By Lincoln Anderson
Responding to complaints about a recent increase in the music volume in Washington Square Park, on Sunday Park Enforcement Police issued tickets to at least three performing acts. Specifically, Parks Department officers enforced a rarely used regulation prohibiting “unauthorized assemblies, exhibitions or parades” of more than 20 people in a park without a permit.
Parks spokesperson Philip Abramson confirmed that it was this rule under which the tickets were issued.
“There were more than 20 people gathered and we had been receiving complaints about mass gatherings and noise in the park,” he said of the groups or individuals who received summonses.
On Tuesday, Joe Budnick, president of UMO Music, was, as usual, in Washington Square Park playing acoustic guitar. He said some performers, in fact, had been extremely loud in the park over the weekend. On Saturday, he said, a drummer with a full drum set was pounding away, “intensely loud,” for hours on the west side of the fountain, to the point people couldn’t hear themselves talk.
Then on Sunday, the acrobatic tumblers Tic and Tac had a drummer playing along with them on white spackle buckets who was really making a racket, according to Budnick.
The PEP officers initially just gave warnings, but eventually gave Tic and Tac a $250 ticket, he said. A New Orleans jazz band also got slapped with a fine.
“I think Colin the piano man got a ticket,” Budnick added. He said Tic and Tac probably weren’t too worried about it, and just kept on performing and raking in dollars from spectators.
“They could eat it — they make a lot,” said Budnick, who always plays for free in the park.
“I think they’re getting desperate to try to control it,” he said of the department’s crackdown on drumming and loud music in the square. “They usually start these campaigns, but it’ll die out in a bit,” he said of the new enforcement.
The guitar man noted that there is, in fact, a drummer who plays along with his group of musicians in the park, but he does so “at a reasonable volume.”
Although Budnick is obviously a huge music lover, he agrees that performers shouldn’t play excessively loudly, since that monopolizes the auditory space, to the point where other activities are impacted.
“It shouldn’t be a thing that no one can have a conversation,” he said, “no one can read a book, students can’t study. It’s a community park, for students, tourists, everyone.”
Then he gave a sample of his current favorite tune, “Bring It on Home,” by Sam Cooke, strumming his guitar sweetly and crooning soulfully in the beautiful sunny weather. Xenia, a songwriter and New School student, walked up and Budnick handed her his guitar and she belted out her own original song. He even let a reporter play his guitar, and encouraged him to stop taking notes and sing.
