Street Performers in Paris

One of my goals while in Paris was to see some street performers. I think it is so cool that people showcase their talents (albeit some rather bizarre) in this way. I can only imagine it is more profitable for these young men than bagging groceries at the local SuperU. (Incidentally, grocery stores don't employ people to bag your groceries for you - you have to do it yourself). And I hope it means they are earning enough to keep them from attempting other less safe, less legal forms of street enterprise.

The first performance we encountered was a guy playing an amped guitar on the steps to Sacre Coeur. But we were quickly distracted from appreciating his campy cover tunes by this other young man and his balancing ball. In the photo below he is about 15 feet off the ground, having shimmied up the lamppost with the ball on his head the entire way. He also did all sorts of acrobatic maneuvers on a wall, all of which included the ball never touching the ground. It was pretty amazing.

Besides musicians in the subways and artists in the courtyards, the performance highlight for me was coming across dancers on the Champs-Elysee. I had just said to David and Janell that I wanted to see some street performers when we happened upon them. Little did I know when I took this video that they were just warming up / playing around in anticipation of their more refined, choreographed performance. Sadly, because I had already used a bit of memory in my camera for this video, I didn't get anything from the "real" show. But this is a pretty good sampling of what was to come. It was exactly what I was hoping to experience while in Paris!

*I cannot promise appropriate lyrics in the following video. In all honestly, I was too busy taking in the coolness to notice!