“Has this group got time for a hula dance today?”  I addressed the tour guide, a jolly, elderly man, who, after years of leading his group past me, stopped.  The group stopped too, in an arc around me as if awaiting a short lecture about a statue.  “Where’s everybody from?”

“All over.”

“Brazil,” shouted a 30-ish woman.  She shook her head “no” when I offered her a lei.  “I don’t know how.”

“All the Brazilian women say that, then they come up here and dance beautifully, and so will you.”

As she danced, beautifully, the tour guide put a quarter in my case, but no one stepped forward to follow his example, except the Brazilian woman.  After her dance, she gave me a quarter too.

A couple of English women with bicycles witnessed this scene.  They had been sitting near me at the fountain when I set up.  Tossing a dollar in my case, they pedaled off.

Three kids from North Carolina walked up from the benches with a dollar and change.  They danced to the “The Hukilau Song,” then ran giggling back to their parents.  The eldest, a girl of about 11, came back for a second dance, this time to “Little Grass Shack.”

A bride and photo crew set up near me.  In addition to the photographer, there was an assistant to carry the cameras and tripod, a lighting grip with screens and tripods of his own, and a dresser to arrange the train of the bridal gown, and to fluff the bride’s hair.  The absence of a groom led me to believe the bride was not a bride at all, but a model.

A 20-something man walked by with his friend.  “A ukulele and a bride.  Only in New York,” he said, laying a dollar in my case.

A petite woman in her late 30s watched me play.  I invited her to dance to “The Hukilau Song.”  She told me she was from Hawaii, and that she had danced to the hukilau with me about 5 years ago.  As we moved through the second verse, her delicate hands formed the silver moon under which kanes and wahinis sang their love songs.

A man ran up and took her hand, spun her around.  She looked surprised, and uncomfortable.  He let her go to put a dollar in my case.  “Do you know him?”

“No,” she said, “Yuck.”

“Let’s dance another one,” he said.  He was 50-ish, with a trimmed beard and a porkpie hat.

“Aloha,” the woman said to me, returning my lei and moving quickly away.

The man, Alexander (“My secret service name is also Alexander”), hung around for a while, listing for me the times and locations of the best free swing dancing in the city.  He chased after women, grabbing their arms and trying to pull them over to me for a dance.  Finally, I said, “I do a solo act.  I need you to move away.”

“No, no,” he said.  “I’m helping you.”

“You’re not.  I’ve been doing this a long time, believe me, you’re not helping.”

“I bow to your experience,” he said.  He moved some distance away; I resumed my act.  When I next looked in his direction, he was gone.

A woman wanted a picture.  I put a lei around her neck.  She gave me a dollar.  A thin elderly man, with a bemused smile on his face, watched me for a while, then he gave me a dollar.  At last, with a few more minutes left in my set, a young couple from Baltimore, now living on 125^th St., wanted a picture to send to her father, a ukulele buff.

With $8.51 in my pocket, I exited the park.  There can’t be very many busking days left this year.