Street Performers: A Talented Free-for-All

Eleven-year-old Adam Ho wants to be a rock star. Judging from the mob he draws at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade on weekends, he’s on his way. Adam’s a definite crowd-pleaser. He sits alone in a chair with his guitar, like a diminutive, laid-back B.B. King, and charms the socks off Promenade shoppers by playing legendary blues and rock tunes by the likes of Eric Clapton and the Beatles.

He joins the thousands of street musicians, minstrels and performers throughout history who have shamelessly put their act in front of anyone who happens to be in the area. Sometimes the act is good, sometimes less than good, but for the audience, the price is always right.

They’re not the only free show around: Excellent subsidized performers are on view regularly at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Strolling mariachis lend an authentic air to the history of downtown’s Olvera Street. Universal Studios makes sure the tourist mecca that is CityWalk has a human face by providing a steady stream of movie star impersonators. These acts are professional and rehearsed and display talent that could command high ticket prices in regular venues.

But for the unexpected and unpredictable performing experience, head to the streets. Musicians, jugglers, mimes and comics drawn by the lifestyle, the entertainment industry access or simply the compliments of an appreciative audience perform daily at such places as Pasadena’s Old Town, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and the Ocean Front Walk at Venice Beach. Sure, they’d like a donation, but they’ll perform even when their cup is half empty. Actually, anywhere there’s a crowd, a street performer might show up.

Hisao Shinagawa can be found every Sunday at the Hollywood Farmers Market entertaining passersby with his upbeat poem songs. His battered guitar has seen better days, but for the wizened Japanese American these are the best of times. His repertoire of about 200 songs reflects what he calls “social justice consciousness.”

“Street musicians get to meet all kinds of people,” says the energetic 53-year-old. “It’s even better than a coffeehouse. I like learning about people. For me, every day is a song.”

The market management screens potential performers and schedules playing times but does not pay a stipend. Destiny the Harpist and Caribbean band Trinidad and Tobago depend on that money in the cup. For the Jazz Renegades, a jam band with rotating members, it’s not always about the payout. Tenor sax player Bob Sajdak likes the casual street environment.

“I come here for the fun of it,” says Sajdak, who also plays in the Swing Daddys. “Here we can stretch out a bit more. Nobody is critical. And I get to play with different cats all the time.” The band performs jazz standards but sometimes throws in a little crowd-pleasing James Brown.

San Francisco musician Dillinger Lee Heerman, a graphic artist who travels to Los Angeles once a month to play musical water glasses (using distilled water because “L.A. tap water is so polluted that you can’t get a sound on the rim of the glass”), prefers Venice Beach as a stage rather than pay the $37 annual fee the Santa Monica Bayside District imposes on the Third Street Promenade performers. Santa Monica prefers to regularly rotate performers due to complaints from merchants who had to listen to the same acts all day and night. Heerman is not entirely thrilled with that system.

“If the city would just enforce the noise ordinance, they wouldn’t need to infringe on our constitutional freedom of speech rights,” he grouses. “The blues guys come in, set up their loud amplifiers and pretty soon the merchants start complaining. So the city creates new ordinances that require the performers to keep changing location and then charges the acts a permit fee.” Because Heerman plays infrequently, the permit fee seems a little steep to him, considering there was no fee before.

On a good weekend day, young Adam Ho can pull in $400. So his parents don’t mind paying the required yearly permit fee that the city of Santa Monica now charges performers. According to Steele Smith, community liaison for Bayside District, which oversees the area, performers rotate after two-hour sets and must set up 40 feet away from other performers and 10 feet away from merchants. Most anyone who has listened to the cacophonous clatter of Sinatra imitators, mimes with recorded accompaniment and conga players is appreciative of the new rules.

“My job is as a mediator,” Smith admits. “I do the job the police used to do.” Smith also organizes a music collective show twice a year that features his handpicked selection of the best of the permit holders. A show this spring featured the elegant, moody dulcimer music of teacher Yan-Hong Zhao, as well as Adam Ho and guitar player Chris Wilson, who is recording a self-produced CD.

Venice Beach, long a popular street musician location on summer days, has suffered in recent months because of construction on the boardwalk. Although such perennial favorites as the turbaned, much-photographed Rollerblading guitarist Harry Parry would never leave the neighborhood that made their faces so familiar, many of the regular performers have abandoned the noisy beach to relocate at the Promenade. Venice Arts Mecca is using L.A. city grant funds to start awarding small stipends of $20 to performers to lure them back to the beach. Look for Venice regulars back at the boardwalk after the recent $15-million cleanup. The biggest concentration of acts will be at the west end of Windward Avenue.

“I like the street performers,” says attorney Allan Wernick, who lives near Venice Beach. “They add to the fun of the boardwalk. But for local residents who visit certain beachfront cafes regularly, the repetitious song lists can get monotonous.”

Guitar player Mikko Manuel prefers the beach to the “concrete” of the Promenade. He has performed on streets, in casinos, in clubs and on cruise ships throughout the world and was featured on the television show “American’s Funniest People” in 1994.

He admits, though, that playing on the boardwalk is not without its problems, whether it’s the omnipresent police or complaining neighbors.

“The problem is that people move to the beach and then think the beach is their frontyard and they have a right to say what goes on there,” Manuel says. “I ask you, why would anyone move to Venice Beach for the quiet?”

In the 17 years since he has been a street musician, he has seen changes.

“If you do something funny or weird, you make the money now,” he says. “Guys who played here in the ‘70s said that crowds used to follow musicians to each location. Not anymore. Now you have to do rap or something [else that gets attention].”

To the amusement of onlookers, mime Jules Ross follows people around to get attention on the boardwalk. Ross studied with legendary mime master Marcel Marceau in Paris and has performed with ‘N Sync and Santana in large venues such as Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine.

“Other art forms need an actual theater, but the street is a theater for me,” explained Ross, who uses his beach time to work on new material. He relocated here from the Bay Area five years ago. He admits that some people get miffed when they find out Ross has been following them around, aping their movements.

“I’ve been kicked, punched, spit at and thrown in jail,” he says, strangely proud. “One cop in San Francisco made me his pet project. He told me he just didn’t like mimes. ‘I hate you guys,’ the cop said.”

Ross gets huge laughs and applause from delighted Venice Beach bystanders and is usually able to smooth the ruffled feathers of his “marks.”

Ross is quick to point out that most street performers depend on donations and would move from the street to the performing stage given the opportunity.

“We don’t really like playing for free, but if the weather is bad, that’s often what happens,” says the talkative mime.

Admittedly, some acts are entertaining because they’re just so ridiculous. There’s the guy who puts his head in a cardboard box and pretends he’s on TV. And the septuagenarian woman who unabashedly dons a red-sequined bikini and sings and plays the ukulele. Americans do love their novelty acts. We used to crowd the vaudeville and burlesque halls for such entertainment. Now, outdoor public spaces may be the last places to find buzz-saw jugglers and painters who play congas.

The offbeat performers eventually may be, in Smith’s words, “squeezed out” by bureaucracy. Merchants have been known to complain that the performers get in the way of potential shoppers. As shopping areas are remodeled, the quirky performer who follows an inner muse that leads to a wacko act in front of three people may soon be replaced by a slick, professional-sounding act. The IRS can scare off some street performers who, if truth be told, haven’t paid any taxes on their cash income. The wannabes, coulda-beens and also-rans who are a part of the rich tapestry of culture may find themselves legislated out of public spaces. Gone will be the raw, untested, unproduced performers who make audiences feel special for discovering them.

“My favorite thing is to see someone perform on the sidewalks and then appear on something like ‘The Tonight Show,’ ” says actor Jackson White with a laugh from his front-row seat at Figtree’s Cafe on the boardwalk. “People can get discovered in the street now instead of at Schwab’s drugstore. In fact, I’ve been looking for a used accordion myself!”

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Dianne Bates can be reached at Bateswrite@aol.com.