Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Street busking can get you a ticket in Hamilton

In what kind of a country are we living, when a street busker gets a $65 ticket for being a public nuisance? It's not like the musician was stalking drivers to wash windows. Only in Hamilton -- and this is supposed to be a progressive city?

Some in the generation before mine still talk about the "Hamilton Sound," the era of great music in the early 1970s that emerged from nightclubs and, yes, street musicians. This sends the message that new music is not welcome in this city, and it is wrong.

If the city has a "problem," they should do what they do in Toronto and have a competition for the annual licenses that go to buskers who perform at transit stops.   The city gets their cut, the musician keeps the rest and everyone wins.

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