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| It will be the last ticket you'll have to give me... |
I thought I sounded pretty good and got about 6 bucks off of the twenty or so people who walked by who were not carrying musical instruments. You have to be really in the "void" to get a tip from another musician, or the other musician has to be someone you are friendly with who has just gotten a hundred dollar tip, themselves.
Then I went to Stanley's and got one of their Mardi Gras Bock beers. They are nothing to write home about, unless you are writing home to say that you just saved 75 cents. I think I am the only one buying them; the bottles seem to be in the same relative position each consequetive night, even though they are on "sale" at $1.25 plus tax.
Philantropy Backfires
Stepping out onto the sidewalk with my Mardi Gras Bock, I felt the presence and stares of some "travelling kids" who were parked on the sidewalk.
One of them had a banjo. I guess they were making no pretenses about where the tips for the banjo playing were going as they sat right next to the beer store.
I say that I felt their stares and figured that they saw that I was drinking what they probably assumed was one of the expensive beers; and their envy was palpable. I almost wanted to say "These are only a buck twenty five," to assuage their beer envy. I wasn't trying to rub their noses into the fact that I actually know how to play an instrument and thus, do better than those who just use them as panhandling "props."
The one with the banjo said "Hey, Bring that guitar over here!"
I supposed that they were hoping that I could maybe get someone to throw a buck (essentially, a beer) into their empty case (essentially, bottle).
I had already done the same for a guy in Jackson Square who was playing a cello. We jammed on "I Know You, Rider," by The Grateful Dead and two bucks had fallen into his case -ostensibly one for each of us- but I told him to keep them both. When he asked me to jam, he said that he needed money. I told him that he could keep whatever was thrown. I was trying to make him some money. After all, I had pulled in a whopping 10 bucks that night.
"Unless someone throws something ridiculous," he said, "Then, we'll split it."
In that spirit of charity did I sit down to play "one song" with the banjo guy.
That was all the time it took for a cop that I am now familiar with to pull up and give us each tickets for "obstruction of a public passage." My fourth, if you are keeping track of them.
In about and hour, I will meet with attorney Mary Howell, and hopefully discuss a way for me to get out of town without having warrants haunting me wherever I go "You know you have warrants in Florida, don't you?" is bad enough, hearing it every time I hand over my ID to cops.
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| The Church That Build The Rebuild Center |
I was late arriving at the courthouse this morning.
Attorney Howell had already been there and pushed it ahead to March 7th, as well as adding to it the one that had been set for the 27th of March (the day before my brothers birthday).
She told me just an hour ago that, had I been there, both would have been dismissed.
However, by the 7th of March, the one that I got last night will be in the system and all three may be thrown out, allowing Howard and I (yes, he's coming along) to make our way west, with San Antonio the planned first stop.
Howard has been patiently waiting for me to settle my legal matters. He told me at the end of January that he couldn't see himself being here until March.
I have a new reader, Julie from the Rebuild Center staff, whose blog I now "follow." I will try to put the link on my front page.
I used to hustle small craft items I made, in Santa Cruz. I used to make a point of parking my motorcycle, putting my helmet and jacket away, and then starting my hustle, and the first dollar or two I got, I'd take from the giver's hand and keeping my hand extended, sort of dance on over to a certain classical violin player and toss the gratuity into his case. He doesn't even need the money! But I consistently cough up. Cello, jazz guitar, if it's good I'm gonna toss something in the case - even if I'm in more need than the players are.
ReplyDelete(I know the violin player doesn't need the money because he and his boyfriend both have good jobs, and he bought me drinks a few times at the Blue Lagoon, a place that vies with the Asti for the title of diviest dive bar in Santa Cruz.)
You need to get disentangled from that place somehow. It's just getting ridiculous.
I bought a Volvo station wagon today, a vehicle that can carry a fair amount of buskers' or homeless ppl's or busking homeless ppl's crap and in style. I still have to think in terms of "the meter's running" when I drive it anywhere, not just "is this trip necessary?" but "will this trip pay?" but at least my friend will get to drive his car in peace without my borrowing it all the damn time.
As well as the usual flea markets, finding stuff people just want gone and will sell for a song (for me to sell for a symphony later!) the equation is: I spend $20 in gas to go up to one of the many farmer's markets in the summer when it's warmer and I'm better, and I play and maybe sell some CDs or something, and make $100+. I essentially get paid to escape the 110-120 degree summer heat.
Ah, flea markets. I remember the one in Hubbardston, Mass. A field the area of three football fields with tables set in row after row..I would find paperback books which were usually 10 cents; I grabbed everything that I had ever heard of (my intention was to become very well "read") from Richard Adams to Emile Zola, I had almost the whole series of Signet Classics at 10 cents a pop.
ReplyDeleteI friend of mine, though sought out vinyl albums and went to yard sales, garage sales and flea markets; I remember him finding the "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" double album for 50 cents ("without a scratch") To come to the point; he found the original "Yesterday and Today" Beatles album with the infamous "butcher" cover which was eventually recalled, for a dollar. The album, along with the cover is worth $20,000 now, especially because it is in mono which, inexplicably is worth more than the stereo release; Another friend made a killing buying antiques and reselling antiques; sometimes people clean out their attic and "we've got more than enough chairs already" sell their Queen Anne chairs out of their garage for "how 'bout twenty for all five?" so, if you have the eye of an appraiser, you can thrive; ...then there's the guy who bought an old oil painting cheap and between the canvas and the backing....you'll never believe it.....
P.S. The shaman got in my face again on Royal last night...grabbed my arm as I tried to push past him. He rambled on about wanting me to delete all references to him on this blog, he never saw the "correction" I made on the next day's post; he'll probably never see this comment. I am going to save that post as a draft so it will "disappear" from cyberspace, at least until I'm out of here. He stands too close and is like a coiled snake...he once again referred to Sue and I as "homeless pieces of shit"
ReplyDeleteTake a man out of the jungle (where he ran around half naked, eating tubers and human flesh), and put him in a studio apartment with a high-def TV, and suddenly the homeless become "pieces of shit" in his estimation :)
Isn't civilization a wonderful process!
Just delete the stuff about the "shaman" and move on.
ReplyDeleteI made a living, and a decent one, no, wait, an OK one for me and a decent one for everyone ELSE, for a decade, on Ebay. Now I"m gradually learning to do the same thing, without Ebay. Erstwhile Ebay sellers are now selling at special-interest (from ham radio to dolls) flea markets, on Craig's List, keeping Rolodex card systems again like the old days, and doing better.
Supposedly Thursdays are good days to go to the Capitol flea markets here and find techie stuff. That's what I do, the techie stuff. In describing my favorite flea market to a pal who was thinking about selling there, I said, "The sellers and the clientele are 99.5% male. What sells is GUY STUFF". There are a ton of different things to make a killing on, but for me, it's engineers' and mechanics' stuff that works. It's what I like, what I know, and what I find fun to deal in. So, I can be at a flea market and find a bucket of hardware, say stainless #4-40 or #60-32 machine screws, and buy the bucket for a given price, then make 10X minimum bagging it up in little bags, $1 for 50 or 100 of 'em. So yeah, flea markets are in my plan now that I have my own car to get to 'em.
It's Thursday today and raining, so no flea market but anyway, I have $23.50 in quarters and dimes to my name, since I spent all my money on the car, lunch, odds and ends like milk and plastic rivets, and $40 in gas to put in the car, yesterday. But I don't plan on going out again until early Saturday to get to the flea market so it all works.