Dear Diary, Today I Became What I Despise...

ie, Teh Ugly Busker.

I left home before 8 AM to run a four-hour errand to Brooklyn for my day job, show kit (two guitars, one chair, one tip-hat, water, soda, mixed nuts for caloric infusion) in tow.    I arrived at my chosen station before noon and the platform was devoid of other buskers  (on payday, this is rare).    Set up my show and began playing.    Fifteen minutes later I stopped because another musician (jazz trumpeter with (illegal) boom box) had set up at the opposite end of the platform and started a ten-minute version of  "Girl From Ipanema".    I could hear him clearly from my end of the platform because this station has good acoustics.

Now, in nearly four years of subway performing, my experience of busking etiquette taught me several things:

When scouting for a pitch, I have to check the platform from one end to the other for fellow performers who might have gotten there first.
My voice is too loud to perform simultaneously with another show, on any platform with good (echo-ey) acoustics.    I can share the platform by alternating songs, but we can't both play at once unless the space is acoustically dead.
If someone else is working the platform with an instrument I can hear from the other end (like, you know, a trumpet and (illegal) boom box), my show would create aural conflict and   headaches for the unfortunate travellers in the middle.     This reduces both our hat incomes to zero.    Therefore, first come, first "served".
If I want an occupied spot, the accepted procedure is to ask the performer when s/he plans to finish, and (if I want) come back at that time.     

Ipanema Guy practiced none of this.      

Last time some trumpeter ignored my show and superimposed his, I went home and cried.    Rightly or not, I deemed conversation futile since so many points of etiquette had already been ignored.     Today I decided to try to talk to him.    I asked him if he heard me working at the other end.    

Why do jerks suddenly possess limited English when you call them on their boorishness?

He claimed that he'd been busking for ten years  and " two musicians can work at either end".     I tried to explain that we were collectively giving the audience a headache but, insisting that I was wrong, he started playing again. 

I informed him I was going to report his (illegal) boom box to the cops.     As I went up to the mezzanine for a phone signal, he turned off the boom box and hid it in his bag.     And continued to play.

There was no phone signal, and I didn't really want to distract a cop from a real crime and "tattle" on some jerk.     I have no idea what prompted me to go back down there and re-start my show, but since Ipanema Guy insisted the space could be shared, who was I to argue with such a genius?

FIRST SET:
"The Thing" (complete with resonant "boom-da-boom"s on the guitar belly)
"Keep The Customer Satisfied", the rollicking Simon and Garfunkel work
"The Marvelous Toy" by Tom Paxton, complete with sound effects for the chorus
"Commuter's Lament", my homage to the two-fare zone, to the tune of "I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly"

Believe it or not, I made an effort to not "blast" my voice, to keep it to the volume I usually sing.    I made ten bucks in twenty minutes (I love the audience in this station  8).     By the time I took a break for water, Ipanema Guy was gone, much to my surprise.    Really.    (the other trumpet guy just played over me before)   I felt bad for anyone who had to filter out both of us, but the alternative was to start scouting again,  after most Friday buskers are already working.     I just couldn't, not after the week I've had.

Gave away two business   cards, one to a man who "books children's parties", and one to a man who works at an Adult Day Center for seniors.    (I do not include my favorite South Park songs in my street show   8)

Phoned my "connection" to ask about the turnaround time for recording a CD.     If things go optimally, I could have CD's to sell in time for the Ohio Buskerfest.      Even if I don't, the next time someone here asks me if I have a CD I can smile and say "Yes.   Yes, I do."