Does your town have these? Ranks of failed artists lining the sidewalks of tourist strolls, charcoal at the ready and surrounded by slightly-off portraits of Tupac Shakur, Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino in Scarface (why? whyyyyy???) and various other celebrities who are either dead or career dead and thus unlikely to sue.
We certainly do. At least the guys who line the sidewalks on the DTES are offering practical things like old DVDs, sweaters, candle holders, shoes, and psychoactive substances. The guys on Robson Street can’t say that!
What possesses the hapless (at least, they look hapless; I’ve rarely seen any hap at all evident anywhere on their persons) tourist to pick up one of these carbon-based travesties? The thought that surely there can be no more personal souvenir of Vancouver than a hand-drawn caricature of Roseanne Barr? Maybe they take one look at Tony Soprano there and say “if this guy can do that, I know he’ll do justice to THIS face?” And it’s not as if Tupac ever really broke into the Vancouver market in the first place.
raincoaster 
Absolutely, those famous faces are the charcoal artists’ street-Tweets; their aim to get you to sit for a spell and pay them $10 for the privilege of drawing you. I’ve had my caricature drawn in various tourist meccas, and it’s always a hoot…if they’re good. If one of them were smart, they would take their craft on-line, and draw people’s distorted mugs for Avatars and such. Did you ever go to the link on my blog and do your own artists’ sketch of yourself? You should, it’s actually quite fun, and eerie how well you can get it to look like yourself…it, like sitting for the charcoal cartoonist, like all of this shameless self-promotion, is pure harmless vanity. Now go draw yourself and let us see you how you see you… http://lostweeknight.blogspot.com
…when you need a break from all this connectivity.
Not only does my town have them, these loathsome aesthetes form the malevolent, horribly twisted epicenter of a Carnival-cruise line-encrusted-fairyland with cotton candy trim. Sadly, it could be paradise, but they put up a parking lot.
I’ll do the face drawing thing, but first I have a flamewar post to get up. Drunken Swiss aggro is very amusing to watch live.
There’s a guy who photoshops your face into a Klingon, which is quite fun; he’s also got a large selection of Klingon Porn. Yes, people send him pictures from porn sites and he photoshops them into Klingons. Geeks are pervy just like regular people!
Necro, I saw more actual original artists than these charcoal spammers when I was in your burb last. Have things changed? Sad.