Posts Tagged ‘Honolulu Eyes’
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Getting Crowded
0July 19, 2014 by admin
I had my hat, so center stage was a possibility. Deciding I’d gotten enough sun this week, however, I headed instead to my spot in the shade. There was a guy there with a trolley full of gear. “Are you planning to play here?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. He was a disheveled, balding man in his 40s or 50s, pale and not altogether clean.
“Cause this is my spot.”
“I don’t know you,” he glared at me.
“I don’t know you either, just saying, I’m here almost every day. I’ll go find somewhere else to play today.” This guy had way too much gear; he wouldn’t last. “You’re going to use an amp?”
“Yeah.”
“Cause if you are they’ll shut you down, and you could screw it up for the rest of us. Especially if you start rocking out or something.”
“No, man, I’m too old for that. I’m just out here because they told me at the hospital I need to get out and do something. They don’t want me hanging out inside all day. Hey, what’s your name?” he asked, taking out an electronic cigarette, sucking on it once and putting it back in his shirt pocket. “My name’s Heartstring.”
“Call me Mr. Ukulele.”
So back to center stage, in my hat. Three 20-something girls stopped to dance, but not the hula. They wanted to swing. “Only one rule here,” I said, “you have to wear a lei.” While one shot the video, the other two danced the swing to the hukilau. Triple step, triple step, rock step. They put on quite a show, through two verses and the big ending, A7 to D7 over and over before resolving to G. Then they walked off.
I had a second walk-off of another kind about 15 minutes later. A couple sat down on the stone bench directly in front of me to eat lunch. They seemed to like the music, applauding at the end of every number. The young woman laughed and gave me a thumbs-up at the rhyme, “in those hula Honolula eyes.” I was inspired to serve up “Give Me a Ukulele and a Ukulele Baby (and with a Little Ukin’ You Can Leave the Rest to Me,” just to see if I’d get the same reaction. Instead, they gathered their trash, waved an approving goodbye and left.
Somewhere during that performance, a woman walked by and waved her arms hula-style. “How about a hula today?”
“No, not today,” she said, adding, “You seem to be having a good time.”
As indeed I was. It was a $3 day. As I packed up, the breathy sound of an accordion wafted over the plaza, barely audible over the splashing fountain. A woman had set up in the shade at the start of the path. The busker scene, like the weather, has started to heat up.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Give Me a Ukulele, Honolulu Eyes
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The Return of the German
0July 11, 2014 by admin
It was a slow start on Wednesday. Although hot, the humidity was down. Over the lake, the towers of the San Remo on Central Park West stood out clearly against the blue sky. Almost an hour went by before I got a lei around the neck of a young German woman, who danced to “The Hukilau Song,” both verses, before thanking me and walking off. My first dollar materialized a short time later, when a hulking 30-something tossed it in without breaking stride.
A girl of 5 or 6, with long wavy red hair, grabbed a blue lei and danced up a storm, skipping, jumping and waving her arms from one side of the path to the other. She struck me as a theatre kid, born to play Annie, full of self-confidence, and just a little bit annoying. When we’d finished, she tossed the blue lei back into the case and pulled out a white one. “Different color, different dance,” she said, this time cavorting to “My Little Grass Shack.” Her father, who had been proudly watching the performance, peeled off a fiver and took her by the hand, preventing her from showing us her orange lei inspired hula.
A large woman in a red dress stopped to dance. She moved languidly, her arms undulating like gentle waves washing the shore. Next came a pre-teen boy who would not dance, but dumped a pocketful of change into the case to show his appreciation. A woman walking two small dogs showed some appreciation too.
The crowds were thin, the weather hot, time to bring the act to a close. A group of Germans stopped to listen to me sing “Honolulu Eyes,” then put a few dollars in my case. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Already did,” said a Fräulein, putting in her buck. It was the young woman who started things off today, returned to make things right.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Eyes, My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
