The LookOut sm confidential

 

THE LOW-DOWN ON THE TOWN
Impudent
,
uncensored account
By
C. Castle

Council Won't Perform

Friday, June 25--Santa Monica considers itself a savvy place. This is, after all, the city that sued Mobil Oil Corp. over a gasoline additive that leaked into the water supply - and WON.

Yet, City Hall seems hamstrung over the issue of how to regulate street
performers - where they stand, how loud they play, what they sell.

The City Attorney's Office was supposed to have a new draft street
performers ordinance ready Thursday in preparation for Tuesday's City
Council meeting. Then word came down Thursday afternoon: the draft will not be ready until mid-July.

The issue of how to regulate street performers - regulate without inciting a slew of First Amendment lawsuits, that is - has been a civic battle since early last year. That's when Santa Monica proposed a new street performers ordinance -- and promptly was slapped with at least one lawsuit from civil rights attorney Carol Sobel.

Since then, the legal wranglings over the ordinance have been on hold and city officials - that includes the Bayside District Corporation, which manages the Third Street Promenade - have been forced to sit at the negotiating table with musicians, mimes, and other artists.

The process has not been an easy one; even the performers themselves do not agree. Venice activist Jerry Rubin has been spearheading one faction - supporting the loosest of regulations -- while Third Street Promenade musician Ned Landin has been leading the other.

Sorry Jerry. Rumor has it Landin represents the majority. Chaotic as they have been, the meetings resulted in a compromise between
Landin's group and city officials. Landin presented the City Attorney's
Office with his re-written ordinance, one that restricts performers but
doesn't strangle them.

The ordinance would force the performers to move to another spot on the Promenade every two hours and set a required distance between the performers.

"Jerry doesn't want to take his card table and move," one Bayside District official said at a board meeting Thursday night.

Bayside Executive Director Kathleen Rawson got a copy of the ordinance and said she's willing to give it a try, at least for the summer. But at this point, the summer will be half over by the time the matter even gets to the council
for a hearing.

Picture Bloom

And hey, what's with Councilman Richard Bloom's portrait? There on the second floor hallways of City Hall are black and white glossiy pics of all the council members, past and present.

But there is no picture of Bloom. Instead, there's a color mug that ran in the newspaper before the April election pinned in the empty frame. It's said the picture was put up when the triumphant councilman visited the chamber with victorious colleages election night. That was two months ago.

Seemed back then he couldn't wait. Now after a couple of council meetings that have run past 1 a.m., maybe the family practice attorney who, unlike other collegues, keeps early hours, may be having second thoughts.

Or maybe, as we've heard through the grapevine, he just doesn't have time for pictures anymore.


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