Entertainers Incensed at Park Ban : Arts: Officials call kickoff of Soviet festival a private party; Balboa Park street performers claim discrimination.

Silly Star, a weekend clown, has been going to Balboa Park for a decade.She considers herself a fixture, like the fountain, or the dozens of other street performers who show up and entertain only for tips.

It isn’t like a clown to be angry, she said, but she’s furious.

“You could call it fighting mad,” she said.

Cheryl Barton (Silly Star’s real name) said she and 15 to 25 other street performers are incensed that Mayor Maureen O’Connor, Balboa Park management and the organizers of the Soviet arts festival have joined forces to ban them from the park this weekend for Super Powers Sunday, which kicks off the 3 1/2-week festival.

In place of the street performers who show up at the park every weekend, Barton said, entertainers from Sea World and Seaport Village are being brought in by the festival committee “to pretend to be” street performers.

Penny Scott, district manager for Balboa Park, who grants the permits that allow street performers to juggle, mime, clown or dance--but only for tips--said no permits were being granted either Saturday or Sunday because Super Powers Sunday is considered a private party.

“It’s not that we’re denying permits,” Scott said. “The city ordinance says public land cannot be used for private gain. The permits (for street performers) are administered by this department and at our discretion. Street performers enhance the park, but if we feel they pose a conflict for an already scheduled event, we have the right to take away their permits. We’ve chosen to exercise that right.”

Barton called the ban discriminatory and said the park’s legion of street performers may stage a sit-in demonstration.

“I have some basic questions,” said Cynthia Douglass, 29, of Del Mar, who plays the harp in the park. “If we who perform in the park on a regular basis are not being given the opportunity to play for our Soviet visitors, and others are, why, exactly, is that? How is it not discriminatory?

Barton, 39, said she had been told by spokesmen in the park office that some of the street performers are “bums” or “panhandlers” and that the city “didn’t want to be embarrassed” by having them seen by visiting dignitaries.

Scott denied that anyone in her office said that, but she did say that “some people in the public have complained about the street performers. “A lot of people don’t like” performers seeking tips, she said.

Scott said the no-permit policy for this weekend is not discriminatory. She also disputed the performers’ contention that the city is embarrassed by them and is choosing to shut them out because their image is not what the mayor’s office wants to convey.

“That is just plain old not true,” said Paul Downey, a spokesman for Mayor O’Connor, who conceived the festival. “We’ll have 3,000 performers throughout the park representing all the different cultures of San Diego. We’ll have Filipino groups, Mexican groups, Irish groups and Italian groups, the one caveat being that everyone donate their time.

“If the Sea World and Seaport Village performers are being paid, they’re not being paid by us. And the last I heard, Peg Nugent (hired by the festival to book entertainers for the park) still needed performers.”

Nugent and representatives of Sea World and Seaport Village were unavailable for comment.

“I’ve been coming here for 10 years,” Barton said, “and I’m a quality entertainer. Most of the street performers I know are talented and dedicated. I know of one who was living in the park, but to lump us all together and stereotype us as though we were common vagrants only adds insult to injury.”

Barton said permits were also denied for last weekend’s KidzArtz Fair for the same reason: “We weren’t welcome at a private party.”

Scott said it was more a case, as it is this weekend, of the park being packed with events and performers and that the sponsors of each event--the children’s fair and Super Powers Sunday--”went out of their way” to ask that street performers “not be there.”

“Each group said they’d just rather have their own people,” Scott said.

A spokesman for the San Diego Police Department has said that as many as 50,000 people could show up for the six-hour event.

Roy Phelps, 69, a Normal Heights retiree, who was in the park Wednesday watching Barton, harpist Douglass and other performers earlier in the day, said he is “mystified” by the city’s objection.

“It’s part of the atmosphere of a great park,” Phelps said. “The street performers are part of what makes Balboa Park a fun place. Take them away--take away the atmosphere, chip away at it a bit at a time--and what have we got? I don’t like the way this smells.”

“This ban, as it were, is really sad,” said Deris Jeannette, 41, who said he had watched street performers in the park for years and considers them “one of its best aspects.”

“To forbid these people to do what it is they do--and do well, for the pleasure of many--just because they don’t fit the image that San Diego wishes they would is really reprehensible,” Jeannette said.

Barton, wearing a rug-like multicolored wig, red sneakers and suspenders and blue stars painted on her chin and around her eyes, said the customary group of street performers who visit the park includes three clowns, two jugglers, a magician, a man and woman who read Tarot cards, six artists and an Indian who does traditional Native American dances.

He, too, is banned, she said.

“I guess we’re ashamed of even our own country’s heritage,” she said.