Juggling Interests: An Inside Look at the New Street Performers Ordinance

By Jorge Casuso and Lookout Staff

Ned Landin sees big things in the new Santa Monica performer's ordinance he helped the city craft. When the rest of the country follows suit - and he predicts it won't be long --, the singer/songwriter says he'll be able to hop in his van with his guitar and tiny dog, "Potato," and reach an audience of millions during a cross country trip.

"You can tour and have an audience of three million and not have to go through Disney," Landin said. "This is a Renaissance. It's the venue for the next century."

Free speech advocate Jerry Rubin, who also had a hand in drafting the emergency ordinance, begs to differ. In fact, the perpetual activist is so upset over the law the city began to enforce last weekend, he went on an 18-day hunger strike to protest the chilling effect he predicts it will have on creativity and free speech.

"It's unjust, unfair and unsafe," said Rubin, who ended his hunger strike Monday by eating grapes that spelled out the word "Freedom." "It's not an inconvenience, it's a downright hardship. You can't blame people for trying to get around a ludicrous ordinance."

The new law - which updates a constitutionally questionable 1997 ordinance regulating performers and vendors on the bustling Third Street Promenade and Santa Monica Pier -- is perhaps the most liberal in the nation. For the first time, the negotiations brought together everyone from city officials and uniformed police officers to jugglers, guitarists, clowns and political activists.

Before last week, performers couldn't name a price for their wares, and if they didn't accept a donation of any amount, they could be fined and lose their performers license. Now, they can vend, though no more than five items can be displayed at a time.

The new ordinance covers sketch artists, balloon sculptors, psychic cats, light bulb painters, henna artists and just about anyone else who can make the case that what they produce is the result of a "performance." Free speech vendors like Rubin can peddle anything from pamphlets to bumper stickers displayed on tables that measure up to 4 feet by 8 feet.

Loose as it is, the ordinance is under attack as an exercise in municipal control by critics who fear it will dampen the creative energy that pumps life into the two thriving commercial strips. Their biggest worry is that a minutia of guidelines will trigger a chaotic game of musical chairs by forcing performers and vendors to pick up their gear and paraphernalia and rotate their spots on the even hours. Performers also must move at least 120 feet and keep at least 40 feet away from each other?

"We're saying, 'You can now stay, you can now sell, you can be there all day, just share the good spaces,'" Councilman Michael Feinstein, who led the effort to craft the new measure, said before casting his vote last month. "We can all grow up and share all that wonderful area if we give a little bit."

If there were a theme song for the enforcement kickoff Friday night it would be Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused." While some performers and vendors abided by the law, many others held tight to their spots. Police slapped $250 fines on a few, who also happened to be among the measure's most vocal opponents. (Rubin was ticketed twice for refusing to move.)

Some found their compliance backfired. Inka Groove, a duet that plays indigenous Latin American music, had to walk more than two blocks Friday night before they could find a spot at 10 p.m., and then, it took negotiating with the string quartet who occupied the space.

"It was really hard," said Christian Sanchez, the duet's leader. "We tried more than 20 spots. No one is there to time anyone. No one is moving anywhere. There are too many performers."

Proponents of the law say many of the initial snags will fade away when the city hires a $12-to-$15-an-hour monitor to keep score and smooth the friction arising from the stiff competition for prime spots. (The block between Broadway and Santa Monica Blvd., for example, can draw as many as 15,000 visitors on a busy weekend night, according to Fire Department officials).

"There's certainly going to be a learning curve, and once we get a monitor in place, it will help," said Kathleen Rawson, executive director of the Bayside District, a city-funded agency which oversees the downtown area, including the Third Street Promenade. "If people are confused, it's because it's new."

Rawson notes that the current rotation plan was the result of a six-month long process that included performers, vendors, city officials and law enforcement officers. The group was faced with a thorny dilemma: How to insure that a particularly obnoxious performer didn't camp day in and day out in front of a frustrated merchant, or secure a prime location no one else could share.

Numerous plans were considered and discarded before the group finally settled on rotation. "I can't think of an option we didn't explore," Rawson said.

Unlike performers on Universal City Walk, which is private property, those on the pier and Third Street Promenade couldn't be screened for quality. Anyone has the right to express themselves on a public street, and more than 500 performers and vendors have been granted permits to do so by the city.

The idea of using a lottery to choose who would go where was nixed both by free speech activists (Rubin called it "lotterizing free speech"), and performers, who said it had driven away quality acts from other cities. "The best performers will go elsewhere because they have no other option but to sit around and wait for a spot," Landin said.

"There were a lot of compromises," Rawson said. "We knew there would be
problems. You can't do this and make it fool proof. There are too many
personalities."

If anything is driving the ongoing battle over street performers, it's personalities, and two of the main ones driving the fate of the ordinance are Rubin and Landin.

Whether they love it or hate it, Santa Monica's street performers ordinance largely is the work of Landin, a regular on the promenade along with a tiny gray Toto look alike named potato. For six months, Landin crafted and critiqued draft after draft of the ordinance, attending meeting after meeting to hash out the details.

This wasn't Landin's first campaign. In the early 1990's, he was fighting on behalf of performers in Cambridge, Ma., over decibel levels and performance hours.

"When I started performing, I had nothing going on in my life," Landin said. "I wasn't very good. Street performing gave me an opportunity to get better. I want to save that for other performers. The only way to do that is to compromise. An uncompromising position will cause it to be wiped out."

Rubin, who has taken on causes from banning war toys to saving the Ballona wetlands, has latched onto his latest cause with a vengeance. He believes rotation will only lead to division, as performers and vendors compete in a dangerous game of musical chairs.

"People are fighting with each other," Rubin said. "No one really likes it."

Although he supports the rotation system in Santa Monica, Landin was among those who opposed the idea in Cambridge. But he says there's a difference. In Harvard Square, most performers learned to share space. In Santa Monica, he said, performers are apt to grab and hold onto the same spot for hours.

"Rotation will force people to deal with each other more," Landin said. "I saw people who don't normally work with each other walk up and ask someone for their spot. Before people would just go home."

Landin is the first to agree that Santa Monica still doesn't have the perfect performers ordinance. But he lauds the new law compared to the measure he worked on in Cambridge, where anything but pure performance is prohibited and where almost nothing can be sold but cd's and videotapes of a performer's work.

"Even making balloons is questionable," he said. "Out here you can paint, you can create things. That is a huge step in the right direction."

While Rubin agrees, he finds the rotation an unworkable burden.

"I'm very depressed," said Rubin, who said he was too weak Friday and Saturday to break down his display and move every two hours, especially in the wake of a sauna and enema that nearly hospitalized him. "It would take a half hour to break down and a half hour to set up. They're treating us like slaves."

City officials, however, say the ordinance has to be given a chance to develop and change with use before its effectiveness can be gauged.

"It's a work in progress if for no other reason than the performers change all the time," said city attorney Marsha Moutrie. "They'll think of ways to utilize either the law or weaknesses or omissions to their benefit. They are very resourceful."