1. Not a Cop

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    October 30, 2014 by admin

    The New York City Marathon is Sunday. The W. 72nd St. entrance to the park was blocked off with 8-foot silver fencing. There were motorized vehicles driving every which way. Inside the park, more fencing. The city is busy cleaning up for the event. On the path leading away from Strawberry Fields, 3 gardeners pulled up black-stemmed boneset and multiflora roses. “Multiflora,” said one gardener, “because they multiply.”

    On the upper branches of the catalpas, the long skinny seed pods hung like black tinsel among the broad, yellowing leaves. For reasons unknown to me, the flag across the road was at half-mast. On a grassy patch, 15-20 new moms with their babies were exercising back into shape. The restrooms south of the arcade were newly hosed down.

    The guy I call Frank, the lip syncher, was set up near my spot at the fountain, his amp turned up high. I stopped to inform him that amplification was not permitted; it did not go well. “I see amps here all the time,” he said. “Do you hassle them? Why you hassling me? You gonna call the cops?” I explained that since the Quiet Zone Wars, we buskers agreed to police ourselves and his egregious behavior could ruin it for the rest of us. “Nobody but you is bothering about me,” he said by way of justification. “It’s not nearly as bad as the subway.”

    Having made no impression at all, I wished him Aloha and headed toward the boathouse. As it happened, Frank was not lip-synching; he had a fine voice and interspersed his performance with high kicks, break dancing and acrobatics.

    A dollar from a young couple got me started. Two English lads threw in 6 quarters, then stopped a few yards away and conferred. Moments later, they came back and gave me a handful of change. When I counted my take at the end of the set, I found a 1913 Buffalo nickel among the coins.

    A young parks department employee opened up the wire fence in front of me so he could mow the lawn there. “I’ll only be 10 minutes,” he said. Over the roar of the mower, I practiced my new numbers, “Down among the Sheltering Palms,” and “You’ve Got to Be a Touchdown Hero.”

    A tall, heavily muscled young man from Brazil took the ukulele out of my hands and started playing “New York, New York.” He hadn’t quite mastered all the chords, but he made it through to the end of the song. Smiling proudly, he gave me back my uke and walked away to rejoin his friends.

    It was a hula-free day. A number of people danced, but only when they’d passed me by and thought I couldn’t see them. One 30-something man with a sympathetic smile gave me a buck. During my finale, “Little Grass Shack,” a couple stopped to hear me pine for my “fish and poi;” they too contributed a buck.

    The fellow who mowed the grass had taken up a broom and was sweeping the leaves off the stairs. I asked him if his supervisors had ever discussed the rules governing buskers. He nodded toward Frank. “You mean like him? I told him he couldn’t amplify, but I’m not a cop. Whenever I call PEP (Parks Enforcement Patrol) they don’t come, so I don’t call anymore.”

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  2. Something New

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    October 28, 2014 by admin

    With so few suitable days remaining in the season, I ventured out on Monday despite the cool temperature. It was just 60 degrees, and the sparse crowds at Bethesda Fountain wore hats, coats and scarves. Singing in the sun kept me warm.

    A trio of Italians got off their bikes near me and started to take pictures. The boats on the lake, fall colors on the far shore, and crystal blue sky above complemented the brick, stone and bronze of the place. As the others remounted, a young man came toward me and placed a dollar in my case. It lay there alone for some time until a thin elderly woman got up off the bench to add a handful of quarters.

    Barreling down the path came a large group of teenagers. “Have you guys got time for a hula today?” There was a scrum for leis, then the kids lined up and danced to “The Hukilau Song.” They were 8th graders from Gloucester, NJ, and were in no hurry at all. After the dance, the group colonized the grassy hill beyond the benches, tossing a frisbee, snacking, and generally slacking off until their next activity. Three times, a gaggle of girls broke away and asked to dance again. For variety, I played “My Little Grass Shack” and “Honolulu Eyes,” but the last group of girls wanted to go to the hukilau again. All told, I collected $2 and change. Two unaffiliated boys of the same age had been sitting by the fountain to watch the show. When the group finally gathered to leave, the boys each gave me a dollar.

    Maybe because there were so few tourists today, I became aware of some new presences. A tall, muscular man in jeans and a tee shirt walked slowly around the fountain, asking loudly who had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior; he offered baptism right then and there. A man set up on the opposite side of the fountain with a microphone and tape recorder. He was lip-syncing to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.”

    I was packing up to leave when the saxophone player sat down near me. “Are you coming or going?”

    “It’s all yours,” I said.

    He rolled his eyes toward Frank. “There’s something new here every day,” he said, warming up with scales. As I walked away, I heard the sax’s rendition of “New York, New York,” a jazzy fortissimo. Frank didn’t stand a chance.

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  3. Sixty-Four Degrees and Sunny

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    October 26, 2014 by admin

    A beautiful Saturday in New York brought out the crowds, foreign and domestic. The acrobats had taken over the western stairs, with their loud exhortations to make noise. The entire plaza teemed with people enjoying the day, a very welcoming sight as seen from the eastern stairs, and for a moment I thought it might be possible to coexist with the shouting and clapping of the acrobats, but no. I was content to visit my maple tree, still leafy overhead. The baby mulberries were dripping with bright red, hard-skinned berries, while the enormous parent across the path bore no fruit.

    A woman walked by and started me out with a dollar. Moments later, 2 people on bikes stopped to take pictures of The Boathouse Restaurant, and the yellow mums around the railing reflected in the lake. Before remounting their bikes, the woman asked for a picture with me. I put a lei around her neck; he gave me a dollar.

    Two toddlers bopped by, put on leis and danced ($2); two young women did not dance ($2).

    A girl and her mother told me they had lived in Hawaii for 8 years. “I can play the ukulele,” the girl said. I handed it to her and she plucked out a tune. “I can play the ukulele behind my head.” The girl wrestled my uke into position, but she could not play her song. “This should be higher,” she said, plucking the G-string.

    “It’s tuned differently than your soprano uke; it’s an octave lower,” I said.

    “So that’s why it doesn’t work.” She handed the uke back to me, turned and walked away, followed by her mother, who waved “Aloha” without turning around.

    A 70-something stopped to hear a few bars of “Give Me a Ukulele,” and he gave me a dollar. I asked him what had grabbed him, was it the song? “No,” he said, “it’s the whole…the whole presentation.”

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