I travel through the CBD of Melbourne every day to get to and from work. And I encounter buskers of various musical genres and relative talent…some awfully good, some who should be shot and put out of our misery.
Today I encountered a new one, a face and a sound I had never heard before. A young fellow, he stood beside a lamp-post playing an out-of-tune ukelele, and as I turned my head to find out where this abysmal noise was coming from, I spied a message pinned to his jumper with a safety-pin.
I saw some entertaining buskers in Sweden. Or was it Denmark? (It’s been a while.) Some wacky Englishmen playing guitars and banjos and wearing pots on their heads. Then there was the Spanish guy in Munich playing “Joo Are the Sunshine of my Life”.
But I think my favourite busker is in Santa Monica. Some old Eastern European guy with Psychic Cat(s). I think someone snapped a photo at an L.A. Dopefest.
We used to have a guy here (he’s gone national now) who would ask tourists for their zip code, and he could not only tell them where they lived, but tell a story about their town or even neighborhood in some cases.
I think I can speak for the average American, when I say I have no idea what the following words mean:
[ul]
[li]CBD[/li][li]busker[/li][li]jumper[/li][/ul] Americans – we’re provincial!
Oh golly, humble apologies. I read your reply first in my hotmail.com messages, and the post appeared as if you were requesting translation for *all * the things from CBD right down to Americans. ‘Americans’ was bulleted along with the rest of the terms, so I gave my smart-arsed translation of that too before I had bothered to read your post here on the actual board.
There’s a guy in the Minneapolis skyway (which is like a catwalk over the streets between building cause brrrr it’s cold!) there’s a guy who has two marionettes and sings songs from Fiddler on the Roof in a very old-country baritone.
I dunno if I agree. As an average american I can say that I am quite familiar with the term busker and indeed, when I was in the UK I was with people who did not know the term. I don’t think it has any thing to do with province.
