I spent many years busking, on and off. Sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time; sometimes made a whack of money, sometimes made nothing. I loved it.

However, as the years went by, and I became more tied into the "straight" world in other aspects of my life, I unfortunately came to realize the degree of contempt felt for buskers by the general public. Although the greatest modern sin seems to be to "care what anyone thinks", I'm a weak and sensitive enough soul that to some extent I do care, and it reached the point, fairly early on, at which I felt I had to hide this seemingly unsavoury aspect of my misspent youth. I would find it virtually impossible to go back to busking now, much as I wish I could.

As a teenager, when I started seeing buskers in larger cities, I always admired them as generous artists who were contributing something wonderful to society. I just assumed others felt the same way. And while many indeed do, the vast majority seem to equate busking with begging. One approving comment I used to get fairly frequently was, "At least you're doing something to make some money; not like these other guys ... ", as if what I was doing was just one step away from begging. This impression is actually fostered by some buskers, as the one mentioned in a post above, who apparently went out of his way to be pitiable. This view of busking as glorified begging is reflected in the disapproval of the busker who was seen driving a fancy car, and comparing him with the person on welfare driving a Cadillac (or whatever it was). To me, this comparison makes absolutely no sense - but I understand how it makes sense to many people ...

Anyway, buskers - more power to you! But be careful about how implicated you become in the straight world. Avoid it like the plague.