“It’s broken…” City of Las Vegas Town Hall with Fremont Street Performers

by Brandon Summers | June 23, 2026

RED (pictured above) is a bucket drummer who has been performing on Fremont Street and the Las Vegas Strip for over a decade. He was one of many performers in attendance at the City of Las Vegas’s Street Performer Town Hall yesterday (Monday June 22, 2026) who shared their grievances with the functionality of the current street performer lottery system. Both city officials and performers recognize that the online registration lottery is rife with abuse and fraud.

“I’m telling you [the lottery system is rigged] because it’s broken— as someone who uses it. You don’t use it. You’re not out there every day. So what I can tell you right now— factually, no opinions based on it— is it does NOT work! Because the other day, they made me sign up [for] a new registration after I had just registered the day before. And said “hey, you’re registration is expired”. The NEXT DAY when I went out there to do it, they told me I didn’t have one. So then what, I had to sign up [again]; but it’s illegal to have multiple registrations. But I have to because every time I log back in, it tells me I’m expired. I know people are going out there with three or four numbers unintentionally because every single time the security guards come by. So don’t argue with me about something that I’m using every day.” – 1MRed, bucket drummer.

Some of the proposed changes included a photo ID to verify identity of performers, changing the lottery start time from 3PM to 1PM, disallowing tumbling acts from operating, and suspending performers who are caught abusing the registration system.

Performers had a mountain of complaints including selective enforcement by Fremont Street Experience (FSE) security, individuals who are homeless using performance circles to vend palm leaves, homeless people being paid to hold spots, performers gaming the system by creating multiple registrations, performers drowning out others by using multiple loud speakers, and Fremont Street Experience closing the entire mall during special events.

You can’t even look forward to getting a spot because you see all these strange people… making you lose the ability to pay your cell phone bill so they can get $10 and go do drugs. – Kelvin Gordon, box contortionist

Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke briefly about some of the issues that his organization would have if certain changes were to take place.

“…right now, if they [the City of Las Vegas] were to charge a single penny in exchange for entering into this lottery system— for the purposes of [a performer] receiving a circle, it would violate the state constitution instantly. I appreciate the City [of Las Vegas] trying to work with everybody and work through it. We’re mostly here to share what our hardlines are. – Athar Haseebullah, ACLU

The meeting was open to the public, informal and anyone who wanted to speak was given a microphone. Representatives from the City of Las Vegas did more listening than talking and did their best not to interrupt performers once they had the mic. Some moments were quite funny which shouldn’t come as a surprise given the colorfulness of the people in attendance. It was well worth my time to be there.

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Brandon Summers is a Las Vegas native, violinist, street performer, and advocate for spontaneous, unlicensed performance in public spaces. Summers has been busking for over ten years and has performed for Ciroc, Hudson Jeans, Netflix, JBL-Harman and many more. He is a graduate of Fort Valley State University where he majored in mathematics and holds BA in liberal studies.