A Narrative: My First Day on the Streets of Cambridge

There was the train station - what they call the "T" in the Boston area.

The first guy you see working when you climb the stairs out of the station is the one selling artwork. Even though there's an actual painter just to the left, this first guy is the one you see because he's the one you hear. He's got music playing. Not booming, but it's there.

Between these two vendors is another, sitting between them with a sign. I don't quite remember what it is, and I didn't take notes that day. It was a religious message etched into cardboard. Right on the other side, if you turned right coming out of the station, a person wearing a toga was speaking into a microphone.

On the back side of the station, there was a singer strumming a guitar.

That was 4 performances. 4 performances already going on at 1:30pm that Saturday afternoon.

All this on the little island of pavement that held the entrance to Harvard Square's T.

1:30? Yeah. I could hear the Tin Man's cautionary advice echoing in my ear: You need to come out here earlier, he had said to me once upon a time. For him, it was about putting in the hours. Putting in the hours helps bring in the dough, but that particular day, starting earlier would have done more than that. Starting earlier would have gotten me a good spot. A good pitch, as they say in street performing.

I walked west on Brattle Street, following the flow of pedestrian traffic - west first, then northwest. When I reached the end of that block, I had a fleeting moment of panic. Every single open space was occupied by a street musician. I really really really should have woken up earlier.

I turned around. Walked back to the station. Panic aside, it was a nice day out, and it was exciting seeing buskers around. I was wondering if toga-guy was done. But nope. Now there were more of them. Turns out it was the Bard's birthday, and they were celebrating with some street theater.

The painter on the left - the guy with no music on - seemed nice. He had a hat. I approached him. We chatted. I asked him about good pitches in the area. He suggested a spot across the street. It was a little narrow, but it was a good spot as long as the people in the store didn't mind.

Why not? It wasn't like I had any other options.

And it turns out that I had the spot right in front of the entrance of the Harvard Coop. Being in front of a bookstore in Harvard Square pretty much guaranteed a constant flow of traffic.

So I set up my stuff.

Before I was done setting up, I heard a voice: "Are you doing magic?!" My audience had appeared, and I rushed into my first show of the season.

Check out last week's post to see how that went. (In short: not great, but it got better).

Maybe it was because it was one of the first warm Saturdays of the year. Maybe it was because of the influx of tourists that came with the upcoming Boston Marathon. Or maybe it was a mix of understanding how street shows work (thanks to the large number of performers here) and the rarity of circle shows in Cambridge. But I didn't really need to work hard to get people to stop.

People just kept coming, and I kept performing, adjusting my show as I learned and adopted.

At one point, in between shows, the Shakespeare performers suddenly appeared. They stood a few feet away from, acting out a scene from... something.... I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't identify what play they were drawing from, but I wasn't paying attention to their words at all. I was surprised - reeling slightly from the disruption. They pretty much plopped right in front of me and started performing.

There was no point in trying to draw a crowd while they were there. Fortunately, they only needed about ten minutes for the scene. Then back across the street they went.

By that time (around 4pm), I was ready to give up my spot. The sun had long ago moved too far away from me, and the Harvard Coop cast its shadow onto my entire stretch of pavement. It was a cold spring, and I was back to shivering between shows. When two passersby with cake told me about free birthday cake across the street (Happy Birthday, William!), they offered to watch my stuff while I grabbed a slice. I took the opportunity to dash into the sunlight... and decided immediately that, yes, I would try to find a new spot.

I picked up my stuff. Went back across the street. The Shakespeare guys were wrapping up, so I waited patiently for the spot where the cake was being served. There was cake on the ground! (Ew! Or... yum? Depends on your point of view?)

And then suddenly, the vendor who sold paintings increased the volume of his music. I blinked, looking up across at him. We were close, but the space between us and the space between him and the other painter were about the same. When he saw me staring at him, he lowered the volume of his music and spoke.

"There's gotta be at least 50 feet between each street performer."

I just nod. "All right." Packed up my stuff, sighed, and went back across the street into the long shadow of the Harvard Coop. Another round of performances. Ran into three people I knew - one whom knew I would be performing there and two who did not. Of the two who came up to me after a show and didn't expect to see me there, one was from undergrad and one was from grad school.

Small world, eh?

Next show.

I have a mic, so it helps a lot, but a random (seemingly homeless) person decided to make use of my audience. He started yelling out while I was speaking. I couldn't hear what he was saying (mainly because I was doing my best to push forward with my show). A more experienced performer might have shouted him down.

I ignored him.

He quieted down after a while, but he chimed in every so often, interrupting my train of thought.

Still. Ended well. It was 6pm. I was cold and hungry and don't quite have the work ethic of the street performers I've observed. I packed it in. A drummer with a bucket asked me, as I was packing, if I was done for the day. I nodded. That was very nice etiquette, I thought.

Four hours of busking.

Rusty and with less skill than I had when I was performing regularly, I still managed to make the same as I made my best day in Chicago.

No wonder there's so many buskers here.

Welcome to Cambridge.

Romanticizing the Streets

One: Street performing is not easy.

Just because I've busked a few weekends - and just because I know theoretically how some of the best street performers do what they do - that does NOT mean that I can just go out there and do it and expect success every time.

That's what was going through my head yesterday afternoon, when I was rounding off my first street show in eight months. Even as I was performing, I knew that I was messing up horribly. I had forgotten most of the lines that had become almost natural to me back when I was performing in Chicago. My timing was off, my jokes were rushed, and I just moved from one trick to the next without really focusing on my interactions with the audience.

I realized when I was getting strapped into the straight jacket that I should probably have stopped the show there and hatted my audience. But I didn't, and by the time I was strapped in, it was too late. All I could do was finish up the show, watch my audience trickle off, and rethink what I was doing before my next audience appeared.

So what had happened?

I was out of practice. I was using a mic and amp for the first time, wasn't sure that I was using it right, and got distracted by the feedback. My audience (surprisingly) appeared before I had even finished setting up. I wasn't ready for them. I was... having trouble getting my arm out of the straight jacket. I never sat down and scripted my show like one street performer said I should. I didn't... I didn't...

All excuses.

Somehow, in my time NOT performing, I got this idea into my head that I'm a pretty good street performer - and forgetting the fact that I'm good, yes, maybe. But I'm good for a beginner. Writing this blog and thinking about performing all the time, even when I wasn't performing, had somehow romanticized the whole thing for me. I was remembering all the highs and forgetting all the lows... forgetting the grit that it took to make it through a day where, for the most part, the majority of people walking past are ignoring you.

Two: Should I have prepared more?

What would that have entailed? Scripting? Practicing? The magic, I have down. It's the performance that I messed up on... but even if I didn't have the magic entirely down, should I have stayed in and just practiced?

The second crowd that day showed up pretty much as soon as the survivors of the last show walked off. I was too worried about messing up the straight jacket again, so I ended my show before I got there.

I got a larger hat from this partial show.

I could feel my show getting better as the day went on, as I stopped thinking about what I was doing and started focusing on interacting with my audience. There was one very awkward moment when I couldn't pull a card out of someone's back pocket... so, eh, I ended up just trying to fish around in there until I heard someone say, "What's happening here?" until, embarrassed, I pulled the whole deck out and found the card out in the open air.

It was ok. By that point, the audience had grown, and I was ready to try the straight jacket again. I had more or less messed up the trick, but the playfulness in my interactions with the audience was going great

I ended the evening with a police officer in my audience, my largest hat, and the performance high that I've been craving since my last show in Chicago.

So should I have stayed in and practiced?

The best thing about performing on the streets? If you mess up, you'll get to try again. And again. And again. The performance is the warming up. That's how buskers get good - not by staying inside and practicing but by going out there and giving it a try.

Three: What's different about Harvard Square?

Too much to share in this one blog post. (Sorry, Jeremy!) I will write about it next week, though. The main difference is just the sheer number of performers in Harvard Square and the politics that comes with that. Also - a lot more interruptions. More on that next week.

(And apologies for my horrible photo taking skills. I'll try and remember next weekend to take more pictures!)

Cambridge, MA: Home of Organized Street Performers

My Cambridge Street Performer's Permit:

 It's not as fancy as the one that the City of Chicago passes out...

But take a look at the back of the Cambridge permit:

There is a number listed for Street Arts Advocates. A quick internet search turned up this description: They are "a nonprofit arts organization cultivating ongoing fundamental relationships between arts and communities by celebrating self-expression as a basic human right essential for the healthy growth of youth, individuals, and communities."

In addition to that license, I also got a copy of the Street Performer Code of Ethics when I gave them my application. There is clearly some degree of collaboration between the street performing community in Cambridge and the local government - one that I didn't really see much of in Chicago.

And ooh! This part had me geeking out: In Cambridge's Street Performer Ordinance, there are the words, "...a written notice shall be sent to the Street Artists Guild no less than ten days prior to said hearing..." Content aside, there is apparently a Street Artists Guild in Cambridge!

It's a guild!

Woah!

I wanna join the guild! Just so... I can be in a guild. Right. Ok. Stopping with the geeking out.

There's also the Street Performer Ordinance itself. The beginning looked pretty similar to what I saw in Chicago... and then I saw this:

"If a performer attracts a crowd sufficient to obstruct the public way, a police officer may disperse the portion of the crowd that is creating the obstruction. The police officer shall not cause the performer to leave the location unless efforts to move the crowd fail to adequately protect the public safety or order. A police officer shall not ask the performer to leave the location unless all other means of restoring the public safety or order have been exhausted."

Legal language aside, this is the part that I found most interesting about the street performing laws in Cambridge. I don't know yet how these laws are reflected in practice, but the fact that there is legal language here that puts constraints on what the police can do is a huge step forward from what happened in Chicago.

In Chicago, the police seemingly reserved the right to move you, regardless of whether or not you were breaking any laws. When I described to my advisor my observations of police officers ordering several different groups of street musicians to move, he had asked me this question: What, then, was the purpose of getting a street performer's license?

My answer at the time? It was just a way of keeping track of them. You aren't legally permitted to perform without a permit, but even if you have one, there's always a chance that you will be asked to move to another location - either by a police officer, by the managers of a nearby store, or by the occupants of a nearby building. Any anonymous complaint from any individual could result in the removal of a busker.

That's why I find these laws so refreshing: Embedded into these laws - institutionalized in the City of Cambridge's ordinances - is the recognition that street performers bring value to the city. While other cities might pay lip service to that idea, Cambridge has actually legally embraced the street performance as an integral part of the city's cultural vibe.

Whether or not that is true in practice, though, I will let you know...

Right after I figure out how to transport all my stuff around on the back of a bicycle.

Magic: Meant to be Seen Live

This past Tuesday, I saw three magicians and a comedian perform on the top floor of a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square.

I really enjoyed it. Steve Kradolfer and Joe Howard, two of the magicians that night, had great acts: They were very professional, very good at their art, and had a lot of fun with the audience. They were, in short, what I imagined when I pictured going to see a professional magic show. Steve did a wonderful Cards Across and some things with rope. Joe's cups and balls routine was a classic, and he did this classic effect due justice.

My favorite performance of the night was Joel Acevedo's, whose torn-and-restored card to orange was one of the more original acts that I've seen. I've seen torn and restored cards before, and I've seen (amazingly-performed) objects appear in fruits. Joel put both of these classic tricks together AND still managed to make the entire act all about his volunteer.

Check out the Mystery Lounge in Harvard Square if you're ever in Cambridge.
It's a Tuesday night show with different magicians working on a rotation.

Granted, it looked like his volunteer had been drinking one half of a scorpion bowl (which, a friend had explained to me, means a whole lot of alcohol, which tends to lead people to do things that they don't remember and probably don't want to remember anyway). There was one moment in the performance when the volunteer had seemingly accidentally tore a playing card in half. As a magician, I knew that that was part of the show. Though Joel acted like the volunteer had messed up, I thought it was obvious that his carefully-scripted instructions were supposed to subtly tell the volunteer to tear the card in half.

So I was surprised when, after the show, a friend asked me, "What do you think he would have done if the audience member hadn't accidentally torn up the card?"

It was in that moment - even though I don't know the guy and didn't get the chance to speak with him after the show - that I was really happy for Joel. Those are the kinds of comments that comes with a great magic show.

Then there are comments like this one (from Yelp's reviews on this show in the Hong Kong Comedy Club):

"I hadn't been to a magic show since I was a small child, so perhaps I am just easily amused, but I had a great time."

This is, of course, a compliment. But it's a compliment with a caveat: Yeah, it was a magic show. But it was good! Despite the work of everyone from David Copperfield to David Blaine and their attempts to make magic cool, it's still hard for people to overcome the image of everyone's uncle making a coin appear from behind your ear.

It still amazes me how surprised parents are at their own surprise when they see a magic show seemingly geared towards their kids. I guess the thing is... it's hard to appreciate magic unless you see it live.

Magic isn't meant to be seen on a screen, where audiences can just assume that something is happening off camera that they can't catch. Magic, as an art form, is meant to be seen live.