Hey all,
As I mentioned in the last email, I just re-launched a Google alert that tells me every time "busking", "street performers" or similar terms are written online.
In other words, I'm effectively spying on the internet.
I say spying because Google's web crawler, Googlebot, continuously scans the internet for new content. One of its tricks is to check whether a website has updated its "XML Sitemap", a file embedded on almost every website designed to direct Google to changes to its content.
So, let's say a local council has drafted new anti-busking legislation. A council employee uploads a pdf of the rules to their website in preparation for notifying the public and press. The website's XML Sitemap registers a new file has been uploaded. The next time Googlebot indexes the site, it will see the new pdf, scan it, and then add it to that week's Google Alert.
This means I'll learn about the new legislation before the public does.
I can then put local buskers into a conversation with their council before these new laws have been publicly announced. This is important, because it's much harder to get elected officials to budge after they've spoken publicly—nobody whose job relies on being voted in wants to look like they're written rules that are unfair or nonsensical.
Between 2010 and 2014, when I last had an alert running, at least twice I was able to get buskers in a conversation with their council before legislation was announced. And after relaunching the Google Alert last week, I got another scoop, this time in an Irish town with a population of around 20,000 people: Wexford. Here's what the alert looked like:
Clicking that link took me to an incomplete pdf. The signatures at the bottom were added on April 14th, but the date at the top, saying when the law "shall come into effect" was left blank:
Missing dates is a classic sign that the document isn't ready to be viewed by outsiders. In this case, Wexford's new laws haven't been enacted, but they had been uploaded.
To confirm that this pdf was still 'secret', I searched around on that domain (wexfordcoco.ie) for mentions of street performance. The only one I could find was this page, which, as you can see from the screenshot below, also looks unfinished:
I did a general search and discovered that the council had tried passing anti-busking bye-laws in 2024, which had been so unpopular that they were immediately scrapped. Why? Because one of the rules limited buskers to only making a sound below 65 decibels, which is roughly the volume of an indoor conversation.
In other words, Wexford council had approved laws that said you can busk, but only if you're not audible, and were only stopped by a public backlash.
They did this with full understanding of how decibels work. This was not a mistake. One of the councillors was quoted as saying he'd always noted that the decibel limit was much too low. The council members who'd voted for the 2024 laws had done so despite knowing it was an effective ban.
Other rules in those 2024 bye-laws were also brutal:
Buskers can't busk after 7 p.m., which is one of the earliest curfews I've ever heard of.
Amplification is banned everywhere.
Anyone using amplification will have their equipment seized, and bear the cost both of having them impounded and of getting them back.
On top of that, there's a fine for contravening the bye laws of €2,500 EUR ($2,750 USD).
If a busker refuses to comply, that's another €2,500.
If the cops suspect that a busker has breached the bye-laws, they have to give over their name and address—or receive another €2,500 fine.
And if the cops are "of the opinion" that a busker had gone against the bye-laws, they can arrest the busker without a warrant.
Comparing the 2024 and 2025 bye-laws side-by-side shows only one change in the new document: that the volume limit has been revised up to 85 decibels.
This is good, but it doesn't mention at what distance a decibel reading should take place. Because of the way air pressure works, a saxophone producing a sound that's measured at 85db from 1 meter away would be producing a volume of 121 dB from 1 centimetre away. Would that be against the rules? Who knows.
The story above—in which a 20 year old singer, Caitlin Kavanagh, was racially abused while busking for the first time in Wexford, singing through a microphone and using a backing track—was from April 11th this year.
Caitlin was quoted as saying, "The support from the people of Wexford has been overwhelming, and I want to keep doing what I love—spreading positivity through music.”
Her mother, Alice (who'd filmed the interaction), said, “I’ve always felt welcome, and we continue to feel the strength of this community behind us.”
Three days after that interview, Wexford Council signed those new bye-laws into effect, turning Caitlyn's show into a criminal offence.
I've written several times about terrible anti-busking laws being passed in Ireland, in Galway, Dublin, the Cliffs of Moher and now Wexford. If anyone can direct me to an explanation of why so many councils have been cracking down on Irish buskers in recent years, do let me know!
Thanks, and heavy hats,
Nick
Closing my tabs
A legal commentator, Chris Geidner (a.k.a The Law Dork) always finishes his newsletters with a section called "closing my tabs", in which he provides links to all the news he's not writing about. I like the idea, so I'm stealing it.
So, here is my first "Closing my Tabs":
The Covent Garden Street Performers Association just celebrated 50 years of self-managed "clowning on the cobbles" in the modern era (also covered by the BBC), despite the fact that the council has criminalised busking without a license in Westminster.
Australia's entry to Eurovision, Go-Jo, started off as a busker on Bondi Beach.
The London celebration marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII will include a performance by Victor Ray, who used to busk just up the road from where the stage has been set up.
I also discovered there's a festival called the Street Performer Expo in Roanoke, Virginia, which I've just added to our festival database. It's produced by a nonprofit organisation called Busk Roanoke.
There's a saxophonist dressed like a tree in Wellington, NZ. I was happy to see the QR code shown on that page brings you to their busk.co profile :)
I don't think he collects tips (so I wouldn't class him as a street performer), but there's a guy called Kevin Carpet who wraps himself in a carpet so other people step on him. People have described this as "perverted".
A British singer/songwriter called Myles Smith discovered the downside of busking permits, being told he needs one before he can surprise fans in Sydney. He's a big enough name that the New South Wales arts minister, John Graham, intervened to let him perform on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.
Alice Tan Ridley, who spent three decades busking in the NY subway died on March 25th. You can read about her life on the Playing For Change website, and there are tons of videos of her online.
Joseph Gitnig, a.k.a. Pegasus, got a nice write up in the New York Times when he passed away at the age of 95. He was arrested twice in 1977 for busking in Central Park, but refused to stop. The ACLU helped him get the charges dropped, leading the Parks Commissioner to declare that busking was not something you needed a permit to do in New York. [Thanks to Robert Lederman for bringing this to my attention].
The UK Government has announced a £270 million "Arts Everywhere" fund, which doesn't include—you guessed it—funding for outdoor arts, the venue that is, well, everywhere. The response from Outdoor Arts UK acknowledged that supporting museums and libraries and the like is important, but outdoor events are facing their own crises right now, which also deserves governmental support as they will reach far more people than indoor venues.
And France24 has published a profile of silver-painted traffic lighters in Jakarta, made special by the incredible photos within:
