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Playing in the Streets: First published in San Diego CityBEAT |
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When I was broke and living in Manhattan I never wanted for entertainment: the streets were full of it.
Sometimes the show was Cops and Robbers, like the night on a narrow street in the West Village when two young men in dark clothes and white sneakers whooshed by me, running like greyhounds. Three seconds later, a fat, bald guy in a cheap brown suit came wheezing after them. He waved a handgun and panted, "Stop. Mother-fuck-ers. Stop."
Sometimes the show was a Family Situation Comedy. On Eleventh Avenue I passed a skinny man just as he grabbed a woman by the throat, bent her backward onto the hood of a car, and started slapping her face. The show became interactive theatre when I yelled something brilliant like, "Hey!" and moved to pull the guy away from the woman. He stepped back from me--and the woman seized the opportunity to attack. But she didn’t attack him. She attacked me. As she swung wild roundhouse punches, I dodged and retreated. She aimed a kick at my crotch and screamed, "Mind your own business motherfucker!" The skinny man laughed. It was a comedy, after all.
But my favorite street entertainers were also the most
endearing and safest: the musicians.
There was the guy in purple robes with long, stringy
white hair, who pushed his full-size upright piano,
outfitted with wheels, along St. Marks Place and all
the way down Fifth Avenue, cars and taxis whizzing past
him, to Washington Square Park. Under the echoing arch,
he would bang out unrecognizable tunes he insisted were
"classical jazz".
One time, eating my brown bag lunch in a plaza on mid-town Madison Avenue, a movie was being filmed on one side of me, and a brass quintet of world-class Julliard-trained musicians played on the other side of me.
I remember the many times I was made late for appointments by a wildly brilliant violinist ripping through pieces by Mozart or Paganini under the vaulted, cathedral-like resonance of Grand Central station. His fingers weaved furiously even as he bantered, made jokes, and told outrageous stories of the love lives and musical prowess of long-dead composers. Sometimes he would play his violin so furiously and joyously that I would hear a person in the encircling crowd gasp. Money would overflow his opened violin case. But I also remember the time I saw him stop in the middle of playing, grab his violin case, and dash onto an arriving uptown number 3 train--not bothering to gather the stray bills and coins that had landed near, but not inside of, his case. I don’t believe he played in public just for the money, but to make people snap to a more alert understanding, if only for a moment, of the wonderful absurdity of being alive. I believe he played to make people gasp.
Where are the street musicians in San Diego?
Try the Hillcrest Farmers Market on any given Sunday, where Shawn Rohlf and his 7th Day Buskers, a tight-knit band of acoustic roots musicians, are building a loyal following.
"Busking is an art," Rohlf explains. "You’ve got to be good at grabbing people’s attention and holding them there."
Between songs rooted in an American past of denim overalls, migrating Okies, and broken-hearted drifters riding empty boxcars, Rohlf steps into the audience. He leans over to chat with Bill Gail, an 85 year-old sitting in a lawn chair. He greets a young mom, her toddler bouncing in his stroller, stubby fingers reaching out for Rohlf’s gleaming banjo so tantalizingly close.
Rohlf grins. "Kids are the key. If they like you, like the music, they stop. If you can get the kids, you’ll get the parents."
"And get the tips," Steve Peavey, the Buskers’ mandolin and guitar player interjects.
What about the money? All the Buskers except Rohlf work with other bands to piece together their living from music. There’s not a fortune to be made, playing in the street, but Rohlf notes, "We always have an enthusiastic audience. And we get to play the music the way it was intended. No amplification."
Jasen Cotton, an 18 year-old saxophonist who played the Poway and La Mesa Farmers Markets during the last two years of high school, sometimes played with a boom box. "I would put CDs of rhythm sections on the boom-box and then solo over that. I hated doing it. It was just cheap. But playing for two or three hours, it was great practice. And I made enough money to buy Sebelius–a very cool music writing program. And I bought X-Box, too."
If you want to play for pay in San Diego’s streets and parks you’ll need a permit. Carole Rukstelis, a Park Ranger overseeing the granting of permits to performers in Balboa Park explains, "We have a responsibility for the safety of all the people using the parks. With the heightened concern over security after 9/11 and to protect kids better, we started requiring a background check as part of the permit process."
Translation: Odds are against that crooning guitarist in Balboa park being a child-molester or Al Queda terrorist. He’s required to display his permit, to perform in an assigned, "designated area", and he has undergone a background investigation that includes fingerprinting and clearances from the Department of Justice, San Diego Police Department and City of San Diego Personnel Department.
Wayne Webster, a 57 year-old Celtic music fiddler has one of the nine spots in Balboa Park assigned to musicians. "This is the number 4 spot," he explains. "The money isn’t great, but it helps, supplements my income. Playing in front of people is a lot better than just playing in my room. But you’d be amazed at how people ignore you. Like you’re invisible, a part of the scenery. Sometimes I feel like a palm tree. But I don’t care. Look where I am!"
He waves his bow in a slow circle, from the Casa del Prado building in front, to the Casa de Balboa building behind him. "I got great architecture, great acoustics. I got lots of people, sunshine, fresh air. I even got some ducks that go by once in a while. I love ducks. If I don’t make any money, I can still just take my fiddle to Pacific Beach for the sunset. I don’t even put out my case for tips. Just want to play down the sun."
Rukstelis and her fellow Park Rangers keep watch over their annually rotated stable of 14 to 20 performers. "Sometimes we’ll get a complaint. There was this clown. We heard he was being rude, yelling at kids. I mean, imagine a clown, in all that makeup and costume yelling at kids! Once in a while there’ll be a fight among musicians, usually over a spot. Or someone has been drinking."
Some street musicians, like Jerry Kalkhof, a 29 year old "software guy" during the day, and a bossa-nova guitarist on weekends, fly under the legal radar.
I spot Kalkhof riding a bicycle along 30th street, a large acoustic guitar slung over his back. He’s on his way to the North Park Festival. "I play in the street all the time. No one’s ever hassled me. I mean, I’m not asking for money. I do it to jam with other musicians, connect with people. If it wasn’t about my spiritual growth, I’d stop, and do something else."
There are unwritten but very real rules of etiquette among street musicians.
"You never play within hearing distance of someone else," Kalkhof says.
Webster says, "Everyone’s competing for a spot. If you aren’t playing in your spot regularly, you should let someone else have it."
Rohlf tells of earning his way through Europe by busking. "The rule is, you always ask someone who’s playing, "How long you going to be here?" And they usually cooperate, and say, "Oh, twenty or forty minutes."
Rohlf continues, "There was this one guy who hogged the best spot in Amsterdam, on a bridge where the best tips were. Everyday I would ask him, "How long you going to play here?" He always said, "Oh, three or four hours." I kept trying to get to that spot before him. Finally, one morning I did. So I start playing. And it starts snowing. Soon, my fingers are freezing. Wind is blowing, it’s snowing, there’s no one coming by or tipping, but I’m determined to hold that spot. It gets worse: a bird flies over and shits on my hat. Finally, that guy shows up. I’m frozen stiff and I’ve got bird shit dripping off my hat and I haven’t made any money. He’s all pissed off that I’ve got "his" spot. He comes up and asks, "How long you going to be playing here?"
"And I told him, ‘Oh, three or four more hours.’"