This is a good story. Sad.
Charlie's Place was a motorcycle shop in San Francisco in an industrial neighborhood. Charlie's Place is where I took my 1981 Honda 450. Charlie only repaired classic Honda's older than mine.
From all appearances, Charlie had a very successful motorcycle repair business. He had two master mechanics and required a two week appointment schedule.
Charlie is now operating in Los Angeles near Koreatown. He closed his San Francisco shop.
I asked some of my mechanic friends in the neighborhood "What happened?"
The answer was that the harassment by local government officials was unending and unmerciful.Charlie is a gentle hard working top flight non-political mechanic.
Local government officials were regularly visiting Charlie's shop to tell him he could not have so many motorcycles parked on the street in front of his shop. No one else was using the space. It is a barren industrial block. The visiting government dignitaries usually came in groups with a host of interns along with them... all wearing fancy clothes. The officials are all earning in the hundred-thousand-dollar-plus income category with pensions and health care benefits proportional to their executive earnings.
These arcane zombies from City Hall were incapable of understanding how important Charlie's business is to San Francisco and to San Franciscans who love old motorcycles. They are incapable of understanding how difficult it is to start and run a successful business.
What I am asking my readers to do is find a word that expresses the incomparable blindness of these perpetually harassing government drones. They are not stupid they are not naïve and they are not ideological idiots. What are they?
(Here is Charlie’s Facebook page with the top photo of the Honda model that he was constantly building from scratch with every part perfect. Every screw and bold. He built many over many years.)