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.