Buskers beat the Metro ban

Busker in Washington, DC, have had a tough time of it in the last couple of years. Transit police have been moving them on from their pitches with more-than-required firmness.

Also more than legal firmness, too. Alex Young had already faced down the Metro transit authority and had the courts put a stop to the practice; this week he went back to court and won his costs. Which by that time, had got up to USD50,000.

The Metro had made things worse for themselves by trying to argue down the costs:

Jeffrey Louis Light, a private civil rights attorney who represented Young in conjunction with the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville group that advocates for civil liberties, said Metro’s decision to contest the fees increased them by about $20,000 as the issue was drawn out in court.

“They’re a business,” said Light, who will take home $33,447.10 in the case at hourly rates of up to $661. “They need to make sensible business decisions. This is not one of them.”

Jeffrey had a further burn for the transportation authority:

“They spent time arguing over whether this guy should have his guitar case open, and for what?” he said.

The head of the Metro, Paul J. Wiedefeld, is currently learning the chords from The Boxer in order to cover the costs.

Buskerobit: Jesse Morris

One of San Francisco's regular BART buskers, Jesse Morris, has died, Muni Diaries is reporting.

Known as The Punk Rock Johnny Cash, Morris continued his covers act down the metro system alongside his own band, Jesse Morris and the Man Cougars. He liked his work:

“I consider it a job,” he says. “Just like some people might work in an office, I work at the station entertaining people. I get to do what I love, and I can make a living at it.”

Tributes to Jesse have been left on Reddit.

Buskers busted

With surprisingly short notice, London Underground have canceled their busker scheme deal with Automatic Management. Set up in the days of the Livingstone administration, this was the attempt to impose order on the chaos of tubeway buskers. It took much of the romance out of the underground - buskers were given official pitches, the scheme was sponsored by some sort of lager - but also offered a truce in the long battles between London Transport and musicians.

Now, though, the deal has gone and London Underground is taking control of the scheme, but in a way that sounds like it's a prelude to running it down:

For the foreseeable future, there will be no Busking Site Managers. In the event of any dispute over pitch bookings, instruments being played etc., LU staff will not enter into protracted discussions with buskers. If a situation cannot be easily remedied, Station Supervisors have the authority to close a busking pitch for as long as they think necessary to avoid problems. Where this is deemed necessary. Station Supervisors have been instructed to submit a formal report. Buskers should do the same to the above email address. BTP are being briefed of these changes and will provide assistance as necessary, although this is unlikely to be needed.

We can see the reasoning behind the 'if there's any dispute, shut it down' line - there's no funding for the running of these pitches and staff don't have the time or the training to oversee them. That's why, presumably, the running of the scheme was outsourced in the first place.

The Underground denies the long-term plan is to drop the scheme entirely:

We realise that the interim arangements are not ideal. However, we remain commited to operating this scheme for you and we are working hard to introduce more robust arrangements as quickly as we can. The decision to bring the scheme ‘in-house’ was taken with very little notice (for a number of reasons) and we must all do all we can over the coming weeks to keep the scheme viable.

... but that pay off about "keeping the scheme viable" suggests a door being opened to an announcement that, hey, we tried to do all we can, but...

Some suspicion has aired that Boris will have something to do with this - like he's actually making decisions - but there's nothing to confirm one way or the other.

It is most distressing to have the harmonica played badly at one in a public place

Marcel Berlins, musing on the Guardian's Comment Is Free site (one year old today) muses that quality should be a defence when buskers and graffiti artists are caught in public:

I want to see a scheme which - in the public interest, of course - would separate the musically and artistically gifted from the no-hopers of no ability. And any busker or graffiti artist prosecuted under whatever law would have a cast-iron defence: "Yes, I did it - but I'm really talented.

It's a lovely idea, but surely Berlins is having a little joke with us - he knows the impossibility of a legislated definition of 'talent', surely?