The war between whimsy and responsibility is an ancient one, and it is raging in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Someone — and you’d be hard pressed to find who, since pretty much every third resident of this city spends his ample spare time dreaming of Magical Other Worlds and making up games with names like “Elf Crusade” — has put a tiny door on a tree in the park. Officials took it away, saying it was hurting the tree. But people freaked the fuck out, so they are putting it back. Whimsy 1, Responsibility 1/2, for giving in to Whimsy.

Help Grist raise $25,000 by September 30 to further advance our climate reporting

Naturally, the door has attracted a large following of children. Here are some of them saying adorable things about it.

[protected-iframe id=”ea44dccbac8a657b01cac4f367794d55-5104299-30178935″ info=”http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/static/flash/embeddedPlayer/swf/otvEmLoader.swf?version=fw1000&station=kgo&section=&mediaId=9046445&parentId=9046248&cdnRoot=http://cdn.abclocal.go.com&webRoot=http://abclocal.go.com&configPath=/util/&site=” width=”400″ height=”268″]

We hope the one who is almost or already in middle school is joking when he says he thinks gnomes built it. (It was obviously built by elves. Elves are the ones who like to create mischief. Gnomes are the ones that stand on lawns making passersby wonder why the people who put them there have no taste.)