This event gets plenty of $ from the craft folk that pay to vend their various crafts there and the merchants that wish to offer food booths. The performances at this event, including those by street performers, are already donated by the performance artists and have been for decades. There is no need for the event to enact further regulations that reach into the pockets of those artists who offer their talents and performances for free. Those folks already agree to play without being compensated.

If this event wants their 15% so badly, I think that the performance artists would be happy to give it, if they were getting compensated reasonable fees for their performances. However, given that this event has a long history of not providing compensation to performance artists and since each artist agrees to offer their talents for free, including those who host workshops, I think that the event saves a vast amount from this source alone and shouldn't be in the business of extorting further fees from the artists who participate.

Want to know just how much this event does reap in unpaid performance fees alone. Let's contact each and every act that has played this event in the past and ask each of those artists or groups what they normally get for one of their performances from other festival venues. Add all of that up and you'll quickly realize just what a bargain this event has been getting from the performers who agree to play for free.

One MC member here said that they had 5000 volunteers too. Near where I was performing, before I got the boot, I saw about a dozen of them at the north Mercer entrance just standing around at the gate and in the info booth with nothing to do. If this event can't figure out how to host their show, that reaps hundreds of thousands of dollars from craft and food vendors and has thousands of volunteers, including free performances from the artists involved, without fleecing street performers, then perhaps they should just throw in the towel and let this event die a natural death.

I think that it would be far better to see this event take a giant step backward, to what it used to be before all of the money grubbers took over and I don't think that I'm alone in that wish. Turn back the clock and let this event become what it was intended to be before the mismanagement and megalomania crept in. Of course, it's not unusual, when in a time of stress, to allow one's thoughts to hearken back to an earlier time, when the pressures of present circumstance did not weigh so heavily. Escapism is all a part of life on the planet and the human condition.

I predict that it is likely that this event will die a horrid and unnatural death due to the influences of those who can't leave well enough alone. It may, in fact, already be in the process of such a death. Given that this event's organizers deem it necessary to fleece the poorest among us with fees and percentages, demanding payola in return for the constitutional right to freedom of expression, I'd say they've already revealed their own demise.