City weighs changing vendor rules
Some selling 'just crap,' says resident who complained to city commission
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An unsightly but legal flea market-style display found weekends on Hypolita Street, plus unsubstantiated rumors that vendors outside the city downtown parking garage must “rent” their free public spaces, caused two St. Augustine commissioners last week to request a review of city laws regulating vendors.
Vice Mayor Leanna Freeman said, “The whole (regulation) system has been a problem for me from the beginning.”
Since 2008, artists, musicians and vendors have been prohibited from painting, performing or selling wares on St. George Street and up to 50 feet away.
But that hasn’t prevented vendors from legally using other public spaces to sell merchandise, such as homemade jewelry, preserves, art prints, clothing and other items. When the City Commission passed the current ordinances prohibiting those activities on the Plaza de la Constitucion, it also provided space for free artistic and commercial expression while at the same time easing public safety concerns and merchant interests on the city’s most visited shopping street.
However, that free space seems to have encouraged those who’d rather sell cheap trinkets rather than local arts.
Chris Fulmer, a city resident, brought the Hypolita Street vendor to the attention of the City Commission.
She said, “No other city I know allows people to set up shop on their public streets. It’s not even good stuff (they’re selling). It’s just crap. I don’t know why we allow it.”
She said the Hypolita vendor uses a hand truck to bring in orange plastic bins of cheap merchandise such as glow sticks and pinwheels to sell, mostly on Fridays and weekends.
“It’s horrendous,” Fulmer said.
A street view
Ralph Hayes, a versatile musician who has legally played downtown for many years, said he’s collected 55 signatures from St. George Street merchants who wouldn’t mind seeing musicians and artists back on St. George Street — as long as they didn’t block doors, windows or pedestrians or compete with merchants directly.
Hayes said, “They pay taxes and want the performers to pay something, too.”
The ideas of selling permits or holding a lottery for artists and vendors was once contemplated, but discarded.
Hayes said he brought his signed petitions to the county attorney’s office and gave copies to commissioners, but never heard back.
“(With the performers returning), more tourists would come down and see decent entertainment like they used to do,” Hayes said. “People would take their relatives and friends downtown.”
He believes that this activity would revive St. George’s Street’s fortunes, which he sees as hurting due in this economy.
“There’s nobody there. You can get a parking place anywhere you want,” he said. “Merchants are standing outside their stores, talking to each other.”
Before ordinances governing street activities were passed, musicians, magicians, artists, jugglers, clowns, pirates, hippies, silver men and — only once — three complete one-man-bands performed on St. George at the same time.
The artists, vendors and musicians occupied nearly every open spot of vacant wall and drew huge crowds of gawkers among the shoppers.
But merchants complained about the resulting litter, blocked doorways and sidewalks, and noise.
The city said the street had become unsafe because emergency trucks and police personnel couldn’t get through.
Hayes believes the performers should have negotiated a workable system with the city and merchants that would have kept the tourists coming and the performers working.
Instead, the ordinance was challenged in federal court on First Amendment grounds and the issue became confrontational.
“The city must do something now,” Hayes said. “Anybody can go (to the public spaces), set up a tent and do anything they want. Key West allows an artist one easel and one chair. Some merchants want us out there in front of their stores.”
No more regulations
City Attorney Ron Brown told the City Commission last week that the multiple ordinances controlling street activity — many adopted in final version in 2009 — remain legal and constitutional.
The federal judge allowed the city to restrict all forms of speech on St. George Street if there were “alternative venues for free expression.”
So the city carefully delineated where people may sell and perform and where they may not, such as the Plaza de la Constitucion and St. George Street.
Hypolita Street and grassy areas around the Visitor Information Center are sites where vendors may set up tables.
On Hypolita, one man plays his large didgeridoo, drawing curious onlookers. He also sells little ones.
Sometimes there are guitarists singing and playing for tips.
“All of the free spaces we established are now occupied by vendors,” Brown said.
Brown said he’d report his alternative measures at the commission’s Jan. 9 meeting and offered to schedule a workshop if the board wanted to discuss the issue further.
Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline didn’t want to pass new laws, saying, “I would prefer that we look at alternatives.”
Commissioner Errol Jones said he’d been told that someone had been coming to the VIC in the early morning, setting up a tent or a chair and then asking for money from vendors to use that spot.
Vendors on the street Monday said they hadn’t heard that, though they admitted that on weekends, the grassy area near the Parking Garage became packed with vendor tables.
Javier Baron, a St. Augustine silversmith who displayed colorful cut stone objects and jewelry, said no spaces are being sold. “Overall, everybody cooperates,” he said.
A nearby vendor, Sharktooth Steve, said he’d been selling there a long time and had never heard of that happening, either.
“With the job market (so poor) here in St. Augustine, for some people, this is all they have,” he said.
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