
My Experience Busking in San Francisco - stevetjoa
https://stevetjoa.com/busking/
======
cperciva
From the article:

 _While I 'm playing, I'll routinely see a policeman ask a person sleeping on
the ground to sit upright. I'm not sure if that's because of the civil
sidewalks ordinance or to "prevent obstructions"._

I don't know about San Francisco specifically, but in some cities police
forces use this sort of instruction to identify people who need medical
assistance: If you're able to respond to the police, you're probably fine, but
if you just lay there then you're probably incapacitated by alcohol, drugs, or
some other medical condition.

~~~
bigdubs
In NYC (and I think San Francisco) it's illegal to sleep on the sidewalks.
NYPD enforces this pretty consistently, SFPD on the other hand I'm pretty sure
they just do it to make sure the person isn't dead.

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carapace
Years ago, there was a man who would stand on Market St. wearing a suit and
just kind of dance back and forth singing "Gotta keep smiling". It wasn't a
song as such, just a refrain that he would roll around over and over, and he
would shuffle and sing and point at passersby and smile, encouraging them to
smile.

One day my dad stopped and asked him, "You seem sane and well-educated, why do
you do this?" (I'm paraphrasing here.) The man told him, "Sir, I make a
hundred dollars a day, tax-free."

(My dad saluted him and walked on.)

~~~
coldtea
Plus it beats working your ass off in most professions...

~~~
therein
Especially given that post-tax you would be making only a little bit more as
an entry level software engineer.

~~~
aioprisan
I doubt that very much. $100/day post-tax = $36500, pre-tax is't about $42000.
If you're making anywhere close to $42000/year as an entry level software
engineer in SF, you're doing it wrong. Even entry level folks should be able
to start at double that.

~~~
bcook
Commenter _therein_ did not specify the locale of the entry-level software
engineer. Busking is much, much more reliant on locale than programming.

~~~
aioprisan
I was keeping it in the same context. The buskin therein was in SF, so I made
a comparison with a software engineer salary in SF. If the busking was in
Alabama, I'd expect the busking revenue to be quite different, and so would a
comparable engineer's salary in that locale.

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robertelder
Here is a video of Joshua Bell
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell))
playing a 3.5 million dollar violin in the subway for 45 minutes and making
$32:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw)

~~~
coldtea
Well, obviously it doesn't matter how expensive your violin is, or how good
you are at your music genre -- it's about how popular the genre/tune is, and
when busking, how likable you are (plus, putting on a good entertaining show,
with emphasis on the "show" part, e.g. not subtle classical skills).

~~~
rhizome
And location.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah. He would have faired better in some Vienna subway station around
Christmas time...

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goblin89
The earnings surprised me. I know a decent software engineer whose effective
hourly rate is embarrassingly close to the lower limit of Steve’s reported
$15–50 range. On the other hand, that’s busking in SF.

~~~
stevetjoa
Steve here. Thanks for reading! Those earnings are certainly not sustainable
over eight hours in a day, nor over every day of the week. But they are
attainable in strategically timed bursts. Some earnings are also skewed by a
very few who donate $20.

~~~
goblin89
Thank you for sharing your experience!

Doubly interesting to me since I’m thinking of performing as well.

The kind of performance I’m considering, though, would be of a more obscure
style and requiring some electronic gear (worth $xxxx), so I’d probably go for
a collaboration with a friend at least to have a sense of safety.

Regarding eight hours a day, as a software engineer most days I personally
pull off about 5 hours of actual focus tops, though maybe that’s just me.

~~~
stevetjoa
I think that's a great idea. Electronic aids, despite the overhead, have a
higher ceiling than a feeble acoustic violin. It can be more unique, more
exotic, and more easily heard.

My focus on software is also 0-5 hours a day, and those hours are only before
noon and after 10 pm.

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ktRolster
I usually give a dollar or two to performers, especially if they look
homeless, unless they are horribly out of tune, in which case sometimes I
still tell them the useless advice to get in tune and give them a dollar.

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gardano
Back in the late 80s, my brother (baroque cello), a friend and I (Baroque
Violins) started busking in Harvard Square for fun.

One of our favourites was the Mozart Organ Sonatas. We generally made enough
money to buy beers at the end of the evening.

I guess my biggest memory was the time we started playing in front of Au Bon
Pain when we just started out. I thought we were doing OK until some guy, with
a grim fierce smile, took out a fistful of pennies and chucked them, one at a
time, into the violin case. Apparently we had taken over the spot where a
much-loved group regularly played. He made it more than obvious that we were
not welcome there. We had no idea there was politics involved!

We moved on quickly, with our tails between our legs.

One of the nicest things we got was a sketch by a local artist. It's still got
pride of place in my violin case.

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sjclemmy
I used to busk, playing guitar and singing in Bradford (UK) city centre in the
early 1990s. I wasn't very good, but it was funny. £30 on a good day? Not bad
for a couple of hours.

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hammock
I busked in Covent Garden in the middle of the summer for about an hour and
made something like £100. That's literally my only experience though so it's
probably an anomaly.

~~~
jjallen
What instrument and music?

~~~
coldtea
Bassoon and Miami Bass style hip hop.

~~~
peatmoss
I encounter too many buskers to feel like paying on a regular basis, but I'd
have dropped some cash in your case if you were even remotely able to pull
this off!

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valgaze
I wonder if those impeccably dressed Jehova's Witnesses in SF subway stations
collect data on their pamphleteering/conversion efforts

~~~
ldom22
They use pamphlet a/b testing as a service for continuous improvement of user
acquisition

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cm2012
I used to busk with a friend on NYC subways. We each made $100 a day for 6
hours of singing consistently.

~~~
themartorana
That seems incredibly low, was it a while ago? Considering how much money I
see people connect sitting silently with a cardboard sign, I would think
performing in NYC would net a lot more.

~~~
cm2012
Its actually a lot more than most random beggars make - and at $17 an hour,
more than many New Yorkers.

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coldcode
Just sent a week in SF staying on Union Square loving the trumpeter who played
every night. Amazing tone, clearly a professional.

~~~
vram22
Some years ago I was in Boston. Walking through a park somewhere near the
Boston Park Plaza hotel, or Legal Seafoods, on a sunny afternoon, I saw a
large man with a bald head, playing a trumpet, surrounded by a few admiring
kids, listening. Reminded me of the Wizard of Oz or some such fairy tale. I
also listened to him play for a while before getting back to my meeting.

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spacehome
> And I fully understand the picture of inequity created when someone donates
> to a musician while homeless people are on the ground yards away.

"Inequity"? Yea, right. I sure feel inequitably about those who make our
public spaces more vs less pleasant.

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cpr
My son would play his bagpipes at Penguin and Pirates games. The people of
Pittsburgh are quite generous. Perhaps partly because of their Scottish
heritage--there's even an endowed chair of Highland piping at CMU.

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fblp
Steve - how do you feel about people taking photos or video of you?

~~~
stevetjoa
I welcome it. I enjoy the challenge of staying focused when I notice out of
the corner of my eye a crowd forming or people filming.

Sometimes I cope by playing with my eyes closed. Violinists have options where
to position their eyes: on their bow, on their fingers (rare, but helpful
sometimes in practice), out into space, or closed. For example, James Ehnes
and Hilary Hahn look at their bows, but Itzhak Perlman and many others play
with their eyes closed. I focus on the bow, but when someone is taking a
video, I might close my eyes to remove the distractions.

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Annatar
I find it saddening that so few people care for culture that he and his peers
have even had to consider busking, instead of playing formally at a concert.

~~~
icebraining
I don't understand why you think that even in a place where lots of people
care about culture one can simply decide to play at a concert whenever they
want, especially if they are still students. And he specifically says he's
busking as an alternative to practicing at home, not as an alternative to
playing at a concert.

In my limited experience, places where there is more interest in erudite music
also have _more_ people busking, not less, since there are more players
overall.

~~~
stevetjoa
Steve here. Indeed, I already play at least four orchestra concerts per year
and a number of chamber performances. Busking provides a performance
opportunity of a different sort by playing solo music which is more exposed
and musically dense.

And yes, you're also correct that for some instruments, concerts are not easy
to come by. Our orchestra has a wait list of 70 flutes! Our #1 organizational
challenge is figuring out how to provide more performance opportunities to
more people in a financially sustainable way.

(Incidentally, I have seen one solo flautist busking in Powell Station. He was
a high school student.)

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chinathrow
Since I can't give some coins as I live in another timezone - if you have
Paypal I will donate a few bucks.

