Woman Calls Cops on Guy Whistling 'Closing Time'

Oregon police don't know if it was the song or the whistling in general that offended
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 30, 2016 8:44 AM CST
Woman Calls Cops on Guy Whistling 'Closing Time'
Whistling not appreciated in these parts, stock photo guy.   (Getty Images)

Every week, Capt. Mark Herb of Oregon's Forest Grove Police Department pulls together what Time calls the department's "always entertaining" police log, and the last item in the most recent installation didn't disappoint. For the week of Nov. 20 through Nov. 26 listed in the Oregonian, the log cited ruined Thanksgivings, the attempted theft of a riding mower, and the revival of a once-ubiquitous late-'90s song. The log notes the "verbal altercation" that took place when a woman become perturbed and told a man to "shut up" when he wouldn't stop whistling Semisonic's "Closing Time" near her driveway.

She ended up eventually calling the cops on the "jackass guy," and when the police got there he was gone, but they managed to track him down, still whistling the same song. After the cops talked to him—likely telling him "you don't have to go home but you can't. stay. here"—he headed out, lips still pursed, sounds still emanating. "It's not clear if the caller would have been more or less upset if it was a different genre or whether it was just the talent lacking in the whistling," Herb tells Time. (A Maine man was told by police to spread his whistling around and not linger in one spot.)

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