A Tale of Two Cities: The Power of Place

I was street performing sometime last weekend.

I neared the end of my show without quite getting to my finale... and I could feel myself faltering. I had a brand new opener. My mid-show routine was going smoothly.

But then I faltered. I didn't have confidence in my finale (my straight jacket routine), so I faltered.
And...

My audience stayed.
My audience STAYED.

I don't think I can over-emphasize how strange that was for me. I didn't have to rush through my transitions to keep them there. When I jokingly messed up a trick, I didn't have to quickly cut into my joke with a, "That was a joke. Don't leave!" (which in itself is a joke, I suppose).

And I didn't have to cut off any applause.
I had learned long ago that applause is bad. When it's not controlled and intentional clapping, then it's a signal to the audience that it's a good time to leave.

But my show needed an ending. And my audience didn't try to rush away like they usually did. I stared at them for a second, wondering why they were still there. When they didn't leave, I moved forward, ending with a finale that I'm still not particularly happy with - but at least it's a finale.

So what changed?

I don't think my performance has really had time to evolve all that much. Unless my new opener is powerful enough to alter the whole tone of my show (maybe it is, but I don't think so).

I think it's the city.

When I started asking about what the street performing scene is like in various international cities, one Boston-based busker told me that there's no such thing as good or bad cities for street performing.

If you're a good performer, he had said, you can stop a crowd anywhere.
That doesn't mean that some crowds aren't easier to stop than others though.

"Faneuil Hall is cheating," I was told - not long after I watched an audience practically materialize around a performer as soon as he turned his music on. And when a recent performer's strike at Faneuil brought these same performers out in search of other venues, they told me that they had to work much harder to build their audiences in places like Harvard Square.

They still managed to build them, of course.
That's because they're really really good.

Harvard Square is harder than Faneuil Hall. But compared to Chicago, Harvard Square is easy. I noted this observation to a busker, who complained, "Chicago is like New York. Everyone's in a hurry to go nowhere."

That's what it was. That's why I had two audience members (a father and his son) stick around for three shows. That's nearly an hour, watching me do the same thing over and over again. I kept on seeing the same faces walk back and forth on the sidewalk. Like the pedestrians on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, these pedestrians are mostly tourists - or, at the very least, people out and about enjoying the day.

But these tourists actually do look like they're looking for something to do. I don't know what the difference is just yet. There's something different about the very nature and "vibe" (whatever that means anymore) of the two cities.

In the meantime, if any Chicago buskers I know would be interested in trying out the scene in Cambridge, let me know if you're in town. I would love to drop a Chicago street performer into Harvard Square and a Boston street performer into Chicago, just to see what would happen.

That's... not exactly how this kind of social science works... but if it happens naturally, I would love to see what comes out of it.