Festival etics, 15% of your hat or we report you to the IRS

[davidkaye]

You are arguing that festivals harm local businesses; fundamentally, you posit that one corporation is more worthy of the audience's dollars than another.

I think my answer got lost somewhere in this forum. It takes a lot of money to put on a festival of any kind, whether it's a music festival, busking festival, or Burning Man. Thus, the big corporations such as Another Planet, Live Nation, BBC (Better Beverage), and others dominate festivals. THAT is corporate.

On the other hand, the clubs and bars tend almost universally to be owned by 2, 3, or 4 people who've pooled their money and maxed out their credit cards in order to run venues to serve their neighbors and local performers. Big difference.

[Irina]

Wow, Isabella, you are at the Fringe and you take your time to contribute to this forum? Bravo! Good luck in Edmonton! Your act is amazing, to my knowledge you are the only busking aerial act around! I totally agree with you - festivals are GOOD for local community - they bring tourists to hotels and resreaunts, give jobs to locals, and inspire local creative people to improve the quality of their shows/art etc. The mentality in San Francisco is "this is my spot, I have been here for 10 years, stay away from me!" They do not need to travel, like buskers in other cities, where the weather makes you move out and travel, so they are really protective of their 'territory". I have been threatened with baseball bet on Fisheman's Wharf when I worked there in 2000-2001...I am not saying ALL SF buskers are like that, but some are and I can see where they are coming from. The rents are also very high there, so I can undersrtand that they are under a lot of pressure to make money!

[Lee Nelson]

AMEN!!!!!!!!!

[Isabella]

So I'm guessing you always pick the neighborhood hardware store over Home Depot, you hit the corner grocery instead of Safeway, and you never set foot in Walmart?

Look, David, you're entitled to your opinion - you ARE arguing that one business is more worthy than another, and your criteria for worthiness is not quality of product, audience appeal, value for money, or variety of music, it's size. You think small businesses are better than big businesses. That's fine, and it's a great thing to support your community. But it doesn't make festivals--that employ a ton of LOCAL people and spread the wealth around LOCALLY through food and beverage concessions, garbage pick up and sanitation, ticket surcharges to the county/state/venue, etc, all the way down to the henna tattoo girl sitting on her cushion at the edge of the festival--the bad guy. You want your local bar to have a monopoly on the music dollar? Keep tilting at that windmill. And it's a great cause to support local venues. But don't imagine that you're advocating for a utopia for all street performers by railing against festivals.

Right now, I'm at a festival. The Edmonton Fringe. There are local venues involved - pretty much every theatre, bar, storefront, and found space in town. Every restaurant in a ten block radius is getting extra traffic. There are local, national and international performers, with a set quota for each category. The indoor and main stage performers are chosen by lottery--the newbies have just as much chance as festival veterans of getting in and making a hit show. And the street buskers have a mix of big and little pitches that are assigned by morning draw. We're making great money, we're provided with housing by the festival, and we're having a wonderful time. And a ton of LOCAL people are coming to LOCAL venues to see LOCAL performers do their shows, as well as those local people getting to interact with theatre people from all over the world. There are LOCAL street performers here who are getting better because they get feedback from professionals on the road, not just their own community. And there are lots of opportunities to share tips on doing better shows, writing better contracts, and getting leads for better gigs. It is one of the kindest, most generous, most lovely artistic communities I get to be a part of. And every morning, the Artistic Director of the WHOLE GODDAMN FESTIVAL is present at the draw to hang out with the street performers and see how we're all doing.

All I can say is, David, if your festival experiences are uniformly terrible, if you make no money and no friends, and gain no artistic satisfaction, you may not be doing it correctly.

[davidkaye]

And David, I think you missed my point.

You are arguing that festivals harm local businesses; fundamentally, you posit that one corporation is more worthy of the audience's dollars than another.

This may be different in your town, but in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley where I've put on hundreds of live music shows, nearly all music venues are owned by 1 or 2 or 3 local people. They're not corporate at all. These are folks who have put their money into a dream and do their best to support the local community by booking local acts as much as they can.

In the Bay Area I'm talking about Amnesia, the Knockout, Hotel Utah, Kingman's Ivy Room, El Rio, Ashkenaz, Mama Buzz, La Pena. Even the biggies like Bottom of the Hill, Red Devil Lounge, and Cafe du Nord are owned by individuals who have borrowed money, even maxed out their credit cards to create community spaces for community events.

The festivals, at least the festivals around here are the big guys for the most part. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is put on by billionaire Warren Hellman. The Outside Lands festival just concluded is put on by Another Planet, a concert corporation that was spun off from Bill Graham Presents. The Treasure Island music festival, happening soon, is put on by BBC Beverage, a major food and beverage corporation.

Okay, those are music festivals, but I think the theme holds. Festivals for the most part require a lot of money and thus require corporations, or at least corporate foundations to run.

Call me old-school but I prefer to leave my money with local folks I know and respect, who have put their personal money on the line, not corporations.

[martin ewen]

McDonaldsization of street performers, is I think an unfounded fear. If the American population are further conditioned to accept prefabricated pap as reality then maybe but even though reality moreso in America than anywhere else is a dimwitted feelgood collective hallucination built on exploitation and held up like that is some cherished principled ideal interchangable and technically identical with the concept of 'freedom' while actual freedoms are whittled down to the fact that your scrotum is public property at American airports and given also that the idea of 'disposable income' and 'leisure time' are constructs that have hypnotized the population while they actually commit to entire lives of indentured debt and servitude masked as lifestyles spent being culturally programmed in front of a glowing box when not working or purchasing things the box tells them to on their 'days off'

Well you get the shitty culture you are prepared to put up with is my point and the fact that you have one promoter putting on a raft of cookie cutter street fairs, [which are entirely different entities from a street festival as we here know and are employed by ]

is the reason your objection to new efforts to produce street festivals runs counter to your own argument. Just as the touting of SF as a world destination with it's huge entertainment catchment runs counter to your argument that festivals alone are predominantly responsible for empty rooms.

As far as street theatre goes America leads in many things but it's the handicapped poor cousin of street theatre. The best american performers don't even bother visiting it, it's just too inhospitable. Dirty Fred would get arrested. Space cowboy just has got arrested in NY, doing what he can freely do throughout Europe and Australasia so to that degree American street theatre has already been McDonaldsized. It's only career masochists like Eric who exist as exceptions proving the rule.

[Isabella]

And David, I think you missed my point.

*****Do local businesses deserve monopolies on their products?*****

You are arguing that festivals harm local businesses; fundamentally, you posit that one corporation is more worthy of the audience's dollars than another.

Do those local businesses deserve a protected zone where audiences are forced to attend them and them only?

Honestly, I'd even listen to accordion music if it meant I got to spend a day in the fresh air and sunshine instead of having to coop up in a dark, sticky, smoky, too-loud bar to hear some live music. As a consumer, am I allowed to make that choice, or do you feel that choice should be dictated for me based on the home city of the corporation in question?

And as a performer, do you want to work in a location where you have one, local option to sell your services rather than a market of several events/venues where you might negotiate the best deal for yourself and play indoors or out as it suits your show?

[davidkaye]

David, your going to have to get used to massive differences of opinion on pnet. hard not to take it personally but what you may not be aware of is that although it's a slow moving site at present, in part because of corporate bleed-off.

I don't that any of it personally. I'm a longtime veteran of Usenet, so I've seen it all. And your point about "corporate bleed-off" plays EXACTLY into my point.

This specialised little online community has existed for over a decade now and has some cumulative wisdom.

I'm actually not new here, though my description says so. I hadn't logged in nearly 5 years and recently came back. I also know some of the performers who pop up on the streets and at various shows, Eric Cash, Scot Nery, Daniel Browning Smith the Rubber Boy, Chris Karney, Paul Nathan, Sigred, Molotov, etc.

I mention that because your point about a small ecosystem wherein one big event starves all the others is just a provincial fact rather than anything a principle can be built on. ie, festivals are bad because regular venues become empty during them.

San Francisco is a city in a metro of nearly 8 million. It's a world destination and the #4 metro in the USA. Sorry, but it's hardly a provincial setting. It's just that there is a finite audience for everything. It's also true of movie festivals as I've noted elsewhere. Movie festivals are thriving; movie theaters are closing.

and if 'festivals' threaten established venues, well there must be something they offer that established venues do not.

Look at it this way: Lots of people hate WalMart because it's called a "category killer" meaning that it kills off businesses within 50 to 75 miles. This is a known fact. Starbucks has been a category killer in a lot of communities. Chain stores drive out mom'n'pop businesses all the time.

We can say that they're offering something that the other established venues are not. For example, McDonald's offers a bland, uniform dining experience. It doesn't change much from city to city or country to country. People who visit us in San Francisco flock to McDonald's even though SF is one of the finest restaurant destinations in the world. People want the bland, uniform dining experience of a McDonald's.

That's well and good for what it is, but aren't we performers because we want to offer something different?

Take street fairs, for instance. SF has dozens of street fairs -- Noe Valley, Castro, Fillmore, Bernal Heights, Potrero, North Beach, Polk Street, Glen Park, etc., but most of those are identical with the same crafts, the same music, and the same food because the booster groups that put most of them on have contracted with one promoter to run them. (And every one seems to feature LaVay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers.)

I just don't want to see the McDonaldsization of street performers.

[davidkaye]

Festivals and Killing Acts

Your example of Arcade Fire is pretty right on - they probably wouldn't come play a club.

You missed my point. My point is that the Outside Lands music festival (3 days on 5 stages) ruins the live music scene in San Francisco while it's going on. Likewise, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival harms the local bluegrass music scene while it's going on.

My point is that there are X number of people who go to see live events. You have a big festival and the small venues and the smaller performers hurt because the big guys take the audience away.

Maybe I should put it another way: If you just went to the Cotati Accordion Festival and spent the weekend listening to accordion music, would you then go out to a cafe or nightclub and hear someone play accordion? Hell, I play accordion and even *I* wouldn't do that!

[martin ewen]

David, your going to have to get used to massive differences of opinion on pnet. hard not to take it personally but what you may not be aware of is that although it's a slow moving site at present, in part because of corporate bleed-off. facebook, google+, etc. generic social networks with attractive bells and whistles. This specialised little online community has existed for over a decade now and has some cumulative wisdom.

Welcome BTW.

Festivals are neither good or bad of themselves. Most that have survived their own learning curves are good as a result and most exploitive fests die, starved because of the indignity they offer.

Many here are or have been full time performers working some international combination of festival and street and corporate.

I mention that because your point about a small ecosystem wherein one big event starves all the others is just a provincial fact rather than anything a principle can be built on. ie, festivals are bad because regular venues become empty during them.

Not arguing this isn't true but obviously the public are drawn to things that most interest them on any given day.

Corporations, as much as I'd like to dress them as darth vader and beat them with a baseball bat are not uniformly bad. The epilepsy foundation is a corporation and they have created a funding umbrella that has propelled the Toronto Buskers fest for over decade to rival Edmonton, another huge and much respected festival.


if you create a cultural, or counter cultural module that charges at the door and sells liquids at a profit using performers to get people through that door then you live or die by the sense of community that has people return to that room.

If you exist using that module by taking for granted a supply of tourists then you are merely another distractive commodity and 'festivals' if they are taking your custom are simply better at what they do than you, [figurative 'you'].

There's no injustice as far as I can see. Adapt or die.

Street theatre is adaptive by definition which I suppose is why it's survived centuries.

and if 'festivals' threaten established venues, well there must be something they offer that established venues do not. My observation is that they offer atmosphere in public places rather than atmosphere you need to pay a cover charge for and additionally festivals commercial worth can be measured on more levels sociologically and commercially than a doortake and bar sales nightly total can match.

But ...you know... I could be mistaken.

[Isabella]

Second what Lee says. Not sure where you have been working, but I've had wonderful luck with festivals, been treated extremely well, and made great friends and great money.

Interesting to think about festivals taking away from the local scene - I know in Christchurch, they specifically book buskers who are not working the street, so that the audience will see something new at the festival.

Many of the locations I work don't have a circle show scene - there may be small music buskers, but the festival is a different beast, bringing in much larger acts and shows that otherwise wouldn't come. Your example of Arcade Fire is pretty right on - they probably wouldn't come play a club.

So the question is - are the venues/locals *entitled* to a monopoly? Because you're basically arguing that any town with a hamburger stand should be facing off against McDonalds. Perhaps business owners should anticipate that some weeks of the year will be awesome and others will be competing against an outside event? Would you argue that they are entitled to a clear playing field every weekend, and that anyone who wants to see Arcade Fire had better be able to afford a ticket to Montreal to watch them there?

[Lee Nelson]

dude, get out of SF.
I have worked at hundreds of festivals and mostly they are great. Only a very few have I felt like I got the short end of the stick.

[davidkaye]

Hi Irina,

Well, let's see. I have been a radio DJ and talkshow host, a TV movie host, a very bad actor in small theater productions, and I have put on about 400 live shows over 12 years in venues such as clubs, dives, and theaters in the SF Bay Area. I've also booked acts for corporate events and play my button accordion at private and an occasional corporate event. That's the extent of my corporate entertainment schtick.

On the busking side, I've been a street musician, playing fiddle or button accordion on the streets, at farmers' markets, in the BART subway, and at the occasional flea market.

The purpose of a lot of my posts is to caution buskers about getting pushed around. I don't like to see good performers jacked around by charlatan promoters. I feel more kinship to the buskers than to any of the corporate people. The corporate people and the promoters can take care of themselves.

The buskers are often people who have a passion to perform, and can be blindsided by that passion and make some dumb moves. What I hope to tell people is hey, you're good at what you do and there is no reason to tolerate being pushed around.

As to festivals, I DETEST them (Eric is an exception here because I know he won't go corporate on us). I DETEST festivals because the promoters pull the crap that this NW Folklife Festival obviously does. They try to dominate the scene and prevent "outsiders" from working. That is BAD.

Whether it's a busker festival or a movie or music festival, the festival format erodes the audience base for the smaller performers. For instance, there is a music festival called Outside Lands taking place in San Francisco this weekend. Sure, Arcade Fire is here and all kinds of good acts are here, including Kitten on the Keys and her bawdy burlesque act.

HOWEVER, Outside Lands with its 5 stages and 3 days of shows positively KILLS most of the other live entertainment in SF this weekend! It's nearly 10:30pm. I just came from a venue that is normally very busy with live music tonight and tonight they're empty. I'm sure it's because the audience that would have been there was at Outside Lands today or will be tomorrow.

BUT, if you're going to work busking festivals, I am adamant about suggesting to buskers that you get a stipend, get contracts in writing, and basically formalize as much as possible or you're going to get ripped off AND you may find that the busking environment will suffer from the festival taking away all the audience within about a month either side of the festival.

I think too may people are giving away their talents to promoters in the hopes of drawing big audiences that will help their careers. I say don't give away your talents. Demand a stipend.

[Irina]

Hi, David, I have seen a lot of your posts lately, and it looks like you are coming from the world of corporate entertainment...We all love corporate parties and sponsorship money, but for most street performers this is not the case...Most street performers I know just work on local pitches and at local events, nobody pays them and daily stipends, they just get their 'hat". But when a local festival held on public property tries to get money FROM street performers who worked there for years - this is IMHO is immoral and illegal and clearly violates the 1st amendment of USA constitution. I can understand when festival moves the busking acts away from vendors - but they can't just close you or demand 15% of your tips! I agree with you - it is much better to work at the festivals which give you free housing and daily stipend, but do you have these every weekend? If you do - you are very lucky, most buskers do not. If we just act as primadonnas - we'll starve to death!

[davidkaye]

Get A Contract!

NW Folklife has not paid a single performer for their skills and talents to entertain at this event in the last 3 decades since I've been donating my time there. Now, they not only wish to deny the right to freedom of expression, but they want to street performers to pay for that right. Rights are not privileges to be controlled by power hungry event coordinators and they have no right treating our rights in that manner!

I suggest to anybody who is invited to participate in one of these "festivals" to be sure to get a written contract with the organizer, look it over thoroughly, and then decide if you want to participate. Make sure you get their counter signature so you both have signed copies of the contract. Yeah, it's a hassle, but this is the only way to guarantee that you're not going to get ripped off.

So many promoters think they can get rich quick on the backs of performers who have spent years honing their skills by ripping them off or making unreasonable demands. Forget that! As street performers were are professionals, not derelicts. We deserve to be treated as well as the electrician they hire to to oversee their setup or the insurance agent who oversees their liability insurance.