New Orleans second-line parade vendors, artists now will need city permits

A member of the Young Men Olympian Junior Benevolent Association buys a beverage from a street vendor before the start of the group's 128th anniversary parade in Uptown New Orleans on Sept. 23. (Photo by Matthew Hinton, The Times-Picayune)

When "Treme" star Wendell Pierce heard of the city's proposed permits for vendors at second-line parades, he took to Twitter last weekend with a common, gut reaction to such propositions: "We challenge this idea that the culture serves the City, while the City doesn't serve the Culture," he wrote in a string of more than 20 tweets. "Harassment & restriction of street culture."

Matthew Hinton, The Times-Picayune MATTHEW HINTON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE Members of the Young Men Olympian Junior Benevolent Association, Inc. Untouchables division parade to the music of the TBC Brass Band in the association's 128th anniversary parade in Uptown in New Orleans, La., Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012. Formed on September 3, 1884, YMO, Jr. usually has a small parade on the 3rd followed by a this much larger parade later in the month.The parade this year featured six different divisions each with their own band including he Young Pinstripes, New Birth, Baby Boyz, Stooges, TBC, and Rebirth Brass Bands. 128th Young Men Olympian Junior Parade gallery (13 photos) In the days that followed, the yearlong tug of war between the city's by-the-book administration and the artists and cultural groups it's trying to wrangle reached yet another crescendo.

"This is a passionate subject -- it is our identity in New Orleans," said Scott Hutcheson, the mayor's adviser on cultural economy. "We always respect the culture and the people who work so hard to create it. There's always that fear of the commodification of culture. It's been around for a long time, and it's a balancing act for government."

By Monday, the city had put out one fire: Hutcheson met with Pierce to explain that the city had worked for a year with the second-line groups and their vendors to craft the $25 permit.

"We're on the same page," Pierce said after their meeting. "They're not just coming in to co-opt the cultural economy. They're talking to people who actually create that culture."

But a new fire was being ignited by another of the city's most celebrated sons.

Note of dissonance

Trumpeter Kermit Ruffins announced a meeting to organize a march on City Hall.

His gripe was not, initially, with the second-line permits. It was the city's continuing crackdown on venues hosting live music without a live music permit. The city's 85 active live music permits bring the city $70,000 a year in fees and penalties. But many other venues operate under the radar, unlicensed, without consequence until recently. Mimi's in the Marigny was the latest scofflaw to voluntarily pull the plug.

Dozens of angry artists flocked to Ruffins' bar for the Wednesday meeting and, by day's end, the city had announced an amnesty program of sorts: Businesses who began the permitting process would not be ticketed for not having one. And the music returned to Mimi's.

But the underlying problem remains: Many of the artists and venues and merchants that build the city's cultural backbone have been doing so illegally for decades. And until no-nonsense Mayor Mitch Landrieu took the city's helm, the administrations before him had approached enforcement with the Big Easy's trademark insouciance.

"Enforcement had been so erratic, so hard to plan for, and in the absence of a sensible system, people have improvised because they have to," said Jordan Hirsch, an artists' advocate and the former director of Sweet Home New Orleans. "There's a sense within the community that we're self-regulating, that the community fit all this together -- musicians need gigs, people want to pay for that experience, the second-lines count on vendors being out there because people want to have food and drinks. And it's the city's responsibility to craft a policy based on the stuff that's already in place."

The city says that's precisely what it's trying to do.

Trying to jive with the law

The proposed permit for second-line vendors, which appeared for the first time on last week's City Council agenda, doesn't actually make selling food and drinks along the parade route illegal; it's been illegal for years. There's just never been a permit available that fits the situation -- vendors who travel along with second-line parades.

"The role of government is to enforce the laws on the books," Hutcheson said. "But you've got a mayor stepping back, and saying that if something doesn't work, let's figure out a way to make it work."

And so, last August, when the city warned that it would begin stepping up enforcement against illegal vending, the second-line vendors complained that there was no way -- under existing law -- that they could make themselves legal. Some avoided parades in fear of police, and lost, in some cases, their only source of income. On a good day, $1,000 can be made hocking cold water and beer, one vendor said.

"I do understand that laws of the land exist, and we may have to adapt to change whether we like it or not," said Tamara Jackson, president of the Social Aid and Pleasure Club Task Force. "We wanted to make this economically feasible, and continue the traditions going forward as we have in the past."

Jackson took Hutcheson to parades and introduced him to vendors. He worked with them for a year and the result was an annual permit -- now listed at $50, but to be lowered to $25 at the vendors' request -- that also requires vendors to clean up litter and bans them from selling alcohol.

'A safety net'

The alcohol ban is what riles most, Jackson said. Vendors began selling alcohol after Hurricane Katrina, when many bars were closed, and the city has long turned a blind eye to illegal Heinekens traded for a few dollars on the sidewalk.

Though Jackson said the permitting was a reluctant compromise -- the city had been considering a sanitation tax to the clubs because of the trash left behind -- others in the community considered it a good step toward fixing a broken permitting system.

"The city has a reputation for imposing the law whenever it feels like it. Having a permitting process, if it works and it's fair, is actually a safety net," said Ashlye Keaton, an attorney for social aid and pleasure clubs. "If you're selling hot dogs and worried about going to jail if the city decided to crack down -- that $25 permit is a insurance policy."

Permits fall into two categories, she said: restrictive and empowering. The second-line vendor permit, as she sees it, fits within the latter, so long as it doesn't require a burdensome amount of paperwork or seven-hour lines at City Hall.

Elester Bell, who's sold barbecue at second lines for 15 years without a permit, agrees with her: "I don't want to be ducking and dodging the police. So I don't mind, I have no problem with it."

Some crying foul

Still, more than 130 people have signed an online petition, asking that the city back off its proposal.

"The city going after vendors that are trying to make an honest living within the context of our culture constitutes harassment of street culture," the petition reads. "Leave our culture and traditions alone! Leave second line street vendors alone!"

"We are the heartbeat of this city, this is jazz city," said Wendell Jackson, who sells water, beer and pecan candies at second-lines. He worries that too much regulation and enforcement will start to stifle creativity, and it's all to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

"I've been parading over 30 years," Jackson said. "It's been going fine for 30 years. Ain't nobody bothering nobody. And all of a sudden now it's a major issue. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up. It's just about getting money from us."

But the administration has long said that residents begged for tough enforcement of existing laws and simply can't have it both ways.

The permit ordinance was delayed by City Councilwoman Diana Bajoie, who said she wanted to perfect the language and return it to the agenda for the council's next meeting, on Thursday. Ruffins scheduled his march on City Hall for Oct. 24.

In the meantime, Hirsch thinks that the city could see an opportunity in these occasional cultural battles.

"Everybody wants the same thing: Everybody wants second-lines, everybody wants to be in compliance with the law, just laws that reflect an appreciation for our culture," he said. But the city's permitting system is too tangled and bureaucratic to work, particularly for those unaccustomed to legalese.

"The good news is that all of it is so bad, there's an opportunity to start over, to do something that really reaches a lot of people," he said. "The policy should start with the community and grow out, not from the top down."

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Claire Galofaro can be reached at cgalofaro@timespicayune.com or 504.717.7701.

Source: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/09/new_orleans_second-line_vendor.html

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