New Places, New Faces, Less Business

Yesterday, I decided that I should try busking in some new places. Business is pretty good at Tori, but I haven't tried selling my stories in other spots and, who knows?, I might make more money elsewhere.

So I went to Esplanadi, the lovely little touristy park near the port. It's right next to all the ritzy places in Helsinki – the most expensive restaurants, stores and the most expensive lodging around: Hotel Kämp.

Esplanadi, Helsinki – Photo via www.lomamatkailija.com

I saw down right on the main gravel promenade and oh, jeez, business was slow. I got lots of smiles, and lots of photos of me taken, but that's about it. A young couple came up to me, holding hands, and asked me to write a story about them. It was so cheesy and cutesie – which is generally not how I write. Well, I can be cheesy at times, but I'm not a cutesie writer. They paid money, though, so I wrote it.

A lot of people tried to take photos of me without me noticing. Like I'm not going to see you standing there pointing a camera at me, even if you are standing to the side? Ha. I don't really mind. I'm in a set of some random person's vacation photos. I was considering charging for photos, like the old ladies in Peru do, but that just feels so dirty to me. It's sleazy and I can't bring myself to ask for money for a stupid picture that I would totally take and not want to pay for myself. Anyway, though it is important for me to make money to pay rent and food and such, it's more important that I'm doing this because it makes me happy – not to be a sleazy tourist-trapping busker.

One woman walked by and said, "I LOVE THE IDEA!" but just kept walking. It doesn't help if you love the idea but don't buy from me, I thought. But then she came back five minutes later and told me she loved the idea so much that she had to buy a story. She didn't have time, so she bought one of my ready-to-go stories. This one was inspired by my friend Frank's prompt: "Janet opened the envelope with her test results." It's about a woman who is excited to find out she's not pregnant, despite the fact that she's never had sex.

Then I was having some technical difficulties with my typewriter. It – I don't know – just stopped working. It wouldn't spin the ribbon wheel, so I could type, but the characters would become more faint because of the used bit of ribbon. Other strange things were going on, so I tinkered with it for a good 20 minutes until I miraculously fixed it. Don't give up on me, David.

My last and final customer was a guy who had been looking for a present for his girlfriend. He said he didn't think he would be able to find anything, and that a poem by me was probably the best idea. So I wrote a poem about exactly that: the boy was looking for a present for her, but didn't want to buy something that's a "drag" (as I say in my poem) like a hat or clothes or lipstick, and so the poem is the best option because it shows more clearly what she means to him. Another cheesy piece of writing.

Esplanadi wasn't that great of a spot. People stop to look at me, but they don't stop to buy from me. I'm a tourist attraction more than a writer. And then people don't really have time to wait for my stories, so I think that's another reason business was slow.

But most importantly, the clientele are completely different. Instead of writing fun poems about a straw hat, I'm writing cutesie, couply stories and poems. It's not bad to write the occasional lovey dovey piece of crap, but I can't have that being my main source of income. It would drive me nuts to write "Roses are red, violets are blue" type things all day.

So today, I'm headed back to Ravintola Tori, in the hopes that I'll get some cool (and perhaps generous?) customers.

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David E. Sugar – Although You May Laugh