants as possible. No longer content with concrete spikes and anti-sleep steel poles, one bus station in England has hit on a novel new way to ensure that 1) no homeless people will be seeking shelter in its walls, and 2) they’ll be hit with an avalanche of bad press, all of which will contain the words “Grinch-like.”

Bournemouth Coach Station in Dorset, England now employs the dulcet sopranos of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore (and, presumably, snatches of the more conventional tenor of Dave Seville) playing non-stop from ceiling speakers in order to keep undesirables away. The Bournemouth Borough Council said the Chipmunk onslaught was part of their strategy to keep homeless individuals from sleeping within the bus station and keep waiting passengers from feeling threatened. When asked how they felt about the initiative, residents told the BBC they found the use of Alvin-based irritations “cruel”, “inhumane” and compared it to tactics used at Guantanamo Bay. Watch a video including the excruciating torture techniques.

Following negative public feedback, Dorset police said they would be reviewing the strategy. “Hmm… how about feedback, this time? That oughta do it!” This isn’t the first time the Bournemouth station has employed an audio assault, either: Alvin and co. replaced the bagpipe music which heretofore had been the station’s go-to slumber disrupter.

[H/T BBC]