Kenneth Caneva and Jane Sugarman of Greensboro sent the following LTE to the N&R. I haven't written much about the subject but can't help but agree:
Street musicians should be welcomed
That the City Council is considering licensing street musicians is another example of its counterproductive meddling in matters best left alone.
Is a background check really necessary to keep dangerous buskers off our streets? Have droves of people really been bothered by the modest amplification some use either to complement their singing or to be heard above the street noise? What pressing need requires the hours of performing to be circumscribed? Keeping off “private property” is a shibboleth. Is it really a big deal if some people stand just off the sidewalk in the entry ways of closed businesses? Have liability claims really been mounting? Aside from the bureaucratic rigmarole of registering, a fee of $25 for the privilege of performing in public would likely be a significant deterrent. Or is the council’s intent to discourage public street performers? These proposals reveal again its failure to grasp just what Greensboro needs — and doesn’t need — to make downtown a pleasant place to spend time.
If the goal is (and should be) to encourage a vibrant and friendly downtown, musicians should be encouraged and applauded. If the music lifts your spirit, toss some coins in the hat. Our response should be a smile, not fear.
Also, what is the City's issue with musicians selling their own CDs or poets and authors selling their own books? In world class cities like New York City it is an every day occurrence and a welcomed form of commerce but do the same in Greensboro and you become a criminal. My personal war with the Greensboro City Council started back in 2000 when I published Carrot On A Stick (no longer in print) and soon learned that the city in which I lived denied me the God given right to pursue my chosen path towards earning a living and making my own way.
Just think of all the hell the Greensboro City Council might not have gone through over the course of the last 12 years if Billy Jones had never taken up blogging? The Blogsboro Meetup Group that got the attention of the Los Angeles Times in 2004 might not have ever formed (I did found the group, you know) the world famous Streetplane that put me in front of 20 Million viewers on Discovery Channel Canada and attracted worldwide attention to Bloggingpoet.com where I constantly put down the City of Greensboro for 11 years... those things that cost the City a fortune in PR budgets to overcome might not have never happened.
Or City Manager Mitch Johnson might still have a job. No, I can't take credit for his firing but it was Jerry Bledsoe and I who arranged the face to face meeting between David Wray and a sizable group of local bloggers-- some who thought Wray guilty in the beginning but later changed their minds-- and pushed the City Council into a corner they couldn't buy their way out of, disappearing News & Record archives and all. With a lot of help from Ben Holder, of course.
Just think of all the problems Robbie Perkins might not have faced in the last year had I been free to recite poems and sell books on city streets instead of spending my days at home at my keyboard. But no, Greensboro's Fascist regime has to control every aspect of its citizens' lives and meddle in everything we do.
You see, because I couldn't go out and actively peddle books I began blogging as a means to sell books and it was blogging that dragged me into local politics-- not the other way around. So in other words, the Greensboro City Council did all this to themselves and I've been getting back at you all these many years. All I wanted to do was create, not destroy, but you stood in my way.
And they wonder why the young people move away.
Finally, thanks to the Billy Jones created by the Greensboro City Council, our local elite are eating their own. Too bad they won't eat them all.
You see, Greensboro, it's like I told you many years ago, you cannot spend enough on Public Relations to undo the damage I can do and your recent effort with the downtown performing arts center is proof I was right. And I can always get louder. Fix the problems before the next Billy Jones whoever he or she might be, spends the next 12 or 13 years making your lives miserable.
