(BOULDER, COLORADO) From Boston to Los Angeles, newspaper reporters around the country are suddenly running articles about the best buskers in their neck of the woods.Chained in ownership, it isn't hard to see that reporters in each city were given the same assignment. Other papers soon hopped on the bandwagon.

As a result, you can now take your pick of the major city in which you're most interested - or the whole sha-bang from coast-to-coast.

Of course, on any given day, there are different buskers out and about. On slow days, it isn't unusual to find full-time buskers enjoying the day off bicycling or hanging at the local café. C'est la vie.

Conversely, since buskers live for the weekend, this is the time to search and report. Unfortunately, the poor reporter may now be off work and having fun doing their ...

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(SWITZERLAND) An interesting page at Swiss Info has many busking attractions, pictures, and related stories starting in the nation's capital with the Berne Buskers Festival.Celebrating its 12th year this summer, the three-day event featured 42 acts with 145 performers from 18 countries. Half of the acts were musical with the rest involving clowns, dancers, human statues, and other artists.

Related busking stories and pictures take us around Switzerland to Basel, Biel, and Montreux as well as podcast on what it's like to be a busker in Berne.

A reporter for Busker Central entered a Buskerfest contest in Luzern back in 1992. Unfortunately, the city was given a bad reputation when the contest was found to be "won" by a professional opera singer who had stumbled outside. Her father also happened...

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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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(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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(SAN JOSE) The Tico Times - Costa Rica's national newspaper - reports that skaters will no longer be legal in public transit in and around San José. Neither will walking between cars be tolerated. In an effort to refine the law, street-performers reacted with a large protest by marching down 2nd Street to Parque Nacional located near the Legislative Assembly building in the nation's capital. Why? Because some of the best busker acts at the parques involve skating and skateboards. The new law would thusly deprive them from making a living.

Zoobie, an editor at Busker Central, has actually busked Parque Central in downtown San José. Back in the day, it was a nice sunny venue aside from the vendors mostly selling fruits, vegetables, and artwork. People were appreciative and generous on market days. But segregating s...

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