The Street Entertainers of NYC
Here in our area on the East Coast, we call them “pan handlers,” but when I mentioned this expression to a friend of mine out in California regarding the activities at the Fisherman’s Wharf area near her, she got indignant with me and said “Out here we call them ‘street entertainers, not panhandlers.” I stood corrected.
We got to see first-hand what some of these ‘street entertainers’ do to make money. One was a man who had spray-painted himself with silver paint and would pose for pictures for a small fee. He was quite good at tossing his coin or coins into this small bucket he held behind him for the purpose as he twirled around in front of his audience. We never saw any of these coins miss the bucket the whole time we stood and watched him. And, by the way, he drew quite a crowd.
Another one who probably could be called a street entertainer we jokingly nicknamed ‘the Bush Man.’ This man had gotten a fairly large piece of shrubbery (hence the name, ‘Bush Man’) from somewhere, who knows where, to stand behind and hide from people as they would (unsuspectingly) come walking by him on the sidewalk; and then, just at the right moment, he’d jump out at them to scare them. Boo!
We got a picture of this ‘Bush Man’ for future reference as a memory of our trip, as he did manage to give me a good scare much to the ‘entertainment’ of my husband and our traveling companion. They both loved seeing me jump and come back down to earth (sidewalk) again.
