if you are busking, do not let your jar fill
up with money. take it out as it comes in,
except for a dollar. didn’t, and i’m typing with
one hand. best
What happened to the other hand?
hurts. tried to tackle the guy running off
with the money. missed. second time happened.
better to take the money out of the
freakin jar right away.
Get yourself a German Shepherd, it’s worth feeding him just to watch him chase down those thieves and chew 'em up a bit till the cops get there. 
Loren
Actually, theres another reason for taking the money out as it comes in: people have a tendency to favor the empty jar for their moneys over a well filled jar.
But you have my sympathys for the war wound
Ow! So sorry!
Another thing you can do (an additional thing) is fill your tip jar with water. I kid you not. That’s what all the downtown counter businesses in Santa Cruz (Starbucks, Pacific Cookie Company, etc.) do these days, because they had so much trouble with people grabbing the tip jar and running off. If it’s a good-sized jar, and you fill it with water, it’s too heavy for someone to just grab and run with (and you have the added advantage of kids getting a big kick out of putting money in your “wishing well.”) When you’re ready to move on, just tip out the water and the cash stays in the bottom.
Redwolf
have you been busking with sheet music again jim??
You should be so lucky!!
My worst ever day was £8.
My best ever was £173 
- 'twas the week before xmas!
thanks for the ideas
wouldn’t the water filled jar make for soggy
money?
Well, my hand is improving, thank heaven.
the cap and top ferrule of my copley flute
got scraped in the scuffle. steel wool. I brought
it instead of the seery because of what we
did next.
After the adventure at the market, far too dramatic
for my taste, we played at a Civil War reenactment.
We sat on the steps of a store. A major battle was enacted
on the street in front of us–cannons, cavalry,
rifles fired with powder (always pointed above the
heads of the other side, good idea). I have
become a master of yankee doodle on the
flute. Lots of free sasparilla.
It’s very odd, and I don’t mean to be a spoil sport,
but the civil war was a horrible thing, immeasurable
suffering, and people trying to kill each other with
guns is ugly (when I finally saw it happening in
New Orleans it wasn’t anything like the movies),
and I figure the people who fought in those
battles were peeing in their pants, many of them.
What a weird thing to reenact.
I know the war has passed into Amercian mythology,
and maybe reeanactments are part of a sort
of healing and celebration, still going on.
But I had the fantasy that next week we would
do Auschwitz, the emaciated Jewish slaves walking down
the center of the street, others would portray the SS.
Or maybe Stalingrad or the Battle of the Bulge…
Or maybe the bombing of Dresden.
The Bates Street Folk n’Blues Band will be there too,
of course. Slow airs, maybe. We actually
have some Beethoven, sung in german…
I guess the old Buddhist nonviolence only goes so far, eh Jim?
Nope. Dollar bills have the remarkable ability to sit in water all day, then be good as new with just a little blotting off (just ask anyone who’s accidentally run bills through the washer). Sure it’s a bit damp, but it’s better than gone, if you know what I mean.
Redwolf
Thanks. I’ll get a blotter. As to Buddhist non-violence,
I like Loren’s suggestion of the German Shepherd.
Better than the AK 47 I was about to order.
Rover gets the karma–heh, heh!
There is a yearly civil war re-enactment that takes place about a quarter-mile from my house. I don’t participate myself but will say that some of the re-enactors take it VERY seriously - for that weekend they will wear complete outfits right down to the underwear, sleep in the same sort of bedrolls used then, eat only the appropriate food, etc. For them I think it’s a combination of tribute and personal sacrifice.
On one of the days school groups come from around the area. I chaperoned my daughter’s class a couple of years ago. There were several educational stations involving an actor playing Abe Lincoln who talked about the role of slavery as well as trying to keep the Union together, a black man who talked about the role of black soldiers, exhibits on clothing, horses, firearms, all kinds of stuff. I think most involved hopes that the understanding of what happened will keep it from happening again, although I’m sure there are many who just want to run around in costumes and shoot guns.
It was the war that made our nation, perhaps even
more so than the revolutionary war. It’s odd
to see acts romanticized that are, in fact,
ugly–I don’t mean this as a moral
judgement, I’m no pacifist and I don’t
hate guns.
Once in New Orleans, driving by some projects,
I braked the car sharply because a young man was
crossing the street close in front of me.
He had something in his hand–a gun.
He began firing at another youth on the
pavement who ran for his life, the first
fellow running after him firing
the pistol.
I remembered all the movies I’d
seen with guns in them, which seemed sexy
and exciting, the way they sounded
and looked and how people looked
when they shot them at each other,
and here at last was the
real thing and it was obscene.
Sorry about your hand, Jim! I hope you heal up fast.
Thanks for the tip. Your story illustrates why I’ve been reluctant to busk. I wouldn’t mind doing it for no money, but I figure that there will always be someone who wants to give it anyway. It would be ungracious to refuse, I think. The last time I busked was at a public park, and my immediate audiences were four: a couple of fascinated squirrels, a couple in love who lounged nearby with some white wine and the appropriate wineglasses for it (illegal, but I won’t turn them in 
), a party of homeless men who insisted on talking to me and asking for cigarettes and money (!) while I played, and a poor fellow with apparent mental problems who sat at a picnic table one remove from me and ranted at me about what I can’t recall (UFOs or something), but suffice it to say that the last two were very unpleasant for me.
When I’m out walking, I’m on my own, and I don’t mind that. I can handle myself. However, performing handicaps one in a way, and there lies my misgivings. Maybe the answer is to have a busking partner or two. I still would like to go about busking.
(Edited to correct for a tautology. Whatever.)
I think you just may be on to something there, Rando… 
:roll:
The anti-thief busking system could be as simple as using a Village Smithy from Serpent, anyone tries to make off with your breads all you have to do is crack them upside the head! 
It just occurred to me that another measure might be to hire a goon to mind the jar and glower menacingly at my adoring public. 
Can’t afford that. What an image, though!
when they shot them at each other,
and here at last was the
real thing and it was obscene.
As an ex-EMT guy I have seen my share of the results of such violence. When I lived in Dallas as a kid we lived in an apartment building where there were weekly stabbings, fights, shootings etc. It’s anything but “glorious”.
I’m fine now. I make money busking.
The street is weird, of course. Usually I’m
with at least one other person, Charles,
who is the world’s best street performer
because he can project his personality
through a concrete wall. Sometimes I’m
alone. It can be odd and discouraging
and often pretty exhilirating; virtually
always exhausting–we don’t stop for
heat or cold. Also we have another banjo player,
sometimes. Maybe a fiddler, but
rarely. Most of our clients are
children; we invite them to play the banjo,
we have a pick for them. Charles plays
the chords, the child strums, and we
sing Jessie James or Mama Don’t Allow
No Banjo Playing Round Here. Usually
the parents put a dollar in the jar.
Other kids dance. They’re lovely.
I’m afraid this puts the kabosh on the
German Shepherd.
The way to avoid rip offs is to have
very little in the jar.
Busking on the street is nitty gritty real–it’s good
for me spiritually. Kindof my church.
All kinds of things happen and I’m in the
middle of them. Just another grain of sand on
the beach. I’m nobody, playing for tips.
At our usual venue, the
farmers market, lots of folks from Africa, the middle
east, flowing robes, you name it.
Reminds me of what life was like in
India. I often slept on the street.
Also people really like us–though there has been
occasonal abuse from weirdo vegetable vendors.
In Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, the best book ever
writeen about India, Kim comes out of a railway
station into a crowded city and is struck by the
fact that he is one of millions. ‘Who is Kim?’
he asks himself and begins to lose his identity.
When he opens his eyes there is a wandering
holyman standing in front of him looking
at him. ‘Yes, I used to do that, too’ the holyman
says, ‘but that way is closed to me now.’
Well, it’s there if you busk.