My sister took her 7yo son to Seattle for the week and had a great time. I asked about street performers and she said they saw a magician at Pike Place Market...

...he physically stopped her son to show him a trick, did a single round of sponge balls (hold this one, mine's gone, it's in your hand!), and then held out his hat to my sister, who was ****ed. Unfortunately, she gave him a buck as my nephew asked if he knew any more tricks. He waggled his hat and said, "That's up to your Mom." She declined and they took off.

Unfortunately, that was my nephew's only exposure to busking.

Jay

Sorry your sister and nephew met an idiot.

Several years ago my wife and I saw Tom Frank perform at Pike Place Market -- *that* would have been a great intro to street performing for my nephew!

I don't know who this "busker" was but I've been to Pike Place market. I bet without out some serious "make them stay, make them pay" chops this guy has gotten stiffed ALOT. So, he developed a technique. A rather poor one but a technique none the less. I couldn't imagine busking in a place like that. You are almost guaranteed to be working a very small trickle everyday. (I remember it being very narrow) and because of the odd combination of it being a market but yet a public place, I bet many tourists are not familiar with the busking business model.

I've never been to Pike Place Market either. However, there are venues where only trickle shows are possible, or, sometimes, "door front" or "sidewalk" shows. In these situations, shows, of necessity, have to be short, sometimes consisting of only one or two tricks. And a busker has to communicate he expects to be tipped in some fashion, or he might not get paid! I don't see anything wrong, per se, with gesturing with the hat--many buskers do just that. There's a fine line--if a busker is too aggressive in asking for money, he can turn people off and annoy them, and not get paid. If he doesn't ask for the money though, his chances of getting paid go way down. I don't feel that the busker at Pike Place Market was necessarily off base in his approach, even if he did turn one person off with his solicitation.

The one time I was at Pike Place Market there was a magician doing some okay card work. Instead of asking for tips, he was selling instructional DVD's of what he was doing. I didn't see him do any original work, so I'm not sure if he was legit. Still, that got me remembering the days back in the '70s when I was pitching Svengali Decks at fairs and flea markets. That was a hard way to make a buck!

My friend Niko, the magician on a motocycle is from Seattle and busk a PPM. He does a half-circle show and he's definitely not the guy mentioned. But if you follow Niko on Facebook you can see when he returns to town. He's currently in Europe.