Buskers, Street Entertainers in Oxford, Oxfordshire*

Places to find public entertainment

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Buskers, Street Entertainers

• The worst noise in Cornmarket Street is Heath Richardson & his terrible bagpipes. Most buskers are quite OK, but Heath Richardson is SO LOUD that he has generated over 450 complaints from local residents. Most of the busking occurs in Cornmarket Street - Usually right outside the Vodafone shop. The best busker so far as been Vinnie Clarke (who travels up from Plymouth).
• Bearded bag lady of Botley! A proper old-skool tramp, doesn't bother anyone, just minds her own business.
• Diary of a Goldfish (yes really) - www.humphreysblogogold.blogspot.com
• There is the chap in the coloured cloths who busks in the town center, he must be in his late sixties, and he steps back and fourth to a getoblaster, their has recently been a painting of him in one of the loacl art shops, I wonder if he got any of the procceds? I love eccentrics and personaly, he always makes me smile, plus he is always nice when you give him money. He is prehaps not treated as nicely as he could be by all passers by, which makes me sad.
• Everyone in Oxford can play the piano because they had lessons from one of their many relatives. Therefore most of the population can busk or has at some point. However, doing so for cash is seen as vulgar since it would be a lowly pursuit of income. Rather it is done in charity for the poor miscreants unfortunate enough not to have had a classical upbringing.
• Wheelchair Eno - Disabled, or perhaps lazy dude in a wheelchair and armed with a Union Jack-themed jester's hat and a crap keyboard, proceeds to torture passersby in Cornmarket street with his end-of-the-pier Jean Michel Jarre type "music". Has a minder who just looks embarrassed the whole time Wheelchair Eno is doing his "set".
• Chris (or Kit as he preferred to be known), popular 'looney' who liked to sing and whistle walking along the road in his great coat, greeting people and wishing them a long and good life.

• that obscene tramp on Brasenose lane, should be hung drawn and quartered, and then chucked in the thames
• For nutter spotting Cowley road is your best bet. We have everything from the fat woman in a pink tracksuit who bawls out star trek tunes at you when you walk past, to the tubby Jamaican with an afro who cruises, serenely stoned up and down Cowley road all day. Most people on Cowley Road to be honest are nuttier than squirrel shit. Thats why I live there.
• You get all the usual tramps and that, maybe some smellier peeps than elsewhere.
• Buy a sandwich in the Covered Market and sit on the wall on Broad Street.
• too many of them on cornmarket. at least they could shift from the front of hmv...
• Try Cornmarket Street. There's one who's always drunk and seems to think he's the next Billy Bragg. On a reasonably sunny Saturday there'll usually be a troupe of some kind in the middle of there with a ring of people around.
• Frei Zinger plays lovely flute music on Cornmarket. Also see if you spot the fifties lot by BHS, or The Huckleberries (think Levellers) on Cornmarket weekends now and again - stop and listen and appreciate.

• The Asian guy with a huge bushy mullet who sits outside GAP in the evenings playing his electric guitar. He can jam.
• Check out flautist Frei Zinger and his band the Aquabats.
• The tap dancing old man outside the Westgate shopping center
• There used to be a guy outside Woolworths on Queen Street whose entire act consisted of balancing himself upside down with his head in a bucket – very funny, but where do you throw the money? Try crossing Magdalen Bridge without being accosted by aggressive beggars – or have things changed so much in the past five years? I once had a terrifying psychotic episode on Cowley Road when I started talking to a drunk in a wheelchair who had a sign hanging from his neck that said 'I am a wise man'. (August 2000)
• The odd string quartet cannot detract from the sheer quality of the humour provided by local drunkards.
• The Great Douganso!, a brilliant street magician/mime artist.
• the beggars
• the man with green wig who tap dances to a synthesiser sample tune!
• Kevin Francis - entertaining, in a depressing sort of way.

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