When Marissa Acosta walks through the Square, she treads a path that brings her first to the character she calls “Peter the Russian guitarist.” She moves on toward “Lawrence the Loud Kid,” and finally in the direction of “Loony Balloony” and “Juggler’s Corner.”

Notebook and badge in hand, the official performer monitor covers a designated route three to four times a week during the May to October performance season.

In a city that gives out nearly 450 street performer permits per calendar year, monitoring is crucial to keeping the peace. Acosta spent her summer patrolling the streets in five-hour shifts with a decibel meter and book of tickets.

“Harvard Square is pretty unique in that the city actually cultivates an atmosphere and a system for performers,” Acosta says.

One juggler told Acosta he expected to bring in $1,000 nightly. She estimates most solo performers bring in about $10 per hour.

The Square’s street entertainment is regulated by an unseen bureaucracy of City Council ordinances that include an enforced curfew and a required $40 permit.

The Square’s street performers—many of whom prefer the term “busker,” originally a British term for street entertainers—say the scene is a culture and community in itself, with a subtle hierarchy and staggering breadth of performance.

It also provides a venue for Cambridge’s most unusual talent to be seen by the thousands who pass through the Square each day.

“The thing I love most about street performing is that I’m making some kind of a living by entertaining people,” says Karin Webb, who posed as a “living statue” this summer. “I want to reach out to people in the real world who’d never show up at a theater.”

Living Landmarks

Clad in a floor-length white bridal gown and sweeping tulle veil and posed in front of Au Bon Pain, Amanda Palmer is one of the most visible performers. She stands frozen, one hand outstretched for donations, which she exchanges for paper flowers.

Nowadays, Palmer says she spends more and more time at Faneuil Hall in Boston. The migration of chain stores to the Square has cut down on her business, she says.

She performed regularly in the Square in 1997 and 1998, but Palmer says her Square performance time has tapered off steadily since. She estimates that she performed in the Square about 10 times this past summer, as opposed to around 100 times when she began.

“It’s still one of my favorite places to perform,” says Palmer. “But in the international street performer community, there is this sentiment that the Square is drying up.”

But she enjoys the Harvard Square crowd for what she calls its “emotional intelligence.”