Physics student 'sciences' street storytelling in Rochester, N.Y.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- The sound of the metallic clickety-clack and the sight of someone typing on a manual typewriter perched on his lap turned heads recently at the Public Market.

Karl Smith, 26, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester in biophysics, offered 10-cent stories while you waited. Many took him up on the offer.

"I used to work as a historical interpreter at a Boy Scout camp in Cimarron, New Mexico," and portrayed a historical character, he said.

This was one idea that turned into his favorite, of keeping that creative side alive. "Science is creative in its own way, but it's not whimsical. It doesn't have that same aspect of the theatrical," he said.

Smith, a Rochester resident originally from Pennsylvania, started offering stories approximately two years ago, and busks at the Corn Hill Festival and most weekends at Public Market and the pier in the Charlotte neighborhood depending upon his graduate school workload.

He said "almost immediately" after starting this project, "people would come up to me and would tell me the most incredible things about their lives and they would think that I had some special sort of insight into, like, the problems in their lives."

During the two hours he was at the Public Market recently, some people did a double take, smiled and moved on while others stopped and watched.

"I write any kind of stories at all," he told a woman who had stopped to watch him. He explained, "Usually I ask for, you know, like a character in an unusual situation or like an object that's broken in a really weird way."

The typewriter initially caught Gary Levine's attention. He said he hadn't seen one in many years. Levine, of Rochester, about to celebrate 30 years of marriage, asked Smith to write a story about it.

Several minutes later after he received his story, smiling, he said, "I thought it was very good."

Elizabeth Primus of Rochester had seen Smith at the Public Market before. She said she recently started a business and felt anxious and stressed out, so she had him write a story about her business, "where everything came out good and it was successful."

Whatever the topic people brought him, Smith enthusiastically asked them a few questions and pounded away on his $5 typewriter, which he found on sale.

With one year left before graduation, he's still trying to figure out what he'll do. He said he likes the research but his passion is in storytelling and he hopes to get into science communication of some kind.

As for the 10-cent storytelling, "I like it for the storytelling, but more than anything I like it for the people," he said, "this is my love letter to Rochester."

Want to find Karl Smith?

You can tweet to him: @10centstories.