It’s been interesting to observe the street performer situation unfold in Ocean City over the last few weeks. Over and over again, the claim is the city will again be sued for violating the buskers’ First Amendment rights as a result of making them register in advance. I even saw a sign last weekend reporting donations would be used to fight against the city’s stripping of the performers’ constitutional rights. Common sense says that was a simple fabrication, however.
It appears the city saw this coming and has already sought the modification of a former opinion issued by U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Hollander, who has twice ruled against Ocean City on street performer matters. In 2013, Hollander found the city’s 30-foot noise ordinance for street performers to be illegal. That has since been abandoned altogether. Three years earlier, the judge ruled the city could not make buskers register ahead of time because it violated their First Amendment rights to free expression.
It’s the later ruling that City Solicitor Guy Ayres said the city is seeking an amendment to currently because the new law makes the performers register for a location, not just to entertain.
“We filed a motion in federal court to ask Judge Hollander to amend or modify her order enjoining the town to require people to register to be street performers because the new system that we use requires that they have to sign up for a space,” Ayres said. “We were on a conference call with [street performer task force member and former plaintiff in a lawsuit against the town] Mark Chase’s attorney and he said that Mark Chase was not going to challenge it. This [registration system] has been done in other places, as a matter of fact Las Vegas is doing it now and it is holding up. Las Vegas did it in conjunction with the local chapter of the ACLU, so they supported it. It was also upheld in California. There are cases throughout the country that supports what we did.”
Ayres added the city hired a First Amendment law firm to oversee this process to ensure there were no constitutional violations with the new regulations.
“There is no guarantee it will not go to court because anybody can file suit but Venable was being paid to check it all for constitutionality and be as reasonably assured as you can be that if challenged it would pass,” Ayres said.
There has been no ruling yet on the most recent motion.
Over the last 20 years, I received several letters — all hand-written, which I love — from George Hurley. I remember the first one and still have it in a file in my desk. It was in response to a story I wrote after a ride-along I did on a city bus when I was working at this newspaper during the summer of my freshman year in college.
I was tasked by founding publisher Dick Lohmeyer with riding city buses from 11 p.m.-4 a.m. (or whenever the “drunks were passed out for the night” in Lohmeyer’s words). Hurley wrote to me to go into further detail about the bus and how the “ride all day for a buck” campaign originated. It was my first direct response to an article I had worked on.
The last letter I received was last September after he came into my office with an announcement for his granddaughter’s achievement in college. We were talking about local authors and I brought up Dale Cathell, who had just come into the office the week or so before to drop off his latest book, “Wading Through The Swamp, The Memoirs Of A Bad Boy.” I offered to let him borrow it. Within a few days, he dropped it back off with a letter and a book he recommended I read, titled “An Honorable Titan, The Dramatic Life Story Of Adolph S. Ochs, the man who built The New York Times.”
The handwritten letter read, “Thank you for the loan of Dale’s book. What a unique and profound record of one’s life. I enjoyed reading it very much and have so advised Dale. Though I will always be thankful my ancestors chose northern Worcester County to live in (actually, as probably indentured servants they had no choice), I can assure you that the county today is much richer culturally and economically.”
It was said in many ways this week that Hurley will be remembered fondly and that there aren’t too many people like him still around. I agree with that very much.
Ocean City’s plans to pursue a state grant to fund a traditional playground off the Boardwalk is a good call.
Ever since it was installed, I have not been a fan of the dinosaur pieces added to the beach after the old wooden structures were removed. I still think it’s lame for the majority of children, although I admit it does provide kids of suitable ages a few minutes of enjoyment. There’s just not enough to it and children bore of it easily.
The idea of a full playground at North Division Street on a to-be-constructed concrete pad extended out on the beach sounds like a solid addition to the town’s free offerings. The early concept reminds me of a scaled down version of what Virginia Beach has in Grommet Island Park, which is a fantastic oceanfront playground. This is a nice addition for the city to explore.