How often do you help buskers? (how much, live, subway)

[biramar]

You seen some buskers who spray black/tan their faces or suit up as spiderman or batman and solicit money in your cities? How often do generous people in your city help a bro out? (Or you just look away and get movin on).
Is there an IDEA how much money they can make in a day if they're doing great?

(Honestly answers are most appreciated and given the positive rate)

[Fat Freddy]

Maybe in New York City the bums dress up in costumes, but around here they dress like bums.

[lammius]

Tourists give them money for sure. I have no idea how much they earn.

[Hemlock140]

That's something I have never seen in Seattle, our panhandlers dress like they have slept on the sidewalk in the same clothes for months - which they have.

[Creekcat]

They have a name for costumed panhandlers?

[animatedmartian]

Busker seems to be an across the pond term for street performers.

AFAIK, Times Square in NYC and Hollywood Boulevard are really the only places where people dress up like superheros or pop-culture characters and wander around waiting for tourists to come up to them. Though street performing in general tends to be pretty common in most US downtown areas. There's documentaries of people who pretty much spend their lives doing this sort of thing (the costumed performers) and it's definitely not glamorous. Most people aren't doing it for the money and if they were then they wouldn't be performing on the street.

[Port Pitt Ash]

Originally Posted by biramar

You seen some buskers who spray black/tan their faces or suit up as spiderman or batman and solicit money in your cities? Is there an IDEA how much money they can make in a day if they're doing great?

I'm pretty sure they aren't allowed to solicit and can only accept tips.

Confessions of a Superhero was a good documentary about this lifestyle.

Another one I watched had to do with people going to NYC to become buskers. If I remember correctly they said the best ones made something like $100 day I believe. Although out of the four or five people featured in the show all but one washed out in a matter of days to weeks. Some of the NYC buskers were extremely professional and highly talented, but either seemed to be doing it for the love of it and/or because they didn't fill a marketable niche.

In any case it seems to be a hard life where you're exposed to occasional violence, people trying to steal your tips, and the elements.

Not to mention it seems like you need a lot of people passing by to make your tips. A lot of cities seem to make you pay for a permit to be a street performer and some even make you pass an audition before they will allow it.

Plus you need to know how to "seed the pot", be a performer in addition to being talented, and how to gather a crowd.

Every midsize city I've been in the buskers didn't seem to make all that much. New Orleans might be the exception to this.

I'd imagine there's a reason you don't see people lining up to do this and the ones who do sticking around for only a short time.

AND just from the replies on this post I think a lot of people confuse buskers with panhandlers thus creating a stigma, which would add friction to people stopping to give you money.

There was also the violinist subway experiment. In the DC metro at rush hour Joshua Bell (one of the best violinists in the world) played and only made something like $150. So...just imagine how much a so-so performer is going to do.