All in a day's walk: Part 2

Some background info: Every year at this time, Edinburgh's population of roughly half a million doubles. The cause? Something called the Festival, the Fringe Festival, and about 6-10 other smaller festivals who take advantage of the visitors who have traveled here for the first two festivals I mentioned. The first is an international theater festival with well-known actors and troupes, high priced tickets, and guarenteed first class shows. The second, the Fringe Festival, built up around the first. Consisting of over 100 venues, and literally hundreds of shows every day, the festival gives all sorts of actors, musicians, and street performers a chance to show off their talents (or lack thereof). The day before we had seen one of these less fortunate performers, who, having little actual talent, made a show out of the lead up to his trick... in the end wasting everyone's time who had stuck around hoping to see something entertaining and spectacular.

A shot of one of the multiple stages set up around the area for performances. Some of these stages are fewer than 60 feet away from another... sometimes the noise from one can overwhelm another performance.




Today however, (today being the actual day of this walk... not the day this is written--i'm horribly behind on journaling.) our little group of four got lucky. Drawn in by the small crowd on some church steps, we started watching a street musician who dressed and looked Irish, but turned out to be from Detroit. His specialty were sleight-of-hand tricks, and we had shown up in time to see his last few tricks. They all involved some variation of 3 copper cups on the table and miniature tennis balls appearing and disappearing from underneath the cups. Not only was he skilled at the trick, he drew the crowd in in a way that no one in the audience ever felt singled out in an awkward or embarassing way. My gorgeous friend Tara was standing in front taking photos, and he quickly singled her out, asked her name, and encouraged her to take photos, promising to pay her for any good ones she took and emailed him. A few minutes later, noticing our friend Kevin standing near her, he asked Kevin point blank if he was Tara's girlfriend. Kev quickly denied it, to which the performer quickly replied, "well he's either your boyfriend or a horny stranger with how close he's standing." More impressive than his quick wit was his ability to suavely ask for tips without making anyone feel they were being forced. Unlike some performers, he didn't specify how many pence or pounds he felt would be appropriate, but simply asked for whatever we felt he deserved, and asked that even if we had nothing, but felt he did a good job, that we shake his hand and thank him. (Some performers are rather demanding in asking for payment, usually asking more than anyone feels they deserve, and probably hurting their chances of actually making anything at all)
The four of us talked to him afterwards for a few mins. I was reminded how incredibly small this world is at times. He told us that in September he'll be traveling to Santa Barbara, CA, where we all go to school, for a wedding. Not only that, but he told us the dates he would be performing on State St, right in front of the business I worked at all summer.