Full of hot air

Old Sacramento plans to give street performers the boot.

Liz Brenner, with the Old Sacramento Historic District, says she began meeting with the city attorney last week to discuss new parameters for current Old Sacramento street permits. “We’re taking a look at the whole permitting process,” she told SN&R. “We don’t have street-performing permits anywhere else in the city. We don’t make a dime off these things.

“What’s in it for us? Nothing.”

Currently in Old Sac there are four street performers, which include a caricature artist and balloon man. All have business permits, which will expire at the end of June.

But instead of renewing all the permits, Brenner said she wants to only retain the summer street-theater program put on by the Historic Old Sacramento Foundation. The program, which will start again in July, is produced by Red Barn Productions, from Vallejo, and brings performers in period costumes to re-enact historical situations from the gold-rush era.

Not all Old Sacramento business owners approve of this move.

Steamers owner Janie Desmond Ison said she wants the current performers to stay. “They are very good ambassadors for Old Sac,” she said. “They’re asked where to go, what attractions to see, what not to miss; they are incredibly resourceful for visitors.”

Brenner said she plans to meet with the performers in the next few weeks. (Jonathan Mendick)

Obama’s marijuana fail

Last Wednesday, April 20, President Barack Obama made an appearance in Northern California on the most marijuana-friendly day of the year, 4/20. That same day, cannabis-patient-advocacy group Americans for Safe Access delivered Obama’s marijuana report card. And, no, the president didn’t smoke it.

He earned an F.

“The report card highlights broken promises, half-measures, and a general failure by the Obama Administration to address medical marijuana as a national public health issue,” read the report by ASA. Specifically, ASA cited a 2009 Department of Justice memo, which urged federal prosecutors to deprioritize enforcement efforts in medical-marijuana-friendly states—but that “100 aggressive, SWAT-style raids on patients, growers, dispensaries and laboratories in California, Colorado, Michigan, Montana and Nevada” have occurred since that very ’09 memo.

Still, this week, Obama has a chance at redemption: Next Monday, May 2, Dr. Mollie Fry and her husband, Dale Schafer, will turn themselves in at downtown’s federal courthouse to serve five years for growing medical marijuana at their home in Cool.

The couple was not allowed to invoke Proposition 215 or California’s medical-cannabis laws during their trial.

Fry and Schafer, who leave behind five children and two grandchildren, are petitioning Obama for clemency, asking that their sentence be commuted.

The couple was arrested seven days after the 9/11 attacks. (Nick Miller)