A strange man danced in front of me

Times Square subway stationAs I got to the Music Under New York(MUNY) spot at Times Square I saw the instruments and equipment of Agua Clara, the Andean music band, but not the musicians… Only Gabriel, who played percussion for them this morning, was there… All the band members were…gathered around a Marines display a few feet away! Every now and then the US Army would have a recruitment table set up not far from the MUNY spot, usually without much of a crowd around them. Today they had an innovation – they set up a rod for doing pull-ups! Lots of people were stopping by to try to see how many pull-ups they can do. Jorge, the pan-flute player, did 9 pull-ups! Angel, the leader of the band, got a sticker that says ‘Marines’. He is going to cut off the last two letters and place the sticker on his guitar case (his last name is ‘Marin’) :) As the band was packing up and I was seting up Angel and I talked. We discovered that we were born on the same day! We both said to one another “so, that’s why you are so nice” :)

Agua ClaraAgua Clara said the Marines showed up about 15 minutes before I arrived. I was happy that at 1:15 they packed up their equipment and left. They were attracting a lot of attention…

Everybody said it was very slow this week. One musician who plays with another Andean music group said he thinks it’s because everybody is going to the West Side to see the fleet that arrived for ‘fleet week’, and that things will probably pick up in the weekend. Indeed, I saw two sailors in white uniforms pass by.

Frank, the guitarist/singer/whistler thought it is the immigration’s fault for it being slow for street musicians. He said because of the immigration there are now many more poor people in NYC than there used to be. Frank is from Puerto-Rico, I think.

FrankOnly the 3 singing brothers didn’t think it was slow. As usual, they gathered around me to sing me a song as their daily gift to me. They always cheer me up.

As I played the theme from ‘Star Trek’ 3 policemen stopped a guy wearing a cape and a mask. They had him take off his mask. I couldn’t hear their conversation. When they let him go he put his mask back on and then I saw that he was a character from ‘Star Trek’! He recognised what I was playing and waived to me.

There were 15 police officers gathered on the mezanine where I was playing. A strange man danced in front of me, tried to light a broken cigarette, dropped the match book, tried to pick it up and dropped other stuff, picked it up, moved a tissue that was on the floor to be next to me, put a quarter on the floor next to me, and was generally behaving in a strange way. The Police told him to go upstairs. I wanted to pick up the quarter that he left on the floor, but some lady picked it up, and walked away. I was sad that she took it. Then all of a sudden I saw a dollar bill on the floor in front of me, a few feet away from my donnations bucket! God works in misterious ways.

‘Saw Joke’ of the day: A guy came up to me and asked “are you going to cut this train station with the saw?” Isn’t it cute how people try to say something funny about the saw?

Nicest gesture of the day: Some kids were gathered around me. One kid put a huge $100 (fake) bill in my donations box. It’s an ad for a cell phone texting game. I enjoy fake bills – I glue them inside my donnations bucket for decoration. That’s where this bill is going :)

At 3pm Delphin showed up with his electrick guitar. He said he wants to go to Denver, Colorado – he heard busking down town there is really good.