Vietnam veteran Jim Hinde, one of the founding members of the Pike Place Market Buskers Guild who performed for over 18 years in the market passed away this week.
Perhaps you heard his anti-war and protest ballads which became familiar background music to the market. "He would show up at the Market at 8 a.m. and start playing in the morning. He played three sets a day. He treated it like a job, and he did it impeccably," says his friend Jim Page.
Surely Jim will be missed, and we all send out warm wishes to his family.
Contributions can be made to the Jim Hinde Memorial Fund, P.O Box 21804, Seattle, WA 98111.
In case you're not putting a face with the name, here are some pictures of Jim Hinde.
Jim Hinde, the man who fought endlessly to RAISE the Pike Place Market Busker Fee solely to keep competition away from him at the Market.
Jim Hinde, the man who filed more than one complaint about my feminist political satire at the Market, and even came to court to testify that *I* should NOT have the same Free Speech, Civil, or Constitutional Rights at the Market that he believed he had a right to at the same Market.
Jim Hinde, man who played a little narc for the Merchants Association by playing both sides of the fence as a mock "journalist" for the Market News, claiming to be a fair and impartial reporter, yet every issue regarding civil rights of buskers was censored BY HIM when he worked for that paper.
Jim Hinde, busker scab, who did more to undermine the Busker Union at the Market than any one other person, using it instead as a false credential for himself as a board member forever, and making most of us stay AWAY from the guild due to his constant grandstanding with other has-been male patriarchs artis and jim page.
Jim Hinde, man who sang trendy hip songs about how awful Starbucks is, in between him going to Starbucks several times a day to refill his mug!
Jim Hinde, notorious sell out, poseur as Market Historian and busker elder.
Fact is, Jim Hinde did not show up at the Market during its busker hey day. He, instead, was a significant contributor to the Market's demise regarding street performers. As I said, he wanted to keep buskers OUT of the Market, with MORE illegal fees for free speech rights on public property, and did all he could to run me off of the streets of the Market, a place I had busked a DECADE prior to him showing up fresh off of the Fruitopia tour bus he came here on.
I could not stand Jim Hinde, I will not lie. I hated him ever since 1990 when he faked being a busker and journalist and weaseled his way into my private hearing with Market authorities for supposed "obscenity" in my busking act at the Market. I won that hearing and expected a fabulous article in the Market News about how I won, from the busker/journalist at the hearing. But the paper was silent. And that is when I found out Jim worked for the Merchants Association, the group that hassles buskers the most, and that he was actually there as a spy for them, and was there to write terrible things about my losing the hearing in print, but since I won, he had nothing to say. This guy was not in any way for busker RIGHTS. He worked against busker rights. I was trying to assert my free speech rights on public streets in court rooms in 2006 and Jim Hinde was leading the pack, along with fellow busking scab Artis the Spoonman, to have me literally banned from playing the Market's public streets due to my political content!! WHAT UTTER HYPOCRITS! Because Jim Hinde (and Jim Page) never said anything truly radical and was a POSEUR radical at best, he never encountered any backlash due to anything he ever sang about. But I sing about *controversial* issues like BIRTH CONTROL and DEAD BEAT DADS, and SEXISM, unlike Jim, and Jim did NOT LIKE *MY* RADICAL POLITICS! HE HATED MY RADICAL POLITICS and not only signed personal complaints with the Market over my political content in my music, but also went to court as a busker scab against me. He also tried over and over to get the very same free speech busking FEES that I tried to get ABOLISHED, RAISED to protect his own turf. He did not want ANY competition to the almighty dollar at the Market...
I was not impressed with Jim Hinde. I feel he reduced the Market and busking to a cheap whore status in Seattle, in many ways. He certainly was the first INAUTHENTIC busker we had land in our midst via Coca Cola, and he really milked it as an identity quickly...rather than earning his place, he sort of took it, and I know many people who are not cool with Jim Hinde. Jim would yell and scream at buskers who did not OBEY HIM and he could be quite threatening in one of his rages, honestly. I guess that was it, Jim Hinde wanted other buskers to OBEY him, as some sort of authority, and I never saw him as anything but that guy who came off the Fruitopia bus and then claimed to be our historian!~
Other buskers and I had discussed making a band named "Jim Hinde is an asshole" so we could put band stickers all over town. That was in 2007. Now that he is passed on, one of these buskers wrote me and said now we had to change the band's name to "Grateful Jim Hinde is Dead" - LOL!
Jim Hinde was a busker scab, working against busker rights, he wanted to keep buskers out of the Market by raising the permit fees, he was a problem. I hope the Market can finally be challenged regarding the illegal free speech fees it extorts out of buskers now that their patsy and spy is gone...He most certainly behaved as a SPY for the Market's PDA and authority agencies, spying on and narcing out other buskers...which is why I say he was a scab and a poseur. Also, he was an oppressor of lyrics, an oppressor of free thought and political civil rights, he worked tirelessly to get me censored at the Market...
Apparently free speech for Jim Hinde meant fees for performance on public property and censorship of feminist lyrics that threatened him. I am not impressed and cannot feed a myth that makes this guy out to be some kind of hero, activist, or friend of buskers.