In The Zone (Part III)...
Friday nights are always weird ... tonight was no exception. I was in the zone, but I have no idea where my audience was! It started to get weird early on ...
... as I was setting up, a guy comes along and asks how long I've been doing this. I respond with my usual joke ("Oh ... about 10 minutes now"). Before I could dish out the punch line ("oh you meant overall! I thought you meant tonight!"), he takes it upon himself to offer me some unsolicited advice. He claims if I put a couple of dollars in my tip jar, I will make more money. I politely thanked him and went back to what I was doing ... somehow, I fail to see how placing my own money in the tip jar is going to make me any more money (hehe). Sounds like Enron Accounting to me (hehe).
So I get into doing the first show, when some punk kids push their way to the front row and proceed to heckle me. I decide to take action, dish out a retort ... then walk right past them and start to give away some balloon animals to the people in the second row. They take the hint, and after they leave I resume the show.
It gets weird this time of year - see, when summer first starts the kids have been in school all year and every goes on a family vacation and they have fun as a family. But now, these kids have been stuck in the house with their parents for a month and the parents are glad to get rid of them. That results in more kids running around unsupervised and I end up becoming a baby sitter. Oh well, you have to take the good with the bad when you do anything.
I made a child cry tonight - that is a new experience for me. For years, I have watched kids see the clowns and get all scared and run and hide and even cry, but I have never had a kid start crying because they saw me. Of course, I've never worn top hat and tails before either so I imagine that while the vast overall majority of the kids are not scared of magicians ... there are a few that are. So mom and dad are pushing this kid in a stroller towards me when the kid starts crying ... Dana (you remember Dana, my girlfriend) was on the phone with me at the time, and made the comment "yea that's how I reacted when I first saw you too". Geeze, see what I have to put up with here? hehe.
So tips are always slow on Fridays - I expect that. Most people wouldn't, I mean ... you would think that Friday night would be a prime night that all street performers eagerly work. Not me - I know better. When in Myrtle Beach, Friday night means the people in town have been here all week and they are strung out and broke.
This is where I feel sorry for the weekend warriors - you know, the performers that come out once a week or once a month when they can. They have a bad night, and then spend the next month trying to figure out what they did wrong. The truth of the matter is, they didn't do anything wrong - it was the CROWD! You simply can't control all aspects of your show, if your crowd doesn't have any money they can't tip as well as you would like. You just can't squeeze blood from a turnip, it doesn't work.
I wish I had some new pics to post, but we are once again falling behind in the video department ... I have the weekend off, so I'll try to post some by Monday but no promises - I am working on sewing myself a new jacket so I may or may not have time for video.
-JoeJoe
... as I was setting up, a guy comes along and asks how long I've been doing this. I respond with my usual joke ("Oh ... about 10 minutes now"). Before I could dish out the punch line ("oh you meant overall! I thought you meant tonight!"), he takes it upon himself to offer me some unsolicited advice. He claims if I put a couple of dollars in my tip jar, I will make more money. I politely thanked him and went back to what I was doing ... somehow, I fail to see how placing my own money in the tip jar is going to make me any more money (hehe). Sounds like Enron Accounting to me (hehe).
So I get into doing the first show, when some punk kids push their way to the front row and proceed to heckle me. I decide to take action, dish out a retort ... then walk right past them and start to give away some balloon animals to the people in the second row. They take the hint, and after they leave I resume the show.
It gets weird this time of year - see, when summer first starts the kids have been in school all year and every goes on a family vacation and they have fun as a family. But now, these kids have been stuck in the house with their parents for a month and the parents are glad to get rid of them. That results in more kids running around unsupervised and I end up becoming a baby sitter. Oh well, you have to take the good with the bad when you do anything.
I made a child cry tonight - that is a new experience for me. For years, I have watched kids see the clowns and get all scared and run and hide and even cry, but I have never had a kid start crying because they saw me. Of course, I've never worn top hat and tails before either so I imagine that while the vast overall majority of the kids are not scared of magicians ... there are a few that are. So mom and dad are pushing this kid in a stroller towards me when the kid starts crying ... Dana (you remember Dana, my girlfriend) was on the phone with me at the time, and made the comment "yea that's how I reacted when I first saw you too". Geeze, see what I have to put up with here? hehe.
So tips are always slow on Fridays - I expect that. Most people wouldn't, I mean ... you would think that Friday night would be a prime night that all street performers eagerly work. Not me - I know better. When in Myrtle Beach, Friday night means the people in town have been here all week and they are strung out and broke.
This is where I feel sorry for the weekend warriors - you know, the performers that come out once a week or once a month when they can. They have a bad night, and then spend the next month trying to figure out what they did wrong. The truth of the matter is, they didn't do anything wrong - it was the CROWD! You simply can't control all aspects of your show, if your crowd doesn't have any money they can't tip as well as you would like. You just can't squeeze blood from a turnip, it doesn't work.
I wish I had some new pics to post, but we are once again falling behind in the video department ... I have the weekend off, so I'll try to post some by Monday but no promises - I am working on sewing myself a new jacket so I may or may not have time for video.
-JoeJoe
posted by JoeJoe at 11:13 PM
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