1. A Not-So-Blue Monday

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    August 19, 2014 by admin

    There is a new homeless person, a young woman, playing guitar at Strawberry Fields. That makes at least four, who seem to have worked out a rotation, with one on the bench by the Imagine mosaic, one on the rock with the country plaque just to the east, and two on deck. They pretty much stick to the Beatles songbook.

    The horse chestnut tree looks awful. The leaves are browning fast; if there are chestnuts forming, despite the blight, I can’t see them.

    The day is perfect, low humidity, temp around 80, cool breeze off the lake, lots of people hanging out around the fountain. With my hat, and with SPF 70 on my arms, legs and face, I set up on center stage and go into my act, which, appropriately, I begin with “Sunday,” which begins with the lyric, “I’m blue every Monday.”

    “Have you got time for a hula today?” There are no takers. Across from me sat 3 college-aged girls. “How about a hula?” I called over to them. They just needed to be asked. Two were from Scotland, the other from Australia. Their hula was slow and seductive, at the end of which they returned their leis and went back to the bench. It looked to be another egregious walk-away, but moments later they returned, each putting a dollar in my case.

    A young couple wearing Rutgers tee shirts dropped a buck and did a spirited dance, with turns and dips, jumps and stomps. They had such a good time they added an additional 2 bucks to the growing pile of singles. An Asian woman tried to hula, but didn’t have a clue; her Brazilian boyfriend, after a little coaxing, stepped in and showed her. A wispy Hispanic girl, perhaps 7-8 years old, approached. “Would you like to hula?” I asked.

    “With pleasure.” She had energy, grace and imagination – the sort of kid who stars in “Annie” on Broadway. Her uncle asked for change of a 20, and left a fiver.

    An Israeli woman skipped toward me with a toddler in her arms. Unable to stand the toddler on her own two feet, the woman hulaed with the child in her arms. An Englishman stopped to talk about George Formby, as almost every Englishman has since I started busking in 2007. Between and during dances, individual men, women and children contributed their loose change.

    While counting my take at the end of the set, a teenage girl walked up to me. “I heard your music and really like it,” handing me another dollar.

    As pleased as I was with the $18.67 in my pocket, a day like today is priceless. And to top things off, I got a call from Martina, the cable tv lady from the M104. We tape on 9/8.

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  2. Beating the Rain

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    August 13, 2014 by admin

    Big, billowy gray storm clouds rolled in on cool moist winds from the southeast, covering the sun. The conditions were perfect for playing center stage. As I tuned up and strummed out a basic chord pattern (G, G7, C, Cm, G, E7, A7, D7, G), a forty-something woman wearing a MMA (Metropolitan Museum of Art) sticker walked up to take my picture. “Did you get it? Good. Now how about a hula?”

    She was from Austin TX. After the hula, she took a selfie of the two of us and promised to send it to me. We’ll see. If she does, it will be all I get from her.

    An enthusiastic 8-year-old girl with blond hair to the middle of her back improvised for her parents and sister. The sister, entering her teens, refused to join in. At the end of the dance, it took a moment to disentangle her hair from the lei.

    A teenaged couple walked up to me. “Have you got time for a hula today?”

    “No, we just wanted to give you this,” said the boy, handing me a dollar. “We really like your music.”

    Over the next 45 minutes, the same scene played out three times. Adults with a young child stop to listen. An adult presses money in the child’s hand and gives instruction on how to put it in my case. The child approaches, withdraws, approaches again, drops the money and runs. “Thank you,” I say, first to the child, then to the adult, for teaching the important lesson of aloha.

    The clouds moved faster. The wind shifted; it was blowing from the west, making it hard to tell whether the rain had started or I was just getting wet from the spray off the fountain behind me. There was already 3 times more money in my case today than yesterday, so I packed up and headed out of the park to the subway. By the time I got home it was pouring.

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  3. Here Come the (Wrong) Crowds

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    August 12, 2014 by admin

    It started as a typical Monday, not too crowded. The weather continued hot and humid. Puffy white clouds in a bright blue sky were backdrop for the towers of the Majestic and the San Remo on Central Park West. A fifty-ish man gave me a dollar early on; another man of about the same age emptied his pockets of 8 dimes and nickel. That was my haul for the day.

    During the slow moments, when no one was visible in either direction, I practiced “Down among the Sheltering Palms,” and another new tune, “You’ve Got to be a Football Hero.”

    About 20 yards up the path, an old man carefully set up his equipment, pulling it from a shopping cart, first a chair, an umbrella, a music stand. I worried at first that this was another busker, but it eventually came clear that he was a caricature artist. That wasn’t a music stand, it was an easel. He didn’t have a keyboard in his cart, it was a box of paint and brushes.

    Moments later, an old lady started pulling her caricature studio out of a granny cart about 5 yards down the path. I was surrounded. Add to these the caricature artist who had been setting up near the bench toward the fountain all season, Nick the hand-writing analyst, and the accordionist who has recently appeared, and my stretch of path no longer provided the quiet wonder of aloha on a summer day; it’s looking more like a carnival midway.

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