Ring My Bell

I hate it when comic strip characters, even ambiguously gay ones, have way more cultural savvy than me. I had never even heard of Joshua Bell until a few days ago, but he is obviously famous enough to be a Dennis the Maestro punchline. It seems Joshua is a rock star in the classical music world and is both single and straight, not that there is anything wrong with that.

Washington Post columnist and noted prankster Gene Weingarten talked Bell into performing for nearly an hour at the entrance to the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station in DC. I am familiar with the place, having used that station for business and pleasure many times. I’ve even met fellow bloggers there since it is an easy to find and well traveled location. If you watch the video, in the far upper right is a newsstand that does way more business selling lottery tickets than magazines, even if you account for the broad selection of titles that are normally delivered in plain brown wrappers.

Weingarten wanted to know if genius would be recognized when presented in a location where it’s not usually expected. His social experiment met with deafening apathy. Bell’s open Stradivarius case collected only 32 bucks, which won’t get you nose bleed seats at most of his performances.

The long feature article has much hand wringing over the lack of culture in society and our failure to stop and hear the roses. They conclude that much of art is in the context. How true. It’s also a matter of matching material and style to the audience.

A much more successful street performer, although I hope to never see him in Carnegie Hall, is Times Square’s Naked Cowboy. On our recent band trip to New York, I was herding a group of about twenty teenagers from the Virgin Megastore to the Sam Ash music emporium so they could gawk at piccolo trumpets and enameled clarinets when I saw The Naked Cowboy drawing a crowd at the point of Duffey Square (which is really a triangle). I led the group across Seventh Avenue so they could gawk in person. One girl in our group even got up the courage to get groped by him. Those pictures are sure to be on Facebook by now.

Naked is a bit of a misnomer, the Naked Cowboy actually wears a hat, boots, and Hanes cotton briefs with his name Sharpied onto the back. His guitar has a tip jar opening and he spends more time posing than playing. One proud pair of parents had their cute daughters tag-team him while taking pictures.

He has a ready set of lines like “Take your time, I can do this all day” as he flicks his tongue suggestively that tends to speed up boyfriends taking too long fiddling with the focus. The weather that day was pretty cool but business was brisk and there was no evidence of shrinkage in the crowds around the Naked Cowboy.

So the next time Joshua Bell wants to do a little busking, I suggest he leave the three million dollar Stradivarius at home and don some tighty-whiteys instead.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: Who is your favorite street performer or where is a good place to see them?