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On a cold morning of January 2007, a young man wearing jeans, a baseball hat and a T-shirt stopped next to a trash can in one of Washington's DC most central subway stations. He looked around for a moment and then, with some hesitation, he pulled a violin out of a small case. However, nobody seemed to notice him: People were rushing to get to their jobs, the kiosk was selling some morning newspapers and in the lottery line some people were waiting to get a free ticket for a violin concert. The stranger took some coins out of his pocket and put them in the open case that was lying between his feet, hoping to convince people to give him some money.

After a small pause that would make Paganini look puzzled, the young man finally started playing his violin. He was quite good but that didn't make a lot of difference in that cold morning. He played continuously for 45 minutes and during that time few, pitifully few people actually stopped and payed attention to the stranger. Some not sure of what they should do gave him some coins and walked away in a hurry: "What a poor guy, playing music for pennies...".

After playing a total of 6 musical pieces, he paused and looked at his money case. Inside there was a small pile: All he had made was 32$. He picked up his pride, he took his money, he packed his violin and with a quick gait, he exited the L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station.

He then did something bizarre: He took a cab.

What would Sherlock Holmes do if he was around ? Well, he would put some tobacco in his pipe and he would look really puzzled. But in our case he wasn't there, so he didn't put any. Hmmm.... Why would the violin player spent his money on something like that ? What was even more strange is that the stranger lived ONLY 3 blocks away. Sherlock Holmes would ask Watson if he had any tobacco left from that fine one they bought together in Morocco. He would clearly need it to crack THIS case.

The real reason behind his decision to spent his money like that, was his violin's price-tag: A staggering 3.5 million dollars. A normal price for a 300-year-old Stradivarius and quite a good choice for a top musician like him: Joshua Bell is one of the finest classical musicians on this planet and to get a seat at one of his violin concerts, would cost you at least 100$ given that your seat was in the back of the concert hall.

Waaaaaay in the back.

However all he made was 32$. Quite strange for a man that wins 1000$/min. Joshua Bell was actually performing an experiment for Washington Post. Washington Post counted that 1,097 people passed by without even flinching, 27 gave him money and walked off and 7 people actually stopped and listened to the music, when many of them were actually waiting for a free concert ticket. How on earth could that happen ??

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That is hardly a bad income even in NYC.  The people who enjoy his playing would of course pay more for the privilege but those are a minority of the population. He did fantastically well considering he was playing to an open field.

That could only have been better if they could have gotten Itzahk Perlman to do it.lol.

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lol Что?