The café connection

>> Dedicated loitering is the first step to beautiful metro music

by CRAIG SEGAL

Enrico Lipani's workday begins when his butt makes contact with a chair at the Second Cup on St-Denis and de Maisonneuve and ends 11 hours later.

Lipani, an unemployed 63-year-old Sicilian, would forgive you for assuming that he's just loitering. But Lipani has been coming here for two years to guard the Berri-UQÀM metro musician schedule. If you want to busk regularly at Berri, you have to go through Lipani.

That's because Lipani represents the Chorale de l'Acceuil Bonneau homeless men's choir, perhaps the city's most dedicated gang of buskers. The former IBM employee schedules his life around the choir.

If the choir wants to play tomorrow at Berri on the green-line platform at 7:30 a.m., then Lipani has to be the first busker at Second Cup today to secure the timeslot. But part of the deal with getting there first means he has to guard the schedule until the last busker bounces in at midnight, when all buskers must return to prove they are serious about performing on time.

"It doesn't bother me to stay here. I'll come at 12 p.m. At 6 p.m. I still have no money for coffee. They don't mind. Try that anywhere else and the waitress will tell you to leave. Here you can even ask for water."

The last busker to sign up must wait until 5 a.m. and bring the schedule to the blue sign with the harp on it in the designated music area, and a secret location (usually behind the garbage).

Since some buskers started ripping the sche-dule down, feigning ignorance when those who adhere to the busker code show up, Lipani makes two copies of the list. When the bad buskers caught on to that, another guardian called Jean-Claude started photocopying the schedule with his Seiko Quartz on it to prove the time and date.

"I once caught the guy who was tearing down lists," says Jean-Claude, 71. "I put my hand on his neck and squeezed. Like this! CKCKCK!!!"

Jean-Claude has been reserving a spot for his opera-singing 75-year-old wife Thérèse Lachance for one year. He draws three flowers next to her name so that no one confuses her for another Thérèse.

Unlike Lipani--who prefers to watch the black-clad UQÀM students and weirdos such as the vagrant who promises to "draw your soul 'cuz I take lots of vitamins"--Jean-Claude does crossword puzzles.

"All the musicians sit together. There's no animosity. We form a family."

Another busker called Jean-Marc makes colourful drawings of country scenes on old Number 7 cigarette packs. He hopes to sell them to people who want to cover their packs when the government puts cancerous lungs on packs to discourage smoking.

After his long 11-hour workday you'd think Lipani would hit the sack. "When I come here I drink too much coffee," Lipani says. "I go home and write until 6 a.m. and then sleep for two hours."

Then he gets up and does it all over. "It's like I have a job, and me, I find that good. If I didn't do this, what would I do?" says Lipani. "I'm reliable. I'm always here. Always. Always. Always."

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