PSYCHIC DRAWS A BLANK ON HIS VISIT TO ROANOKE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 23, 1993                   TAG: 9302230204
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
PSYCHIC DRAWS A BLANK ON HIS VISIT TO ROANOKE
Ian Bliss should have seen it coming.
The clairvoyant who planned to sponsor a Psychic Fair at the Roanoke Airport Marriott over the weekend got blindsided by the Roanoke commissioner of revenue's office.
Acting on a tip, Assistant Commissioner James M. Williams visited Bliss around noon Saturday as the fair was about to begin.
"He had no license, so we suggested he shut it down," Williams said Monday.
The city license fee for palm readers and the like is a flat $1,200, even if the seer is in business for only a day, Williams said.
Bliss, 46, was sitting in the room he had rented, with other people seated behind a half-dozen or more tables, when Williams arrived.
In a newspaper feature on Saturday, the seer from San Antonio predicted a rosy future for the Roanoke Valley, saying the re-opening of the Hotel Roanoke would invigorate the economy and The theater, a New York City landmark since 1988, hosted "The Ed Sullivan Show" for 19 years. that area politicians would, for once, put aside their differences and work for the common good.
He warned, though, that the area would have to shake off its isolationist tendencies in order to prosper.
He also said he never researched a place before giving his readings, because overanalysis could obscure his intuitions.
This was not the first time under-analysis ruined his plans.
In September 1989, Bliss canceled a fair in Hutchinson, Kan., because of a 1909 ordinance forbidding psychics from practicing there, according to the Associated Press.
Bliss called the ordinance archaic and a violation of his civil liberties.
He was unavailable for comment Monday. A telephone number he had given - his girlfriend's back in San Antonio, he said - had been disconnected.
Williams said the psychic had a predictable reaction to Saturday's shutdown.
"He wasn't too happy about it, but I guess he saw the handwriting on the wall."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB