Street musician Sam Schildkraut and his sidekick, Yorkie-Chihuahua (YoWaWa) mix Gangsta, will celebrate their 1,001st performance outside Skechers shoes at 4475 Mission Blvd. from 9 to 11 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 9. “We\u2019ll both be dressed in our tuxes,” said Schildkraut of the special occasion.
\nIt\u2019s been a year since the unlikely pair was first featured in the Beach & Bay Press. Both remain active, vital and increasingly familiar in their adopted beach community.
\nSam has gained notoriety for playing his sax while accompanied by Gangsta. And Gangsta is making friends, like his new buddy “Taco,” whom he hangs out with now whenever Taco\u2019s owner Doug DePrima drops by.
\nDePrima said Taco and Gangsta are “homies.”
\n“They go wild for each other,” DePrima said, adding the two pet owners and their charges met at McDonald\u2019s and have been friends ever since.
\nDePrima gives kudos to Schildkraut for spending time with and promoting his “sidekick.”
\n“Sam takes Gangsta to L.A. to take pictures with movie stars; he\u2019s very busy with him,” DePrima said.
\nDePrima hopes some of Gangsta\u2019s “street cred” will rub off on Taco. In fact, some of it already has.
\n“Taco does a dance on his hind legs that makes people laugh. That would make me rich if I were able to get him to do it on command,” said DePrima. “He\u2019s the kind of dog who walks down the boardwalk and people just crack a smile when they see him.”
\nA transplant from New York, Schildkraut came to San Diego to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He\u2019d always wanted a dog. He found one in Gangsta, a “furry frankfurter” he encountered while in a San Bernardino hotel parking lot and ultimately adopted after finding out he was a stray.
\nThough strangers in a strange land, the man and his “son,” as Schildkraut refers to Gangsta, have found their niche in PB performing nightly outside the corner shoe store. It\u2019s an experience that\u2019s schooled Schildkraut on the human condition.
\nThe saxophone player said he\u2019s witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly in people standing on the corner of Garnet Avenue and Mission Boulevard.
\n“People will tip you or chat with you even if they can\u2019t tip \u2014 that\u2019s all good,” Schildkraut said. “But then I\u2019ve had people, men and women, who\u2019ve shoved me or wanted to throw their weight around or looked down at me.”
\nEarning his living as a street musician has not dissuaded Schildkraut from his ultimate goals, which not only includes personal improvement and success but gaining notoriety for Gangsta as well.
\nSchildkraut wants to pen a book about Gangsta, in a format yet to be determined, with the title “Gangsta: A three-pound puppy lost in the \u2018hood.”
\nWith a Gangsta tome in the works, Schildkraut is forging ahead with his Gangsta “calendars,” which feature the mutt mugging with more than 100 famous folks, including the likes of astronaut Buzz Aldrin as well as actors like Sylvester Stallone, Cheech Marin and Barbara Eden of “I Dream of Jeannie” fame.
\nSchildkraut is also looking forward to celebrating his 1,001st night as a street saxophone player.
\n“If people have ever appreciated my work, hopefully they\u2019ll come by and say hi,” he said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Street musician Sam Schildkraut and his sidekick, Yorkie-Chihuahua (YoWaWa) mix Gangsta, will celebrate their 1,001st performance outside Skechers shoes at 4475 Mission Blvd. from 9 to 11 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 9. “We\u2019ll both be dressed in our tuxes,” said Schildkraut of the special occasion. It\u2019s been a year since the unlikely pair was first […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":259214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"PB?street musician to celebrate his 1,001st performance in Gangsta style","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}