Streets and sidewalks are barricaded; traffic is snarled; and costumed buskers milk money from the looky-loos obstructing the entrances to Gucci and Tiffany.

And the New York subway system, whose cars and platforms are regularly graced with free-styling buskers, certainly provides a fitting context.

Now, she added, “we have buskers and panhandlers, unlike in the old days, when we had no one.”