For now, there is harmony on the street performer front, but rest assured it won’t last for long.
There are bound to be complaints about the system approved this week once the summer rolls around and, like all matters related to street performers, it will be driven by the dollar.
While they may hide behind constitutional issues and take umbrage at anything that prevents them from doing exactly what they want whenever they want, the bottom line to these buskers is making money. The great majority of them simply want to get tips from Boardwalk-goers and anything that makes that a little bit difficult or stands in the way of that will draw their ire.
That’s why at some point the city has to be firm in its position on street performers and we think now is that time. The Mayor and Council and the Boardwalk Task Force have gone beyond their duties to appease the performers.
Last summer, after months of meetings and input from street performers, the city put into law a new system governing street performers with the objective being trying to find a happy medium where Boardwalk store owners, the street performers and the general public at large would all be satisfied.
That didn’t happen last year because the performers were outraged over the hurdles they had to overcome. Clearly there were some aspects that needed to be tweaked. Having a dozen people sleeping outside of City Hall the night before they could register for spots on the boards was obviously not the intent and unacceptable.
It’s important to remember that by and large, however, the Boardwalk businesses were pleased with the new system that addressed the “Wild Wild West” mentality where anything goes prevailed for the performers on the Boardwalk. The general public also was content, although this is a divisive issue for many. Some say the performers add to the charm of the Boardwalk, while others think they are mere panhandlers and should be banned.
While there were some minor tweaks made to the existing ordinance, such as the size of designated spaces, the key issue that needed to be rectified ahead of this summer was the flawed first-come, first-serve registration process. That’s now gone and in its place is a single-day lottery system for designated locations from 9th Street south to the Inlet. The concept is there will be a single signup day on Monday that determines the Monday through Thursday spaces as well as those for the weekends. There will be some luck involved but it will be fair, which is at its most simplistic the goal here.
In this case, the city has gone out of its way to accommodate the buskers’ concerns. We would argue there has even been too much communication on this matter because there may be no answer to some of the performers’ concerns, particularly if it means they don’t want any regulations at all because it hurts their income.
There are many who feel that way and are asking the court system to weigh in on it as a result. In the meantime, we think this is a fair system for all the players.