Advantage Point

Consumers and Tourists Looking Down Upon Street Performers

June 2, 2019 – A Thousand Words

The streets of Prague are filled with what you would expect any major city to have. The tourists, the locals, the street food, beggars and then there are the street performers. The only difference in Prague is the abundance and choices of performances of these people.

Yesterday was the honor of having two 8 foot boa constrictors around a 19 year old study abroad student’s neck for the small price of 200 kc which swiftly turned into 100 kc after some hardball by a poor college kid. The animal which is known to have some of the most powerful muscles is being put around the necks of tourists just trying to up their instagram game. For these people though, it is not an instagram picture, it is their income.

The performers that go out on the street corner or Old Town Square every day for multiple hours each day painting their face, hair, body and clothes just to stand still and hope a sucker comes by to take a picture and drop a couple of euros or krowns. For the art dealers and painters they are competing against each other to catch the eye of that one extra tourist. For the people in the panda, polar bear and lion mascot costumes they waddle around hoping that a kid will coerce their parents into taking a 40 kc picture.

These people have come to the last thing they can do. Working the streets. Although they are blessed to be here in such a wonderful city and have become remotely successful with these jobs, these are not jobs and the face of rejection and failure jeers at them every, single, day.

In this photo you can see how this artist is surrounded by shopping bags, people ignoring them racing off to somewhere they have deemed more important and other onlookers. They are teased by the bags, showing off that the consumers are not on the streets but in the stores. He has lowered himself and these consumers have a position of power and quite literally look down upon him with the advantage point.