Underneath a warm, wet sky, I set up on center stage. As I put a lei around my own neck, a dozen or more kids on a scavenger hunt, attracted by the bright colors, hurried over to check me out. “Have you got time for a hula today?”

They did, and afterward my case took in a few singles and change. It’s always a boon to get dancers early in the set; it gives everybody else an idea of what I’m doing, like the family with kids who next happened by. “Where are you from?”

“Brazil,” said one of the dark-haired moms. “What about you?”

“I’m from New York.”

“You are the first New Yorker I’ve met since I arrived on Monday,” she said, shaking my hand.

Two well-dressed men in their mid-30s walked by and one of them took my picture. “Did you get it? Good, now how about a hula?”

He hemmed, he hawed, he hula-ed. “Now I’ll have to give you a tip,” he said, pulling a $20 bill from his wallet. It turned out he and his friend were in from Reno to get married.

A young Hispanic man wearing a “Bronx” baseball cap asked me if we could take a picture together. “Of course,” I said, “but you’ve got to wear a lei.”

He put his arms over my shoulder and took a selfie. “My girlfriend loves the ukulele,” he said, dropping a dollar in my case.

An elderly couple, who had been sitting at some distance, packed up their lunch and started out of the park. As they made their way toward the trash cans, the woman veered toward me and gave me a dollar. “Thank you,” she said, “you’re very entertaining.”

Another school group came by from the High School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture (HSCTEA) in Ozone Park, Queens. Among the 20 or more kids I spied some credible hulas, but nothing compared to the woman from Hawaii, who, after reviewing the movements she’d learned in grade school, danced a lovely hula to “The Hukilau Song.”

A short while later, I sang “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” to a pair of newly wed women in buzz cuts and blue blazers with wide lapels and gold trim. Their photographer grew impatient while I crooned of “sweet aloha” and of how “blue skies of Hawaii shine on this our wedding day.”

Toward the end of my set, a woman of 60 or so laid a fiver in my case and piled some coins on it to keep it from blowing away. “Delightful,” she said.

As I packed up, noting that today’s take again far exceeded normal levels, I wondered if perhaps my busking revenues were a leading indicator of the economic recovery. If so, it would be most delightful indeed.