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A City Council committee has approved moving ahead with a noise ordinance proposed by Ald. Brendan Reilly, aimed at cracking down on the "Bucket Boys" and other street performers downtown. Picking up where his predecessor Burt Natarus left off, Reilly wants to give an existing noise ordinance more teeth by revoking a performer's license after fewer violations of playing above acceptable decibel levels. Police Cmdr. Steve Georgas testified to the committee agreeing with Reilly that the performers weren't just annoyances, but can also contribute to petty crime, like pickpocketing.
However, Georgas also stated that such violations are difficult to enforce -- it's not as if Chicago police carry sound meters. Only 30 tickets were issued in 2008 along Michigan Avenue -- a popular spot for the Bucket Boys -- and it couldn't be confirmed how many of these were even for violating the sound ordinance. Because of this (and the fact that many performers are unlicensed, making the threat of revocation moot), Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) wondered why the city should even bother, saying, "If we can't catch them, as we've been told, then I don't understand why we're putting another law on the books, too." [Trib]
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This bill is to protect tourist dollars. This is clearly an attempt to keep Michigan Avenue safe and clean and nice for visitors. Ridiculous.
Interestingly, though, tourists seem to like the bucket boys. They probably think the kids are some slice of "real" city life, so they gather en masse and clog the sidewalks, making it difficult for the rest of us who find ourselves trapped on Michigan. Most locals I know hate the bucket boys and wouldn't mind a bit if these kids disappeared. Make them earn an honest living selling M&Ms on the Red Line.
Try working next to these musicians. You might have a differing view. And I think most tourists--this is just my gut--think such performers add an urban flavor to their trip, something one can rarely get in, say, the middle of Kansas.
Do you have any evidence to support your idea? Any comments from bill supporters or something like that? If so, I am willing to stand corrected.
Matilda's representing for all the haterz, drowning them all in a big glass of haterade.
“Try working next to these musicians.”
So what's your racket Matilda? Wait, let me guess,... reading lofty political proclamations from ontop of a wooden crate right next to the Bucket Boys?
I bet you’re just jealous because the bucket boys always draws the crowd that you think should be listening to you and contributing pocket change into your grandfather's WWI war boot.
Never said I worked next to these musicians, my dear Spookster. But I've known enough people who do, and read enough comments from others who do, to see their point. Have you? Or are you too obsessed with special-ed students (funny how the guy who cries racism! racism! most often here makes dumb jokes about special-ed kids. Isn't that usually the case, though?)
Thanks for playing.
YAY!
The annual bucket boys debate on Chicagoist!
Poster 1: This is city living. Move your butt back to Naperville if you don't like it!
Poster 2: They are so annoying! I hate listening to them all day.
Next up: Bikes vs. Cars!
And waiting in the wings:
Sears vs. Willis
Macy's vs. Marshall Field
Blue line vs. Red line
Cubs fans vs. Sox fans
Streetwise vs. flatout panhandling
The dude with the colorful suits vs. The Walking Man
Wendella vs. Shoreline
Never knew you were such a committed post-modernist: Commenting on the commentators who are commenting on the original commentary.
Apparently, no one ever learned that silence on a subject says a lot more than comments about commentary and the commentators who comment, or something like that. We are well past the age of irony, my friends, and have slammed headfirst into the pointless and absurd, all that sound and fury stuff.
Words, words, words.
Indeed, they are words. Good job, sparky. Hope you get summer-school credit for that find.
Here's the next riddle:
1...3...67...89..22
Numbers, numbers, numbers.
Someone paid attention in class.
The fun irony here, of course, is that this is a comment about a comment about a comment. Of course, I'm adding to that by commenting on a comment about a comment about a comment.
Anyone care to comment?
No comment
bucket boys are still better than "yo let me get some money for my basketball team"
Nah. I can ignore the "basketball players" and keep walking. The bucket boys, on the other hand, are quite audible 12 floors up in my office with the windows closed.
I find it sad that they may have to crack down on ALL street performers, when as far as I'm concerned it's only the bucket boys that are annoying. It's not just that they're loud, they're also not particularly talented or interesting. How about getting some real drums? Get a real percussion ensemble going and learn some new rhythms, maybe something that people could actually dance to, instead of that one constant, rapid-pounding which appears to be the only thing one can do with a plastic bucket.
Just another example of our Midwest Hicksville provincial townie social and political view.
Yea Small Town Tilda might feel all grown up and cosmopolitan now that she has “arrived” to the big "Sit Tay"
But to me any city that cracks down on street artist is just a bunch of buildings waiting to be once again consumed and over run by prairie grass and wetlands.
I guess we should round up all street artists and force them into on area in what is today’s “Maxwell street flea market” Oh but not before we charge them a street artists permite fee!
Why don't they crack down on all those morons "wilding" on our city streets after a cubs game. "Hey Honey, have you seem my Cubs jersey?
Yes, because kids banging on plastic buckets just screams "urban sophistication," Spook. It's what separates, say, Paris and Tulsa.
I would bet you a bottle of fine single-malt Scotch that I actually grew up in a larger town than you did, and that I've travelled far more than you have (four continents and counting). Just saying. It's funny, but you have a provincial attitude about a great many things despite your attempts to act like you don't. No worries. We Midwestern hicks aren't so in love with our own egos to care too much.
Matilda. The big picture is that Alderman Reilly is trying to get all the performers off North Michigan Avenue.
We all know, just because the news story is about bucket boys and noise, this doesn't mean there are other parts of the story that are not (yet) being reported.
FOR EXAMPLE, Check this out:
Included in the amended street performer's rules and regulations are lines that read:
"A performer may not block the passage of the public through a public area. If sufficient crowds gather to see or hear a performer such that the passage of the public through a public area is blocked, a police officer may disperse that portion of the crowd that is blocking the passage of the public."
Ok, the above are the same standard words that are in most cities ordinances. Meaning, the police are not allowed to move the performer, because if they did, that would sort of defeat the purpose of freedom of speech, right?
The "freedom" part is the right to be standing there.
But, Alderman Reilly added this section to the above:
"- or may order the performer to cease performing at that location until the condition causing the congestion has abated"
What does the sentence mean, "condition causing the congestion"?
Perhaps, you will not be allowed to perform on a busy Saturday, because the conditions are too crowded?
Anyway, I don't know squat, but we can all agree that Alderman Reilly has turned an ordinance that contained exact decibel levels into "normal conversation" and "move that portion of the crowd" into "condition causing".
And as all of us in the states know so well, ambiguity leads to court cases and having civil rights ordinances in play, possible overruled in courts is expensive and is definitely not what the people on North Michigan Avenue or the city desire.
Again, Alderman Burton Natarus wanted relief for his constituents. He was the guy that put through the ordinance closing off five blocks on North Michigan Avenue. That was HUGE!
So, why did he stop there?
Because he knew, making vauge laws, laws that could be challenged in the courts does not fix the problem and only cost the city money.
This is all Mariah Carey's fault.
Presco wins.
Maitlda, have you ever seen the B. Boys play? Did you hear the NPR segment on them? Do you know how many movies that have been featured them as background? I would suggest that perhaps they should be considered part of Chicago’s unique (or what passes for unique) culture. These kids are not begging or gang banging on a street corner but are playing music( on recycled buckets) passed down from generations from a particular Diaspora called Africana.
I don't quite buy the "Chicagos unique" bit. I've seen these guys in NY, LA, Boston... They're like Peruvian flute bands.
Do the Peruvian flute bands pickpocket people who stop to listen to them and shoplift from the stores they play in front of, too?
Do all bucketboys do this? Cause if you're right, it seems it would be fairly easy to arrest them.
not true J.D
The Peruvian flute bands go to a special school to get trained to look really sad while playing. They are mostly out of work actors trying to make a few extra dollars inbetween gigs.
This description makes them sound kind of like the Bean. We should therefore be allowed to carve our names into them.
I also have this image in my head of some tribal elder in Botswana circa 1750 banging on a white plastic bucket.
No, but to argue this is what makes for urban sophistication--or whatever is the opposite of Midwestern hick--is just dumb. As well, you have a childish inability to consider what it must be like to work 8-10 hours every day next to that banging. Just because people want to concentrate on work does not make them anti-Chicago, or whatever dumb idea you are trying to push here.
"These kids are not begging or gang banging on a street corner but are playing music( on recycled buckets) passed down from generations from a particular Diaspora called Africana."
So what? Having the ability to concentrate on work is another value passed down through countless generations, and the jobs along Michigan Avenue surely add more to our local economy than some kids banging on plastic for coins and small-denomination bills.
Yes, since these buckets have mild pop-cultural recognition and a tenuous link to history, we should put up with them. Seeing as how no one who actually lives here likes them, I'll take a pass.
Well actually the only time I see them is on south State Street, by the Old Navy (next to the bible megaphone man) which has very little office space.
I still think they're a net-positive. And they bring a bit of "native wonderland" to the suburban shoppers, making their trip to the big city all the more exciting.
Come on Tilda, I bet your friends from Bugbite Illinois population 276 would be lining up for pictures and autographs from the B boys.
Heck I'm sure when you first got off that Greyhound Bus to call Chicago "home" you were equally starry eyed at big city life.
You really have to find a new act, Spook. The whole Midwestern hick thing lost its freshness about a century ago.
And I love how you, who pretends to be urban elite, now speaks up for suburban shoppers. You win today's irony award. Not sure what the prize is. Perhaps a white bucket.
jezzzzz, I went from a fine single malt to a white bucket, maybe we can compromise with forty acres and a mule!
I have 20 acres and a groundhog. It's all yours. The taxes are too much.
You would think that after banging on a plastic bucket all day every day they would get better at it eventually. Nope.
The law should keep them from playing the same fucking beat over and over again
Can we move Hypnotic back and trade them for the bucket boys?
Chicago 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly and 18th District Cmdr. Steve Georgas are doing whatever they can not only to rein in noise violators but to limit all street performers on Michigan Avenue.
But, in doing so, they have left one gaping hole in their plan.
Chicago is ripe for a civil liberties lawsuit challenging the 2006 closing of North Michigan Avenues' five main city blocks to First Amendment activities.
Noise limits are OK legally, but prohibiting free speech on large areas of public sidewalks has never been allowed by the courts.
The recent threatening pressure on Chicago's legally licensed street performers has rallied the free speech community throughout the United States and legal challenges will follow.
The previous 42nd Ward Alderman, Burton Natarus, understood this and resisted community pressure to legislate too far outside First Amendment case law, and now, Alderman Reilly and Cmdr. Georgas have opened up a can of worms that could ultimately end up with all or much more of North Michigan Avenue being open to free speech activities.
Alright!
Chicagoist did not disappoint me with the annual bucket boys debate, although I would have liked to have seen the "well, maybe they should play in front of your house all day and see how you like it then" comment. Maybe next year.
Haven't, we, the people, given away so much already?
We own the streets.
People that have posted here and everyone else in the United States, owns the pubic walkways.
How do we know this?
Because, we have ACCESS to the streets despite the fact that governments (cities) have been trying very, very hard, for a very long time to restrict OUR access to the streets and they have FAILED.
But still, just here, in our little pocket of the internet, we have people calling to remove street performers simply because they, get in their "way", make "free" money, are deemed to be "unsavory" charters or make too much noise.
Haven't, we, the people, given away too much already?
Only recently, have regulations been enacted to restrict the flow of industrial waste into "OUR" rivers.
"OUR" air is still allowed to be used as a garbage dump, because relevant emission controls cost money and hinder businesses.
Almost everything in OUR country has bowed to economic or special interests and now, they, the business and locally connected residents want the streets too and some people want to give it to them.
If all these people had their wish, performers access to our streets be gone, regardless of the children, tourist, or fancy photos posted on the internet.
Luckily, for all the people of the United States, the courts take a broader perspective on this and other First Amendment matters.
With the above and more in mind, it's amazing that ordinary people would side with business, governments and special interests to restrict, to take away, something else that the people own.
Even if I would never use the street for any other purpose than taking a walk. I'd be really mad they were simply taking something away (again).
Doesn't the "we" also include people who work along those streets, though?
Or is the "we" far more exclusive than you imply?
We are not talking about big bad corporations, not really, but ordinary people who have to put up with this noise for hours each day, ruining their concentration at work. I am not making this up. Do some research if you don't believe me.
bahm tica tica tica, bahm bahm tica tic, bahm tica tica tic, bahm bahm tic tica