On the morning of the final day of Outside Lands, the sidewalks surrounding Golden Gate Park were full of people trying to make a quick buck. Scalpers tried to sell festival wristbands. People stood by cars holding up signs offering rides away from the park (After the July 4th traffic gridlock, Lyft, Uber, and Waymo were restricted from the streets closest to the park). One group of kids sold homemade spam musubi — to raise money for the SFSPCA, they said. Other people sold bootleg Outside Lands merchandise. Out of all the hustle on view, police seemed to only be interested in the scalpers — there were two police cars pulled up and two officers questioning one of the wristband vendors.
By 4 p.m. most of them were gone, but, 11-year-old Jonah was still going strong, selling lemonade, LaCroix, and water bottles with electrolyte packets taped to them. The price per drink — $3 for the lemonade, $2 for LaCroix, and $5 for water— might seem steep, but it was it a fraction of what vendors inside were charging ($7 and up for a bottle of water, though there were free water-bottle filling stations for people who had brought their own). A year ago, he and his brother, who live in the neighborhood, felt they could no longer ignore the business opportunity presented by the large crowds of people roaming the area during festivals and major holidays.
“We sell drinks because people might be thirsty from walking around and might want something cheaper,” said Jonah. “Last year we made like $300, because people liked the hustle.”
A few blocks away, Sandra was frying bacon-wrapped hot dogs ($7) and bottles of water ($5) to the crowd streaming out of the park.
Sandra doesn’t usually work as a hot dog vendor, she said, in Spanish. “But I have three daughters who are about to start school and I need money for their uniforms,” Sandra added.
Two blocks away from the festival’s main entrance, a man sat with a keyboard in his lap, next to a cardboard sign that read, “I’m homeless and it’s funny people will see your situation and won’t donate, but will use you for content. That’s fine, I will make it either way.” He’d been here since 11 a.m., he said, and this was his 10th Outside Lands.
When asked for his name, he said “I go by many names” before asking to be addressed as “Zaddy.” He played a mix of jazz and classical, he said, and he did not take requests.
Donations, he said, were not as common as one might think. “People ain’t shit,” Zaddy said. “People will say you’re amazing and that you made their day, but they won’t even donate a nickel. Let alone a penny. And they wonder why people, especially certain groups of people, do things to survive. We all gotta survive at the end of the day.”
In general, he said, busking is hard work. “Unfortunately you are in the competition of survival.”
“I’m not the best, but I’m also not the worst,” Zaddy said. “I use music to bring joy and positivity and funds to my buns. I don’t really give a fuck about nobody else’s music — ultimately I’m a creator, that’s what we want to do on this earth.”
