1. Group Dynamics

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    September 25, 2014 by admin

    Bethesda Fountain was buzzing with school groups today. Altogether there were 3 groups from the Brooklyn Environmental Exploration School, or BEES. They were on a scavenger hunt. The first flight of BEES was happy to stop for a hula. Their teacher contributed $3. The second flight, hearing others had been there before them, hurried away without a dance; the third danced, then hurried away. Their teacher promised to put “hukilau” on the vocabulary list.

    On the eastern staircase, a class of high school kids from a private school, in blue shirts and beige pants and skirts, posed for their school picture. During a lull in the photo-taking, a half-dozen boys wandered my way. “Have you got time for a hula today?” They lined up and off we went. By the second verse of the “The Hukilau Song,” they were in perfect sync, hula to the left, hula to the right. While the kane’s danced, the wahini’s gave their critique from the sidelines. “What do you think, girls,” I asked. “Was that a good hula?”

    “Not even close,” said one girl, and the others agreed, but none would don a lei to show the boys how it was done.

    Time to go, the boys pulled out their wallets and each dropped at least a dollar in my case, maybe more.

    In the northeast corner, by the water, a college class was arrayed around their teacher. When they were done, a few of the girls asked if they could hula. They’d seen the other groups dancing and wanted to get in on it too. They were from Marymount Manhattan College; the subject of the seminar was “Romantic Attachments.”

    “What is that?” I asked the teacher. “Sex education?”

    “That’s what I thought at first,” she said, “but you’d be surprised. These girls know the physical mechanics, but have no practical experience with the emotional.” At the end of the dance, she slipped a twenty out of her pocketbook. “You’re great,” she told me. “Are you here all the time? I’m going to hold more classes out here.”

    Toward the end of my gig, 2 Brazilian women stopped to dance. One dark, one blond, they were tall and curvaceous, dancing the hula in a rapid, controlled style. As they walked away toward the lake, they embraced and kissed. A moment later, the brunette returned with $2. She was still dancing to her inner uke when I pocketed my $37.25 and went home.

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  2. Best Day Ever

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    September 24, 2014 by admin

    The autumnal equinox brought a crystal clear day in the low 70s. People were out in coats and sweaters; I was back in long pants. Center stage was mine.

    After a few songs, a toddler came up to me and indicated he wanted to dance. I tried to put a lei over his head, but he would have none of it. Standing stiffly by my side, the child smiled for the camera. His father and older brother took pictures, while mother and sister sat on a bench. Mother was totally covered in brown, only her eyes exposed. She had a large red pocketbook in her lap. Father gave me a fiver and I asked him where he was from.

    “You are my first Qatari,” I told him, and shook his hand.

    “It is a very small country,” he said in unaccented English.

    “In a very difficult part of the world,” I added.

    Taking in the scene around him – boats on the lake, splashing fountain, giant bubbles from the bubble man, children dancing, the sweep of the twin stone staircases leading the eye to the sky – he said, “How lovely here. The children are happy.”

    Next came 3 women, one of whom, Janice, was having a birthday. That was good for $2. The 40-something man in Bermuda shorts was good for a handful of silver. A girl in her 20s put on a lei and did some kind of interpretive hula that had her cavorting all around the fountain, balancing on the walls, leaping like a gazelle. That was good for another $2.

    A pear-shaped man in a panama hat wanted to take my picture while I sang “Honolulu Baby.” As he held the camera steady, he waggled his butt. “Sons of the Desert,” he said, naming the title of one of the Laurel and Hardy movies in which the song had been performed. I sang on; his graceful waggle was vintage Oliver Hardy. As he walked off, he told me he was from Germany, where they love the old films.

    A man walked up with money in his hand. “My group over there has been listening to you, and we want you to have this. It’s $100.” He put the c-note in my hand; I put it in my pocket. “Give them a little acknowledgement.” I tipped my hat.

    They were 3 couples from Nantucket who had done well and had no problem spreading it around. At the end of the day, I counted $16.86 in my case. My previous one day record of several years standing was $51, $40 of which I got from film crews who had paid me to shut up. This was better.

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  3. The Best Dollar of the Season

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    September 19, 2014 by admin

    It was another gorgeous day, and not a saxophone in sight. I set up at center stage, turned my face to the sun and sang my heart out. A girl from England stopped to hula. Her boyfriend got it all on film, then, with a simple “Thanks, love,” they walked off. At least, I thought, her dance might give others the idea.

    A misbehaving toddler, not yet 2 years old, cried from one end of the plaza to the other, with her exasperated mother chasing behind. When the little girl saw me, we locked eyes, the crying stopped, and soon she was dancing joyfully to “Tiptoe through the Tulips.” We kept this up through 2 verses and 3 choruses. Observers seemed amused to watch the dynamic between us, and the little girl’s mother seemed relieved. At the song’s conclusion, the mother whisked the girl back into her stroller and rolled away.

    A young man in jeans and tee shirt finally got me started with a dollar.

    A 20-something bike rider dismounted right in front of me to listen. After 2 songs, I asked, “Do you like ukulele music?”

    “I like listening to you play it,” he said. Just then, a woman of a certain age brushed by him and put a dollar in my case. The bike rider, perhaps realizing the rules of the game, walked his bike to the east-bound path and listened from there.

    After taking a few pictures of me, a man dug deep into his pocket and came up with 56 cents to give me. Most people give me a thumbs-up for a photo, if they give me anything.

    Almost every day in the park, for the last six or seven years, an elderly black woman has walked by, east to west, and never even looked at me. A few years ago I started greeting her with an aloha, and today, for the first time, she pulled a crumpled single from her pocketbook and dropped it in my case. “Do you write your own songs?” she asked in a West Indian lilt.

    I explained that my songs were largely from the 20s and 30s. “Even older than me,” she said. “They’re lovely.” If that were the only dollar I earned all season, I would be satisfied.

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