A Queenstown busker has pushed back at claims street performers had bullied the resort’s pipe band from its regular downtown performance spot.
Simon West, aka ‘Juggling Jack Flash’, says the reverse is actually the case, and it’s the pipe band who are the aggressors, literally marching in on the buskers’ patch.
West is responding to allegations made by Queenstown and Southern Lakes Highland Pipe Band member Dave Macleod in an oral submission to a recent Queenstown Lakes District Council public hearing of proposed amendments to the Activities in Public Places Bylaw 2016.
Macleod, who is also a solo busker, called for a larger footprint to busk in the town and greater effort from the council to clamp down on bad behaviour from ‘‘fly-by-night’’ buskers.
For more than 15 years, the pipe band, made up of 14 to 15 ‘‘mostly pensioners’’, had assembled every Thursday night in its regular spot on the downtown waterfront to give public performances, he told the hearing.
However, he alleges frequent intimidation from other buskers has recently forced the band to shift its performances to the Memorial Gates, a part of town not frequented by street performers ‘‘where we don’t get challenged any more’’.
West calls the claims of bullying buskers ‘‘quite comedic’’, saying it’s the pipe band who have no regard for other people working on that spot or ‘pitch’, as it’s known by buskers, outside the Patagonia ice cream shop and KJet.
The lakefront pitch is the only place designated by council for permitted buskers to perform in the town, he says.
‘‘What the pipe band do is start playing at the top of the shopping centre and they will walk down The Mall playing and on to the pitch, regardless of whether somebody else is using it.
‘‘I’ve had conversations with them several times and one of their wives comes down to support them and comes up to my face and starts talking over the top of me and just refusing to have a discourse.
“It’s her word or no word.’’
West, 37, who has been a pro busker in Queenstown, the UK and Europe for 20 years, says street performers meet at the pitch at 4pm every day to pull names out of a hat to determine the order of events.
Such an orderly process is particularly necessary over the busy summer period when there could be up to seven shows in afternoons and early evenings.
West concedes the pipers ‘‘have been a little bit better about it recently because we have had conversations with them, sometimes they’ll wait and see if we’re there’’.
However, the band has spurned multiple invites from buskers to be part of the draw, he says.
‘‘We’ll happily have them there — we do not not want them to do their thing — but I think it’s incredibly rude that ‘A’, they will not involve themselves with that at all and ‘B’, walk down and play all over the top of us.
‘‘There’s no consideration for those of us that earn a full-time living from this, whereas for them it’s a hobbyist thing.’’
West also rejects Macleod’s allegation that many buskers in Queenstown do not have council permits to perform.
‘‘We have to apply for permits, it’s called a special licence, same as the pipe band do,’’ he says.
‘‘They say ‘oh, we’ve got a special licence, we get to perform here whenever we want’, they’re quite insistent about that one.
“The reality is we all work on the same licence.
‘‘There’s only one place you can busk in Queenstown, whereas there’s a dozen spots where musicians can perform — there’s no restrictions on them.’’
Macleod did not comment when approached by Mountain Scene.
