Fortune-teller fight
Some say city licensing process discriminates
By Donovan Slack, Globe Correspondent, 2/18/2003
On a wintry evening last December, Boston police came to The Psychic Eye, a downtown fortune-telling parlor run by a young woman who goes by the name Mitchell. She was ticketed and ordered to appear before the city's licensing board. Her offense: claiming to divine the future without a license.
''I cannot conduct business anymore?'' Mitchell said at her hearing a month later.
''Not until licensing,'' said board chairman Daniel F. Pokaski, slapping her file shut and calling the next case.
The Boston Licensing Board regularly nabs people who say they have psychic powers for violating state and city laws against fortune-telling without regulatory clearance. But many of the fortune-tellers in Boston - most of whom say they are Gypsies - say that the licensing process is unfair, even a form of discrimination.
''Every other business they really don't care unless it's tobacco or alcohol,'' said Costello, a fortune-teller who, like Mitchell, goes by only one name in accordance with Gypsy tradition. ''You're a Gypsy, we want to watch you. Doesn't the city have someone better to watch? Shouldn't they use their energy to get crack dealers or people who shoot babies on the train?''
The city says the fortune-telling license requirements, which have been in place since 1963, are not discriminatory against Gypsies, but are designed to root out frauds and con artists.
''The unscrupulous ones prey upon the very vulnerable people who would come in there and believe,'' said Pokaski.
The licensing board commissioner once fielded a complaint from a customer who said a psychic told her that her living room set was cursed, and that she should bring the new furniture to the fortune-teller's office at once so the curse could be removed. Pokaski said the customer never saw her couch or loveseat again.
''Sometimes they can be real nuisances to neighborhoods,'' he said.
About a dozen alleged future-seers in Boston are licensed. Pokaski suspects many more may be operating outside the law.
''Our job is to balance the needs of the business community with the needs of the residents,'' Pokaski said. ''We like to know who does what where so we can have some control.''
Gypsies in New England say they've been fighting discrimination in Massachusetts licensing for years. They have had some support in the courts. After a fortune-teller sued Provincetown for not granting her a license in 1983, US District Court Judge David Mazzone wrote that a residency requirement in the state's law was unconstitutional and ''obvious discrimination and unequal treatment.''
After learning of the 1983 ruling about three years ago, Boston eliminated the residency rule, which required fortune-tellers to live in the city for at least a year before becoming eligible for a license.
''Basically, it was an anti-Gypsy statute,'' said Alfred Farese Jr., a Boston attorney who said Gypsies tend to be nomadic, moving from city to city.
Some now say the application process itself is flawed. Like other people seeking to do business in the city, applicants for a fortune-telling license must fill out a detailed, four-page form seeking information about the applicant's background and business plans.
After completing that paperwork, Mitchell faced the three members of the licensing board in a windowless room deep inside City Hall.
''Now, you must post prices so the public can see exactly what they're going to have to pay,'' Pokaski said. ''You can't say, `OK, there's a curse on you so it's going to cost another $20 to take it off.'''
''Exactly what will you be doing?'' another board member, Joseph Mulligan, cut in.
''Palm-reading, tarot-card reading or psychic reading, which is both,'' Mitchell said, her voice quavering.
''Do you use a crystal ball and all that stuff?'' Mulligan said.
''No.''
''Will you be doing any seances? Do you do that?'' Mulligan asked.
''No, no, I don't like to do that,'' she said.
Mitchell, who was ultimately granted a license for her Kingston Street business, declined to be interviewed. But Costello, whose family operates a half-dozen fortune-telling businesses in the Boston area, said questioning of the kind Mitchell faced is degrading and fueled by ignorance and prejudice.
''We are Gypsies and we are proud of what we do,'' he said. ''It's our inheritance. It's 2003. Enough is enough.''
But Pokaski and his board members say they have reasons to be tough - and that they do not discriminate. In December 1998, a Boston-based fortune-teller was sentenced to more than a year in prison for swindling a longtime client out of nearly $200,000 in inheritance money. She claimed the money was evil and had to be cleansed - out of state. Federal agents later arrested the woman in New York City.
In Arlington early last year, police said a Cambridge man gave a fortune-teller $12,000 and a sterling silver napkin ring so she could ''cleanse'' the money and the ring of a ''curse.''
She told the man that the money, which he had inherited, was the root of his problems. When the man later was unable to retrieve his property, he contacted local authorities.
When a Boston High School student paid a visit in May 2000 to a fortune-teller in Bay Village, police said the 16-year-old was told that if she handed over nine $20 bills and nine flowers, she would get back together with her boyfriend. The high school student paid $40, planning to return with more. But her mother learned of her daughter's activities and alerted police.
Costello insists that a few bad apples have poisoned the pool of opinion.
''We don't stand on the street and drag people in by a rope,'' he said. ''They walk in on their own. I put my sign out, my door is open for business - just like anyone else.''
