BOO! SCARY BUSKING!

Busking is scary.  Not scary, scary, but scary as in intimidating, unnerving, sort of creepy, sometimes hairy, and for a beginner busker, having tyro feelings filled with fear or dread.

A REGULAR HALLOWE'EN WORKDAY

While busking in the middle of a grocery store parking lot, Extra Foods, an older gentleman, after distributing his groceries into the back seat of his car, huffing and puffing, hobbled over to me pushing his shopping cart aiming it right at me.  “Plug this in and get the quarter back,” he said as he left the cart an inch away from my mid-section.

Then there was this other guy, in the same parking lot on the same day, who got into my face and stated I should mow his lawn for a couple bucks.  In one of my songs I have written about a bag lady in Victoria, British Columbia, who always would come up close and talk with her beer breath right into my nostrils.  This guy’s breath was way worse than hers.  “No thanks,” I replied, “I don’t do lawns.” He grimaced, shook his head, and walked away. 

While busking at Shoppers-On-Broad one sunny afternoon a panner stormed passed me and started banging on the store front window.  (A panner is street argot for a person who pans people for coin.)  When a couple of staff members came running out to make sense of the commotion, the panner pointed to me and yelled to them, “Why is he allowed here and I’m not!”

An early morning busk at Shoppers-On-Broad, another panner arrived and sat right next to my guitar case, which I always leave open on the ground behind me.  Rather than just keep an eye out because I judged him ready to steal my busk money, I packed up and left.  A potential for fisticuffs for sure if I stayed.  (Yes, I can be that shallow and territorial at times.)

One afternoon another time guitar-busking at Shoppers-On-Broad, this scruffy twenty-something man, started screaming in my face about why I was there begging busy people for money.  He kept this up until the manager came out and rescued me.

Another time in front of Shoppers-On-Broad this chic girl of emergent adulthood age, drives up onto the wide storefront patio where I am standing, revving the engine in her bigger than big half-ton truck.  First, she smiled and then she yelled.  “If any of my brothers brought their guitars here and played like you, they’d be put in jail,” she said. What?  Yikes?  Hmmm. (And she looked soooo sweet.)

I was busking in Victoria Park, central to downtown Regina, when this elder lady who was dressed to the nines asked me, “What right do you have to be allowed here.  Who gave you permission?”

Years ago, at the Regina Farmers’ Market this guy stations himself right beside me and starts shredding his guitar, which is, of course, plugged into his high-volume amp.

“Really?” I turned and said directly to his face.

“Well where should I go then?” he asked with a smirk on his face.

“Anywhere but here,” I replied.  Strangely, he immediately packed up and left.

Once there was this four-member band who set up next to me at the same Farmers’ Market.  As I glared by design at the closest member, their fiddle player, the manager of the market came over and sternly addressed them, threatening to charge a fee for each band member.  They left.

My friend, Trent, and I were busking with our banjos down in the Scarth Street Plaza when a bespectacled middle-aged chubby man dressed in a too-tight soiled suit, started pounding on his amplified Moog synthesizer within 40 feet of us, drowning out our banjos.  Trent and I changed locations.

I was busking at Value Village when this panner plunked himself down right beside me.  Within seconds the mall manager came out and gave him the boot.  “Why not him?” he asks while gesturing toward me.  “Because he was here first and he’s not just sitting and begging for money,” the manager retorted.

Shortly after this exchange, it got worse.  A guy pulls up in a van, a friend of this panner who just got booted.  This friend of his parks right beside me and cranks up the radio tunes.  Again, the manager comes out, this time his mouth fully loaded as he laced profanity toward guy in the van with the turned-up tunes.  The manager’s tirade lasted a few minutes, ending only when he threatened to call the police.

One time there was a guy who grabbed the set of bongos I had set in the grass beside me.  “I bought these as a gift to my brother,” he lied.  “I’m calling the cops right now,” I replied.  I was not lying.

A couple of guys in an American lux car roared up beside me while I was busking at a shopping mall parking lot.  It was one of those cars so big it could have had either an inboard or an outboard for a motor.  The passenger jumped out.  With his fists clenched he ran at me, and took a swing at my head.  I ducked. He missed.  I remember thinking to myself, the next swing he takes I’m gonna clock him with my guitar.  He didn’t attempt a second swing.  Instead he jumped back into the car.  And then they just drove away.

There is certainly a tinge of humor when reflecting on these scary busking moments.  Introspectively, this last anecdote I shall deliver is the funniest of all. 

I was thrumming my wares in one of my usual haunts, the parking lot at Extra Foods.  A rather scruffy young man galloped past me, and in pursuit of him, a male police officer.  However, almost immediately after passing me, the police officer stops in his tracks, turns, and runs back to me.  Pointing his finger at me, he states, “You’d better have a permit to be here and I’m coming back to check.”   And then he turned and continued his chase.

Hmmm.  Of course, I never challenged him.  I did not because he was gone before I could even respond. Factoid:  In the city of Regina there is no such process for attaining a busking permit.  Busking in Regina is totally unregulated.  If that police officer had returned like he threatened he would, I would simply have informed him that I had the store manager’s permission to be there.  Enough said.

To unwrap (an apt Hallowe’en metaphor, methinks), busking, like ghosts, can affright.  This is especially true for those who are new to the trade.  For guys like me, every busk is pretty much same ol’ same ol’.  I know, though, that for me to be complacent in any busking regard, could result in deleterious effects.  I know, that when busking, my head needs always to be on a swivel stick.  Busking can be Lotus land; busking can be Hell.

BUSKING, for me, began as a TRIAL OF TRICK OR TREAT, and now has become a ...  

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HAPPY HALLOWE’EN, EVERYONE!

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