Adventures in Busking, Vol. 1

I got a busking permit last week.

For those of you who don't know (and I'm constantly finding out that most people don't) busking is a fancy word for "street performing", thus making a "busker" one who performs on the street for donations.

The City of Santa Monica requires street performer's (musicians, magicians, drawers, painters, fortune tellers, etc.) to purchase a $37 permit that is good for the calendar year. If you perform without one you will get a ticket that is likely not cheap nor worth the trouble. So last Tuesday I went down to Santa Monica and waltzed into City Hall prepared to sign my check for $37 and walk out with my permit. Quick and easy. When I got there, however, I was informed that I needed to give them two passport sized photos of my beautiful face for them to put on the permit. The kind gentleman in the City Clerk's office (that's not sarcasm) told me that there is a photo booth on Santa Monica Pier that they will accept photos from if I wanted to try that route, so off I went on a mission. Parking in Santa Monica is not the easiest thing in the world but I was lucky enough to find a meter right in front of City Hall. Problem is that it was only a 40 minute meter, so I was gonna have to rush. For the record, I hate rushing...but I always end up putting myself in positions where I have to.

Anyhow, I start walking down to the pier which is only about 3 blocks away, but there is construction on a the main road there so I have to bypass that to make it around and down to the pier as time continues to tick away. When I got there I realized that (surprise, surprise) my broke ass had no money. So, first thing's first, I needed to find an ATM. Sounds easy enough, right? I mean, it's Santa Monica Pier. It's world famous. It's gotta have plenty of ATM's. Well apparently not. Despite this being a major tourist attraction (arguably the biggest tourist location in Los Angeles) I only found 2 ATM's, and of those one was "Out of Service." So, after paying a $3 service charge I finally had my $20 and it was off to find the photo booth. *tick tock*

The photo booth costs $5 and, of course, only takes exact amounts (in all fairness though, that was to be expected). Anyhoo, the "restaurant" next to the photo booth wouldn't make change unless I bought something, and I didn't have time to mess about trying to get a $5 bill somewhere else so I bought a bottle of Pepsi bottled tap water for $2.75 and was finally in business. Once I got over the lameness of going into a photo booth alone I got my pictures and was ready to go.

So, I rushed back to City Hall, filled out the paper work, gave the dude my photo strip so he could cut out one of the pictures and gave him a $37 check for the privilege of being ignored by hundreds of people in one fell swoop while attempting to procure donations. I then rushed to my car and made it there sans ticket with 2 minutes to spare on my meter! *Phew!*

I picked up my permit on Friday and am now a proudly licensed street performer in the City of Santa Monica. And it only cost me about $50. Hopefully I can make that amount back quickly and start making a little loot so I can continue to avoid a normal job.