OCNJ Daily ran a Wednesday story about nascent attempts by the city to potentially regulate or monitor performers on the Ocean City Boardwalk.
Ariel Gottlieb, 16, of Silver Spring, MD performs on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ.The story featured a photograph of a young musician strumming a Vance Joy tune on an acoustic guitar, and it outlined the concerns of boardwalk merchants and police.
See “Boardwalk Musicians Put Ocean City in a Jam.”
While acoustic musicians hardly seem like a cause for concern, the video above may illustrate a bit of a slippery slope.
The video shows an atonal version of a “song” with the only recognizable lyrics being “sluts on the boardwalk” … later electronically amplified and changed to “whores on the boardwalk.”
The group reportedly yelled at and berated a boardwalk merchant who asked them to stop.
The film is just one of the media submitted to OCNJ Daily as examples of the various issues Ocean City will have to consider as it tries to balance artistic taste and freedom of speech against public nuisance on a public right of way.
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