Jim couldn't make it again, so I went down to meet Warren in Laguna on Saturday night. Nice weather, lots of people. There was a guitar girl I've never seen before on Greeter's Corner, so we set up across the street in front of Fingerhut, which is a pretty good second choice. And since she was acoustic-only, she was bound to be a lot less distracting than Sanchez, while blocking him from taking that spot -- win-win!I still prefer the Ice Cream corner for the better foot traffic, not having to worry so much about the Gallery Girls coming out to complain, and I think the tall-plants backdrop helps diminish the car traffic noise -- but the "monitor" effect of the sound reflecting off of the glass wall across from us is pretty nice on the Fingerhut corner.
It was nice to be without Sanchez for a change, but after a little while, the guitar girl disappeared and my nemesis, the Bluegrass Boys, took over the Corner. They're not nearly as loud and obnoxious as Sanchez, but they're just so much fun that they can be equally act-destroying. The last time they appeared, I might as well have just gone home as soon as they'd started, since all my potential audience hung out with them instead of me. But this time, although a lot of people stopped to hear them (as they should!), I was actually proud/glad to be doing quite well at the same time. It helped that they did me the accidental favor by getting frequently hormonally distracted and spent as much time chatting up the girls as playing...
Earlier in the week, I had gotten inexplicably inspired to learn "Feel Like Making Love" by Bad Company (?!?), and had worked out a passable arrangement for it. And it went over pretty well, too -- lots of singing along by passers-by, and I even saw one fist-pump -- so I guess it's worth pursuing.
When we play in front of Fingerhut, I put the tip jar on the ground in front of us, and it has a color-changing glowball at the bottom, to make it more visible. Most people notice it down there, but a group of 20 or so young men in silly British "bobbie" helmet/hats went by, and one of them kicked the tip jar over. He didn't even notice (they may have been drinking a bit...), but another guy behind him did and picked the jar up and fetched the money back in. While he did that, Warren asked him who they were, and he said that they were a British soccer team called "The Charlatans". After they wandered off, it occurred to me how ironic it was that a couple of hundred regular people managed to go by, but it took a soccer player to unwittingly kick the jar over...
Anyway, we had a great response, and only got asked to turn it down by the Fingerhut ladies once (which was because they were hosting a guest lecturer). Lots of people stopped to hear a few songs, and I noticed that several of them came back around again later. And we made $97 for the evening, which felt pretty good considering the Bluegrass competition across the street.
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