New performance zone rules take effect on Fremont Street

Dennis Patterson and Chad Fritz, living silver statues, stand lifelessly still in a pre-designated spot Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015, at Fremont Street Experience. A new regulation takes effect today that brings order to street performers.

As he has for almost three years now, Dennis Patterson came to Fremont Street in costume on Tuesday, hoping his gold-and-silver cowboy statue performance would win some love from tourists’ wallets.

That was proving a bit difficult early in the evening, when Patterson and his fellow statue, Chad Fritz, were not in the most ideal spot. They were set up at the far east end of Fremont Street Experience, blocks away from most of the foot traffic at the time.

But they could not go anywhere else — not until their time was up.

That’s because Tuesday marked the dawn of a new era for Patterson, Fritz and the numerous other street performers who have long flocked to the pedestrian mall in downtown Las Vegas. Instead of having free reign along much of the Fremont Street Experience, performers are now limited to 38 specific zones between 3 p.m. and 1 a.m. They rotate every two hours between zones, which take the shape of circles on the ground designed like casino chips.

New Street Performer Zoning Regulation

A street performer stands in a pre-designated spot on the Fremont Street Experience, Tuesday Nov. 17, 2015. A new regulation takes effect today that brings order to the chaos of street performers. Launch slideshow »

To get one of the spots, however, performers have to first register with the city and then opt in to a lottery system for each day they wish to set up on the pedestrian mall. City officials put the zones in place in an effort to space performers out and instill some order into the crowded entertainment scene on the pedestrian mall.

Patterson said he was OK with the city putting performers in certain positions, but he did not like the randomized aspect of the space assignments. The current arrangement could jeopardize the livelihoods of street performers, he suggested, by preventing them from being able to find reliable work at the locations best suited for them.

“We’re used to working five days a week,” he said.

Still, everyone who wanted performance space on the pedestrian mall received it on Tuesday. Of the nearly 130 who registered, 42 opted in to the lottery for Tuesday and all of them received a spot, according to a city spokesman.

That may not be the case once the weekend, or another more popular time for performers, rolls around.

Even if the limited number of zones eventually means that some performers can’t find the work they seek on Fremont Street, that may still be worth it to those who pushed for the new rules. In written statements filed with the Las Vegas City Council earlier this year, multiple officials with ties to downtown casinos or the Fremont Street Experience said the previous street performer situation had created “untenable pedestrian traffic congestion” and even occasional “dangerous conflicts.”

City Councilman Bob Coffin, whose ward includes the pedestrian mall, said when the performance zone ordinance was introduced that it was part of a “tenuous quest” to try to “help organize a little better the human behavior on Fremont Street.” The ACLU of Nevada was involved with creating the ordinance.

Not everyone is embracing the new system, however. Michael Troy Moore, a performer and leader of the Sonic Laborers and Visual Entertainers Union, said on Tuesday that his group is planning to strike against the zones and challenge them in court. He decried the creation of the zones as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech that could set a damaging precedent if they’re allowed to stand unchallenged.

“It’s like Pandora’s box: Once it gets out, it’s never going back in,” Moore said.

Others were more supportive of the zones. Adam Flowers, a performer who also leads the group Street Performers and Artists of Nevada, said the zones appeared to have helped decongest the pedestrian mall. Speaking near a zone occupied by a member of his group between the Golden Nugget and Binion’s, Flowers noted that the area looked “very clean” in contrast to how crowded it may have been previously.

“In essence, there’s more room,” he said of the zones’ impact.

Yet Flowers was not wholly satisfied with the new system, either: He said he would prefer a first-come, first-serve system, or at least the ability to choose a preference for certain spaces when signing up for the lottery. That would, for example, help performers whose acts “need to be heard” avoid having to set up close to a stage with live music, he said.

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