I’m in San Francisco for NetWork, a GigaOm convening on the Future of Work. After a fantastic sprint of a day meeting visionaries and thought leaders that left my head spinning, I boarded the evening shuttle to BART.
Two stops, a wave of my BART pass, and I was ascending the staircase on Market Street. “Da-da-da-dan-da-dah…” a booming tenor grew louder and louder.
“Click-click-click-click.” Head down, I texted. And in the filmstrip that is my unconscious mind, I saw the Virgin Record Store that once stood on the corner of Market and Powell. But then I stopped, recalling that The Gap now occupies that particular location.
The voice was coming from a man at the top of the stairs – a busker.
Dressed in a close-to-threadbare T-shirt and well-worn jeans, and accompanied by a cassette-playing boombox that needed an occasional <whack> to keep the speakers going, was “Steve” – who’s name was actually something more like “Sveta” but he’d grown tired of having to repeat it and adopted something simpler for others, even as it gave him trouble.
I soon found myself among an audience as unlikely as they come: four teen-aged men of color, one towering over his peers despite his intentional slump – all jeweled, inked, and wearing boxers prominently displayed above the waistlines of their Levi’s; a Japanese tourist in his early 20s, toting rain gear and a Nikon at-the-ready; and me, a smallish female in business attire with ever-present laptop, scarf, and Oregonian fleece.
We stood in silence, equally agog. It was well into the refrain, before one of the teens began video-recording the performance with his mobile. Documenting this experience did not occur to me until much later, so I was only able to capture The last six seconds of Sveta’s aria.
There was a moment of magic in this experience. One of the young men let tears roll down his cheek, prompting mine to flow, too. We looked back and forth knowingly at each other and at Sveta, affirming the magic of our experience and connecting across every conceivable demographic, geographic, social or other attribute that might otherwise keep us apart.
The smallest young man, who had been capturing video, was the first to speak, “Dog, that was bad. Are you on YouTube? Where are you from?” Followed quickly by “Where’s that?” and accompanied by authentic expressions of interest all around. In a flurry, email addresses were exchanged – I offered my card in hopes one of them would email me the video link.
Sveta packed up his things while all of us scrounged around for a dollar, having almost forgotten that part. The Japanese tourist gave $5. We waved to one another. The young gents went one way, Mr. Nikon and I headed up the hill to Geary Street.
We conversed in a combination of broken English and hand signals (his English being far superior to my Japanese). He indicated he’d arrived the day before in a torrential downpour, giving us something to laugh about as I had deplaned at the same time and been equally soaked. “But today…” he pointed to a flyer for Alcatraz and grinned.
He veered right. Planning to continue to Sutter Street, I asked whether he need any help finding his next destination. He thanked me, nodded, bowed, and then pointed to a photo of Sveta in his camera and whispered, “This man better than Alcatraz.”
Indeed.