1. Four in a Row

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    August 13, 2017 by admin

    A knowledgeable reader has informed me that the plants I cannot identify are the annuals gomphrena and celosia.  Except for a single golden stella and 2 pink dog roses, gomphrena and celosia provided the only color behind the benches on Friday, the fourth day in a row of beautiful busking weather in Central Park.

     

    The Imagine Mosaic guitarist was singing “Eight Days a Week.”  A yellow-vested workman on break shouted to his buddy, “One of me favorites.”

     

    Leaving Strawberry Fields, I noticed the wood anemone had emerged from the scrub along the path.  It was already 5 feet high, with large buds visible in a nest of leaves at the end of the long stems.

     

    At Bethesda Fountain, the cowboy was finishing up “Song Sung Blue” (Neil Diamond, 1972).  He motioned to me to sit down for his last number, “Quando, Quando, Quando” (Engelbert Humperdinck, 1968), accompanied by prerecorded strings.

     

    My first hula dancer was a teen-aged Australian boy.  At the end of “The Hukilau Song,” he rejoined his parents and walked away.

     

    Obnoxiously loud music started blaring to my right.  Something was going on near the big bubble man.  A young man had spread roses on the ground in front of a young woman.  He dropped to one knee.  It was a marriage proposal, complete with an amplified soundtrack.  There was nothing to be done but stand quietly and wait for the scene to play itself out.  She said yes, they kissed, the crowd applauded.  A friend, who had been taking pictures, finally bent down and turned the music off.

     

    A group of young men wanted a picture.  One of them gave me a dollar.  When I asked where he was from, he answered, “Verona,” as if answering “Italy” would have done an injustice to his heritage.

     

    A cheerful mom from Hagerstown, MD, offered up her son and daughter to the hula.  The kids did a credible dance; mom gave me a fiver.

     

    An Asian mom unbuckled her baby from the stroller and gave her a little push toward me.  She swayed to the music of “Get Out and Get Under the Moon.”  Mom was delighted and handed the baby a dollar to give to me.  The child ran off, the mother gave chase and came back with my gratuity.

     

    Another baby girl, named Tenzing, from Tibet, was unleashed by her mother.  She walked to within a few feet of me and looked up, locking eyes.  When I finished my song, she started to cry.  Mom picked her up with one arm, as she dropped a dollar in my case with the other.

     

    A prosperous-looking man in a straw hat and Bermuda shorts put a fiver in my case.  As he walked by he said, “Good luck to you in your life.”

     

    A group of Dutchmen walked by.  A teenaged boy fell behind to do a hula.  I threw a lei over his head and he danced to a quick rendering of the first verse of “The Hukilau Song,” sans intro.  Handing back the lei, he said, “You make people happy,” before running off to rejoin his group.

     

    A boy and girl, both under 20, straggled by.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”  They were hesitant, embarrassed.  “We’re homeless,” the boy said.

     

    “All right, then, this hula’s for the homeless.”  I asked them to imagine they were in Hawaii, blue sky, warm sand, the ocean waves lapping at the shore.  They smiled, swaying as I sang to them like palm trees in the breeze.”

     

    “You know, I feel pretty good,” the boy said, returning his lei.  We shook hands.

     

    “Yeah, that was fun,” said the girl.  Together, they turned and blended back into the crowd.

     

    A mom, dad and 2 kids sat at the edge of the fountain.  The kids had watched the homeless hula.  I motioned for them to step up and dance next, but they quickly turned away.  When they got up to leave, however, each kid had been provided a dollar for me.

     

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  2. Spreading Joy

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    August 11, 2017 by admin

    I got to Bethesda Fountain just as the cowboy was packing up his guitar and amplifier.  “Good timing,” I called, as I unloaded my paraphernalia.  This was the third glorious August day in a row.  The park was packed.

     

    A thin young man wearing a yarmulke got me started during my opening number, “Sunday.”  An Hispanic woman added her dollar during “Fit as a Fiddle.”  During the course of my set, she walked by several times, each time pointing to my case and reminding me, “I gave already.”

     

    A man gave me 50 cents for a picture.  “Did you get a good one?  Now how about a hula?”  He smiled, “No.”

     

    A young Chinese boy wandered from his family, who were taking pictures of each other in every permutation.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    He didn’t seem to understand and returned to his family, only to come back a moment later with a fiver.  One of the women (his mother?) wanted a picture, so I put a lei around the boy’s neck and posed.  Then grandma wanted to join in, and soon the family, properly lei-ed, was working through their photo permutations again.

     

    A woman came off the bench and gave me $2.  Various passers-by dropped their singles, but no one, so far, had time for a hula.

     

    Then, toward the end of my set, 2 large women negotiated who would dance and who would work the camera.  After the first verse of “The Hukilau Song,” the photographer lamented that she could not get the video recorder to work.  So we halted for instruction, then moved on to the second verse, which, as indicated by a thumbs-up, was a keeper.

     

    A man on the bench had been observing the last 15-20 minutes of my act.  As I packed up, he walked over and sat down.  He was newly retired, and had just lost his mother.  Today was his first time out of the apartment in a month.  He watched me count out the day’s take, $15.50.  “Here, let me add to that,” he said, pulling a single from his wallet.  “You spread a lot of joy today.”

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  3. Under the Maple

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    August 10, 2017 by admin

    All plant life behind the benches has been grubbed up except for the 2 new flowers fronting the dog roses, which, so far, I haven’t identified.  One has tall stems with pink button-like flowers, the other sports a conical catkin-like flower which started out as white fuzz, but is now pinking at the tip as the tiny white petals fall off.

     

    The guitarists are back at the Imagine Mosaic; the cowboy, clad in leather, crooning to his recorded backup of “Cracklin’ Rosie,” is also back at Bethesda Fountain.  So today I set up in the shade of the maple, far enough away from the caricaturist on the other side of the path so as not to obstruct his operation.

     

    For the first 30 minutes or so, I sang to the sky, to the rowboat wranglers on the other side of the fence, to the family of cardinals busily shuttling from the mulberry tree in front of me to the mulberry tree behind.

     

    A group of pre-teen girls from the Caedman School stopped to hula.  “Brooklyn?”  No, I was told, the upper east side.  They danced with uneven enthusiasm; their adult supervision seemed distracted.  After the dance, the kids lined up against the fence and marched off.

     

    At this point I began to wonder if today, for the first time in my busking career, I would make nothing.  A very old woman stopped a few feet past me.  With her back bent to hide her money, she pulled a quarter from her change purse.  The coin bounced out of the case onto the asphalt.  I picked it up and tossed it in.  “Thanks,” I said, happy to have averted a busking schneider.

     

    “Is that a ukulele?”

     

    “Yes, a tenor uke.  That’s why it’s bigger than what you’re used to seeing.”  She seemed please to have her suspicion confirmed so cheaply.

     

    Another small group of preteens, from Harlem, had time for a hula.  “Does it cost anything?”

     

    “Not a thing,” I said, handing out leis.  After a little hula instruction, we were off, through both verses of “The Hukilau Song.”  The adult supervision, in this case, cheered the kids along, took lots of pictures, and managed $2 between them for Mr. Ukulele.

     

    At $2.25, I was still 45 cents shy of break-even, $2.70, the cost of 2 senior rides on the subway.

     

    A young redhead with a bright, open face, strolled by.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”

     

    “You bet I do,” she said.  Her name was Ori, a native New Yorker.  She danced to “The Hukilau Song,” then gave me a fiver, and stuck around to hear me play “I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone.”

     

    Passing back through Bethesda Fountain on my way home, I saw that the cowboy had been replaced by the accordionist, there was do-wop in the arcade, and Lady Liberty, atop her pedestal, was scrolling on her cellphone.  Thanks, Ori, I thought, and Aloha, New York.

     

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