Street Performers

Holy Hollywood ending, Batman! Maybe this is a job for Superman! That's what Robin was probably thinking after the superhero sidekick was attacked and pummeled as he strolled in his mask, cape and tights among tourists on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. A series of assaults near Grauman's Chinese Theatre has led to a plea for a city licensing system that costumed characters who pose for visitors' photos hope will protect them.

Just in time for the summer tourist throngs, mimes, musicians and balloon-animal shapers have been newly empowered to bring their entertainments and tip jars to public parks. In a ruling with potentially wide implications for street artists throughout the West, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday struck down curbs imposed by Seattle on those performing at the popular Seattle Center, home of the landmark Space Needle.

A city in England said Friday that two buskers, or street performers, who plagued a suburb by repeating the same two songs have been banned from performing for two years. The Birmingham City Council said the men angered residents with late-night and out-of-tune renditions of two tracks: "Wonderwall" by Oasis and "Faith" by George Michael.

The buzz on Hollywood Boulevard on Friday was over the Chewbacca who police say crossed over to the dark side in front of hundreds of tourists at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. LAPD officers arrested "Star Wars" street performer Frederick Evan Young, 44, of Los Angeles in his furry brown wookiee costume Thursday on a charge of misdemeanor battery for allegedly head-butting a tour guide who complained about Young's treatment of two visitors from Japan.

These crime fighters aren't in uniform and don't carry weapons or badges. They wield guitars, Hula-Hoops, washboards, paintbrushes, and will hopefully have the ability to draw a crowd. Last week, Seattle parks began paying street performers -- mostly musicians, but also a few visual artists and some vaudevillians -- to entertain in five downtown parks in hopes that with more people around, a park will be less hospitable to illegal activity.

NEW YORK -- He's an urban curiosity -- a poet of passersby, a vendor of verse. With his manual typewriter outside a downtown Manhattan supermarket, William Chrome creates poems on the spot from bystanders' requests, sentiments and dares. He does it for the creative challenge, plus the donations. In his carbon-copied pages is a mental panorama of New York, or anywhere. Write me a poem to honor Jesus. Eulogize my dog. Celebrate my grandmother's birthday. Win back my girlfriend.

Suddenly, they stopped. The often distracted, sometimes disaffected and occasionally downright rude members of the Los Angeles City Council swung in their chairs until all eyes were on the man strutting to the lectern. "Our next speaker is Zuma Dogg," council President Eric Garcetti said. Standing before them was a man in his mid-30s, wearing a black wool cap and dark sunglasses. He immediately burst into a manic tirade punctuated by hip-hop slang: "We don't need no legislation.

People tend to think it is easy work to be an organ grinder -- basically, turn the crank, count the money -- and that drives Joe Bush crazy. When he first got into the business 31 years ago, Bush tied himself to his monkey every night for three weeks. His wife would say goodnight and shut him in the family room and turn up the volume on the television. "Look, this is the real McCoy here, pal, just me and you," Bush would say to the monkey, a white-faced capuchin named George.

\o7WANTED: One rent-a-daughter willing to walk the hat line. \f7 HALIFAX, Nova Scotia -- We reach the 20th Annual Halifax International Buskers Festival just as one act is offering up its "hat line," its plea for money -- a pitch that in this instance involves doing something to the audience's offspring if not enough cash lands in the hat or, more accurately, the bucket.

Over the past half-century, Disneyland has hosted world leaders, Olympians, movie premiers and even a few political protests. On Sunday at 6 a.m., the "Happiest Place on Earth" becomes one of the fittest places on earth as 12,000 distance runners invade the park to compete in the inaugural Disneyland Half Marathon. The 13.1-mile course winds through Disney's California Adventure, around the Angel Stadium playing field and through the streets of Anaheim and Downtown Disney. In the third mile, competitors will jog past Space Mountain, the Matterhorn and through Sleeping Beauty Castle.