In US First, San Francisco Will Create Mime-Free Zones

SAN FRANCISCO.  Alton Birdsell, Jr. will admit that what he was doing on Telegraph Avenue last Saturday night wasn’t exactly appropriate for a public street, but it was something that had to be done.  “I always forget to clip my fingernails before I go on vacation,” says the community banker from Leavenworth, Kansas, here for a convention.

Telegraph Avenue, San Francisco

Birdsell purchased a pair of fingernail clippers with an embossed image of the Golden Gate Bridge on the leatherette holster at a souvenir store and had begun to clip his nails over a trash can when he was “accosted”, as he puts it, by an aggressive mime imitating his actions.  “Frankly, I was embarrassed as hell,” he says. “It made me mad.  It’s none of his damn business what I do on vacation.”

“Why don’t you try these clippers, banker boy?”

But the mime, Jacky Tressel, thinks differently.  “These people come into one of the most beautiful cities on earth and act like they’re back home in their bathrooms,” he says.  “Mimes can be the first line of defense against offensive public behavior.”

“He’s going to the movies later–that’s why he was picking his seat.”

But the San Francisco Convention & Tourism Council became concerned that “mime-sliming”, as the artists describe the practice of holding a mirror up to habits that non-mimes practice in public but should keep behind closed doors, was driving away business.  “The endoproctocologists cancelled,” says Herman Stone, executive director.  “Then the chiropodists cancelled before I even had a chance to look up what the first group did,” he notes with exasperation.

“Seriously, dude–are you going to wait on us or not?”

So beginning August 1st, vacationers will be able to wander in and out of designated mime-free zones around the city where they can pick, scratch, tell offensive jokes and otherwise enjoy themselves while away from home without fear that they will ridiculed by a mute artist in whiteface. 

Moscone Convention Center

“Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery,” says Vernon “Chip” Thomas, Southern Midwestern Regional Vice-President of the Soybean Growers of America, which will meet for a plenary session at the Moscone Convention Center in August.  “But I still don’t like it.”