On a picture-perfect Sunday, hundreds of people flooded downtown Golden with river tubes and shopping bags.

But one thing was missing — music.

Washington Avenue, a place where locals play live music on street corners, was quiet on Aug. 3, just three days after Golden began enforcing a new ordinance banning amplified music on public right-of-ways.

Meanwhile, around 17 miles away on Denver's reinvigorated 16th Street, buskers were performing on every block and amplified tunes filled the summer air.

While Golden's new ordinance doesn't outright ban busking, it may push buskers from the quaint tourist destination to other locations such as the bigger, more lenient 16th Street, where Denver officials are encouraging buskers to return.

"That's a huge win for me," Chris Popovich, a busker in

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