TMcG

It's a good point, about the forty bucks an hour. I sent the link to a few Irish musicians I play with, and one of them wrote back pointing out that someone we know has been able to pay her rent by busking in the New York subways. (It also helps if you're standing on a platform where people are perforce waiting for the train to come, or playing in, say, Penn Station, where people who arrive early are hanging out waiting for their tracks to be announced, not mostly passing through hoping to catch the next subway or trying get to work in time to grab a coffee from the coffee cart in the lobby or whatever.)

And about the instrument...as I was reading, I had a niggling sense of discomfort from just the concept of that instrument being played in such a generally bustling place.