Just a question that I forgot to ask. What sort of horror would ensue if the musicians were unpermitted? Why do the need to be permitted? Is there actually an argument in favor of this, or does it have to do with revenue generation?
Mike
>>What sort of horror would ensue if the musicians were unpermitted?<<
There are too darned many of them. (BTW, I am a musician myself.)
Imagine what would happen if it really was a free-for-all. You’d have musicians (most of them virtually without skill or talent) competing 15 feet apart from each other, every 15 feet.
Wherever people gather in large numbers, it is a magnet for every wanna be juggler, guitar player, and every other person attempting to make a buck off a skill that is easy to acquire, to practice for the occasional quarter. Heck, even I thought of doing it to harden my chops. And even the way it’s set up now, many of the street musicians are guys that have the playing skills of a child that has been to two months of guitar training.
Nobody would be killed, true, but it is just more civilized when the government makes it a little harder for just anyone to plop down and start making a racket with an out of tune guitar missing two strings - or selling non-homogenized milk that was sitting in their barn for a week.
Yes, it’s a fine line that many governments have stepped FAR over into becoming a pure revenue source, but the alternative is not a pretty thing. It would ruin many of the street fairs, markets, etc. around the country. And, for the people visiting the location, it DOES work.
Now, a private event, on private property, is a whole ‘nother animal.