Keith at Laguna "Art Walk" -- 02Aug2012

I decided to try playing on the street again for Art Walk, but this time I'd be on my own -- Warren usually plays with Jim on Thursday nights. And they endeavor to get Greeter's Corner, so even though it was empty when I got there, I looked around for another place to set up. (Unfortunately, even though I had deferred the Corner for Jim & Warren, another guy beat them to it anyway -- so I might as well have been the guy who snagged it. Oh well.)

April was already in the Acoustic Alley, so I went down to the other corner, but instead of setting up on one of the corners, I asked permission to use the raised "boardwalk" in front of a little boutique store there. It was theoretically ideal, on the main side of the street, raised up like a stage, well lit...

But it didn't work out very well. There were lots and lots of people out, but they (almost) all just zoomed on past me. Either they didn't want to stop there in the middle of the busy sidewalk, or because of Art Walk, they all felt like they had to get to all the galleries, so didn't have time to stop. There are a lot of people in a hurry on "normal" nights, too, but at least some of them are "wandering" and willing to hang out for a song or two. Or the time it takes to eat their ice cream.

So I just felt like some kind of "decoration" -- people would glance over and sometimes smile as they went past, but only a few groups slowed down to listen to a song, or choose one. About halfway through the evening, I moved over to the green spiral art/bench thing, hoping that people would feel like they were able to step out of traffic, but it didn't seem to help much, and when the sun went down, I was standing in the shadow of a tree in near complete darkness, unable to see or be seen, so I moved back to the boardwalk.

And then I was visited by a 3 or 4-year-old completely unsupervised Persian Demon-Boy. I tried to appease him by giving him a finger-light, but he only used it to further terrorize me -- beaming me in the face and trying, for some reason, to touch it to the guitar, while I was playing. His inattentive big family parked on the bench 20 yards down the street were no help -- his dad came down 3 or 4 times to speak sharply to him, and then walk away and let him carry on, undeterred. They didn't even notice when I gave up, unplugged, and walked halfway up the street with the little monster in tow.

By 9:30 there was almost nobody left, and the Bluegrass Prodigy Kid was hauling in whoever was still around, down at the Alley, so I packed it in. When I got home, there was an even $50 in the jar, so I didn't do as bad as it felt, but, as always, that's not the point. It's nice to have an "approval rating" score (and, they're "dollars" -- even better than "points"), but I'd really rather have people listening than their money. It's way more fun down there on a normal night, at Greeter's Corner, with happy people hanging around. Not sure I'll even bother with Art Walk next month -- or maybe I'll go back to Susie's store...