(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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(CHATTANOOGA) New liberal rules favor buskers and street performers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Over 50 musicians have registered to participate. The musicians include guitarists, cellists, singers, keyboardists and a person who plays a didgeridoo, the wind instrument developed by indigenous Australians about 1,500 years ago.It's all part of SoundCorps' new Sidewalk Stages program. Each of the 15 to 30 musicians who are scheduled to perform two-hour sets from Friday through Sunday is paid $25 by SoundCorps. They also get to keep any tips they make. Those tips are averaging between $40 and $70.

Buskers can perform in public places, such as sidewalks, pedestrian bridges and the parks between them. There are some minimal rules. Performing under the influence and substance abuse is not permitted.

You'll...

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(COSTA RICA) San Jose has buskers singing the blues. Avenida Blues, a traditional blues band in Costa Rica, is finding national resistance to their style of music and performing. The buskers have been working for the past months filming their performances on the streets, issues with police, and concerts at large national festivals in the country.Due to severe lack of interest of the blues in Costa Rica, they are trying to get exposure with the international blues community. With different administration changes, the police have taken down several artists, jailed some others, and have confiscated equipment. A strike in January resulted in a movement called "Nuestra Calle" when there was the reported abuse of power by local authorities in the arrest of a sax player.

The Avendia blues band has been working hard...

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(UTAH) With it's first ever Buskerfest, Salt Lake City has started to come out of it's shell in regards to street theater and performances. Citizens of the city are calling for more pitches to perform their art.Kim Angeli is determined to get more street performers in Salt Lake City - a place that hasn’t always been receptive to the idea. Angeli hopes the SLC Busker Fest will help spread the wealth and connect performers and audiences.

"I would love to have performers on every corner. Art and artistic performance makes an urban environment wonderful and begs to be visited repeatedly," posts Lance Hemmert.

"Abby the Spoon Lady is the most amazing Busker!" cries another.

Most professional buskers are...
...

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(LONDON) The humble street performer is no longer a victim of a cashless society. A new digital method called a contactless payment terminal can accept a tip to the busker with the wave of a card.In a test of the new method, patrons were seen waving their credit/debit cards in front of the reader. The project was launched last weekend by the Busk in London organization as a trial. A few performers were seen testing the new transactional device.

Charlotte Campbell, a full-time street performer who was part of the trial, told BBC News that the new tech "had a significant impact on contributions." Said Campbell, "More people than ever tap-to-donate whilst I sing, and often, when one person does, another follows."

The reader needs to be attached to a smartphone or tablet. It is then...

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