Sights Of The Pier

The Embarcadero and piers in San Francisco have been really great for finding some excellent footage and some fun scenes.  Kelsey Avers and Chad Miller, both students at San Francisco State University, shared some thoughts on the sights that they saw having both held jobs in the neighborhood.

The Arena And The Street Corner: Is There A Difference?

Among circles of guitar players, there is often a sort of air of elitism.  Sometimes, it gets personal.  One fellow musician once commented to me that he’d found more soul in a lamp post than some of the current contemporaries.

Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, in an interview I saw on VH-1 years and years ago gave a contrast to performing at the arena level and at the street corner level, saying that there’s a difference between the two and sometimes some of the best go unnoticed.  He said that if it really were all just about the art, he’d be playing in coffee shops in Cambridge, and not New York City’s Madison Square Garden, and if it really were all just about business, he wouldn’t be having so much fun doing what he does.

Part of what I’m finding as I walk the streets getting to know this ever-varying community of performers is that some are out seeking money (some, desperately), while others are out promoting an existing compilation.  Bands like Aerosmith, though definitely not so much in the last 15 or so years as in the seventies, play huge venues to promote new releases.  Is the street performer with, in one case, steel drums and a CD for sale any different?

One is performing for thousands at a time while the other for perhaps hundreds.  Can superstar performers, classic or contemporary, truly get the same level of artistic and personal fulfillment as the street-level performer, or does fortune and fame dilute it?

I’ve seen my fair share of arena concerts, and if the band was bored, they’ve always done a great job at hiding it.  I’ve never been so lucky as to see any band explode at each other on stage, but I’ve heard the stories.

The Continuing Saga Of Mayor Newsom And “Sit-Lie” Laws In San Francisco

In his recent column for the Chronicle, C.W. Nevius detailed just how it was that Mayor Newsom, who is perhaps about to declare his candidacy for California Lieutenant Governor, was finally convinced aboard on an initiative that would allow city police to move people along who are blocking sidewalks.  Currently, they cannot do so unless there is a complaint from a business owner or resident.

Particularly what comes to mind is a question of when a person’s presence on the sidewalk is malicious.  Regardless of perhaps a person’s obvious transience, is not sitting legal?  When is it a nuisance?

Picture a common scene along Haight Street where, incidentally, this revelation of Mayor Newsom’s came to light: There’s a scruffy looking fella hunched over a battered acoustic guitar, perhaps missing a string or two, banging out a song like The Grateful Dead’s “Truckin'” as tourists and locals pass along a busy street corner.  Is he a nuisance?

Perhaps he, like Bob Weir so many times over the decades, is flubbing the lyrics a bit.  Maybe the guitar is a little out of tune.  Maybe he’s a little out of tune.  But this particular hypothetical busker, we’ll say, is harming nobody.  In fact, we’ll even say that not only is his tuning impeccable, but lines loaded with syllables like “arrows of neon and flashing of marquees out on Main Street/Chicago, New York, Detroit, it’s all the same scene” tumble out effortlessly.  Let’s also say that his tip hat has accumulated a number of bills and coins, too.

Is he a nuisance, or just part of the scene?  This is something that has pressed some opposition to the ordinance to be heard.  For his piece, Nevius contacted Kent Uyehara, Merchant Chair for the Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association, who cited that “Sit-Lie” has been tried before, and it didn’t work.  Still, many residents and business owners are surely pleased at the foreseeable effort behind this initiative, but the question still remains: Is this enforceable?

San Francisco Busking Montage: Part 1

While observing and interacting with the community of street performers around here, I’ve gotten some really great video.  I’ve made a montage from which I hope to elicit the reaction of others.  In the meantime, I thought I’d post the montage itself, since I can’t predict that my “audience reaction” interview(s) will include the montage itself.

Enjoy!

Peddlin’ Tunes

My conversation with Bryan Anes, a graduate of the film department at UC Santa Cruz, and Chad Miller, a business student at SF State, moved past the interesting Bushman.  Chad has reportedly bartered and purchased one of those CDs that artists are selling on the streets.  Every now and again, one comes across someone looking for a buck in exchange for a CD–the best ones actually have a portable CD player.  Chad says that for a bartered $3, he was able to get one of these discs, which he says isn’t too bad.

It all makes me wonder though if this really is the way to get your name out there, or for that matter, make a buck.

“Three Little Birds” on The Embarcadero

I think these guys may have one of the coolest acts to just sit and watch.  I’d love the opportunity to talk to them sometime at length, but in the meantime, I’ll just keep filming!”

Spencer DeVine on Acting and Comic Improvisation

Spencer DeVine has built a repertoire spanning from comedy to poetry, and all the way through the unpredictable realm of improvisation.

Spencer DeVine, 20, a junior at San Francisco State University, has carried a passion for acting and comedy since before he was out of elementary school.

“It really takes you out of your day for like a minute.  If you’re having a tough day, if you’re not happy and you see over five hundred people freeze at the same time, you know, it’s going to be a story to tell people,” he said.

Spencer is involved with SF State’s improvisational comedy group, “Improv Nation,” as well as “Improv Everywhere,” a group that creates scenes such as a five-minute freeze of hundreds of people, all in the same location.  Spencer is currently looking forward to an upcoming freeze at San Francisco’s Powell Station and the surrounding area.

Busking in San Francisco

Some artists' acts compliment the area in which they choose to play. A horn player on Union Square adds a fine ambiance, while perhaps even making more in tips than a guitar player might.

Busk (bsk): To play music or perform entertainment in a public place, usually while soliciting money.

San Francisco has countless buskers, even outside the hot spots of The Embarcadero or Union Square, but it seems that there isn’t so much out there chronicling this group.  I spent some time scouring the web, coming up with a number of different sites on the act of performing entertainment in public places, often for money, but still didn’t find anything terribly concrete upon which to base this venture of mine.

Sutros.com has a list created a number of years back by the Streetnote, a community of such musicians, but it appears as if this site has been more or less defunct for the past few years.

The music industry is a funny place.  For one thing, it doesn’t pay well.  A lot of times, musicians can be seen staked to a street corner going through their numbers one by one hoping to make just a few more bucks.  Sometimes, this pastime is out of necessity, other times it’s for the pure joy of entertaining the masses.

Taking the industry out of music and bringing it to the very definition of public, the streets, is an art unto itself.  A guitar player can do quite well, put him on the corner of Haight and Stanyan Streets near the entrance to Golden Gate Park, and maybe he’s got a gig.  That same guitar player may not do quite as well on Union Square, where the corners are often dotted with horn players and is often swelling with the sound of a nearby three-piece electric group.  Just like a piece of real estate, that hot corner is all about location, location, location.