Boston/Cambridge - permit system or No?

[harmonicakev]

Letters – the Boston Globe
June 12, 2005
Busker Do
Proud and defensive, the street performers interviewed by James Sullivan ("Let the Music Play," May 15) say they are not slumming - they're serious, and it's their livelihood.
So what about those who don't play for a living or people who could easily play in "better" places? They don't have as much of a right to perform in the street? What about beggars, those who are not "serious," and those who have political, religious, or artistic drives? A lawyer says all the street performers he knows want an "orderly arrangement" now that the old street-performer laws have been struck down. They're pointing to Cambridge as the model to follow.
I disagree: Cambridge ought to follow Boston and lose its stifling permit.
Here you must pay $40 a year for the right to read, recite, act, sing, dance, etc. There is much that is good in the system, but the permit is blatantly unconstitutional. It is a great device for securing rights, but at what cost?
The emphasis on music obscures the diversity of performance, and the emphasis on performing as money-seeking obscures a variety of expression. Boston must take a broader view concerning what happens in its open air. The city has begun to renew its image as the cradle of liberty; this is more important than overcoming its insufficient "cool factor."
Ian Maxwell MacKinnon /// Cambridge

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/06/12/letters/

Hi folks - just found this - the writer makes an interesting point -
what do those who actually paid the $40 think?
ciao - kev

[scot]

Boston Globe Cont'

Last year, a free-speech lawsuit brought by a coalition of street performers prompted the city to repeal its street performing ordinances altogether. Although the plaintiffs were concerned about police bothering street performers across Boston, the effect of the repeal has mostly been felt on the city property in front of Faneuil Hall and at the fringes of the market, where bucket drummers, rock bands, and human gargoyles have been flocking all summer.

''It has only affected one scene, basically, because people follow the money. This is the number one tourist destination of the city," said Peter McLaughlin, the veteran comedian and juggler known as Peter Panic.

The competition grew more fierce in July, when several troupes of break dancers from New York heard about the repeal and moved from Downtown Crossing to more fertile territory at Faneuil Hall, performing for eight hours at a stretch almost every day of the week. Meanwhile, the Sardine Family Circus of London brought in its unicycles and acrobats.

On Monday, a dispute broke out about whose turn it was to perform. The circus family left, alleging the Breeze Team dancers threatened to knock out one of its member's teeth.

''It was more than upsetting, it was almost traumatizing, really," said John Griffiths, the patriarch of the world-traveling Sardine clan.
James ''Jay Day" Geddie, founder of the Breeze Team, said that there was no threatening at all and that the dispute was settled when the performers asked the crowd to decide which act they wanted to see and people chose the break dancers.

''We don't disrespect nobody," he said. ''They just act like they rule us."

With the break dancers drawing hundreds of people, acts like the Yo-Yo Show, a Faneuil Hall-sanctioned act that skillfully twirls yo-yos in front of Quincy Market, said they have seen their crowds shrink as people descending the steps from Government Center stop to watch the break dancers and then move on for food and shopping.

''They just never stop," said John Higby, half of the husband-and-wife team.

Stephen Baird, the performance artist who led a coalition of artists that sued the city in federal court last year, said Boston officials should have heeded his suggestion to adopt reasonable rules governing when and where artists can play, how close they can sit to one another, and how loud they can be. Many cities, including Cambridge, have such regulations, he said, and street performers adjust.

Baird said the turf battles at Faneuil Hall are preferable to the closed environment that used to exist there.

''It was what I call the privatization of public space," he said. ''A corporation was allowed to have expression there, and individuals were not."

[scot]

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[harmonicakev]

the first page of 8/25 article!

Minstrels mired in Market melee
With city's repeal of performance laws, sidewalk acts battle for center stage at Faneuil Hall
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | August 25, 2005

It was supposed to herald a new era of artistic expression on the streets of Boston. But since the city repealed this spring its 19th-century laws restricting street performing, utopian visions of roving jugglers and mimes have been replaced with complaints about decibel levels and bickering over prime real estate.

''It turned into a survival of the fittest on the streets of Boston," Peter Gross, a magician and comedian, said of the city's first lawless summer. ''Whoever was the loudest and most aggressive presence won the day."

Nowhere is the jockeying or acrimony so intense as it is on the cobbled plazas of Faneuil Hall, where droves of tourists can bring artists hundreds of dollars a day.

The comedians complain about the bucket drummers. A juggler displaced by a jazz concert tried to ''muscle in" on break dancers from the Bronx, said the break dancers, who later tussled with a circus family from London. Tour guides in tricornered hats and breeches have been elbowed off the Samuel Adams statue by legions of tourists watching noisy acts. There is even a report of a dancer who teased a human gargoyle, ''negating his performance," lamented a woman who works at a shop in Faneuil Hall.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who has grimly observed this unfolding drama from his City Hall office across Congress Street, is not happy. He said he is having his legal department look into how the city could regulate street performers again, not to hush them up, but to tame the chaos.

''I sit at my desk, at the table over there, and there's entertainers fighting with entertainers," he said, gesturing impatiently at the window in his office overlooking the mayhem. ''Somebody has to control that space."

Many performers, too, are wondering whether too much freedom is a good thing -- even at Faneuil Hall, the legendary cradle of liberty where Adams rallied Colonial mobs against British taxation and William Lloyd Garrison spoke out against slavery.

''I'm a huge believer in free speech. I'm a street performer," said Dan Foley, who juggles lawn chairs in front of Quincy Market. ''But you can't impede somebody else's speech."

Until this summer, performances on the plazas in front of both Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market were tightly regulated by Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Performers from all over the world would flock to Boston each year to audition for a coveted spot in the rotation, usually scheduled in two-hour blocks in front of Quincy Market, and in front of Faneuil Hall on busy weekends.

The marketplace still runs the show in front of Quincy Market, but the space in front of Faneuil Hall, known as Sam Adams Plaza for its statue of the Revolutionary-era hero, is city property.


(the rest is in Scot's post-Kev)

[harmonicakev]

PROPOSED ordinance

Well folks, here it is,

http://www.communityartsadvocates.org/images/SAABostonPics/ProposedReg.pdf

a proposal for an ordinance in Boston. Enjoy!

Ciao - Kev