San Francisco streets seem to be full of people standing on their heads and hands these days. It must be the recession. Most of them are young African-American men in their 20s and 30s. They do complicated endurance-testing upside down contortions on street corners downtown seemingly for hours, sometimes with props and always with a change jar in front of them. I cannot imagine a more demanding way to pay your rent.
I watched this one guy for a while yesterday. It was a chilly afternoon with blustering wind. He was dressed in black shorts and a matching wife-beater. He had a green bandanna on his head. He was doing a headstand on a small glass drink bottle, his crown resting on the bottle’s mouth. His legs were absolutely straight up in the air. I stood on that street corner for about 10 minutes and in all that time he didn’t appear to move a muscle.
I felt quite moved and a bit shaken by his performance. Is what he was doing a performance? Can we call this art? Or is it pure necessity?