The Things in the Hat

A young accordionist, sitting down on a little brick half-wall, looked over to me occasionally as he played. His attention was mostly turned towards the pedestrians who walked pass him from both directions, but an aspiring anthropologist was buzzing around nearby, interrupting his concentration with a constant stream of questions - and he was too polite not to answer.

This particular performer, who performs on weekends for fun - who corrected me when I asked him about his work ("I don't really call this work. I call it play"), told me that his favorite thing about street performing is "getting tipped with stuff that isn't cash." Inside his open accordion case, he's found sandwiches, CD's, and even a bottle of Crystal Light.

I watched a guitar player performing in Jackson Station light up with surprise after he realized that someone had just given him a miniature Virgin Mary statue made - he said after taking a cursory look at it - in real gold.

One performer told me that he's "been tipped joints before," "candy by kids, chewing gum, chocolate," and "gift cards" - the largest of which was "one of those Visas with $25 on it." Business cards seem to be a regular form of payment/tip/donation across the board for many street performers. Another busker, a drummer, said to me (in equal parts awe and confusion), that someone somehow found the effort and time to regularly drop carefully-written letters into his bucket - letters that speak of how annoying they find his music to be.

Back in 2011, when I was first trying my hand at street performing at an art walk in Memphis, Tennessee, my first non-cash tip was a check made out to me by someone who didn't have any cash on hand. My first day busking in Chicago, on the day of the Saint Patrick's Day Parade in 2014, I was given a penny that (I was told) had been crushed on the railroad tracks. At the end of another show, I also found a little pink pill in my hat.

My first Chicago hat! Note the little pink pill (which I promptly threw out) and the railroad-crushed penny.

It's fun, sometimes, to get something other than cash. But other times - like in the case of the drummer who received directly hateful letters, the messages that these objects convey are not always transmitted in good faith. One African American street performer, for example, receives racially-charged fake bills every so often. He gave me one of these bills as an example:

This is a bogus bill - one created with racial and racist humor.
A commentary and brief analysis of this bill can be found here.

While it's impossible to know the intentions of the individuals who give these bills as tips or donations - (giving the giver the benefit of the doubt) maybe they grabbed the wrong bill, maybe they thought it would be funny, maybe they didn't want to give him any actual real money, or maybe they actually are fully aware of the hostility in the message that they are trying to convey, there's something to be said in taking a closer look at these objects. If the number on a bill conveys how much a spectator valued a show (with the caveat that some passersby can only afford to give so much), the type of object may also reveal what a given spectator thinks of a given performer or performance.

And however much thought or thoughtlessness was put into giving a particular object, it is still the primary way that most spectators engage and communicate with the performers they watch.