traffic spike at WaPo

Gene Weingarten is a columnist for The Washington Post Magazine and debriefs the whole experiment (via Live Discussion) they setup for world-famous Josh Bell to play his Stradivarius near a DC Metro stop:

This story got the largest and most global response of anything I have ever written, for any publication. I think the enthusiastic classical-music blogosphere helped give it a viral life, as did the availability of quality video. … With little or no elaboration, more than 100 readers so far have told me that this story made them cry. It was not a reaction I anticipated, at least not so universally, and it has somewhat taken me aback.

The original article, “Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.” has been very viral among non-classical-music bloggers and others as well, b/c it’s a brilliant experiment, almost parallel to the age-old question, if a tree fell in the forest and no one heard it, would make a sound?

I love the back story, and the link to another experiment when Bruce Springsteen performing on the street in Copenhagen — see video.