BUSKING: IT AIN'T LIKE IT USED TO BE!

 

A VERY LONELY BUSK LAST SUNDAY

Oftentimes this season, when I am busking at SHOPPERS, I am very soon accompanied by one of a couple of panners.  In street argot, panners is short for panhandlers. 

Factoid:  At the best of times the buskerhood etiquette in Regina is boorish.  Regina especially, of all the places I have busked, has little value, or notice for busker etiquette.  In ALL places I have busked elsewhere, there is an unwritten (and sometimes even written where the busking is regulated) that buskers perform a reasonable distance of at least one block away from other buskers.  In unregulated busking Regina though, buskers will often situate themselves within a few feet of other buskers, even at the supposedly “regulated” Farmer’s Markets.

The last couple times I have set up in front of SHOPPERS ON BROAD, to strum with my 12-string and blow my blues harp, within minutes a  panhandler from the 7-Eleven across the street, has meandered over and plunked himself within 10 feet of my playing.  When this happens, I am competing with someone who is uncouth and unkempt and unnerved; I am competing with someone who sits with outstretched hand and outstretched legs partially blocking the main customer entrance of the store, begging for money.

I should also mention, too, that these 7-Eleven panners have significantly changed their behaviors in recent years.  Only a couple of seasons ago, they stood with cap-in-hand and asked for, “Spare change?” from every passer-by.  Now it seems, at least on my watch and in my space, they just plop themselves down on their butts and utter ne’er a word.  These particular panners, with whom I am familiar, just sit puppy-eyed in their grubbiness.

I am unflattering toward these panners because I am annoyed and apoplectic as I write about them.  I shall describe, with disgust, two of these marching-in-my-parade panners, Mutt and Jeff.  Before doing so, dear readers, that I know these panners likely have issues directly related to mental health and addiction that impede them from having a regular middle-class existence, complete with middle-class behaviors and protocols.  Still, I write in anger from a personal busking perspective.

I shall begin with Mutt.  Mutt has been a regular panner who has been sitting and sitting and sitting for the past few years.  Cap-a-pie, he has a shock of unkempt thick and curly hair.  He is always unshaven, and sports a big, brush moustache. Big-bellied Mutt has a very chunky thorax and continually walks with shoulders hunched, daily from the 7-Eleven to the Tim Hortons a couple blocks down the street, and then back again to the 7-Eleven. And at each of these two vendors, both of which I am a daily consumer, he sits for hours at a time, with his legs stretched across the sidewalk entrances.  When not snoozing, he is looking puppy-eyed every passer-by.  But nowadays when I start to strum at Shoppers, and if he happens to be at the 7-Eleven, he inevitably comes over to me.  I am thinking he is not attracted to the esthetics of my musicianship, rather he is attracted by the number of consumers he imagines my musicianship may draw.

His palms-out-panner-mate, Jeff, not as adventurous as Mutt, used to park himself only at the 7-Eleven.  That is, until I start strumming at Shoppers, and then he invariably wanders over.  Like Mutt, he says ne’er a word, but unlike Mutt, he stands and leans against the front glass, mouth shut and legs crossed and and palm out.  Unlike Mutt, Jeff is scare-crow gaunt, but like Jeff, silent and grubby and very intrusive into my buskspot.  And regarding Jeff in the same way I regard Mutt, I just unsling my guitar, pack up, and leave.  I have never and nor will I ever, initiate a conversation with either of them.  I know Mutt and Jeff to be fellow terrestrials, but I welcome neither interloper when they are nearing my strumming sandbox.

I do not engage with either of them because both guys are wild cards.  I imagine both to have the potential to be volatile and perhaps verbally and even physically abusive toward me.  I imagine this because a situation like the Mutt-Jeff situation happened to me at VALUE VILLAGE a couple years ago.  There at the main doors, I was busking with my guitar and harpoon when a very noticeable character sat right beside where I stood strumming, and put out a pail to catch consumer coins, my coins!  Not-so-strangely, Shawn, the mall manager, happened to be near, saw what happened, and asked my intrusive uninvited sidekick to leave, which he did.  As he rose to leave, he made a phone call.  Within minutes of this phone call, a couple of heavy-set buffoons pulled up in a battered van and parked right in front of me.  And then they hit the radio, blasting it as high in volume as possible.  I stopped busking.  People walked by shaking their heads, some even gesturing to me in an appeal to what was going on.  Again, the mall manager stepped in.  I am not sure what he said to them (the music was too loud) but when they did turn the noise down to respond I did hear: 

“So why are you letting him stay [pointing to me]?  You don’t like fags?” yelled the driver.  (I must mention that the panner who was sent away by Shawn, was wearing a dress, and had flowers in his dyed-pink hair.) 

“No! I just don’t like fags like you!” was Shawn’s response.  Finally, when Shawn threatened to call the police, they were gone.

Meanwhile back at the ranch and on this same ain’t-like-it-used-to-be-theme …

In my city last Saturday was the Cathedral Village Street Arts Festival.  For 10 consecutive years I joined the festival as a regulated busker, and rotated buskspots, as did every other busker, every two hours accordingly.  In the first few years I took my banjo.  The next few years I took my didgeridoo.  And in the latter years I thrummed my 12-string while blowing out songs on my harpoon.

This year, being only a consumer and not a busker, as I walked the strip, I noticed a significant difference about the behavior of the buskers now as compared to those here in years past. All the buskers, save for one, was plugged in, amped up and mic’d with the volume up, and selling CDs.  Being the ever purist and unplugged busker that I am, I was very surprised.

And the last thing I will write about continuing this ain’t-like-it-used-to-be theme, is that the consumers now seem not as generous as in years past.  Hmmm.  This could be because of the subsequent hardships because of COVID 19, but I am only hypothesizing.  All I know for sure is that my guitar case has fewer bills and coins than before, this based upon my empirical busker point of view.  Chatting with other buskers, these low takes are not unique to me.

All this complaining that I have expressed in writing means that I really must decide on the future of my busking with a guitar and harp.  Not that I would ever completely abandon this – after all, I do need to practice my songs for any upcoming gigs!

A GIG AT THE CURE

Alas, the rather hazed romantic nostalgia of busking on the street corners with my guitar and harp is rapidly waning. With happenings beyond my control, the trend to plug-in and sell CDs, combined with the generally reduced generosity of the current consumers, and the unwitting and psychological prompting of random parasitical provocateurs, namely Mutt and Jeff et al, I am seriously contemplating that instead of my usual practice of splitting my busking time 50-50 between strumming and drawing, my pencil and sketchpad are falling quite into favor.  For me to cash in the summertime, munificent busking days ahead, I need to change my ways.   

YEP. BUSKING. IT AIN’T LIKE IT USED TO BE. 

TIME TO PARK MY GUITAR AND SHARPEN MY PENCIL 

(BEGINNING TODAY)

MY BUDDY AND HIS BABY GIRL