Aaron Bernard of Bethel Park has been a busker in Florida and enjoyed them in other towns, but since returning recently after eight years away from Pittsburgh noticed a dearth of such troubadours. He and his two partners in the multimedia company TONeRWOODS Productions have been filming buskers - and interviewing them about their lives - since June; their effort will culminate in a one-hour simultaneous busking fest Downtown called On Every Corner, from 11 a.m. to noon on Fri., Oct. 15. They're hoping for a spring film release and perhaps a music CD.
On Every Corner's roster, formed with the help of those performance pushers in Busk Pittsburgh, contains fire eaters, balloon artists, jugglers, dancers, and a violinist and flutist, among others. So far, though, there are no living statues - a busk category virtually unknown here but common elsewhere, Bernard says.
"That's one of the biggest ones, one of the highest paying ones," says Bernard. It was his sometime avocation in St. Augustine. "You don't move until they throw some money in. They throw more money in, you move some more. If I wasn't filming the event, I would have liked to have tried it in Pittsburgh."
