Seattle Parks Department Hires Street Performers
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)
Written June 30, 2007

“Paid Buskers” is an oxymoron, in ways. Buskers, or street performers, are defined by the fact that they have a hat out for tips in the public square. Unlike gigs where the performer is paid by a private entity to perform in a private venue, busking is about reclaiming public space and using it for free enterprise and free speech. A current program sponsored by the Seattle Parks and Recreation Dept. is paying buskers to play in Seattle parks this summer, and it has raised some controversy here and there, especially regarding the idea of “paid busking.” But buskers are paid in tips regularly, and it is not unusual for large festivals to hire buskers for their events to add ambiance.

I have been a street performer since 1978. I still have my Seattle Pike Place Market 1978 Street Performer Permit. I have busked in a ridiculous array of venues this lifetime. I have performed on the Santa Cruz Mall, on Santa Barbara’s State Street, in New Orleans’ French Quarter, in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, in Austin, TX, at San Francisco’s Wharf, on the Boardwalk in Venice, CA...each city has its own relationship with busking and buskers. Each city has its own unique busker culture. As an actual busker myself, I find it frustrating often, the way journalists who only see our culture from outside, portray us. I am happy to be able to talk about this in first person, as few journalists can.

As I have said, I have played all over and have seen many models of busking in different cities and venues over the last nearly 30 years. So Seattle’s new Busker Program for the City’s parks is just one more chapter in the ongoing saga of modern day street performers in America today. Seattle’s Parks and Recreation Dept. is paying buskers $30 a set (2-3 hours) to play in city parks primarily within the downtown perimeter this summer. It is an experimental program and part of the purpose of the program is to bring a more inviting atmosphere to Seattle parks. Last year, I was also part of the City’s experiment with this concept of bringing buskers into parks to make them more friendly.

To give you an example of this concept, I was hired to play in Hing Hay Park last summer. The park itself is very pretty. It is located in Chinatown and has a beautiful traditional pagoda in its center. The park also has amphitheater-like seating, and I enjoyed the ambiance of the park itself. When I first began to sing in the park last summer, the only people in the park were about 15 people who appeared to be doing a lot of drug business. I sang and they openly appreciated my music...then a cop car rolled into that area of the park. And all those people left. And it was me singing for just 2 cops. LOL! Then a bunch of people in business attire showed up with lunches and began to eat on the amphitheater steps. Then they tipped me and eventually went back into the office buildings around the park, and then all the people who were originally there came back, and appeared to resume drug sales. So during my time singing in that park last summer, I went from singing to drug dealers, to two cops, to business folks, back to drug dealers. This example may begin to shed some light on what the Parks Dept. has in mind.

Some people have intimated that the Parks Dept. is trying to get rid of homeless folks in the parks by hiring the buskers. I do not think that is true. I am homeless-positive, I have been homeless before, I am happy to sing for the homeless. I feel that people can share public spaces and I see no problem at all with the homeless using public parks, along with families, business people, etc.

I played in Westlake Park this week with the Seattle Parks Dept. Busker Program. When I began to play, there were homeless folks laying down on benches to my right, and I was standing in front of a busy Bank of America entrance. Directly in front of me were a group of folks doing what appeared to be drug deals. I began to sing, they looked at me, I looked back at them with a look implying I did not care about what they were doing, but I was going to keep singing. There was no hostility that I picked up on. They seemed to be enjoying the music, and eventually moved a little away from the area I was singing in, as it was a bit like dealing on a stage, at that point. After a while, business folks began to sit on seats and rocks in front of me, eating their lunches, enjoying the sun and my music, tipping me as they left back to work. As I said, I do not see that this program, or my presence did anything negative to the homeless, they got to hear free music and seemed to enjoy it. The drug dealers even seemed to enjoy it, they just moved away from front and center in the park, that was all. The business people seemed to like it. All I did, essentially, was to help humanize the park. I think that the idea of using buskers in parks to enliven them and to make them feel safer, friendlier, is a good idea.

Some conservatives have been complaining about taxpayer money going into this program. The program is spending $10,000 to put buskers in approximately 5 parks downtown: Westlake, Waterfront, Hing Hay, Freeway, Pioneer Square. When comparing that money spent to the reported $10,000+ of taxpayer and public monies spent by the Pike Place Market’s management (the PDA), on private parties and booze, it seems like a great deal. According to the Seattle Weekly, State Auditor Brian Sonntag reports the PDA spent $3,800 on a barbeque and holiday party for employees and families, spent $2,992 in reimbursement to employees who held their own parties “which included booze and a bartender,” and laid out $1,749 in five instances of staff meetings where food exceeded the "light refreshment threshold...” (http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/blogs/dailyweekly/2006/10/...).

As I said, buskers are known to play near someone’s business if asked and their palms are greased. At the University District Street Fair last year, a crafter paid me a large tip to play near her booth. She could not leave her booth, and wanted some nice music near her to listen to, and she was sick of the same two guys playing over and over next to her, so she basically tipped me beforehand to get me to come sing by her booth. I used to play at the Oregon Country Fair (OCF) and I was hired and paid to be an onsite busker in the fair’s aisles. I see no difference between what the Parks Dept is doing right now and what places like the OCF and other fairs have done for decades now. I have been hired by the OCF to provide “ambiance” in the aisles, as have many others, for decades. Now I am being hired to provide ambiance in parks. I believe my presence, and the presence of other buskers, does make Seattle parks friendlier and more accessible for all, and in that context, this program benefits all involved and is quite utilitarian, not to mention a good deal for the buck. The presence of Seattle Police in parks is *much* more costly and more hostile, too, than street performers’ presence. And for those saying the City should pay the buskers more, and that the performers themselves are being exploited by the program, I would suggest they first look at the reality that the Pike Place Market *charges* street performers for their free speech rights on that public City property! At least the City is now *paying,* not *charging,* buskers to play in the public parks. That is a step forward, for sure.