Hey Bob, funny you should ask me about this here in this thread, where we are talking about the constitutionality and legality of playing folk music to folks on the grounds of the Seattle Center during the Memorial Day weekend and during this supposed "folk" festival. Well, from I understand after hearing the weather reports, the predictors of such say that it's going to be rainy this weekend. So, my usual locations, where I enjoy playing, might be a challenge to perform in because of the dampness. Of course, we know that they aren't always right in their predictions but this weekend has traditionally been fraught with such wet weather patterns. I thought that I'd try to find a nice covered walkway to set up and play underneath.

Have I mentioned how much that I really enjoyed playing underneath one such covered walkway last year? It was near the northwest corner of the Exhibition Center, the building that used to house the big dances but then, last year, some jerk came along and had me escorted off the grounds, by the police no less. He claimed that he was doing so on behalf of the NW Folklife Festival and because he had to defend the rules that those managing the Seattle Center had in place regarding where musicians could play.

It's a funny thing but I didn't hear him mention once that the rules he was defending were unconstitutional and had been declared as such, by the district court, way back in 2005. I guess the festival must have "misread" the court case files on that point. Well, in their defense, I even sometimes misread information when I have to read through a whole long list of boring rules and such.

You'd think that five years would have been enough time, for even the organizers of this event, to read the court's ruling on the matter. Not to worry, I understand that they're going to organize a meeting to discuss the matter right after the festival this year. One wonders, though, if it takes this event five years to organize a meeting in order to discuss matters concerning the constitutionality of the restrictions they've enacted against our First Amendment right to freedom of expression and how it relates to street performing, how do they manage to get anything done? It boggles the mind.