When you first started performing.

[Schuyler]

So I'm off soon. Another month or so of practice and then I'm to be biking to Quebec (from Alberta) with a few friends. Even if they bail out I'm heading off on my own this summer to try out the life of a street performer.

So I'm a little bit nervous...

Does anybody have stories of when they were first starting out? I'd love to hear it.

[Chris Griffith]

tried that once. . .

When I was starting out, I strapped three juggling clubs to the back of my bicycle, pinned a sign on the back of my t-shirt reading "juggler for hire" and rode from Minnesota to Winnepeg, across the windy plains to Edmonton. Nobody took me up on the sign, but I had a lot of adventures, and timed my arrival in Edmonton just before the festival there.

I volunteered for the festival, and took a crash course iin Street Performing by watching the line-up there again and again and again!

Then I started trying out my own stuff, quickly learning what did and didn't work. View it as a big experiment - you'll know it's working when you're looking out at a big crowd of lauging people. You'll know it's not when nobody will stop to glance at you. Don't be afraid to try something different if it's not working - it's the only way to break out of it!

Good luck.

[Peter Voice]

Hey, good start, Chris. Did you do the workshop?

I got hit with a mop by a cleaner and moved on twice by security guards on my first day. It took them about 3 weeks to actually arrest me. Then I realised I had found my true calling.

Good luck.

[Mr.Taxi Trix]

My first show was at the Goshen Fair in rural CT where jugglers were at the time a rare thing indeed. Country fairs are an excellent place to be well-received.

I got a good circle, did every trick I could muster, and gave a sheepish hat line.

One old woman gave me a quarter. Thank god.

I knew the hat line needed work, but at the end of the day, many shows later, I counted my silver on a picnic table. EIGHTY BUCKS!!!! I knew I would never work a job again.

[Schuyler]

So yesterday I was in West Edmonton Mall for the day with a friend. We got there at eleven in the morning and had time to kill.

The workers of the casino in the mall have been on strike for 142 days, 143 now. Having nothing better to do we decided to join the picket line. I juggled for the strikers, then stood around doing coin vanishes as people were entering the casino and a few strikers yelled lines about how that was exactly what was going to happen. This got a smirk from casino security.

All in all I made about twenty five dollars and an orange, only got talked to once by two nervous looking mall cops and had a wonderful time with a bunch of angry people. the picketers were a supportive bunch.

Feeling a little less nervous.

[caricatureguy]

I had been doing caricatures (BADLY) for $2 a person at local fairs during the summer of 92' when I came home from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and couldn't find a job. (the first caricature I ever did for money made me a shiny quarter and took me 20 minutes!) When I went back to school I found out they had a freelance program where clients would call the school about caricatures and the school would send you out on the job.

One of the jobs I took was the Lotus Club in the south side of Pittsburgh. It was a little hideway private club that was under a bridge in a residential part of town. It was run by the mafia (no shit) and had a picture of Al Capone on the wall. (Rumor has it he used to frequent that particular joint when he was in town.) Well, they had a grand re-opening planned for all of the old and new folks that were invited to come check it out. It apparently was shut down by the cops back in the 60's or something for what I can only imagine... But it was dark and spooky and it didn't look like they had done much with the place since then! It of course came with the fantastic assortment of new and used characters that you would expect to find in such an 'establishment' as well. It was great! They even had a little rolly-polly, mustachio-ed, door guy that would look through a little tiny door and ask you the "password" when you knocked on the door!

They wanted me to come and draw at the grand opening only (here's the rub) I would have to find a way to walk around and draw people without an easel and they couldn't pay me more than $50 for the whole night so I would have to work for tips. Everybody else in the program apparently turned it down outright but I figured what the hell, it might be fun and I could use the practice, right. Well, that night I came home with $80 or so (which was badly needed and a LOT of money for me at the time) My girlfriend and I threw the wadded up dollar bills up in the air over the bed then rolled around in it till we fell asleep!

Also that night, the father of the owner of another club liked what I was doing so much that he asked me to come to his sons bar and do pretty much the same thing for them. (they didn't give me $50 for showing up though...) This was one of the most popular bars back in those days, so I said "Hell yes!". I was 19, getting served and had exclusive admittance to the best clubs in town WHILE MAKING MONEY!!! WHY EVEN ASK IF I'D DO IT??? Does life get better for a college student??

Needless to say I kept this up for quite some time, got really good at what I do and the rest is history!

Good luck busking- Have fun, make money. It's a great life!

[GlassHarper]

First day on the road

After honing my glass harmonica skills at the Ithaca (NY) Farm Market I hit the road (early 90's) for Key West, where years before I had first seen street performers.

I thought that simply demonstrating my uncanny skills as a glass musician would be enough to loosen the purse strings of the other impecunious immigrants. I got quarters, dimes, nickles and pennies.

One of the other performers asked, "have you had a one hundred dollar day yet?" "Of course not," I replied, thinking he was joking.

It took me several years (I'm a slow learner) before I finally realized most people couldn't really give a @#$% about glass music -- they want to be entertained!

I'm still at it and I no longer have to live in my car.

[jrjuggler]

beginnings

My first performance was a halloween school show in 1982- I was eight years old. I walked out and saw all those kids staring at me and ran off crying (I was 8, okay?). Thankfully, my mom pushed me back out there- after getting tht first taste of applause, I was hooked. My first busking was two years later at Hayden's Ferry (now Tempe Festival of the Arts) although my hat wasn't what I would consider big now, I can't think of another way a 10 year old could make $100 in a day in 1984. Unfortunately it still took me until five years ago to start performing full time. I don't know what I was waiting for! Good luck- enjoy the journey!

James Reid

https://www.jrjuggler.com

[Peter]

AH yes, my first performance. I was 54 yrs old and my wife had been pushing me to get into clowning. Well she got me a lesson from a balloon twister and bought 1000 of the 260 balloons and I practiced with them until they were gone.

Well a Roadhouse Grill restaurant opened up and she talked to the general manager and got us working there on Tues. nights, her face painting and me twisting balloons. I was ready to throw up on the first night there. In fact I couldn't eat at all. But after the first couple of tables when the kids got that light in their eyes as I made them something and the parents actually applauded me. Plus when I got home that night I hade made $150 in tips!!!

That was it! I learned magic and more complicated balloons and have been doing it ever since. In fact after about 4 months part time I lost my "day job," went full time and been doing this for about 9 years now.

[Felicitywishes]

My first performance was as a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz, I was three, and I got to wear the sweetest yellow gingham dress. Getting me onstage was never a problem, it was encouraging me to leave that caused some issues! My first solo street performance was in Venice, Italy. I walked into Venice with 7 euros in my pocket...so there was no choice but to work. I was so scared, I thought I was going to die, or throw up, or both. But after that first show, when I was still alive and the hat was sat beside me, i realised that this was the life for me.

[Doctor Eric]

I was in my teens, I was the lead "singer" (singing in this instance, of course, meaning "crowing like an irate rooster") in a hardcore band called 1984. Our first show was in a record store (in manchester, CT no less), the band wore black hoods and ski masks, I had an inverted cross painted in black on my face. The crowd of typical, apathetic, spoiled rotten connecticut punks who normally just sit at the back wall and act cool, went insane and started breaking things, afterwards I coughed up blood for an hour. We played for a year, and I quit in lieu of beating the drummer to death with a large piece of firewood. I ran off to New Mexico to get laid, and started a Circus/Sideshow. We toured the U.S. for four years, performing acts that violated blue laws in every state that we entered. A Presbyterian Minister led a crusade against our show in Bisbee, AZ. A comic book about our adventures was written by a friend of mine, and published by Top Shelf. I'm pretty sure a bunch of other !@#? happened, too. I started street performing after our second tour because dealing LSD and mushrooms was getting boring.