New Haven RegisterSunday June 5 1988
No 'just desserts' on this birthday cake
By Barbara Steinberger
New Haven - Getting a free piece of cake wasn't a piece of cake in this city Saturday.
But according to designers of the A-Mazing Bureaucratic Birthday Cake, that's the price you have to pay for democracy.
In order to get a small square piece of dessert at the "New Haven Celebrates New Haven" festival on the Green, visitors had to survive a bureaucratic runaround that made waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles seem like a day at the beach.
For most cake-eathers, the ordeal began with a five-to-10 minute wait, during which over zealous cake commissioners passed out cake consumption permit applications (in duplicate of course) and "cake police" kept the crowd orderly. About 30 people milled around in line at any one time.
Then the nightmare began.
Bewildered visitors were forced to wade through a sea of red tape (in this case, red streamers and balloons), and get rubber stamps (in duplicate) proclaiming them for "zoned for cake consumption" and "approved for cake release".
After declaring whether they were "fork-users" or "non-fork-users" choosing the appropriate flavor, and confessing whether they had ever previously been denied cake, the by-now starving applicants took and oath and proceeded to the cake distribution center, where volunteer cake servers such as Mayor Biagio DiLieto and US rep. Bruce Morrison, D3, gave them the long awaited baked goods.
But those who declared themselves fork-users were out of luck since there were no forks available.
And as for the choice of flavor-well, those who picked chocolate cake with chocolate frosting just had to settle for white cake with green frosting, because that was all there was.
"We were told forks are plastic and if you burn them it releases dioxin," Morrison said. "And chocolate is too expensive. They can have any kind of cake they want, as long as it's what we have."
All this was just a little too much for some cake applicants to handle. "I don't believe I am doing this for a piece of cake," said a hungry Paula Diliberto of Bristol as she stood in line with her permit application. "Do we want cake this badly?" Another women asked her friend.
But this wasn't just some half baked idea. A 30 member cake bureau, including a panel of 13 cake commissioners, spent about six weeks formulating policy, defining terms, designing stationary and memos, and making up agendas and minutes, said Beverly Richey, marketing and membership director for the Greater New Haven Arts Council and the artistic director of the cake project.
The cake was made by Leon's Bakery in Hamden, which planned to give out 3500 pieces over four cake-serving periods Saturday and today, said bakery owner and chief cake commissioner Leon Weinberg. Visitors to the green can apply for cake today from 1-4pm and 5-7:30pm.
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