New Ordinance Leaves Performers Dazed and Confused

By Jorge Casuso

If there were a theme song for the first day's enforcement of the city's new ordinance for street performers and vendors Friday night it would be Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused."

While some performers and vendors on the Third Street Promenade abided by the new law - which requires them to change locations every two hours -- many others held tight to their spots. A few, who also happened to be among the measure's most vocal opponents, incurred $250 fines.

If most of those who flaunted the law were ignored by officers, those on the move sometimes found themselves walking the stretch of the Promenade in search of an elusive place to set up, which must be 40 feet from another vendor or performer and 120 feet from the previous spot.

"My biggest fear is that the city keeps writing ordinances, but can't figure how they can be enforced," said performer Ned Landin, who worked with city officials to craft the new law. "Rotation is not the easiest."

Enforcement of the law - which also applies to the Santa Monica Pier - could become easier when a $12-to-15-per-hour part-time monitor is hired. The monitor will keep track of a game of musical chairs that involves as many as 50 vendors and performers, who must pick up their paraphernalia and gear and move all at once on the even hours.

For now, however, enforcement has been selective, many performers said.

Activist Jerry Rubin, who has been on a two-week hunger strike to protest the measure, was cited on both Friday and Saturday nights for not leaving his spot, an infraction committed by numerous other vendors and performers who were not ticketed.

"I'm very depressed," said Rubin, who sells bumper stickers from a table that conforms to the dimensions prescribed by the ordinance (4-feet by 8-feet). "It would take a half hour to break down and a half hour to set up. They're treating us like slaves. A lot of people are standing around wondering what they are going to do."

Rubin said he was too weak to break down his display and move every two hours, especially in the wake of a sauna and enema that nearly hospitalized him. "I told the officer, 'I'm not feeling up to rotating,'" said Rubin, who vows to refuse to pay the fine. "I haven't eaten in fifteen days."

Nina Annoual, the partner of henna artist Rara Kuyu, was given a $250 fine Friday night for having a sign on top of their table, an infraction that was committed by several nearby vendors. Annoual, who said she never received the appropriate warning, kept track of other vendors who didn't rotate their spots.

"He's been there since 10 a.m.," she said pointing to a nearby vendor with a non-complying sign. "He's been there since 3 p.m., him since 8 p.m. I wrote it down in my little book. No one has moved."

Kuyu said the ticket was written in retaliation for his outspoken opposition of the ordinance. "We're going to fight it," he said. "We're going to sue them for it."

Some of those who tried to abide by the rules found that their compliance backfired. Inka Groove, a duet that plays indigenous Latin American music, had to walk more than two blocks Friday night before they could find a spot at 10 p.m., and then, it took negotiating with the string quartet who occupied the space.

"It was really hard," said Christian Sanchez. "We tried more than 20 spots. No one is there to time anyone. No one is moving anywhere. There are too many performers."

Pianist Rich Smith waited two hours for his 8 p.m. spot Friday night, only to have another performer set up less than 40 feet away with a blaring radio that drowned out the soothing strains of classical, jazz and new age music he improvises.

""I tried to abide by the ordinance," Smith said. "I was lucky to be able to play. I tried to reason with him, but that didn't work. I tried to move, but there was no spot to move to."

Those who moved successfully had to negotiate for the spot, a common practice before the ordinance took effect.

"We talked to the Latino guys at the end and decided to switch with them," said Igor Khramov, the leader of the Russian folk rock group Limpopo.

The group tried to remain near their usual spot on the northern block of the Promenade, which gets the least amount of foot traffic but which is where their fans know they will be.

"We picked this spot about three months ago," said Khramov, who plays the balalaika and trombone. "We like it. The crowds know us. We basically don't get any complaints."

Leonid Vaisman, whose "psychic cats" pick a customer's fortune from a box of small scrolls, couldn't tell if he was the legal 40-feet from the next vendor. But it didn't take his fortune-telling felines, Nostrodamus and Cassandra, to tell him the ordinance was "difficult."

"To move it's not a problem," Vaisman said. "It's a problem to find a place."