Random Thoughts

Let the pickle bucket banging begin...

It‘s great to see that street musicians and performers will be able to dazzle the public with their acts on the sidewalks of Traverse City under a new “buskers“ ordinance. It‘s a touch of big-city allure, which along with sidewalk cafes, has long been lacking in our tourist mecca.
But in typical upper-midwestern-uptight style, there are so many rules & regs attached to the ordinance -- six pages -- that you wonder where any potential Woodie Guthries or break-dancing homies will find places to strut their stuff.
For instance, say you‘ve got a new hip-hop group that’s really dope and you‘re itching to get your crew down on the streets to bust a few moves -- maybe even get discovered by the new Fame TV show someday. The rules say that‘s fine, as long as it‘s not in any high-traffic part of downtown where there are lots of people gathering who might actually see your act, like along the 100-300 blocks of Front Street.
Huh?
Then there are 10-foot setbacks from buildings, no playing on bridges or in parking lots, no juggling flaming marshmallows or chain saws allowed, $40 fee, etc... Let‘s hope this baby doesn‘t get strangled in the crib before it gets a chance to try out its tonsils.
Maybe there will be a place for street performers out near Meijer‘s on the bike trail along M-31...
One thing I was pleased to learn about the new buskers ordinance is that there are apparently no restrictions against banging on a pickle bucket. When you go to Times Square or Water Tower Park in Chicago, you always see these guys banging on 5 gallon plastic pickle buckets. They stick a microphone inside, fire up their generators for power, and bang away all day long. Sometimes there are four or five of them, all banging amplified pickle buckets in unison, more or less. And, even if pickle bucket drummers aren‘t allowed to bang loud and proud on the 100-300 blocks of Front Street, you‘ll probably be able to hear them over that-a-way from wherever they might roost.
Kidding! There‘s got to be some kind of noise clause in the ordinance that would put pickle bucket bangers in a pickle. We think of everything, here in Traverse City.

We need a cover charge
Have said it before: Northern Michigan needs an admission fee. Not a lot -- just $5 a carload maybe -- enough to generate millions for the upkeep of what has become one of America‘s top theme parks.
Five bucks wouldn‘t be much, considering it‘s $60 or more to get into EPCOT. And that‘s $60 each.
Area residents have spent generations building the theme park we live in, contributing to its establishment with their taxes. Some have worked for decades on environmental causes to protect the dunes, rivers, forests and views from the bulldozer approach that blights southern Michigan.
Today, we have a must-see destination that is chatted up by hundreds of travel writers around the world. On a flight overseas a couple of years ago, I wasn‘t surprised to find an article about Petoskey in the airline magazine, urging people to make the trek to Grandpa Shorter‘s porch on Lake Street.
Consider then that Traverse City proper has a population of only 15,000 or so, with Petoskey having half that. Consider that millions of people pass through these towns each summer, requiring the needs of law enforcement, sewage and water facilities, parks, etc., all paid by local taxes. It‘s kind of like inviting 1,000 people for Sunday dinner and having only mac & cheese in the cupboard.
Obviously, you can‘t charge admission on public roads -- you need to own them, Disney World-style. But it doesn‘t seem fair that so few must pay for the tourist infrastructure of so many. In a market-driven country where everything seems to be for sale, including the White House, you‘d think that we could sneak in a couple of ticket booths to the Great Up North on the south side of Grayling and Cadillac. Maybe we could start a precedent.
Of course, we’d want to do our share to give visitors more bang for their buck. Perhaps area residents could dress in period costumes one day a week: as pioneers, voyageurs, lost vikings, or in tribal buckskins & feathers to make that cover charge worthwhile.

The “I” word
Can you imagine the racket on talk radio and Fox “Fair & Balanced News” if Al Gore had been president during 9/11? By now, we would have sat through nearly three years of blah, blah, blah, calling for his impeachment.
And can you imagine what our right-wing echo chamber media would be saying if President Al Gore had sent 130 American soldiers and up to 25,000 Iraqis to their deaths in pursuit of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction? It would be a non-stop foaming-mouth-and-spittle-fest on the airwaves, demanding his head in impeachment proceedings.
But, of course, when President Bush and the GOP are involved, the elite Republican Guard of the media have nothing to say on the matter.
Now, however, both of those disasters -- 9/11 and the missing WMD -- are coming home to roost as campaign issues in the next election. Why has the White House suppressed an investigation into the blunders of 9/11? What kind of fudging went on, cooking up the WMD threat? Some progressives are even muttering the “I” word -- weakly, very weakly.
Just so they don’t expect the Republican Guard of the media to take up the cal1... that would only be appropriate if a Democrat were in office. View On Our Website