James Joseph, a composer and guitarist who performs under the name gHSTS & gUITARS, has been a professional busker for over ten years. Currently based in Berlin, he intimately understands and appreciates the realities of playing in his hometown of New York City. “In New York, if you want to run your busking like a job and pay your bills, you can do it,” he told me over Skype. “But you have to hustle.”

What he means by “hustling” has no hint of the pejorative. It’s more related to perseverance. Nearly everyone I interviewed—all of whom I discovered by chance, either in person and also online at The Busking Project (a virtual community for buskers and fans)—approached their performances with a similar degree of seriousness and dedication.

William Ruiz, an NYC-based drummer who plays the djembe for twenty-five hours each week, understands how the pressures of this unconventional and unpredictable environment can impact a musician. At the same time, “it's a gig like any other,” he told me over e-mail, frustrated that many of his peers believe that busking will “make them look bad or desperate.” He realizes that not everyone has the capacity for it, though. “You have to have the strength to build a business from scratch and be creative enough to pay attention to all the details. The more attractive you look and the better your character, the greater your success.”

Eganam Segbefia, a trumpeter, shares Ruiz’s sentiments. He carefully selects both his repertoire and “uniform” for the occasion. “I know they say never judge a book by its cover, but appearance is everything,” he told me during a phone interview. “I always want to look really nice when I present myself, and when I started, I was wearing nice shoes and buttoned down shirts. It gave me good feedback, but it wasn’t good feedback financially.” Soon after noticing this paradox, he made the shift towards minimalism. “As a busker, you have to be as simple as possible in the way you dress, but clean, so that people subconsciously think that this person isn’t just trying to make some money. Now I wear a white t-shirt and jeans. It’s as simple as it gets and it doesn’t take away from my playing.” Segbefia performs five days a week, every week, in three hours shifts and only at the Grand Central/Times Square Shuttle platform. “Work ethic is respected more than individuals themselves,” he tells Hopes&Fears. “People notice that I’m there consistently.”