BOUL MICH CHICK-A-BOOM

Normally, I have a pretty low tolerance for street performers and other sidewalk mischief. When you're doing you best to code HTML up on the 14th floor, the amplified sounds of a bunch of kids beating on plastic buckets isn't charmingly rhythmic, it's damn annoying.

But for some reason I really liked this drumming group's sound. Maybe it's because I was on my way home and enjoying the mild late-afternoon weather. So, I dragged out the little digital camera and grabbed some video.

The stuff I find not so pleasant should be well known to anyone who's walked along North Michigan Avenue more than a couple times. Such annoyances include, but are not limited to, slowpoke tourists who walk four abreast and stop in the middle of the sidewalk, young ladies who have themselves photographed beating off the moose sculpture or fondling the Benito Juarez statue, breakdancing kids who seem to be able to block off half the public way next to the Walgreens, the shoeshine hustlers who shake down tourists, and my personal favorite, the guy who accosts pedestrians crossing the North Michigan Avenue bridge and aggressively demands of them, "Can I ask you something?"

Just another story in the naked city.

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