Again, call me biased because I happen to live in the area, but I think that the St. Lawrence Market neighborhood is the best area in which to live, in the entire downtown core!

This past weekend played host to Buskerfest, and I took a few choice photos that I’d like to share… 

“Busking” is the practice of performing in public places for tips and gratuities.

Usually, we ignore the man in the subway playing his violin, or the homeless guy outside the LCBO playing Johnny Cash songs on his acoustic guitar.  But every August, the St. Lawrence Market plays host to Buskerfest, and street performers or “buskers” fill Front Street from Jarvis right through to Yonge, and entertain us as we stuff ourselves with incredible food.

I spent both Friday night and Saturday afternoon at Buskerfest; handing out toonies and five-dollar-bills to performers while seeing how many crepes I could eat without being sick.

Here are a few of my observations… 

Here we have “The Human Beat Box” who was phenomenal, if you have an appreciation for the art of beat-boxing.  Nobody beats the legendary Rahzel, but The Human Beat Box worked 4-5 shows per day for three days in a row and he earned every single penny he received!  He entertained the crowds with a majority of Michael Jackson songs.  I overheard a stupid girl telling her fiancee that “this is soooo fake,” to which he replied, “Oh I know, it’s physically impossible to do what he’s doing – what a joke.”  I wanted to smack them both…

You can tell how good a performer is by the size of the crowd, and the 1000 – 1500 people who circled around this guy watched him combine chainsaws and mini-scooters.  I can’t imagine that’s ever backfired…

I have no clue how this guy intended to get tips – he had no bucket in front of him!  I just kinda felt bad for him when I pictured the conversation he had to have with his folks – “Mom….Dad….I wanna drop out of Medical School and be a really tall guy who walks on stilts!”

This guy did not entertain me at all!  He had a Tina Turner soundtrack playing while using a marionette to act out her performance.  Maybe I had become spoiled by all the chainsaw and fire antics, but I didn’t spend a second longer than it took to snap this photo watching him…

Let’s take a brief moment to appreciate some FOOD!  I had two crepes each day, and neither were the “dinner crepes” that you see this girl making.  Smear some chocolate on that bad-boy and I’m fed…

These gyros were the best food I ate all weekend.  Messy – yes.  But they make you go back and order two more…

Since when did it become “the in thing” to eat so much corn?  I just wanted to know where the guy in the photo above was able to get a yellow shirt that simply said “CORN” on the front and back.  I’d love to wear that out to a bar one night.  What an instant-conversation starter!

This was by far the most innovative display of the festival!  This guy sat at a makeshift computer table in a rubber pool with all kinds of tubes attached to him that sprayed water everywhere – but only if the people on the bikes (see guy in left) pedaled fast enough to power the sprayer!  The kids absolutely loved this one!

Here is one busker/artist who chose a weather-dependant exhibit.  “Chalk Man” was here last year as well, and thankfully the rain held off this year to allow him to give us this rendering of Iron Man!

Have you ever seen a child so unhappy while getting his face painted by a professional makeup artist?

There were 2-3 of these guys over the weekend.  Paint yourself silver, stand really still on a box, and move every few seconds.  Meh.  I’ve seen better tricks…

What’s more impressive: the flexibility and poise of this gymnast or the Toronto skyline behind the parkette?  Either way, it made for a fantastic photo!

“Mysterion” is actually a good friend of my buddy Ryan.  I saw him perform at The Corner House a few months ago, and I got to be in one of his tricks.  He certainly relies on the honesty of the participant, since when he guessed my numbers correctly I said “That’s right,” even though I was curious to know how he’d react if I lied…

This guy takes the cake, no pun intended.  He set up his folding lawn chair in the middle of the street, perhaps with the anticipation of a performance eventually taking place around him.  If not, he would simply continue to eat one hoagie per minute, and then he would become the performance!

And finally, above you see “The Fire Guy” on the main stage in the parkette.  I watched his whole routine in the dark on Friday night, and even more impressive than his fire-antics was his personality and sense of humor.

My favorite line was when he looked over at this young couple – a beautiful blonde girl and her Brad-Pitt-like boyfriend, and asked, “Hey dude, is that your girlfriend?”  When the young man replied, “yep,” Fire Guy shot back, “Hah, small world…”

He saved his best for last as he successfully jumped through the star-of-fire on his skateboard, but unlike the first night when he had all of Front Street to land on, in the photo above, he had only about five-feet of stage to hit before he had to jump off into the crowd.

The two videos of the jumps can be seen here and here.