I have been reading your various postings concerning the issue you are having with Deadwood. I am afraid I don’t really understand what it is you are trying to accomplish. What is your purpose in being allowed to play on the city streets? You say that you are not trying to make money off of your performances. Is it because you want to entertain people walking by? Do you just want to play out in the open air? Are you playing your pennywhistle for your own enjoyment or to impress people with your ability? Are you trying to promote playing the pennywhistle to others who happen to be walking by?
[ This Message was edited by: Pywacket on 2002-03-19 08:17 ]
It started last summer when I was waiting and playing at the trolley stop just for self-satisfaction, when a woman who mans the information booth came charging out and said “Free music in Deadwood? We can’t have that! I had to call the police.” Sure enough, a cop car drove up, checked me out and asked me if I was busking and I told him “No.” That was the beginning of a summer where a couple of casinos in downtown started calling the police whenever a Historical Re-enactor they did’t like showed up on the street. They dress funny, but the complaints were flying everywhere! I’m not a bad whistle player, not a great one, and quite a few people graciously ask me to play in front of their businesses. Because they have this ordinance on the books, I decided to get legal and ask for a permit! I hate being rousted for doing something so ordinary, and strongly believe this is a “1st Amendment” issue. I don’t block traffic. I don’t carry a weapon. There is one event that closes the street down which was grandfathered in, and several business have performers on the street and the city tends to run off what it considers “undesirable characters.” The town has the flavor of 1876. Last summer a real cowboy tied his horse up at a hitching post on Main Street and was arrested. Deadwood loves to promote this Gold Camp-Wild West-Victorian image. Otherwise it would simply be gambling and nothing more. If a horse at a hitching post isn’t Wild West, I don’t know what is.
The politics are viscious here. They city thrives on the absurd. Permits go to friends, people who fit in. I don’t. I am old, disabled, fat and not very attractive and tend to speak my mind. The ordinance was enacted in 1994, when they arrested a man who was in a shoot-out (tourists love 'em) who took too long to die in the middle of the street. I can see the city needing some control when people are using guns, even black powder guns, and blocking traffic. I was hassled at least three times last summer for sitting on a bench on the sidewalk just playing the whistle. The police tend to use the ordinance to harrass people they don’t like. A friend of mine, a re-enactor, was arrested for taking a dollar tip from a tourist who insisted he take it. The cops also quizzed the tourist on whether he asked for the money. It wasn’t pretty.
Poor police, they deal with drunks and drugs and bad drivers who give them lip! They like me because I don’t drink and never give them any crap. I don’t busk because there is an anti-soliciting law here. It’s not about earning money, it doesn’t happen here.
I’m not even a side show here. The slot zombies simply keep moving from casino to casino. However, once in a while a little girl starts to tug on her mom’s sleeve, and her mom will let her sit by me and she has that puppy-eyed “Gee, I wish I could do that” look on her face. I enjoy the kids, they love whistles, they go away very happy after about fifteen minutes when I show 'em how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” I do it because I enjoy being outside, I like being downtown watching people and playing in the open air and I like kids and I like whistles, and kids are bored spitless in casinos, there’s nothing else for them to do here! Now many re-enactors who have friends in the City Comissioners office, walk down the street handing out plastic badges and swear kids in as Deadwood deputies. The difference there is that they are covered by group insurance that is issued by the organization they belong to. One of the re-enactors called his guy at the Living History Foundation and they said I could join and get insurance for $35 a year if I would a carry a black powder gun and wear a costume. They’re way behind, and I wouldn’t get it for this year. I am not a re-enactor, I don’t want to play either a trollop or a church lady, because I’m not limited to either role. I will probably take the re-enactor solution, but that doesn’t solve that “old girl shoot us in the collective foot” way of doing things around here. I can do this because I honestly don’t care what they think of me and I’m not dependent on them and don’t have anything to lose! It’s a great place to be an old YIPPEE in!
The darker side of this issue is I want to add “Loose Cannon” to my resume. I already had “Boat Rocker” on it. Deadwood is a small town with big city problems because of the revenue the tax from gaming brings in. Also, reality dictates nobody can control everything and everybody. Certainly not me. Since I’ve been living here, with the Deadwood “We only let certain people do such ad such” attitude, I have defied them, because I am not part of the in clique. I have been chased by an influential a$$hole’s brother who was on horseback, when I was doing my job taking pictures for a local paper during a parade. I have close ups of the horses teeth. I’m glad the horse had more sense than the man on the back of it! He even tried to come up and get me from behind from a block away! I’ve been doing this a long time, and can move like a combat photographer. I’ve been told they will run me out of town on a rail because I don’t fit in. I tend not to be passive aggressive to survive here like most people who want to think we all get along in this tiny town! NOT! Too many murders, too much domestic violence. There is not one small business owner who has not gone to jail as a rite of passage. I don’t depend on Deadwood for a living. I can do this without being blackballed from a minimum wage job in a casino which are all in violation of Federal Labor Laws.
Now those are my personal movtives. They pi$$ me off. Somebody has to do something. Oh yeah, creating a media circus (not in the locals) is good. It’s also PR for me. I moved away, I came back, people treat any newcomer like an outsider for twenty years, which I find ironic since my family was one of the original settlers. Believe it or not, that counts around here. I also like Native Americans, and say so in this most racist state in the union. People don’t like kids here at all, and this could be a great weapon to roust kids out of the park on a sunny day just for sititng around with their friends and strumming guitars. The whole thing is beyond absurd, especially the quarter to a million dollar liability insurance policy. They may have shut me out this summer, but they won’t be able to shut me up! I did tell the City Comissioners that I thought this was so much bullshit and was suprised to hear myself say that. And it felt good, too! I also told them this was a First Amendment issue, and that they had too broadly interpeted the intent of the ordinance, and that they could expect civil disobedience from me this summer. So, I am an old troublemaker who thinks that things need to be changed around here, because things need to change, and I’m just the woman to do it! Oh, yeah, my bio also reads that I am “Modern Deadwood’s answer to Calamity Jane…the anarchist stone stuck in the craw of polite society.” Calamity, and Wild Bill Hickok, who was murdered here, is still generating big bucks for the city. So, I also honor her. She took no crap off of anyone, and didn’t fit into Victorian society and did her own thing. She often had to draw a gun and stick it under some guys nose.
Deadwood, as a collective entity, has gone beyong greed, beyond pickpocketing, beyond taxing the stupid to rape. They must charge artists for making their art. Does that clarify anything for you at all?
If whistler’s object to these posts, I’ll be glad to stop. The implications of what’s happening here in this tiny town are pretty scary!
Funny thing, I keep trying to convince people around here that I’m hot stuff! And I am! I was the only non-academic nominated for state poet laureate, didn’t get it, and have a real book not a vanity book coming out very soon. It was financed by a grant from the State Arts Council. You can bet it won’t sell anywhere near here. They tend to look at me like a dumb dirty fat lady, and I don’t like it. My JOB is to give them as much crap as I can. Calamity Jane lives!
Let it shine! Anna “Dances with Weasels” Martinez
[ This Message was edited by: Anna Martinez on 2002-03-19 09:51 ]
Good luck Anna!