There are some towns across the USA who still call themselves "towns". They have a downtown area swarming with pedestrians, pan handlers, townies, tourists, and musicians. Always musicians. These towns always have a soundtrack. It's not always great, but hearing someone destroy a dylan song on an out of tune guitar or play 80's melodies on a sax is far more charming than your favorite CD pumped through even the best of speakers. It's called "live" for a reason. It's alive. It breaths. You hear it and it hears you back.
Northampton used to be one of those towns. People would drive up to Noho to watch the freaks. They weren't really freaks, they were just rich kids with hair dye and clothes from the Army Barracks, otherwise butch lesbians that caught the attention of out-of-towners the way a nun would get attention at a keg party. Not exactly freaks, but worth leaving ludlow.
While the cognitive mind of the cash wielding pedestrian was focused on the sidewalk settlements of 14 year old trustafarians and cars that mimicked livestock, the smell of pizza and/or Asian cuisine would find the nose. The eyes would enjoy an antique cityscape speckled with cheep xerox propaganda. And the ears.. ah the ears.. After that motorcycle passes, the ear would fill with the sound of a creepy dude with an out of tune guitar. The fact that you and he both know the words to the song that he is belting reveals what is too often forgotten. Sometimes they would annoy the crap out of a shop keeper or maybe they were obstructing a handicap ramp. They would be asked to move and the show would go on about 10 feet away without missing a verse of "uncle toms band". The musician's willingness to cooperate is partly out of a lack of reason not to. I mean, if you're in the way, you'll move. And partly because there was a street performance permit issued, for free, by the town. That permit insured that the said musician had read the guidelines. Guidelines that essentially said, "hey man, don't be a goober and move if you're asked to".
It's not always a creepy guy with an out of tune guitar. Sometimes its a cute little girl with a violin or a crazy old lady with a banjo. Steel drums, mandolins, double basses, kazoos, you name it. Someone would lug their rig down to main st and attempt to make $7.00 that night. On a good night (by "good", I mean for you and the musician) the musician would break 3 digits while ice cream licking families, tattooed college students, and novice photographers all dammed up a chunk of sidewalk to watch someone play the snot out of an instrument that they will line up and ask the name of between each song. Putting $5 in the persons case/bucket/hat/mouth was the best purchase you'll make all night.
What are you buying when you put money in a street performers hat? Were they going to stop playing if you didn't do it? Unlikely. Were you impressing your date? Maybe. But really, what did you owe the musician? Consider this; you could have got pizza or Asian or even asian pizza from your generic little springfield suburb. You could have gone online that day to see something out of the ordinary like OH MY GOD LESBIANS! But you didn't. You felt the need to sip your coffee and lick your ice cream and smoke your clove in the town of Northampton MA because you can. Because it's not a Stop and Shop parking lot. Its got people. PEOPLE doing things that people do for no other reason than.. well.. why do cats play with yarn and whales jump out of water? Who cares? They do it because they can. People choose to hang out in a town like Northampton for these simple pleasures. Passing the spoils to the shop keepers, chefs, real estate agents, and beyond.
When you give a dollar to a street musician, you are thanking them in the same way you would thank city hall for having silly castle architecture or thank the park for having benches or thank the students for wearing home made clothes. It's not like everywhere else. Its a place you can go for no reason at all. You drove 35 minutes. You paid the parking meter. You are SOMEWHERE and that creepy guy with the guitar is the difference between Northampton and Holyoke. The difference between somewhere and anywhere.
Of course, you could also give your dollar to the teams of pan handlers that wait for you to leave Thorne's or Fitzwilly's. They are selling something different. If you walk past them without paying, you leave your pleasant night with a guilt trip. Or they can hold your good vibe hostage for the ransom of "some spare change". 9 out of 10 don't get the guilt trip. but that 10% ads up to an amount that would make you want to quit the guitar. That 10% of people who happen to have spare change on them are purchasing something from the beggar. They are purchasing their own feelings of "god saw me do it" and also purchasing the waste removal of class based guilt for the low low price of whichever pocket had the lease amount of change in it. OK, thats not always what they're selling. Sometimes it really is an unfortunate citizen left behind by our free republic. Maybe you are actually buying them food. Or sometimes you are buying M&Ms from children who claim to be from a church. But usually, you're paying 75 cents for warm fuzzies and the removal of your guilt. People complain. Cash smearing, trinket buying, sushi eating, clove smoking people complain about the rif-raf on the streets. "This is such a pretty town. Can't they do something about this? Oh, Hey look, that car is painted like a cow.. Anyway, can't the cops move these bums somewhere else?".
So what can the town do about this pan handler problem which is not really that much of a problem? Let me offer some insight by rephrasing the question. So what can the city officials do to justify their position as an employee of the people when the people (a couple of shop owners and a random tourist) complain about the reality that has poked it's head into their little utopian dry hump? Ok, let me re-rephrase.. What can city officials do in order to show that they are responding to this problem? Notice the question is not "what can city officials do ABOUT THIS PROBLEM?" the question is, "what can they do to SHOW THAT THEY ARE RESPONDING?" Why have I spent a whole paragraph just asking this question? because the answer is too short.
The answer is nothing. Pan handlers are protected by the constitution. They have the right to ask you for spare change and you have the right to ignore or pay them. The constitution can only be changed to help rich people, not to unhelp poor people, apparently. The city can't respond at all. But wait... the question was "what can they do to SHOW THAT THEY ARE RESPONDING?" right? Solutions aside, lets figure a way to keep our jobs and to pacify the shop owner who could destroy me at the next town meeting. Here's an idea. Lets tell them that there is a vending permit.. no. They aren't actually vending. Lets make a loitering law that.. wait.. everyone is loitering. Isn't there some sort of public safety issue? Isn't the sidewalk maintained by the DPW? Lets have them fix it! We change the channel to the next guy with a 50% justified work flow. DPW looks at the foot traffic and pan handling and says "EURIKA!"
"EURIKA! The musicians are asking for money too! Just like the pan handlers! And they are um.. causing noise pollution! When there's no motorcycles or loud car stereos, these musicians are disturbing what could have been PURE SILENCE! And they're in the way of... STUFF! People can't easily move past them without shifting their course by 2 feet! They're not begging, hence they are not constitutionally protected! Lets see if we can weed some of these guys out!"
You think I'm kidding?
Yea, they can limit the number of places they are allowed to play. They can limit the times of day and lengths of times that they play. They can limit the nature of the instruments allowed. They can limit the number of musicians who can play together. They can make sure that the only legal spaces are in the sun instead of in the shade. And most of all, they can revoke the (now $20) performance permit from the musician, banning them from ever playing another note of music on main st. Outcome: most of the highly entertaining musicians don't bother anymore and those who were relying on it, are starving. Boo-ya! Good job DPW!
They still can't stop shop owners from clogging the sidewalk with A-frame signs. Nor can they stop people from letting their saint bernard tug its way from the parking meeter that its tied to all the way over to the other side of the sidewalk where a poodle is wetting herself in fear. Or nevermind the dogs and sign. Neighbors and old friends can stop to introduce what's his name to what's her name right there in the middle of the walkway, paying no attention to the river of people who are slowly becoming a lake of people. It's Ok to block the sidewalk as long as you're not asking for money. And they still can't stop the pan handlers. Its Ok to ask for money as long as you're not noise pollution. And the car stereos and motorcycles who sit at the curb or the red light long enough to make you want to go in doors and actually paint pottery are also protected. Make as much noise as you want. Just don't ask for money.
So, my question now is as follows. Has anyone felt a difference? Is the street easier on the ears? Do the spare change guilt trips come up less? Is it that much easier to fit a car down the sidewalk without running over a guitar case, just incase you had to ever drive on the sidewalk?
Well, one thing has actually changed (congratulations city workers, I know you don't get to hear that often), the street performing has gone from Manhattan quality to.. well.. Holyoke, Ludlow, Springfield quality. The surreal atmosphere of Hamp, which use to make us excited about needing to "go grab a coffee" has turned into "Why put money in the meter when I could just go through the D&D drive-through?" Are you in freakin' tears yet? Do you not understand that this town is one of the last of its kind? You can't just refurbish it like an antique car. When it's gone it's gone. Trading a Haymarket coffee for Dunkin drive through eventually turns into, "Why am I paying this much to live here when I could live in Greenfield?" and then "why set up shop here when I could make better money in West Springfiled?".
We have taken the first step in turning SOMEWHERE into ANYWHERE. That, to me, costs way more than the spare change that we guard so well. We know what the pan handlers are selling. We know what the musicians are selling. What have the city officials sold us? "Someone I work with kept bugging me about this thing that I constitutionally can't do anything about, so I rigged this little placebo and now I can take that off of my to-do list. Really? That's what we got? We traded an endangered American tradition for the price of scratching the words "annoying shop keeper" off of a to-do list at the DPW office? My expenses were more efficient when I was paying a beggar to leave me alone.
Sorry DPW. I know you don't see it that way and you would never do anything to hurt this town on purpose. But please believe me when I tell you that you've made a mistake. I don't tell you how to pave streets or put up signs, but I will tell you all about the dynamics of main st culture and the role of music in any given scene. I discussed it with you a year ago, and you practiced your constitutional right to ignore me. I will now start practicing my constitutional rights.
Just like the pan handler holding my good vibe hostage for 50 cents, here's my negotiation. You should give the street performing laws back to the department that was meant to handle it. By that I mean the people and the police. They will work it out with common sense, just like any other city. Get rid of the $20 fee, the stupid regulations about locations and such. Widdle it down to one rule; If an officer or shop keeper asks you to move, you move. That's the only real rule.
What am I offering in return? I'm a busker myself, not a pan handler. Surely I'm not just asking for a favor with no offering in return. The restoration of our town's reputation should suffice, but I feel like maybe I should personally offer something directly from me. How about this.. I'll make sure to get MY name on your to-do list via lobbying and or demonstrations. You might label it "Dave-thorn on my side-situation" or "The Primate-why is the whole town talking about this-fiasco" or maybe "find out exactly how many people this guy gets to speak to in a short time". Whatever you call it on your to-do list, I can promise it'll really aggravate the heck outa' ya' if you let it stay on the to-do list for too long. When you fix this mess, I'll allow you to scratch my name off of that list. Just like paying a pan handler to go away.
-Dave DelloRusso (Banjo/Vocals)
