a string of hits

Here's a photo I took yesterday outside the Rite Aid at Franklin and Western. I just finished a hike up Mt. Hollywood and went to pick up a Rx on the way home when I came across this man playing a broken trumpet outside the store. As I left the store, I asked him if I could stay and listen and take some photos, and he seemed quite content to let me do that. I asked him where he was from and he told me instead where the woman who wrote the song he was playing was from. "...mumble mumble mumble...She's from Nova Scotia. It was a string of hits!" O-kay. "What's your name?" I asked, and he replied with chuckle," Earthquake. My name's Earthquake." O-kay again. He continued to play this garbled "string of hits" as I watched him-- and the people around us.

What I found most interesting was that, a half hour earlier when I walked into the store to pick up my Rx, few people were stopping to give him a second glance, much less any money. (The honest truth is that he isn't a very good trumpeter.) But when I came out and started talking to him and taking photos, all of a sudden that changed. People started walking more slowly past him, and 90% of them dropped dollar bills into his Thrifty Ice Cream cup. I wonder if, because someone was paying attention to him, they thought that he was suddenly more interesting that he was before? A little more deserving of their dollars? Or they saw that a young woman was interacting with this man, so he couldn't be too crazy or too much of a threat? I'm not sure, but it was certainly fascinating.

It reminds me of a great article I read a while back by Gene Weingarten about virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell, who played unnoticed in a Washington Metro station for 45 minutes. This man sells out concert halls with $100 seats, and yet less than a handful of people stopped to listen to him play outside of the subway. Again, fascinating.