Author: Julian

A Conservatory-Trained Beggar

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The goal of the game is to survive. You survive by earning a living. You earn a living by choosing the corner, not perfecting the song.

His sign reads “food for my baby and / my family can you help / me with a job / God bless you”, and hot damn can this guy play violin.

The last time I saw a violinist of such emotional expression, I located her on instagram, spotted she was recently married, and messaged her anyway to ask her out. She did not respond. 

This guy stations on Broadway between 88th st and 89th st, outside the shuttered retail store beside the Wells Fargo. He plucks. He strums. He fingers. He twangs. He draws a crowd.

The crowd contains a woman sitting on her walker, her caretaker, a woman of about 60 who offers me a tissue when she hears me sniffle, and Yours Truly. Not a bad crowd for a horrendous location.

Five children pass with their two adults. They stop. The male adult says “this is Mozart”.

When passing through Lisbon, I met a local trumpeter. He asked where I live. I told him New York. He loves New York. He can earn $800 or $900 per day in 3 or 4 hours of play, he told me. He played on the east side of Central Park, by the fountain where the summer sailboats swim.

This violinist, in 15 minutes, made maybe $5. $20 per hour is not the rate you’re looking for, my guy. You want a spot with greater throughput.

Just as musical skill does not determine a musician’s popularity, musicality does not determine a busker’s success.

A busker sells music. And like any retail in New York, location matters. But his store is even more tailored.

His sign asks for a job. He doesn’t need a job. He needs to make this one work.

He plays a few classical pieces, then a jewish one. He might know he’s on the Upper West Side (a Jewish hub). I wonder if he knows something I don’t know. I don’t think he does. But how would I know? 

I thanked him for decorating my space via a $3 venmo donation. I had just spent $3 on 18 ounces of blackberries. The least I can do is contribute an equivalent amount of thanks to him.

Hold up: he’s now looping. I’ve heard this song before. From him, like 10 minutes ago.

Are these his only songs? His only moneymakers? Does he loop the same 10-minute concert? That would be very New York of him. My first time living in New York, I donated to a guitarist in Central Park when he played a song of emotional resonance to me. I only realized when I returned the following day that he plays that same set on loop because my song has emotional resonance for everyone.

Most of the donations come from passers-by, not from the crowd. The crowd helps: without us, fewer would stop and listen. But this guy is good enough that he would grab attention even if I weren’t here.

Around 15 minutes in, the battery on his backing track died.

Location and preparation: not his strengths. Violin: absolutely.

I once spitballed with a friend the idea of A/B testing homeless beggar signs. What works, where, for whom.

The problem with that business, aside from the ethical qualms: an unreliable workforce. Data collection and reliable money collection: not good.

I wonder how much I could make as a beggar in NYC. If I cosplayed and A/B tested. What is a beggar but an emotional street performer? This violinist creates beauty. The beggar creates pity. A clown creates joy. French beggars prostrate themselves. American ones open doors to Dunkin Donuts in hopes of capitalizing on the reciprocity. 

I bet I’d enjoy A/B testing different begging in NYC. And by “begging”, I include street performing in general. Be a psychic one day, a debater another, a jokester a third.

The performer’s baby watches videos on a cell phone. Its mother (presumably his wife) swipes. The king’s kids just call him dad.

After the performance, the audience member with the tissue introduces herself as Vicky. Vicky tells me if she were eating the blackberries I was eating, she would have spilled them all over herself. I offer her a clamshell of blackberries. She declines. I tell her about my favorite fruit vendor, where they’re only $1 per 6oz clamshell. Vicky tells me the performer is conservatory-trained, from Venezuela. Everyone around her becomes successful, she says. She tells me the violinist used to play a block south. Now he’s here. Vicky asks for my information and I tell her about my trumpeter friend. I approach the performer to scan his Venmo. Vicky tells the violinist I have something to say. I ask him, through a translator: how did he choose this place? He tells me he lives in the Bronx. I say this street: how did you choose this street? He says by walking (which I interpret as arbitrary). I tell him that my buddy the trumpeter used to play at that location in Central Park and made $800 in 3-4 hours. Vicky says she’ll miss him.

I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. I’d like to. But if I don’t, is that better?

Flogging & Flourishing

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A beautiful experience and the shame that exiles it.

At Burning Man about 10 years ago, two friends asked if I wanted to join them for an intro-to-flogging workshop. I accepted. We trudged across the dusty playa to a tent filled with straps, crosses, benches, and massage tables: the sort of image you’d expect in a BDSM dungeon on TV, except all these were dusty and out in the open, not locked in some basement.

The leader started his talk. He’s a massage therapist, he said, and he thinks of flogging (and BDSM in general) not as an activity about pain, but as a massage with tools. Just as you can create physical experiences of excitement or relaxation or healing in someone’s body using your hands, so too can you create those experiences using tools.

Fair enough.

He asked for a volunteer, asked the volunteer if they had any sensitive areas or pain, and began to demonstrate. His demonstration started slowly: gently bringing blood to the surface, arousing some awareness of the area without any pain. It accelerated: increasing the intensity or the vigor or the speed (sometimes all three at once). He took the volunteer over her edge. She winced. He eased up, comforted her, ensured she felt safe, and continued. The key, he said, was that people have the capacity to go much farther than they believe. Sometimes, we just require a little help.

After the demonstration, an assistant asked us to pair up. The attendees were an odd number, so my group was a group of three: me and my two friends (a man and a woman who were romantically dating and would go on to marry around five years later). First, the man flogged the woman. Then the woman flogged the man. Then I asked the woman if she would like to be my recipient. She agreed. The man interrupted by telling me, “Actually, you’re going to be flogging me.” I did, then we switched, and he flogged me.

I loved it. Adored it. The experience of relaxed sublimity equates only to the perfect calm felt under a heavy blanket or, I presume, a cattle squeeze chute. If you’ve ever loved a hot sauna or a vigorous workout or the endorphins of a long run, you’ll probably like an expert flogging.

Most people don’t talk about this experience. When a BDSM-inspired scene comes on the TV, they avert their eyes or switch channels. We shame kink and the people who like it. No one who has ever been flogged could get elected president.

That makes me sad. Very sad. It was a beautiful experience with wonderful people, the sort of deep and connective touch we share too infrequently.

Thinking about that experience prompts a sad longing in me: the sort one feels when recalling a long-forgotten friend: our life paths diverged and a decade passed, but I would like to snuggle up with them again.

The $20 Locker

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Even when this city smacks me, I still see its beauty. 

I love New York’s reasonableness. 

Today I visited a Yankees game. The metal detector dinged on me when I passed. The bag inspector told me I can’t take a laptop inside. He summoned his teammate. His teammate pointed me to a business across the street. He said, “There’s lockers right across the street. They’re not affiliated with us but people use them all the time. When you come back, tell the security and they’ll let you skip the line.” I asked his name. He said Anthony.

The security guards moved the barriers as I shortcutted back through the zigzagging line. I sped across the street. Inside, the worker charged me $20 and ushered me to the back where the lockers live. I placed my laptop inside, pocketed the key, and told him “okay” when he said the locker rental ends 30 minutes after the game. I asked him his name. His coworker said “Ahmed”. He repeated “Ahmed.”

I spent $25 on the Yankees ticket. On one hand, $20 is expensive. On the other hand, the policies are reasonable at every step of the way. Can policy easily distinguish between a laptop and a recording device? Perhaps not. Is this policy public on their website? Yes. Did I check? No, but I could have and that’s my fault. Is there a reasonable solution to this problem? Yes, and it’s not $100 when it very well could be.

When I returned, I told the security guards that I had visited the lockers and Anthony told me to skip the line. My ticket buzzed in, and I retrieved my limited-edition Yankees soccer jersey. For which I paid an additional $10 over the cost of normal tickets. Not because I care about the jersey, but because my father was in town, and he’s always wanted to visit Yankee Stadium. 

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy the ingredients. 

Funcle Nap?

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To play, find the game. To find the game, do what makes them laugh.

The game is all around us, and it’s simpler than you think. 

I spent time with my baby nephew today. He’s always playing games.

The game could be saying “Funcle nap?” when Funcle is definitely not napping. Or “Squeeze?”, then cackling with glee when Funcle sprays you with water from a toy in the bath. Or “Bite?”, then laughing when the other person bites the offered food.

He’s almost two years old, and his favorite games include wiping the table, splashing water, and putting laundry away.

These games don’t have winners and losers. They lack purpose. They contain fleeting goals, aims, and players, but have no start and no finish.

They’re closer to a porous, playful interaction with the world than a clearly defined structure.

So what makes it a game? Nothing. Wittgenstein used games as his proof that some categories share no essence: some have winners, some have rules, some have neither, and they’re all still games. They’re a family, bound by resemblance, not by one trait. My nephew’s games involve a playful attitude, but almost no other obviously shared structure. They’re a word, a response, or a laugh. Sometimes they’re simply play with play, back and forth.

Most of his games are found, not created. “Funcle nap?” was a game only because Funcle had been previously napping. The audience tells him it’s funny via their laughter. He plays it again. The laughter writes the rules: say it again and you play it again. 

With no start and no finish, where’s the game?

The game is all around us. You simply have to open to it. 

I call him every day

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To outrun the law, be a professional tennis player. To get caught anyway, be a sex addict on meth.

A real story I heard this weekend, transcribed as verbatim as I can: (Spoken in a Polish accent.) 

My friend is criminal. His friend is also criminal. And he is also drug addict and sex addict. And one day, he is on… <speaks Polish. Translator says “methamphetamine”> methamphetamine. And he is driving his car, but he is sex addict, so he pulls over to the side of the road and he is… <mimes jerking off. Translator says “jerking off”> jerking off. And someone sees him and they call the police. But the police, they don’t get there until 10:30 at night even though they were called at 1:30. But since he is on methamphetamine, he is still jerking off. So he sees the police and he drives his car away, but he… <speaks Polish, pantomiming rotating his had in the air. Translator says “flips the car”> flips the car. And he crawls out the window. And he is running away, very fast because he used to be professional tennis player. But because he was jacking off, his pants are down, so he… <mimes hand going from perpendicular to the ground to parallel. Translator says “face-plants”> face-plants. 

So now he is two and one-half years in prison. And I call him every day, except for now because I am… <gestures around him to indicate he is not currently in Poland.>. 

I don’t remember what instigated this story. Nor do I have any stories to match. 

People live vastly different lives. 

Lost and Found

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To win, be kind. To be kind, break the rules.

I twice lost faith in humanity today. Once, I got it back. The rules cost my faith. People breaking them gave it back. 

Three airport snippets and a meander: 

1. The bag with no status (lost #1)

At Houston Hobby Airport, I entered my information into my airline’s bag-check kiosk. It told me to see an agent. I approached one at an empty desk. She asked if I had status. I said the machine sent me to you. She asked if I had status. I said no. She told me to go to the info desk around the corner. I told her the kiosk sent me to her. She asked again if I had status. I have the right credit card and a bunch of points, so I shrugged and said yes. She asked what I needed. I said I’d like to check a bag. She checked the bag. Then she told me I didn’t have status, so next time I’d have to go to the other desk. Her questioning about my status took longer than the bag check, and it ultimately didn’t matter. The rules may be dumb. But at least they’re poorly enforced. 

2. Carousel 5 says Denver (lost #2)

Landing at LGA, I went to carousel 5, where the flight attendants said our bags would be. The sign over it said “Denver.” I had flown from Houston. Houston is not Denver. I asked the agent standing there. He said all the Houston bags were out; if mine wasn’t, I should go to the office. I went to the office. I gave the office agent my flight number. She asked for my claim check. I told her I’d left it on the plane. She tutted, found my information anyway, and told me to go back to the carousel. I went back. My bag was there. The agent at the carousel told me he’d tried to shout for me to come back the moment he realized he’d been wrong. He might have been wrong. But at least he tried to fix it, however poorly. 

3. The green bag (regained)

When the plane landed, the woman beside me turned around and said, “My bag’s in the overhead of row 13, five rows back. Green bag. Could you pass it up?” And people did. A wheely bag, no less. At least 6 strangers joined the mission. Great move. I’m surprised it worked. Well played. 

Keeping the Faith

In downtown Houston, I yelled “Praise the Lord!” Two women on the street ahead of me turned around. In New York, where I live, and Chicago, where I’d spent the last 5 days, strangers don’t look at crazy people. In Houston they do. Maybe Houston keeps its crazy people off the street. In 24 hours downtown, I didn’t see any.

I wondered if Houston just removes them. I looked it up: it’s a mix. Houston housed a lot of its homeless, Texas bans public camping, and a city built for cars has fewer sidewalks to be seen on anyway.

About 18 hours later, I boarded a Houston tram. A man with wild eyes came to the door, clasped his hands, and started begging a being only he could see. No one moved away from him. Back home we’d have given him a wide berth. Here, the crowd understands him.

Houston gives a pass for praying.

Rules for Wagering

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To win, follow the rules.

Last night, a new friend challenged me to the video game Pong for $100 a game. He’s a brash guy: aggressive, cocksure; the sort of guy who makes new friends by testing their boundaries. I asked if he knew Pong. He declined to answer. I declined the bet. 

I offered ping-pong instead, also $100 a game. We’d just played doubles on the same team. I’d seen his game. I suspected I could beat him.

Today, I called him a gambler. He corrected me: he doesn’t gamble, he wagers. Gambling is about uncertainty, luck, and chance. Wagering is about wagers (bets). Ironically, this guy’s given name literally means “randomness.”

I don’t enjoy gambling, either. I’ve liked craps once or twice, playing with someone else’s money, but I haven’t enjoyed gambling since a plastic slot machine at 10 years old. I like playing, and I like winning. I don’t gamble because it’s a losing proposition.

Wagering, though, I do frequently. My rules:

Julian’s rules for wagering

1. Don’t wager more than you’re willing to lose. Self-explanatory.

2. Clearly indicate the stakes and the rules. Most wagers fail on miscommunication. Better clear than confused. State the rules and win conditions up front. Repeat the score and the running tally, frequently. Walk over to the other side of the table if the music is too loud for him to hear you call the score. 

3. Get paid. Many wagers fail not from a loss but from a loss of receipt. If you don’t get the money, did you really win?

4. Quit at any time. A different friend doubled the stakes every time he lost, unwilling to stop until he got even. Motivating, sure. But it misreads the value of quitting while you’re behind: the alternative is quitting when you’re further behind.

5. Control your emotions. Anger can make you a better ping-pong player. It can also make you blind to the meta-games. And the meta-games are usually where the money is.

6. You don’t have to earn it back the same way you lost it. When you lose money one way, it’s tempting to win it back the same way. But funds are fungible. If you lose at ping-pong but win at poker, you can stop playing ping-pong. Lean into your comparative advantages: specialize and trade.

Games Played:

I flew out of Chicago Midway today. The metal detector beeped. The agent told me this meant I’d been “randomly selected” for extra screening. I asked if that meant the body scanner. She said yes. I told her I’d opt out. She told me to take off my shoes and run them through, then asked if I’d go through the scanner now. I said no (did she really think removing my shoes would change my opinion?). She summoned a male agent. He asked me to point out my property. I said, “My partner has it.” (She’d known the game was on the second I got flagged. She was capping my downside to enable me to play.)  “All of it?” he asked. Yes. He walked me to a separate lane. I asked how long he’d been a TSA agent. “Since there’s been a TSA.” He started the spiel: “Any sensitive areas, any painful areas?” And then, hot damn, was this guy thorough. As he ran his hands up and down my midriff, Partner made a cupping motion on one of her breasts, seemingly indicating what the agent was soon to do to me.

After the free massage, I returned to Partner with a new glow.

He offered me $4k for 15 minutes of play. 

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I said no. To win the bet, win the games. To keep the winnings, stop while he can still pay.

I’m not skilled enough at ping pong to play for $2k per game. Yet tonight I played ping-pong for $2k per game.

Here’s how:

He asked, “Ping pong?”

I said, “Sure. $100 per game?”

His eyes lit up. “Sure.”

We agreed: game to 21, 5 serves per person, serves must be cross-court.

I won the first game. We played again. I won. A third time: I won.

He said, “Double?”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

He said, “$200 per game.”

I said, “I’m up $300. You want to play for $200 per game?”

He said yes.

I won.

He said, “$500? I need to clear this out.”

We shook hands.

I won.

“$1,000?”

I won.

“$2,000?”

I won.

So now I’m up $4,000. And the biggest danger in this spot is the guy not paying. Because I’d pay a $4,000 debt if I had one. I only make bets I’ll cover. So if he doesn’t pay his debt, he was free-rolling me the whole time. (“Free-rolling” is when you have the ability to win but no ability to lose. If he would collect upon a victory but not pay upon a loss, he’s free-rolling me for the bet.)

I also 1) don’t want him to feel shitty, and 2) don’t want him to stiff me.

So when he says he wants to play for $4k, I know he’s steaming. I know he’s fuming. He’s physically pacing at the base of the ping pong table like Chris Rock on stage. And I don’t know if he’s someone who will actually pay his debt. If he is, we can play for more later. If he isn’t, I don’t want to gamble anymore.

The game is no longer ping pong. The game is: will this guy pay off an $8k debt? If not, I’m taking my ping-pong ball and going home. 

Who’s That Groomsman? 

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The goal of the game is bonding. You bond by guessing each other.

The bachelor party organizer tasked me with creating an activity. Here’s what I did:

The Method: 

0. Learn the constraints. How many people? What duration? When? Where? Vibe (chill/athletic).

  • 10 people, 60-90 minutes, outdoors sitting around a firepit

1. Learn the goals. 

  • First or second activity at a bachelor party: bonding, getting to know each other.

2. Select a theme. 

  • The groom loves Pokémon, so Pokémon it is.

3. Coalesce. What is the easiest way to achieve the goals in theme?

  • A simple game of “who’s that Pokémon.” 

4. Research. 

  • Ask the groom: what Pokémon would each person be, and why?

5. Make simple game. 

  • Show a picture and read a description of the Pokémon, then see who can guess which person it is. Then read the groom’s description of them and prompt new guesses. Repeat for all people.

Bing, bang, boom.

The Field Report 

We ran the activity today. 8/10 people enjoyed it. 1/10 demonstrated boredom two-thirds of the way through. The last 1 gave side-eye throughout the entire night, so it’s probably not exclusively about the activity that he gave it side-eye too. 

No one was offended. Most people enjoyed their Pokémon. When the experience dragged, we sped it up. 

My one misstep: after my own Pokémon was guessed, I forgot to have the groom describe why I am the Pokémon he said I am. (This step existed to enable group understanding and friendship-forming and bonding.) So the event worked well for everyone else, and only 80% well for me. 

8/10 and 80%? Sounds like a win.

I originally met the groom on an interview tour of an arts school. We connected because I was the most aggressively-forward social butterfly in the group: during the hour-long tour, I spoke with every single one of the 20 aspiring students. The groom had noticed my occupying this social position, and therefore decided he didn’t want to meet me, from a “this social position only has room for one” mentality. Having met everyone himself, we finally chatted in an elevator near the end of the tour. The conversation was so delicious we went out for drinks that night and spent a decent part of COVID playing video games together from a distance. 

I didn’t have the chance to be introduced to the group? Sounds like it’s time to turn on that social butterfly again, introducing the rest of the party to the same version of me that’s the reason I’m here at all.

Why Do People Live Here?

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To win, position well. To position well, realize it’s a choice. 

“Why do people live here?”

It’s a common refrain when I travel. And I travel a lot.

Between 2018 and 2025, I lived in a van, driving around the U.S. and Canada. For 4 months in 2022, I lived in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, and South Korea. And most places make absolutely no sense to me.

New Orleans, New York, San Francisco: I get. Austin, Seoul, Paris, Tokyo: totally. But Chicago? Kansas City? Cleveland? Dallas and Houston? Those tiny towns in Nevada and Colorado and Oregon with more elevation than people?

I’m in Chicago for a friend’s wedding. A surprise thunderstorm shook our windows. Two years ago when I visited, I heard a siren. I asked my friend: “What’s that siren for?” He said it’s a weather warning: we were about to be cold enough to be deadly.

The trains run above ground (terribly noisy), and most don’t even run all night. The weather is always either too hot or too cold. The theater and art are good, but not as good as New York or L.A. The food is tasty, but overwhelmingly unhealthy. Maybe it’s the sports?

I don’t buy that most people intentionally choose where to live based on their values and preferences.

Where & why? 

Ask people why they live where they live (I do, constantly) and most people give one of 4 answers:

  1. They were born there. (This is Partner’s most frequent response when I pose the question.)
  2. Work or school took them there.
  3. A lover took them there.
  4. It’s the nearest city to where they were born. (Partner grew up in the “big city” for her area, because it had a Walmart. This “big city”: 16,000 people.)

Who’s the actor here? 

Every answer describes something that happened to the person. Born there: the game placed you. Work took you: the company (or admissions committee) chose. A lover took you: the lover chose (or their company did). Nearest city: the game placed you, plus a radius.

Where you live is one of the biggest decisions in your life. It decides your environment, your friends, your culture, your wages, your rent, and your weekends. And it’s a rare big game where most players never even realize they’re playing. The board hands them an opening setup, and they just accept it.

I can count on one hand the friends who chose their place to live by auditioning and deciding.

Reality & possibility

How many people decide where to go? Between 18 and 30, do you explore while you can (no mortgage, no kids, career still portable)? After your kids leave home, do you think about moving?

Money, visas, family gravity: there are good reasons to stay where you live. But a lot of it strikes me as activation energy. You’re a distinct person with individual tastes. And you just happen to have been born in exactly the right place? 

I’ll take the other side of that bet.