One-Man Show
Shooing away street performers at Faneuil Hall won't help the mayor.
Dear Tom Menino:
I'm sorry. No matter how hard you try, you're not going to be able to be the only public comedian working the streets of Boston. Your act remains fresh. I've never seen anyone do as many pratfalls trying to get from a subject to a verb as you, and watching you deliver a speech is the closest thing we'll ever get to a one-man pie fight. But I think using the powers of your office to cut down on the competition is dangerously authoritarian and not altogether fair. For years now, the hilarious antics of drunked-up assistant sales managers have been augmented at Faneuil Hall Marketplace by all manner of mimes, jugglers, and people who tap out the rhythms of our lives on overturned plastic buckets. As near as I could ever tell, they weren't any more of a nuisance than the sockless sales guys were. I even spent an evening long ago tossing Indian clubs to a juggler. I'm sure he's used to the plate in his skull. Now, though, we discover that the commotion has come to disturb you in your office. So your staff sent city security officers to knuckle the sidewalk artists and chase away the clowns. (How do you train cops to chase away clowns, anyway? Send them charging up Beacon Hill?) Now I know that mayoring is hard work. Corralling all those pesky diphthongs requires deep concentration, and, even then, as has become obvious over the past decade, some of the little blighters can get clean away. That said, though, this crackdown fails to make rudimentary economic sense. If they did nothing else, the free-range buskers kept the restaurant patrons from noticing until it was far too late that they were paying 12 bucks for a salad.
Charles P. Pierce
cpierce@globe.com 