1. Two in a Row

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    April 12, 2014 by admin

    Friday started chilly and overcast, but by the time I reached Bethesda Fountain the day had warmed and brightened. The water in the park has been turned on since yesterday; the gentle splash of the fountain mingled with the sweet sounds of the harp and dulcimer. Arlen and Meta had drawn a good-sized crowd, a promising sign of throngs to come.

    I donned my lei at my second favorite location, on the path to the Boathouse. With an enormous maple to my back, which gives great shade in summertime although nothing now, and an outcropping of Manhattan schist to my left, I stood to sing. In front of me was an old mulberry tree displaying several fresh cuts; the Parks Department has been busy lopping off dead limbs. At the lakeside people got in and out of rowboats, while at the easternmost end of the lake other people ate on white tablecloths, taking in the view, like me. Across the lake, I could see through the bare bushes a timber-lined path. Is that new? And to the northwest, the taupe towers of the San Remo, made famous in Ghostbusters, stretch skyward.

    I start with “Making Love Ukulele Style,” in G, simple chords requiring no great range, followed by a medley in C, “Sunday,” “Fit as a Fiddle” and “I Saw Stars.” Lots of people walked by, ignoring me. After 15 minutes, a young woman dropped a dollar in my case. They were all dollars after that, 11 of them, and most from women too, none of whom danced the hula.

    I got my first hula dancer about an hour in. A girl of 6 or 7 was very enthusiastic, as were 2 adults, but the 5-year-old boy preferred not to. He wandered off to sit on the rocks and watch the show, which turned out not to star his sister, but rather the adults. Under the pretense of showing the girl how to hula, they shook and shimmied up a storm.

    After 90 minutes, I took off my lei and packed up. I’d played and sang more confidently today than I had yesterday. Callouses are starting to form on my fingertips. I got a little sunburn on my balding pate. Thus the Aloha Spirit transforms us.

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  2. Opening Day

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    April 10, 2014 by admin

    I entered the park at 72nd St. and ran into a wall of meandering tourists at the Imagine mosaic. “Coming through! Hot Coffee! Watch your back! Lady with a baby!” Spring has arrived in Central Park: yellow daffodils, purple wood hyacinth, blue myrtle and green hellebore. The trees are still largely bare, but forsythia and magnolia are showing color. The sky today was cloudless.

    At Bethesda Fountain, I stopped to say hello to Arlen and Meta, who have teamed up to do harp and dulcimer duets. They’re hard core street musicians, having worked through this winter, except on the most frigid days. Arlen’s been at this longer than me; he showed me the ropes when I first started busking. “Oh, great,” he said when he saw me, “it’s that damned ukulele again.”

    Following the path toward the Boathouse, I saw that my second location was occupied by Nick, the handwriting analyst. This year he seems to have added water colors to his menu of goods and services. Farther along, just past the stairs leading under the roadway, I set up shop: paper leis, CDs, business cards, a plastic hula-hula doll, one sign that says “This is Culture”, and another that asks “Got Aloha?”

    Over the years, I’ve observed that the English have a thing for the ukulele. A family of four from Oxford stopped to do a hula, two tow-headed children gamely waving their arms, Dad shouting instructions, while Mom took pictures. A little later I sang Happy Birthday to a girl from Brighton. Each dropped a fiver in my case. I got another couple of bucks from a group of teenage boys from Toronto. They were staying in New Jersey, had just arrived by bus and wanted to meet girls…or wahinis, as they took to calling them.

    Mine was a ragged performance today. I blanked out on chords for songs I’ve played 1000 times. Nevertheless, the day was so beautiful I played for almost 2 hours and took in $21.20. As I was packing up, a Central Park Conservancy worker stopped his cart in front of me. “Winter must be over,” he said, “now that the ukulele’s back.”

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  3. The 2014 Season Gets Set to Begin

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    April 9, 2014 by admin

    Aloha, New York. It’s a beautiful day today, if still under 60 degrees, and tomorrow promises to be a beauty. I took out my Lanakai tenor uke yesterday, tuned it up using low-G tuning, then rounded down to F-sharp to accommodate my voice. The Lanakai is my “outside” uke, with deep, resonant tones that carry outside the confines of Bethesda Fountain, past the azalea and rose bushes, up the grassy slopes and over the lake, where boaters bob all summer. My “inside” uke is a Kamaka soprano, on which this winter I’ve been practicing some new tunes for the 2014 season.

    This will be my 8th season in the park. I started shortly after retiring from a corporate sales job. “What will you do with yourself?” well-meaning friends asked. When I answered that I’d play the ukulele in the park, they thought I was kidding. Perhaps I was, a little, but once I overcame my stage-fright, I realized that making music, especially that joyful plink-a-plink of the ukulele, was world’s more satisfying than golf, for example. Year after year I learned the craft of street musician, came to know a cadre of dedicated performers, suffered indignities at the hands of the Central Park Conservancy, and blissfully strummed out The Hukilau Song for those intrepid tourists who donned a paper lei and danced the hula beside the fountain’s splashing water, beneath the bright blue sky.

    The fun starts tomorrow, and will go on until it gets too cold. I’ll tell you all about it.

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