From Staff Reports 

Asheville city officials recently were greeted with a firestorm of backlash from street performers and their supporters upon revealing that they are exploring the idea of initiating designated downtown busker zones —marks on the sidewalks that indicate exactly where performers can set up. 

The matter has been discussed by the city Public Safety Committee, which makes recomendations to City Council. However, no laws will change until the issue goes before council as a whole.

On a related matter, city officials have been reluctant to entertain the idea of street CD sales. A law that singles out CDs as acceptable — but limits the sale of everything else  —would probably not hold up in court, John Maddux, assistant city attorney, said recently.

He called it a “content-based restriction on free speech,” a violation of the First Amendment. Instead, he encouraged buskers to think of ways to work within laws in place.

“There could be some other creative solutions here,” he told local news media. “There’s nothing to keep buskers from partnering with other businesses.”

Regarding the proposed busker zone pilot proposal, Abby Roach, more widely known as the Spoon Lady, said, “We have no intention of standing in boxes,” as a crowd of fellow buskers standing nearby nodded in agreement.

At an Aug. 24 meeting of the city Public Safety Committee, language was proposed that would create three test zones in busy areas of downtown. Those sections would include taped-off boxes on the sidewalks within which the performers and any equipment must stay within, as well as a guideline that they move along after two hours.

The agenda package for the Aug. 24 meeting noted that, over the past year, the committee has worked with stakeholders in the community, but a number of the buskers have publicly challenged that assertion.

“They told us they’d speak to us,” Roach said of the city. “We feel lied to.” In general, the buskers are saying they realize changes are needed because of the increasing crowds on narrow sidewalks amid safety concerns, but that they would like representation in the process — and feel they completely lack it now.

One of the locations in the pilot program is the sidewalk fronting Woolworth Walk. Under the program, no bands would be allowed to play in the space, and the performance area would be a taped-off 3-foot by 4-foot box, which, some buskers say, is too confining.