1. Last Licks

    0

    November 17, 2015 by admin

    Giant white snowflakes have been hung over Columbus Ave. Along Central Park West, they’ve set up the aluminum grandstand 7 tiers high for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Inside the park, the crowds are thin, despite the 65 degree weather. The hydrangea behind the benches has turned wine red. On the almost leafless rose bushes, a few pink petals have opened wide, as if asking the sun for a handout; orange hips swell on the lower branches.

    At the Imagine Mosaic, the homeless guitarist led the crowd in “Imagine,” encouraging the multi-part harmony with shouts of “lovely, beautiful” between line breaks. Fuzzy buds have lengthened on the tips of magnolia branches. Through the bare trees, I could see the tops of the tall buildings of Mount Sinai Hospital on upper Fifth Ave. In the arcade, the Boyd Family Singers have expanded their repertoire of sacred music to include a few secular Christmas carols.

    Andrew, the young guitarist, was packing up when I got to center stage. “I like these European crowds,” he told me. “They drop a five where New Yorkers drop singles.”

    A 40-something man gave me a dollar and asked if he could take a picture. “Do you play ‘Ukulele Lady’?” he asked. I told him I’d be getting to it soon. Not soon enough, I suppose, because he wandered away.

    A guy and his gal from Brooklyn gave me a fiver and said, “Ok, entertain us.” I had just finished “Fit as a Fiddle,” and launched into “I Saw Stars.” The girlfriend bopped along to the beat, but refused to put on a lei. “How much to come out in a rowboat and serenade us?”

    I hesitated. “150 bucks,” I told him, certain that at that rate I would keep my feet dry.

    “No, don’t you get it?” he insisted. “You’re missing a great opportunity. People will row up to you from every direction to give you money.”

    After haranguing me for a while longer, off they wandered to the boathouse. A man wanted to know if I would stand for a picture with his girlfriend. I put a lei around her neck for the shot. She would not hula.

    A little girl came by and wanted to dance. “If it’s ok with your mom,” I said. It was. The girl was at a loss as to what to do, so I put a lei around her mom’s neck and told the girl to follow. It was a charming scene, recorded by several passers-by. Two women, who had been sitting on the bench for a while came by with a dollar.

    The first photographer came back. “Thanks for playing ‘Ukulele Lady’,” he said. Marcel walked by with Maggie the dog to say hello, marvel at the weather and wish me a pleasant winter. The couple from Brooklyn pulled their rowboat up to the steps leading from the lake to the fountain area. They hailed me.

    “Yo, Brooklyn,” I shouted to them.

    At the end of my set, a thirty-something man got up from the bench and tossed a fiver in my case. “I gotta tell you,” he told me, “you’re the most talented man in Central Park.”

    With his $5, my total came to $15, as good as any day in the summer, let alone a week before Thanksgiving.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: , , ,

  2. Aloha Again

    0

    November 7, 2015 by admin

    I thought the season might be over, until it topped 70 degrees on Friday. It should not have surprised me. A trip to The Mr. Ukulele Archives revealed that busking after 11/1 occurred 5 out of my 8 years, after 11/15 twice, and on 12/1/10, records show I took in $1.

    The sky was November gray, with thick fast-moving clouds allowing patches of blue to appear. The cosmos, cleome, and lantana were grubbed out at the Women’s Gate entrance. Yellow leaves carpeted the lawns, except where the park workers had raked clearings, leaving piles for another crew to remove. Oak leaves filled the air like snow flurries, and piled high against the curbs. Tourists took pictures of squirrels sniffing for acorns.

    At Bethesda Fountain, I acknowledged the comic book man, his wares wrapped in protective sleeves propped up on the bench, and took possession of center stage. Before long a group of high school girls from Toronto sat near me for a group photo. I invited them all to hula, and two accepted. They danced a credible hula, returned their leis and walked away.

    Two Russians eyed me as they walked by. One stopped and said, “How much CD?”

    I told him $10; he shook his head and reached for his wallet. It was my last CD; I’ll have to make more this winter. I also gave him my card. “If there are any problems with it, let me know.”

    “From Moscow?”

    “The internet is everywhere,” I said, thinking, ok, maybe not everywhere.

    A young man with broad shoulders and dark hair walked up from the benches. He put a dollar in my case and said, “You’ve got a really good voice.” I thanked him. “Really good.”

    A couple of 30-somethings with two daughters walked by. “Have you got time for a hula today?”

    The girls looked at mom and dad hopefully. Mom smiled. “I’ve got a lei for you too?” I teased her. She didn’t take it, but while the girls and I went to the hukilau, I could see over my shoulder that mom was swaying right there with us, showing her daughters how it was done. Dad gave me $2.

    “I don’t have any money,” said a girl of 5 or 6, as she put a handful of change in my case.

    “Would you like to do the hula?”

    “No, thank you,” she said, and she ran off.

    A young teen boy came by and gave me a buck. So did a young teen girl. The wind blew water from the fountain onto me; for a moment I thought it was raining, until the sun appeared, bright and warm.

    “You did that,” the comic book man shouted at me. He’d been listening to my songs of tropic islands, palm trees and dancing girls since I got there.

    “I did, I did do that.”

    The little girl with no money came back. “Do you write all those songs?”

    “No, they were written before either of us was born.”

    “Do you come out here every day?”

    “No, just when the weather’s nice. I don’t think I’ll be out here much anymore.”

    “Can’t you do something else, like sell hot chocolate?”

    “No, I don’t think so, but I don’t mind. I’ll see you back here in the spring, ok?”

    “Ok,” she said, and she ran off again.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags:

  3. November 4, Really

    0

    November 5, 2015 by admin

    The post-marathon park seemed out of season. Annuals were torn up; past peak, many trees were bare. Despite the 70 degree temperature, people were wrapped in scarves and sweaters. The cowboy was in his proper place in the northwest corner of the plaza, allowing me the uncontested center stage.

    An Australian family started me off. One daughter wanted to hula, the other hung back to watch. After a verse of “The Hukilau Song” I invited the second daughter to reconsider, and soon the sisters were dancing in tandem, clomp-clomp right, clomp-clomp left. Dad got the picture, and I got a fiver.

    A woman with a huge camera gave me a dollar and asked for a photo. Before she could get me in focus, a man with an equally huge camera took his photo from another angle.

    An old man lurked, watching and listening first from the bench, then from the lip of the fountain, then back at the bench. After a half dozen songs, he approached with a dollar and asked, “Who besides you and me has ever heard of these old songs? ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips,’ ‘All of Me,’ ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,’ ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me.’ Great job,” he added, returning to the bench to hear some more.

    Mothers with small children took advantage of the warm weather. Two moms, with 3 kids between them, let them run freely, which eventually led them to me. I folded the leis in half so they would not trip over them. The 4 year old girl danced. The 2 year old boy, alert to the fact that people were watching, stood stock still, not wanting to call any more attention to himself. The third child clung to his mom’s leg. The dancers were each given a dollar for me.

    While all this was going on, Marcel and Maggie came down the path and into the plaza. A 70-something woman, introduced as Marcel’s wife and Maggie’s mom, told me how cute it was to see little kids dance, and how much Maggie enjoyed the ukulele.

    As a woman walked by, our eyes met just as I got to the lyric in “Sunday,” “…so sweet, the moment I fell for you.” She doubled back and dropped some change in my case. “You got me,” she said.

    A small girl broke away from a group photograph at the fountain and handed me a dollar. Two women from the bench, an 80-something and a 60-something, who had been chatting through my performance, approached with a dollar too.

    Counting my take at the end of the session, $12.35, I sent a silent prayer of Aloha into the warm blue sky. What’s weird is that this unseasonably warm weather is likely to reprise tomorrow, as am I.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , ,

Archives