In the picture above, a self-professed “triple gold equivalent” pop street band is performance bombed by a man in a Leopold Bloom costume on Crown Alley off of Temple Bar in Dublin on Bloomsday. While the street band was quite good, they clearly had nothing on Leopold Bloom. Mr. Bloom, who might have been a bit on the tippling way, spent a solid twenty minutes dancing for the crowd and playing air guitar on his stately cane. The band, for the most   part, seemed amused by his antics, though the lead singer, of course, did not.

The first time I saw a musical street performer was in Dublin. This is odd, because I had certainly visited cities before that one. I had even lived in (or in close proximity to) a couple–first Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which I went to highschool near, and then Burlington, Vermont, where I attended college. I never lived IN the city of Philadelphia, though, and Burlington is Vermont’s equivalent of a city–that is, rather small.

It’s rather interesting to think about what the different types of performers in a city might say about that city. I found Paris had mimes in an abundance in public areas, and the musicians could only really be found in the connecting points between metro stations (though there is one old man who has been lip syncing opera in the same square, day after day, since I was at least the age of twelve). I’ve always gotten a sense that the culture in the more tourist oriented destinations in Paris is largely designed to be exxaggerated in order to more clearly communicated to a diverse audience. the other hand, Dublin seems mostly to be filled with living statues and musicians. Given the city’s tumultuous history with both memorialization and music, this also makes sense. In any case, it’s interesting to see people literally performing the values of the places they live and work in.