Here’s another one, same time same place. This one features a man in a dress with baggy pants, unlaced sneakers, and his hat on sideways, smoking a cigarette & lookin’ sharp. Plus there appears to be an actual busker lugging amps around. Same kids still waiting!

Pic 878
Gazebo

August 13, 2010

Two years ago:
Pic 543
The choir boy

August 13, 2009

Three years:
Pic 189
Experimental farm

August 13, 2008

This guy must have missed his bus out of town, because he was still busking down on Sparks St. a week later. He had gathered a small crowd.

Here he is again. I think in this one he suspects that I’m planning to take his picture, because he’s looking right at me. I hope it didn’t freak him out. Buskers are notoriously shy.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see his trick, because he talked for so long that I got bored and took off. I’m guessing it had something to do with the apple and the big knife that he has in his hand, and the fact that he’s sitting on a bike way up in the air. Maybe there would have been fire in it too.

I did a better job of covering the Buskers’ Festival last year, underpants and all. That was on August 4, 2007.

My advice to buskers, if they want people to stick around, is this:
“Less talking. More tricks!”

I’m not going to show you what happens next. It has to do with underpants.

In general I don’t care for the Busker Festival. It’s very much a crowd scene on a flat street, with no vantage points. Unless you are the kind of person who pushes their way into the middle of crowds you will only be able to see people’s backs. You won’t see a single busker actually perform any tricks, and it’s just juggling, unicycles, and fire-eating anyway. So I went and took pictures of graffiti in an alley.

This alley runs between MacLaren and Gilmour, just off Bank St. There’s my trusty bike ready for a quick getaway in case of trouble.

For pure artistic excellence, the graffiti in this alley is not on the same level as that in some other locations, such as the old technical high school. But I think it has its finger on the pulse of the city. For one thing it provides a lot of useful information and advice, not just the usual “Fuck you.”

There is much speculation on the nature of memory and history.

There is advice about cassette tapes, taxes, baths…

and a mysterious massacre.

There is No Air in many forms…

and for a refreshing change, No Hair.

Some of the graffiti is wordless…

and some of it is meaningless. (I know this because the eyes in my eyes have spoken.)

Some of it seems obsessed with terrorism…

and some doesn’t really fall into any category.

You might think a sleazy alley like this is the kind of place where you’d see a lot of drug dealing and crack smoking, but I didn’t see any. I guess the crackheads prefer to do their deals outside of classy restaurants down in the market. I also looked closely at the garbage, of which there is plenty, and I didn’t see a single crack pipe or used condom. It was mostly soft drink and water bottles. I’m at a loss to explain the absence of criminal activity in this alley.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this interesting post about the Busker Festival. (You’ll notice there are no Ss in the name of that festival, even though everyone actually calls it the “Buskers’ Festival.” I think it’s because the organizers can’t decide where to put the apostrophe. Ha!)

If you really want to know something about that festival, you should google it. Here’s a kid who looks like he was having a good time. But he could see.

Bye for now!