sutton030

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 ...

I passed this business some months ago, then found this story on the West Seattle Washington blog.  It is reprinted here due to the interest of so many people - lots of hits ~ Meet West Seattle’s “Psychic Barber”: He KNOWS you need a cut R ick Cook, owner of Rick’s Barber Shop at 5251 California SW (in West Seattle, Washington), has inherited both a sign and a claim to fame: “Psychic Barber.”      You’ve probably laughed, driving along California SW, when out of the corner of your eye you caught a glimpse of two white neon signs next to each other: “Psychic” “Barber.” That reaction was partly by design; after a psychic moved in next door to Rick’s Barber Shop, Rick had a matching white neon “Barber” sign made by the same person who created the “Psychic” sign.      Now, Rick owns the “Psychic” portion of the signage as well, and his front window proudly announces “Psychic Barber.”   The Psychic Barber attention came after Rick had already been...