Monday Morning at Royal York

I was scheduled at Royal York station on Monday morning. It’s located in the far west end of the city in a pretty, established neighborhood called The Kingsway. I liked the location immediately as I parked conveniently at the Green P parking. Then, hauling my backpack and guitar, I almost got stuck in the turnstiles at the automatic entrance—but oh well. It’s a sunny day, I’m here on the dot of 9:00 and I’m feeling optimistic.

Royal York seemed to have a higher-than-average number of senior citizens than other stations, which seems to work well for me. Many of them stopped, deliberately got out small change purses or wallets and dropped some coins into my case, often giving me an encouraging smile. One man gave me a five dollar bill (again, it almost blew away) but preferred to do it very anonymously, not meeting my eyes.

Another fellow who’d seen me at Jane station also stopped and told me that he’d recently bought two CDs from another subway musician but had been disappointed when he listened to it at home.

Ahah, I thought, here’s a chance for me to sell one of my $4.00 discounted "Learning Curve" disks that I keep on hand for just such a purpose!

(When I manufactured my most recent CD, it came out slightly quieter than intended. In the utter loss of perspective that often befalls artists creating their own legacy, I paid to have the whole thing re-mastered. As a result, I have hundreds of orphaned disks lying around my house. Now, when I play the quieter disks beside the re-mastered ones, even I can’t tell the difference.)

Since Steve was in the habit, obviously, of buying CDs from subway musicians, I thought he’d be a good prospect for the $4.00 CD. Oddly, however, he seemed suspicious of it.

"Or you can buy the $20 one if you like," I said.

He went on about the other musician. "That guy, you know, he was a professional."

"Oh," I said, not quite knowing what he was getting at.

"Do you, like, play clubs and stuff like that?"

"Yes," I said brightly, and explained that, like all other musicians on the TTC system, I am a Working Professional Musician Who Plays Professional Gigs All the Time.

He still held the $4.00 CD and eyed me suspiciously.

"Okay," he said as he put a five dollar bill into my case. "If I don’t like this, you’ll hear about it."

I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was right.

+++

I made $18.50 at Royal York today, after playing for about an hour.

Also, today is November 1st, so I did a little inventory.

In October, I played approximately 18 hours on the subway over the course of 16 days. Our schedule started on October 8th, so we had a late start. I sold 3 full CDs and one sample CD. Another guy said he’d buy a CD if I met him at Osgoode station the next day but we missed each other and...okay, that doesn’t count.

In total, I made $285.61, or just under $16.00 an hour.