(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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I remember I was busking on a popular outdoor mall at a commonly used pitch. As a muse, I played and sang between an outdoor cafe and restaurant. Buskers had used the stage for several years. I usually got a coffee at the cafe while on breaks and was familiar with the staff.

One day, a new staff member came outside and asked me to move down the way. When I asked the blond middle-aged woman why, she simply said she didn't appreciate me singing outside on a beautiful day while she slaved away inside. I told her it was my choice in life to busk rather than being a server and I really couldn't help her. She again requested me to move on and left with the satisfaction of having told me 'what for'. I ignored her request and continued performing.

As a mature busker, I had seen the like before. They have a problem with someone busking because they can't do it. After several other altercations, I had...

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(USA) It's that time of year again when a young man's thoughts turn to busking. It's all about sun, people, and shade as we take a look at some of the hottest performing venues the United States has to offer.An article in USA Today features David Michael, a former street musician and author of Busker: Tales of a Renegade Harpist. The article mentions Michael's insight into the wide world of busking. Waxing philosophical, he elaborates about the different venues some buskers take that, were it not for street-performing, the talent would go to waste. Crowd gathering is also discussed.

Some cities are obvious. New York, Boston, and San Francisco are considered the centerpieces of American culture. Yet, we find some surprising "off-the-beaten-path" pitches that, normally, one wouldn't think there...

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(BOULDER) Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film by Banksy who dares not reveal his face. He's a wanted man for destroying BT property all in the name of streetartThe film involves 5 street artists that have discovered Kinko's copy shop can print huge pieces of whatever art they design. One of the artists, Shepard Fairey, did the Barack Obama print "Hope" - a disputed work that is still in the courts today.

The film shines with creative ideas of street art captured by Banksy and others. It makes for a fun time with laughs at the absurdity of filming all the action in London, New York, and L.A.

Spray-painting "I just messed up your wall" doesn't seem to serve any useful purpose. But through this, we learn that all grafitti is temporary. It is usually painted over or removed although at someone's...

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(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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