You want value for your entertainment dollar? Take a walk down Michigan Avenue, where, for a couple of bucks tossed into cans, hats or open guitar cases, you can hear and see some of Chicago’s more colorful street performers.
Start at the Michigan Avenue bridge, where drummer Robert Hardison is a fixture. Even he has lost count of how long he has been pounding away; he just knows he’s staying. “I’m out here just about every day if it doesn’t rain,” he says.
Heading north, stop at Ohio, where artist Farid Griyech has set up shop in front of Eddie Bauer’s. He can knock off a caricature in 15 minutes or a more elaborate sketch in an hour.
In the same area, you’ll usually find Jacque Williams, who for 12 years has been playing saxophone up and down Michigan Avenue. Give him a couple of dollars, and you can call the tune. “They request ‘The Simpsons’ theme song a lot,” he says. “I hate that song. And ‘Sanford and Son.’ I hate that too. But it pays money.”
There’s probably nothing that Robert Napier (a.k.a. Robnoxious the Clown) hates about his gig in front of the Terra Museum of American Art. With his wife, Jenna, making balloon animals, Robnoxious juggles, exchanges wisecracks, passes out his business card and, well, clowns around. “We used to go to the Foster Avenue beach once in a while,” Jenna says, “and the kids there aren’t as nice. They heckle.”
Across the street is The Casting Couch, one of the Suite Home Chicago pieces that always draws a crowd. Everyone, it seems, wants to have a photo taken with the guy on the couch.
Want more music? Look for “The Mariachi Gringo” — that’s what he calls himself — a sombrero-wearing, guitar-and-harmonica-playing entertainer who with his seeing-eye dog (“Killer”) is also generally in the vicinity.
Another block north you’ll find Leroy Midyette, known on the street as Tin Man. Midyette, though, prefers “Jambot.” (“Copyrights,” he whispers, with a nod and a smile.) Jambot, whose props include milk crates, a boom box and a costume patched with duct tape, does a robot-type dance — but only after passersby toss a buck or two into a bucket.
Just past the Water Tower is where the horse-drawn carriages await passengers. They’re entertainment too. You can watch the horses work, watch them drink from a green fountain, watch them, well, do what horses do. “It’s great for little kids,” says manager Elmer Davis. “If they’re from the city, they’re lucky if they ever see even a raccoon. So they get a nice bit of nature.”
