1. Better Than Break Even

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    May 31, 2018 by admin

    Three weeks since my last outing, and spring is over.  The bulbs have been cut back, or dug up, by park volunteers.  The first few stella d’oro lilies provide the only color along Central Park West.  The garden behind the benches at the Women’s Gate has gone to the dogs, i.e., bright red dog roses, thick on the bush, and a flowering dogwood, gowned in pretty 4-petaled white flowers.

     

    The park is preparing for an event.  Some roads are closed.  At first, the lawns appear to be strewn with white cots, each with a sign I can’t read.  It looks like a massive blood drive, a scene from a medical disaster movie, an NYPD chemical attack drill.  As I get closer, however, the cots resolve into long tables, the signs read Fortress Investment Group.

     

    At Bethesda Fountain I heard the amped guitar of Colin, the cowboy.  We’d struck a deal last year to share center stage.  “Two more songs,” he said.

     

    I sat by the fountain and slowly set up.  Colin had attracted a 40-something woman who danced around and took photos of him.  When he’d played his 2 songs, she pleaded for another:  “Shake Your Booty” (KC and the Sunshine Band, 1976).

     

    An Ecuadorean woman was taken with my solar-powered hula girls.  “How much?”

     

    Ordinarily I would not sell; like leis, they are my means of production.  Nevertheless, I answered, “Five dollars.”

     

    It was too much, she told me.  She was going home tomorrow, and New York was so expensive.  She reached for the pink doll.  “That one’s broken,” I said.  “Three dollars.”  Still too much.

     

    “Ok,” I said, picking up a lei.  “You dance the hula, the pink doll is free.”

     

    Her face lit up.  She gamely danced to “The Hukilau Song,” took her prize and walked off with it.

     

    The Asian man with a shaved head who sells colorful $5 caricatures ran up to me and shook my hand.  “I’m back,” he said.

     

    A mother and daughter paused to listen.  Mom dug into her purse and came up with 55 cents, which daughter shyly dropped into my case.

     

    Two families, with 4 kids, had stopped to take a picture by the fountain.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”  They were from Mississippi and Tennessee.  For the first verse of “The Hukilau Song,” the kids were awkward and stiff, but for the second verse I told them to dance however they wanted, so they pranced and swirled to the end.

     

    An Australian man, now living in Toronto, walked by with wife and son.  The boy, he told me, was learning the uke in school.  “My daughter’s early music training was on a recorder,” I said.  “The uke is so much better.”

     

    “We learned the recorder in Australia too.  You can’t sing along with a recorder, can you?”

     

    The boy danced a hula, and showed us what he’d learned on the uke.

     

    A young Chinese couple stood at a distance, watching me.  The man started up the path, but the woman ran to me, placed a 5 yuan note in my case, and ran off.

     

    A young girl walked up with a dollar in her hand.  She wanted to dance.  While her mom watched, she danced a poised and expressive hula.

     

    If I make $2.70, it covers my subway fare.  More than that is profit.  With the yuan at 16 cents, today’s take was $4.35, better than break even.

     

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  2. Working Overtime

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    May 10, 2018 by admin

    On the ground, the daffs have faded, the tulips hang on, and the masses of wood hyacinth are mostly spent, looking like the spiky skeletons of fish.  The first red rose opens low on the bush.  In the canopy, the trees are green.  Both chestnuts are in bloom.  At Cherry Hill, above salmon and white azalea, a giant paulownia is bursting with purple flowers.  For years I’d seen these trees blooming along the Henry Hudson, looking like purple chestnut trees.  I looked up the name a few years ago.  They were named for Anna Paulowna, daughter of Tsar Paul I of Russia.

     

    Center stage at Bethesda Fountain looked like mine until I saw the old man with the accordion, sitting on the bench.  He wasn’t playing; he appeared to be picking lint from his base buttons.  “Are you done, or are you still playing?” I asked him.  He didn’t seem to understand, or maybe he was hard of hearing.  I asked again.

     

    “One o’clock,” he said.

     

    I went to the maple for 20 minutes, where I made nothing, returned at 1 and set up at the fountain.  The old man kept pumping out chords, while I waited.  At last he noticed me and stopped.

     

    I continued my set where I’d left off.  The fountain was crowded today.  A large group of pre-teens from Central Islip, having picnicked on the lawn, started running around, from water’s edge to the arcade, in front of which the big bubble man competed with 2 snake handlers on segways for their attention.  “Has this group got time for a hula today?”

     

    The leader of the group, a rather rumpled 50-something, shrugged.  Soon I had a line of kids squealing with laughter on their way to the hukilau.  Between verses, they passed the leis to another line of dancers.  Afterward, one of the kids came running back to me with a fiver from the leader.

     

    I saw a woman recording me, so I gave her a good show, for which I received $2.  An old man walked by and tossed me a buck.  Two women slowed as they passed, then stopped 20 yards away.  They were sorting through their wallets.  One of them returned with 4 tightly folded singles.

     

    Toward the end of my set, a 20-something from San Francisco danced a hula and walked away.  The same happened with 3 young women from South Carolina.  My 90 minutes up, I sang “Little Grass Shake,” sat down and started packing up.

     

    “Would you mind?” said a 60-something man in a white shirt and name tag (Mike) on a lanyard around his neck.  “I’ve got a school group here from Chicago, and I’d like to get the teachers dancing for the kids.”

     

    I took out my leis, set up the yellow dancing girl, and spread the currency out in my case.  Standing, I sang out “Honolulu Eyes” until Mike led his group to me and stopped.  With a word to the kids about an opportunity for blackmail, he called out 4 teachers.  Dressed in the same black tee shirts as the kids, they donned leis and, after very brief instruction, lined up to dance to “The Hukilau Song.”  The kids howled as the teachers broke ranks, flapped their arms, spun in circles, and finally united like the Rockettes for a high-kicking finale.

     

    Mike, grinning, handed me a fiver, and one of the kids tossed in a buck.  That 6 from Chicago, added to the 12 from my 90 minute set, boosted me to highly respectable $18.

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  3. In the Shade of the Old Maple Tree

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    May 6, 2018 by admin

    As predicted, the temperature in Central Park topped 90 on Thursday.  I stopped at the water fountain, and glanced up at the wisteria vine, green and tendrilled.  Off to the left, however, I was surprised by a glimpse of purple.  A clump of blooming wisteria poked out of the underbrush and draped itself over the wall, hanging down over the old bridle path that parallels Central Park West at 72nd St.

     

    Another surprise was an early-blooming lilac, about chest high.  I stepped over a low fence to get a whiff.  The jazz combo had moved to other side of the road, into the shade.  To the south, towering above the greening trees, 3 construction cranes erect 3 more sky castles, to join the 2 already there.

     

    At Bethesda Fountain, an English soprano belted out “O Sole Mio” to a recorded accompaniment.  I sat on the bench, waiting for her finish, then approached her and said, “There are rules for busking in the park, and one of them is no amplification.  I’m not a cop,” I added, “we’re a self-regulating bunch, but there are higher authorities, and you could ruin it for all of us – it’s happened before – so please consider a cappella, or something other than that.”  Pointing to the offending appliance, I turned and walked away.  On a day like today, I preferred to play under the maple.

     

    My first dollar came from an aging hipster, along with a wink and a thumbs-up.  A dad gave his young son a handful of change, then pushed him toward me.  A 20-something couple coasted by on bicycles.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”  She, from DC, was all in; he, from Jerusalem, watched.  After dancing gracefully to “The Hukilau Song,” she gave me a dollar and they rode off.

     

    To the east, I watched a group of kids emerge from the tunnel under the drive.  It was a large group of 50 or more highschoolers.  I said to the leader as they passed, “Has this group got time for a hula dance today?”  He stopped to consider, but by then the kids had taken the decision out of his hands.  I distributed all my leis, got the dancers lined up on one side of the path and the spectators on the other, allowing people to walk by.  The kids spoke French, but understood my instructions, so after one verse the dancers passed the leis to the next troupe of dancers.  After 3 verses, everyone who wanted to had hula-ed.  I collected the leis and the money poured in; there was no telling how much until the end of the set.

     

    “Viva la France,” I shouted to the kids.

     

    “We are Quebecois,” the leader informed me.

     

    A 40-something woman opened her purse and dumped change into my case.

     

    A little blonde girl and her tall blonde mother walked by.  In a few minutes they came back.  The little girl clutched 5 quarters in her hand.  “She made me come back,” mom explained.  They were from Norway, and the little girl understood Norwegian, English and Dutch.  She danced a charming hula and I could see, as I sang, that mom was dancing too.

     

    “Do you speak Hawaiian?” I asked.  “No?  In Hawaiian, the word for thank you is mahalo.”

     

    “Mahalo,” said the girl.

     

    “Mahalo,” said mom.  “Now you speak 4 languages.”

     

    My set was over.  I counted $19.06.  Merci beaucoup, Canada.

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