Street Mojo

By Mark McGuigan
Staff Writer

Sept. 5 -- It’s show time, and street performers along the Promenade are going into overdrive vying for attention. These modern day troubadours receive no curtain call, no spotlight and no dressing room, but their energy courses through the strip like an invisible charge.

At one end of the three-block stretch, an elderly man turns brightly colored balloons into cartoon animals, the rubber creatures springing to life with a few simple twists of the wrist. Nearby, a guitarist lays down a Hendrix riff, while across the street a monkey, dressed in miniature dungarees, dances for an organ grinder.

And this is just the 4 p.m. show.

“The entertainment they provide is an important part of what makes the Third Street Promenade popular,” says Mark Richter, who is in charge of Bayside for the City's Department of Resource Management. “The Promenade is a combination of elements -- retail, restaurants, entertainment, movie theaters -- and the street performers are truly an integral part of that.”

For the nearly 700 street performers on the City’s books, the three-block stretch of asphalt, glass and brick is more than a place to spend an idle afternoon. It’s a constantly shifting cabaret, a living stage where shop fronts are backdrops and great acts soar and bad ones flop, 50 times a day. “We have a core group of maybe 20 performers who are here week after week, year after year, and everyone else around that is like a rotating repertory company,” says Steele Smith, who oversees the everyday spectacle as venue manager for the Bayside District Corporation. “You just never know who is going to be here.”

This heady mix of talent on the tarmac is what helps draw more than three million tourists to the Promenade each year. And while performers appreciate the fact that there’s a hefty chunk of loose change up for grabs at all times, money is just one of the reasons they come.

There's also the energy generated by the constantly milling crowds strolling along the sun-soaked outdoor venue, a frenetic kinetic energy that resonates to their acts.

“When I’m introducing who we are and building up the energy (of the audience), I’ll find out how their energy is by looking and speaking to them,” explains Carlos Miller, a break-dancer who has been performing on the Promenade for five years. “On Third Street, the energy is good.”

Then there’s always the chance of finding the perfect Hollywood ending, the chance of being discovered and ushered into the limelight. The Promenade is in such close proximity to the entertainment industry that performers just never know who might be standing in the crowd taking in their show.

Even Steven Spielberg has come knocking on one occasion, flicking his card into the hat of one unsuspecting performer because he liked their music so much, Smith says. The Promenade already has been a springboard for Broadway, with one performer hired to play the part of Timone the singing hyena in “The Lion King.”

“What you’ve got walking around on the Promenade uniquely are people in the industry who may be able to change very quickly the direction in which you’re going,” Smith says. "You have tremendous exposure here."

“I have to give it up to Third Street because they gave us an opportunity,” says Miller, who has just finished balancing on one-hand and contorting his lower body as though the bones in his legs were molten rubber. “You don’t get opportunities like this to come out every weekend, every day and do what you like.”

Although anyone with a permit can lay claim to a slab of asphalt for a couple of hours, even talented performers still require the skill to organize and control a crowd of completely random people for even a short period of time.

“It’s not just talent; you’ve got to be a good people person. You’ve got to be able to communicate well outside of your art,” says Robert, a street artist who has been drawing for 37 years. “Art is one thing, but person-to-person is another.”

With so many choices, people can afford to pick and choose what they want to see and what hat to fill with change. That's why performers must cultivate a thick skin to shield themselves from the relentless barrage of indifference a performance is subjected to day after day.

“You have to be very comfortable with the fact that you’re playing to a mobile audience and the fact that you’re playing your heart out and that really almost nobody is listening most of the time,” Smith says. “You have to have that thick skin and you have to be enjoying what you’re doing enough to make it worthwhile to suffer that.”

But swaddling the ego in the mental equivalent of rhinoceros hide is not something a person can cultivate overnight. It takes practice and an incredible amount of self belief.

“I guess you’ve got to be able to not be easily intimidated if you’re going to succeed out here,” says Derek, a performer whose act involves turning himself into a three-foot homage to the King, aptly titled “Elfis.”

“A lot of people stand there and enjoy your show, then not give you any money and just walk away. You can’t let it get to you.”

If thoughts of rejection on a daily basis don’t reduce the would-be performer to a blubbering wreck and if they can muster the mental toughness required to drown out the competing background din of street traffic, vendors and other performers, then success could be only a final ingredient away.

Call it “street mojo” -- the magical element that makes a crowd of people stop in their tracks and gather around performers like errant satellites, as though drawn by the gravity of some strange attractive force.

“Your core talent needs to be good whatever it is you’re doing, but the people who survive have this second talent which is somehow ‘street performing’ and that’s a difficult one to describe,” Smith explains. “Causing people to stop and take an interest in you and ultimately put something in your hat is a whole separate thing.”

In addition to the money and crowds, an equally large part of the allure of the Promenade, performers say, is the culture of equality, democracy and tolerance fostered among street performers by city officials.

In bygone times, a person wanting to perform on the Promenade had to stake out a territory and defend it from all-comers. But in 1999, officials in Downtown stepped in with a more equitable solution to territorial disputes. Nowadays, the allocation of places works on a rotational basis. A performer requests a spot in advance, and, if available, a 10-foot square section of sidewalk becomes his or her stage for two hours. Once the time is up, a new performer takes over. This is what Smith calls the “elegant system.”

“There was initially a culture here which was more like Venice, and that was survival of the fittest, survival of the strongest and sometimes the most intimidating,” Smith says. “But this system is more democratic in the sense that over time, it’s kind of weeded that element out.”

Not only did the new ordinance bring an end to Darwinian street law, it also helped ease the friction between street performers and neighboring merchants, Smith says.
“There’s been a big change from when I started in 1999,” Smith says. “The merchants and a lot of the residents had a hostile attitude toward the street performers.”

Much of the hostility stemmed from the system in place before 1999, when a performer could select a location on the street and bang out the same soulful off-key tune eight hours a day, seven days a week in the same location with relative impunity. The result was mental torture for many merchants.

“Because we can’t control talent, I can’t stop a lousy drummer from being in front of your store," Smith says. "If that lousy drummer is going to be in front of your store for eight hours a day, it is going to make you angry, period.”

With the new rotation system, merchants no longer have to pay bad performers to stay away from their premises – a transaction that was not unheard of in the past, according to Smith.

“The rotation at least gave us the ability to say you have to suffer this for two hours and then it’s gone and something new will be in its place. That is the thing that reduced the friction between the merchants and the performers.”

The sun is setting, and the crowds are growing larger. Children of all ages stop and stare in wonderment as Stuart Chandler, an eight-year veteran of Third Street, conjures animals, flowers and cartoon characters from ordinary balloons, the creations springing seemingly from nowhere. He pauses and ponders the keys to success on the bustling strip.

“You’ve got to have presence out here," says Chandler, who has an M.A in English literature. "You’ve got to be able to register, got to be able to talk to people, got to be able to get along with the kids.

“You’ve got to have confidence. You can’t get scared. You’ve got to have a certain amount of personal integrity and courage. You need a lot of energy, the amount of energy that allows you to project yourself out there.”