Video: This Is What Happens When You Try To Rob A Street Performer

It's easy to walk around the city and tune out the canvassers, the buskers, and the street performers. Anyone who lives in NYC long enough develops their own tactics for avoiding uncomfortable stop-and-chats (or stop-and-give-monies), and their own justifications for moving along, even when the cause is good, the person is in need, or the performance is worthy. And generally speaking, there are no hard feelings involved—everyone accepts this kind of avoidance as an unstated clause in the NYC social contract.

But once in awhile, someone breaks that contract. Sometimes subway breakdancers come a little too close to hitting your head; sometimes a performance artist insists on being in your face a little too insistently. Like George Costanza and the pigeons, there are consequences to breaking the contract.

So if you disrespect a street performer and try to rob them outside McDonald's in Times Square, be like the man in the video below, and just take your kick to the face.