I recently took up hoop dancing and baton and I was wondering if a permit was needed to practice/hone my skills in places such as Balboa Park, Seaport Village and Downtown San Diego. I know a permit is needed for busking, but what if you just want to practice in public? If one is needed, how would I get one? Any information is helpful.|||I'm pretty sure you don't need a permit to practice your skills. I would expect common safety sense would apply and keep a short distance from the crowded area in case you had a muscle twitch while tossing that baton or you lost control of your hoop and took out a family of unsuspecting tourists. Be careful that you don't put out a tip jar while doing this so you don't get cited for not having your busking permit. Once you are done practicing, you can put your gear away and then it is legal to pester everyone for money. The moral of that is that you have to get a permit to earn your money but not to freeload off others. Good luck in your practices and have a good time:) By the way, there is a huge grassy area about 200 yards South of Balboa park that may be an ideal place for what you need to do.|||The main reason that people say they have stage freight is, they wait until they actually have to appear and/or perform in public BEFORE they actually APPEAR IN PUBLIC.. So they freeze up or get very nervous because they have not trained theirself to PERFORM IN PUBLIC. The QUICKEST WAY to get over STAGE FREIGHT is by PERFORMING IN PUBLIC.. Something I used to do with my students was, I would take them out to a mall or even a street corner or in a public park and HAVE THEM PERFORM. As long as you don't collect MONEY for the performance, then you are merely exercising your FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS to FREE SPEECH... just be sure you DO NOT take even one penny or you have gone from FREE SPEECH to BUSKING and in many places.. BUSKING is illegal without a permit. There is nothing like BUSKING, where you are performing just a few feet away from your audience, to get over the jitters and stage freight that all you people have because you have NEVER APPEARED IN PUBLIC... And, once you can perform just feet from the audience, then it won't matter if you are performing to 10 people or 10 THOUSAND people.. It's all the same.,

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