Seattle Bids Tuba Man a Sad Goodbye

[groovedaddy]

SEATTLE — He played “Itsy Bitsy Spider” when it rained and the theme from “Chariots of Fire” even when the home team lost. “Thumbs up!” he insisted when you were not so sure. “Want to be a part of it tonight?” he beseeched, a call for coins and maybe transformation.

Edward Scott McMichael was a busker with perfect pitch and an improbable horn whom most people in this city knew by another name, Tuba Man. He wore funny hats and said funny things, but his mission was to make money by making music in the streets. Outside the stadium. Outside the opera. Wagner? Iron Maiden? Sure, and it could cost you.

“I was like ‘Five bucks?’ ” Lorin Sandretzky recalled of the time he ordered up Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.” “But it was worth it.”

Mr. Sandretzky has his own outsized alter ego, Big Lo, Seattle’s Biggest Sports Fan. For now, he said, he is “Seattle’s saddest sports fan.”

Last month, Mr. McMichael, 53, was bludgeoned late one night near downtown. He died several days later. He was not carrying his tuba at the time, and it appears that the three teenagers who have been arrested in the case did not know Mr. McMichael. Most of the rest of Seattle surely did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/us/14tubaman.html?th&emc=th

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

1. Went to his memorial

It was quite an honorable sendoff. It's really a shame what happened to him.