Keith at MADE in Long Beach, Sunday, 21June2015

A nice lady on Facebook wanted to promote her store by having buskers out front. Cheaper than renting one of those blow-up tube guys, I guess.

It's a store full of locally made groovy stuff: bags, jewelry, soap, jelly, coffee blends, re-purposed thrift store clothes, etc. It's in downtown Long Beach, but I was told that there was $5 all day parking nearby, which I couldn't find. So I ended up in a "2 Hours Free!" parking structure and figured I'd go back and drive out and back in at the two hour mark, as also advised by the nice but devious lady.

Anyway, nice wide sidewalk out front, but it's on the east side of the street so it's in broad sunlight, starting at 2pm in the middle of June. I thought, well, at least I have a hat...

So I played. And boiled. A few people walked by, and even fewer put a buck in the jar, though I suspect it was more out of pity for my sweat than respect for the music. Nobody stopped to hear a whole song, but one guy with his little girl promised to come back for one. And didn't.

So, at 4:00 I decided to cut my losses and get into some air conditioning before I passed out and broke my guitar. I went into the store to tell the guy Thanks but No Thanks, and got roped into posing for the professional photographer that was taking pictures of people going "Shhhh" for their upcoming "Secret Art Show" promotional material. And they couldn't wait to get some shots of the guy in the funny hat...

That delay put me just over the two FREE! hours, so I probably didn't even break even, but, you know, new and different experiences...

I did message the nice lady, telling her that it wasn't *that* bad, and that I'd love to come back sometime in the evening when the storefront would be in shade, at least. Or even play, like, inside. No reply. Probably embarrassed about nearly killing me...