busking

Buskers’ conversation: Django guitar player: “I recently had an encounter with another busker at 6th Avenue and 14 street (‘L’ train platform). He’s a burly guy who plays acoustic guitar. I was in the middle of playing, and he wanted the spot. When I told him I was just getting started, he verbally attacked...
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I love coins. Whenever anybody puts a unique coin in my donations bucket I am very grateful. I have a collection of the “state” quarters and now I am starting to collect the presidential dollar coins. I already got George Washington, James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson. The oldest coin I ever got is a...
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From time to time I come across cool poetry about busking. Here is such a poem by Elphyon that I found on the blog ‘Grounds for Fiction’ (printed with permission): A Busker with a Broken Guitar/Elphyon A busker with a broken guitar sings tonight a cure for misery. Between neon stars made up of...
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My blog still gets a lot of hits from people searching information about the incident last year when famous violinist Joshua Bell played in the Washington DC subway. Another famous violinist also busked in the streets, but as he didn’t do it as a publicity stunt most people don’t know about it… Fritz Kreisler...
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I love it when people put unusual things in my busking donations bucket. Last month somebody tossed into my bucket a coin with no currency number on it. So, I thought maybe it was some sort of a medal. It turned out it’s a silver shilling from 1787! It says ‘Georgius III Dei Gratia’...
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On one of my Internet excursions I came across the blog of John Stevens, a Canadian poet. Here is a beautiful poem he wrote about a subway musician, inspired by a guy he used to see in the London Underground almost every day (printed with permission): The Subway Musician/John Stevens I hear the approach...
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Here is a beautiful true story written by Margaret Leigh of Australia. She really captured the essence of buskers’ philosophy: The Busker by Margaret Leigh (printed with permission) A story I wrote about a man I used to see on my way to and from work each day. Some people can make an impact...
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I found this poem and I think the poet has some good observations about busking. The lack of capital letters is in the original. a poem to a busker have you been a busker or ever stood like one with your back against a wall and watched the strange parade of the street on...
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The Princeton Review has a new book out, titled 120 Jobs That Won’t Chain You to Your Desk. I just bought the book, and it was an amazing experience for me – I went to ‘Barnes & Nobles’ bookstore, bought the book and set there to check out the ’street performer’ chapter. It felt...
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The Washington Post published an article about an experiment they did: they got Joshua Bell, one of the best violinists in the world, to play incognito in a subway station. They wanted to see if without the PR he usually gets for his stage performances anybody would stop to listen. The result was –...
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