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Washington Square Park Residents Complain About Drummers at Meeting

By Danielle Tcholakian | June 5, 2015 5:26pm | Updated on June 8, 2015 9:00am
 Kareem Barnes, at right, is one half of the comedy and acrobatics duo Tic & Tac. He says he has performed in Washington Square Park with his twin Tyheem, at left, for 25 years.
Kareem Barnes, at right, is one half of the comedy and acrobatics duo Tic & Tac. He says he has performed in Washington Square Park with his twin Tyheem, at left, for 25 years.
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DNAinfo/Danielle Tcholakian

GREENWICH VILLAGE — Dozens of residents packed into a meeting room at New York University Wednesday night to complain about performers in Washington Square Park.

The residents said at the Community Board 2 parks committee meeting that the performers are too loud and take up too much space in the park, with some loitering there all day.

"When groups play under the arch it amplifies the sound," said one woman who lives at 2 Fifth Ave. "I can go up through the park and go up to my apartment and I will hear the music even more loudly than when I am in the park."

Kareem Barnes performs in the park with his twin brother, Tyheem, as "Tic & Tac," doing comedy and acrobatics accompanied by a drummer. He was alarmed at the anger at the meeting as he sat and listened to residents bash them.

"We were the only two black guys in the room," Barnes said after the meeting. "It hurts when people are saying they want to get rid of what culturally means something to us."

Barnes said he and his brother could perform their routine without the drumming, "But it takes away from what we're doing."

There are rules and regulations governing performing in the park, but meeting attendees complained that Parks Enforcement Patrol officers are often nowhere to be found and that NYPD officers are reluctant to write tickets.

The ticket issue actually brought Tic & Tac into the public eye in 2011, when they incurred nearly $10,000 in summonses which were either thrown out by a judge or fought off by civil rights lawyers Norman Siegel and Ron Kuby.

Barnes blamed new CB 2 chair Tobi Bergman for reviving the animus against him and his brother and their fellow musicians.

Bergman was quoted in an interview in the Villager last week citing Tic & Tac as a problem act in the park.

“At what point,” Bergman asked the Villager, “is protecting the freedom of expression of a small number of people actually preventing the freedom of expression of a much larger number of people who are being drowned out?"

Barnes said he thought Bergman had something against buskers in general.

But Bergman said that wasn't the case.

"It's hard to make a living by entertaining people and they do it very well," Bergman wrote in an email. "I admire that.

"But there is an extent to which they do it at the expense of other people's well-being and enjoyment and that's unfair," he continued. "I wasn't there for the discussion, but I heard they came to the meeting, showed sensitivity to the concerns of neighbors and other park users, and expressed an interest in being part of a solution. That's great and it gives me confidence that with a combination of better enforcement of park rules and more consideration of others we can have a quieter park with all the creativity and energy and freedom that it has now."

The committee did not reach any conclusion or issue any resolution at the meeting Wednesday night. The full board is scheduled to meet on June 18 at the Scholastic Building in SoHo.