sutton031

M eet Hans Georg Baumgartner, The Night Watchman of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany.  He's the fellow in the photo left dressed in black holding the nasty looking weapon - an hellebarde , a medieval weapon that combines a seven foot long spear and axe used in the day to keep the local drunks in line. From the earliest years of civilization in Europe until about 1920, night watchmen were common, working from 9:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m., keeping an eye out for trespassers, drunks and especially fire.  Even though the citizens trusted him to keep the streets inside the high stone walls safe, his pay was low and his status lower. Only the gravedigger and the executioner were lower in status. *  *  *      Herr Baumgartner is a Re-enactor , the highest form of tour guide in the industry.  The basic job is that of a Tour Guide , sometimes referred to in the tourism industry as a Step-on Guide , referring to the guides who "s...

Earning a Living as a Bootblack "Shoeshine boy on the street during the Depression, circa 1929." Can someone make a living shining shoes in today's economy?  At on time there shoe shine boys as they were called were found on street corners across the country, thousands of them.  Many were from poor families and worked to help support themselves and their families.  Today, I found three established shoe shine stands in downtown Seattle, plus two bootblacks, the traditional name of those who shine shoes, working on the streets of Seattle. Meet George Johnson, age 74 on October 20th, a self-employed operator of a shoe shine stand in downtown Seattle's Rainier Place.  George has been shining shoes for the last sixty years, starting in Arkansas and ending up some thirty years ago at the Washington Athletic club a few blocks from his current location. "Sixty years," I asked him the day we met.  "You ever think of retiring?" "Gonna work until I can...

Amanda  Plays a Mean Blues Harp When Amanda Grzadzielewski was four years old, her parents purchased her a piano and paid for piano lessons.    Three years later she was with her parents visiting Seattle’s famous Pike Place Market when she heard two musicians playing and talking with a crowd of listeners that surrounded them.   Her reaction was to say to herself, “I want to do that.” Fast forward to 2012, and Amanda and parents have moved permanently to Poulsbo near Seattle and the University of Washington where her father studied mathematics.   True to her dream, she’s busking for passersby at Pike Street Market to earn an income, to find performance opportunities and to find students in her three instruments of choice, piano, guitar (since age 14) and harp (the past three years). Arriving in Poulsbo just this past June, she went to work introducing herself to business owners and civic associations, printing up a business card then dropping by various relate...

Busking at Seattle’s Pike Place Market If you’re not familiar with the terms “busker” and “busking”, well, according to the Oxford English Dictionary the word busk is an English verb dating to a 17 th century French word meaning “to sell” that came to mean “to play music in the street or other public place for voluntary donations” in 19 th century Britain.   So a busker plays music in the street. . . you get the idea.   And busking can be a profitable business for many street performers, at times the musician’s only source of income. One place in this country with a strong busking tradition is New Orleans where musicians, often world-class players, set up in the streets of the French Quarter with a hat on the sidewalk for tips - usually seeded by the busker with a few one and five dollar bills to suggest an appropriate donation.   Over one three week period I watched a succession of wonderful musicians busking in front of the world-famous Cafe' Du Monde'.   Always ...