{"id":126058,"date":"2025-09-02T00:59:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T00:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/126058\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T00:59:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T00:59:12","slug":"busker-and-biker-scene-through-the-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/126058\/","title":{"rendered":"Busker and biker | Scene Through the Lens"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many musicians busking on the streets of Center City Philadelphia, so they can\u2019t all get pictured in the newspaper.<\/p>\n

One of the most notable, David Puryear, the Historic District saxophonist known as \u201cEtta\u2019s Baby Boy,\u201d has been photographed – and published – often.<\/a><\/p>\n

So I wasn\u2019t looking for a busker while doing some street photography of buses as SEPTA service cuts<\/a> began this week due to an impasse over mass transit funding<\/a> in the Pennsylvania legislature. <\/p>\n

I made photos of buses in between covering separate press conferences by both City Council<\/a> and the Mayor.<\/a> Then, as long as I was inside City Hall, I walked to the east side of the building to look out toward Market East.<\/p>\n

It is a street I walked for weeks photographing while the Sixers\u2019 intended to build a $1.55 billion arena<\/a> so I was well acquainted with the view.<\/p>\n

I looked down at a succession of buses while listening to the sharp notes from a trumpet echoing off the marble and limestone walls of City Hall\u2019s East Portal. <\/p>\n

The buses didn\u2019t yield a photo, so I started watching as pedestrians mostly just passed by the musician.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly the sun shining from the west reflected off a building momentarily casting patches of light onto the sidewalk behind the trumpeter and the wall across from him. I photographed frantically during the short time the until a biker paused – right inside one of the patches of light.<\/p>\n

I had my photo so I walked down to meet Rome Leone.<\/p>\n

He told me, as he would share with anyone else who stopped talk, that he did other instruments as well, including violin and piano, which he started learning to play when he was 3 years old. He added that music was always in his family- his grandfather played trumpet with Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, and Dizzy Gillespie. <\/p>\n

Since 1998 a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish\u2019s \u201cScene Through the Lens\u201d photo column in the print editions of The Inquirer\u2019s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are many musicians busking on the streets of Center City Philadelphia, so they can\u2019t all get pictured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,80386,229,88],"class_list":["post-126058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-busker-rome-leone-trumpet-city-hall","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}