When I lived in the San Francisco area, one of the buskers I really enjoyed was the Automatic Human Jukebox. The guy, whose name I later learned was Grimes Poznikov, sat in a painted cardboard box all day on or near Fisherman's Wharf. I regularly saw him in front of Ghirardeli Square. Tourists (or locals) would put money through a slot in the side of the box labelled with the song they wanted to hear. Then a door on the front of the box would swing up, usually accompanied by a slide whistle, and a bearded face would emerge and play the tune, almost always on a trumpet. The guy was GOOD! I would spend hours hanging out down there and preferred to be near him, mainly for the entertainment; I even dropped a few dollars in the box myself. He appeared on more than one national TV show.
Sadly, he was another who was destroyed by mental illness and alcohol. There's a photo and better article than I could write at http://short.to/1h0w2
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