Summer Vacation in the NYC Subway

Today was a quiet day –

The guy who is a percussionist walked by and introduced me to his mother who is visiting NYC.

Some kids asked me to play the theme from ‘Harry Potter’. I asked them how they knew that I could play that and they said they heard me do it some other day.

The blind lady, the toothless guy who always claps his hands when I finish a song – they seem to pass by the station every day and they always say a friendly ‘hello’ to me.

A lady looked in the trash can. I wasn’t paying much attention to her so I don’t know if she through something in or took something out. But then she walked to the advertisement of Russian Vodka on the wall to my left and…proceeded to wipe it clean with a rag… She didn’t clean any of the other ads in the station, not have I ever seen anybody clean these ads, not did the ad look dirty… When she was done cleaning the ad she walked away.
I looked at her in surprise. She looked back at me with surprise, as if she was thinking “well, of course I’m cleaning the ad!”

Thank you to Margaret Mendel for the photos!

At 3pm Alberto, the Andean flute player showed up. I gave him the spot even though he doesn’t have a permit, which means I could have stayed to play longer. He is a very nice guy. He has been in New York for one month now and will stay for another month. He is studying to be a lawyer in Ecuador. Every summer he goes on vacation for two months to play music in the NYC subway. He has already done this on 5 summers.