NYC Department of Cultural Affairs certifies Times Square as the world’s highest concentration of unlicensed Sesame Street intellectual property per square foot
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK — A pedestrian density study commissioned by the Times Square Alliance has found that at peak tourist hours, approximately 40 percent of visible human figures in the Times Square commercial district are wearing full or partial character costumes, the majority representing entertainment properties whose intellectual property rights belong to entities that have not licensed their characters for unsolicited tipping-based street performance, a finding the Alliance described as “a colorful testament to New York’s entrepreneurial spirit” and Sesame Street Workshop’s legal department described as “an ongoing matter.”
The Study
The Times Square Alliance, which manages the pedestrianized public space between 42nd and 47th Streets on Broadway and Seventh Avenue, commissioned the density study to assess the “character performer ecosystem,” a phrase the Alliance uses in preference to “unregulated costumed individual economy,” which is accurate but which the Alliance’s communications team notes “carries connotations we are not trying to lean into.”
The study, conducted over fourteen days in peak tourist season, counted an average of 247 costumed performers in the zone during the hours of 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., of whom 89 represented recognizable entertainment characters, 71 were wearing superhero costumes of general rather than specific design, 44 were dressed as the Statue of Liberty, 23 as Minnie Mouse, 19 as Spider-Man, and what the study describes as “a residual category of seventeen individuals whose costume identity could not be reliably classified, including four whose characters appeared to be original creations.”
The remaining 158 were Elmo. The study notes that this may be an undercount as some Elmos removed their heads during the observation period and became temporarily unclassifiable.
Why So Much Elmo
Veteran Times Square Elmo performers, several of whom agreed to speak on the condition of being identified only by their Elmo name, said the character’s dominance in the street performer ecosystem reflects its combination of extreme recognizability across all age groups and nationalities, a costume that is relatively inexpensive to source on wholesale platforms, and what one performer described as “Elmo’s universal appeal as a being who is always happy, always friendly, and always wanting something from you, which is a very Times Square energy.”
The New York Daily News reported last year on the economics of character performance in Times Square, finding that experienced Elmo performers earn between $200 and $600 per day in tips, with peak earnings during holiday weekends, and that the market has become sufficiently organized that there are informal territorial agreements among performers about station placement, a system that breaks down periodically with consequences that have occasionally required NYPD intervention.
The NYPD’s Times Square Unit confirmed that disputes between costumed characters account for “a non-trivial portion” of its daily call volume and that in its experience Elmos are more likely to be involved in territorial conflicts than any other character, a finding the unit’s commander said he “would not have predicted” when he joined the department but had “long since made peace with.”
Tourism Officials Respond Carefully
The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, asked whether the Elmo density represented a policy challenge or a tourism asset, issued a statement that described Times Square character performers as “part of the rich, diverse, and entrepreneurially vibrant street culture that makes New York City unique” and said the city “values the contributions of all individuals who participate in creating a welcoming environment for visitors,” a statement that addressed neither the intellectual property situation nor the territorial disputes nor the question of what forty percent Elmo density signals to first-time visitors about the city’s current condition.
A spokesperson for Sesame Workshop, when contacted, said the organization “is aware of the situation in Times Square” and that it “continues to monitor unauthorized use of its characters.” The spokesperson did not specify what monitoring had produced over the decades this situation has existed, but noted that Sesame Street’s Elmo remains “a beloved character whose values of kindness and curiosity are central to the organization’s mission,” adding that these values did not extend to unlicensed tipping-based performance and that the organization “encourages visitors to enjoy Elmo through official licensed channels.”
What Tourists Think
Tourists at Times Square reacted to the character environment with a range of responses that correlated strongly with whether they had children with them. Visitors with young children described the costumed characters as “exciting” and “a highlight,” though three noted that the number of Elmos had confused their toddlers, who asked why Elmo was everywhere and whether something had happened. Visitors without children described the experience in terms ranging from “chaotic but kind of amazing” to one visitor from Stuttgart who said he had taken seventy photographs of Times Square and that forty-one of them contained at least one Elmo he had not noticed at the time of shooting.
The city continues to attract 60 million tourists annually. Times Square remains its most visited site. The Elmo density study will be published in full in the Alliance’s annual report. The Elmos will be there when it comes out. They will be there before. They are there now. This is New York.
Keeping count in New York at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.
Also in costume at The Onion | ClickHole | Cracked
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/times-square-40-percent-elmo-nyc-character-costume-density/