I have been thinking a lot about doing a little busking, just for fun. I used to play in bar bands and the like years ago and still play a bit now and then. I wonder if this is something that could quench my thirst for playing music, telling stories, and just plain showing off.

I would love to hear stories of other ancient buskers especially just starting out.

I'm 60 by the way.

(NEW ORLEANS) It's the same old story with a different twist. Just as most captive audiences are tough on buskers, the same held true recently when a busker decided to entertain passengers on a public streetcar in New Orleans.Being the birthplace of jazz, it isn't unusual to find buskers performing songs up and down the venues in the French Quarter which is quite famous for the impromptu entertainers. However, this time was to be different.

The busker pulled out his guitar on the trolly and started singing old Beatles tunes including "A Hard Day's Night". The passengers went about their business expecting the street-performer to soon pass the hat and be on his way. Much to their surprise, the busker just kept playing more Beatles songs having a seemingly endless supply of them on hand.

When...

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(BUSKER ALLEY) Buskers sometimes avoid cities where licensing is required. To them, it doesn't make sense when the hat may be too small to consider a permit. This creates a dilemma.When you think about it, the pay to play scheme actually has it's own valuable benefits. Consequently, it sometimes leaves the door wide open to busk a city where little if any busking is occuring. By asking how many busking permits have been issued, buskers can get an approximation of the competition to be expected.

By being permitted, the busker may also have a selection of top pitches from which to choose.

Since busking is always weather permitting, warm sunny days year-round really helps the tourism industry as well as the busker's pocketbook.

When all the factors are added up, it may make perfect sense to have...

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(ST. LOUIS) Remember collecting baseball cards as a kid? Now you can collect busker trading cards of all the wonderful street-performers in St. Louis.Thanks to Board Bill #181, busking and street-performing is now legal in St. Louis. They are now buskers to be memorabilia-ized! And collected! And traded!

It all came about when the city raised the busker fee in order to monitor buskers. Huh? That's exactly what buskers Fred Walker and Nick Pence said - along with the ACLU when it heard of such a preposterous notion.

Now that a wrong has been righted and the laughter has subsided, the buskers may be memoralized as a collector's card. The busker game includes finding each artist performing and having them sign their card. The winner gets featured in an upcoming street-performer festival.

It's a fun idea....

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Chinese tightrope walker Adili Wuxiuer draws a large crowd as he crosses a 400 metre drop in China's southern Yunnan province.Wuxiuer, who belongs to China's Uighur minority ethnic group, was invited to the Yunnan town of Dousha in south-west China to perform his unusual act. Tightrope walking is very popular throughout China.

"It's very interesting that these tightrope walkers always use huge balancing bars which actually makes the crossing much easier than it looks", said an onlooker about the feat. "On a calm day, I'd really like to see them simply walk across without anything assisting their balance. Now that would be something."