Pearls Before Breakfast

Washington Post run this experiment a few years ago. The question was "Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?"

Joshua Bell (American Grammy Award-winning violinist) donned a baseball cap and played as an incognito street busker at the Metro subway station L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. The experiment was videotaped on hidden camera; among 1,097 people who passed by, only seven stopped to listen to him, and only one recognized him. For his nearly 45-minute performance, Bell collected $32.17 from 27 passersby (excluding $20 from the passerby who recognized him). Gene Weingarten (experiment initiator) won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for his article on the experiment.