Lottery System “Simple, Quick and Fair”

By Ellen Brennan

Ned Landin's article, "Playing Roulette with Street Performers" is a brilliant piece of advocacy for one man’s opinion.

As a member of the PRC board, and a resident living within walking distance of the pier, I talk (and listen) to street performers on the Pier. I’m aware of the distance between Ned Landin’s advocacy for performers rotating, and the preference of the performers on the Pier for a lottery to
allocate performance spaces.

The Pier has a different physical shape (long and narrow) than the Promenade, and rotation of performers as practiced on the Third Street Promenade doesn’t work there. Having 22 performers move their equipment through the crowds every two hours on the Pier creates chaos. It’s been tried. It was a nightmare.

Although Ned doesn’t perform on the Pier, or speak for Pier performers, he’s been vociferously lobbying against the lottery the Pier performers have in place. Ned has indicated in conversations that he’s afraid that the idea of a lottery will spread to other cities where it will deprive performers of the freedom of arriving at different times of the day, knowing that if they
just wait till next rotation, they can move into a performance space. So he’s focusing on trying to stop it here.

Ned’s article infers that the City is about to do something terrible to street performers. On the contrary, the city is poised to respond to the performers themselves, as they advocate for a lottery system they've found works.

I was present at the meeting in 2001 where 38 out of 40 performers voted for a lottery. It’s what they wanted. It’s simple: Show up, put your name in a designated container, and when your name is drawn, you get to choose an available performance space according to your needs. It’s simple. It’s fair. It has solved a multitude of problems, and it works in the physical space of the Pier.

On the Third Street Promenade, street performers work under a rotation system. All performers rotate locations every two hours. On the Pier, such a system caused chaos. Because of the narrowness of the Pier, having 22 street performers move equipment through the crowd every two hours was a nightmare. So the time between rotations was lengthened.

With that change, a group of enterprising street performers started dominating the best performance spaces by camping out on the pier deck every night and grabbing all the best spaces early in the morning. We’ve even had cartels of performers who hired friends and relations to camp on the Pier and grab the best spaces on their behalf. The battle for spaces got so intense that fistfights broke out and tires were slashed.

In an effort to find a solution, four meetings were held by the PRC in 2001 to give all stakeholders an opportunity to speak. The street performers voted for a simple lottery. They saw it as salvation.

Their request for a simple lottery was not implemented immediately. A computer-based lottery with email notification was the preference of the former director of the PRC, but to the relief of the performers, the City’s computer and phone system was insufficient to make this workable. Other systems were tried. The lottery system in place now (identical to the lottery the performers voted for in 2001) has been functioning on the pier for the last half year.

It has stopped the camping out for spots, the fights, the arguments. It’s easy to administer; it’s fair. It solves a multitude of problems. And the Pier street performers are happy with it, as they’ve evolved their own group and spend time and effort crafting their own consensus in their Saturday morning meetings.

The Pier environment is different from the environment on the Promenade. It’s colder, more windy, long and narrow. Many of the performances that are accommodated on the Promenade, can¹t function on the Pier because of space limitations and weather. The assertion that the “best” performers are being harmed by our lottery system is just not valid.

Ned Landin does not perform on the pier. He indicates that he is speaking for the “Santa Monica Street Performer Group” as if he were a designated spokesperson for all street performers in the city. This is simply not true. There are two distinct groups of performers in Santa Monica -- those who perform on the Promenade, and those who perform on the Pier.

There is an overlap, because some perform both places, but Ned does not. He has no basis to claim that he speaks for the performers on the pier. In fact, his advocacy is in direct opposition to the good of the Pier performers as they, themselves, see it, and Ned knows that.

I can appreciate Ned’s fear, but the City’s job is not to make things work for street performers world wide, or assuage the fears of one performer. The City’s job is to administrate the space on the pier for the benefit of the public. Street performance is a benefit when it enhances the experience for the public

Having 22 performers moving equipment through the crowds does not enhance the public experience of being on the Pier. Neither does having the Pier rail lined with piles of performers’ paraphernalia as performers hang out, waiting to move into a performance space on rotation; or having performers camp on the pier deck and fight for spaces every morning; or having all the best spaces filled with identical performers.

Ned’s Shakespearean rhetoric aside, a lottery is the best system so far devised for administrating the allocation of performance space on the Pier. It’s what the Pier performers want. A lottery, held in the morning, and again in the afternoon, is simple, quick, fair, and it solves all the
problems listed above.