‘Uncategorized’ Category
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Two in a Row
0March 11, 2016 by admin
On the Monday after the big storm in January, feeling something like a caged tiger, I set out for the gym, leaped over a snow pile at the corner, fell and broke my leg. I write this now to convey the sheer joy I felt yesterday, bound though I was by a walking boot and cane. Going out with my uke two days in a row approached bliss.
The park retained its overall earthen colors. The sky was mostly gray; warm, wet winds blew the occasional hole in the clouds to let in some sun. I saw more daffs than yesterday. The rose wood was greening, and when I looked hard I saw the nubs of growing tips. Except for the stray forsythia floret, nothing.
The guitar platoon at the Imagine Mosaic is back, if they ever left.
At the foot of the western staircase, where the acrobats work, 2 clown-like guitarists sang and danced to silly songs. They’d set up a cardboard bandstand reading Benny and Griff, and seemed ready to do their show all day. I assessed the situation for conflict. No amplification, no foul. “I play over there,” I told them, gesturing with my cane. They were very nice, they called me “sir.”
After I sang my openers, “Making Love Ukulele Style,” “Sunday,” “Fit as a Fiddle,” “I Saw Stars,” and “Ukulele Lady,” a man my age, who’d been sitting by the water to my left, came up and asked, “Surfboard accident?” He complimented my voice, gave me a dollar and encouraged me to keep up the good work.
A slim, beautiful black woman, close-cropped hair, flowing clothes and bare arms hula-ed toward the benches with her male companion. I encouraged her to put on a lei and do a proper hula, and she did. We went through both verses of “The Hukilau Song,” by which time she’d drawn a crowd. Even her friend was taking pictures. She gave me back the lei and returned to the bench.
An older Asian woman stepped forward and put a dollar in my case. She had been in the crowd and appreciated the expressive beauty of the hula.
The next dancer was a Dallas girl of 7 or 8, who pranced around quite freely while her mother got it on video. Then 3 more Texans, from a teenage tour from El Paso, gave their rendition of the hula. Quite a bit of banter and dollars were exchanged, as their classmates wanted in on what was happening. “You’re my second group from Texas today,” I told them. “Is this Texas in New York Week?”
“It’s a big state,” I was told.
With my final song, “Little Grass Shack,” I sat down to count the day’s haul, $12, then hoisted myself to my feet and started home. At the foot of the stairs, Benny and Griff were still at it.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Benny and Griff, Fit as a Fiddle, I Saw Stars, Imagine Mosaic, Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style, Sunday, The Hukilau Song, Ukulele Lady
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The 2016 Season Comes Early
0March 10, 2016 by admin
In January I bought new strings for my tenor ukulele. My usual brand, Hilo, had gone out of business, so this year I’m playing with a set from Kamaka. It takes a few days for new strings to settle down, but with the arrival of 70 degree weather yesterday, I had no such luxury. Having been cooped up all winter, I wasn’t going to let such a beautiful day slip away.
Except for a few shiny hollies near Central Park West, and a sparse assortment of evergreens deeper in the park, the trees were bare. The park was bathed in hazy grays and browns. The beds at the entrance at 72nd St. had been raked; snowdrops shyly bent their faces to the ground. Tightly clustered tulip leaves pushed several inches high behind the freshly painted wooden benches. On both sides of the path leading away from Strawberry Fields, red dogwood branches stood taller than me. In the distance, I could see a single yellow daffodil. The magnolia near the drive was covered with furry thumb-like buds.
Past the statue of Daniel Webster, I could hear the cheers for the acrobats that work the northern end of the mall. At Bethesda Fountain, Rakeem played his saxophone. “Another 10 minutes,” he told me. By noon, I was spreading out my paraphernalia, solar-powered hula girls, multi-colored leis, an open ukulele case primed with 2 singles and 2 written messages, one reading “This is Culture,” the other “Got Aloha?”
After playing for 30 minutes or so, re-tuning my new strings between every song, a large contingent of Chinese teenagers arrived, neatly dressed in uni-sex blue blazers with red scarves, for the girls, and red ties, for the boys. When 2 of the girls applauded at the end of a song, I invited them to dance the hula. They giggled and whispered to each other, then walked up to get their leis. It was the first trip to the Hukilau of 2016. A young man dropped a handful of change in my case between verses. At the end of the dance, the girls returned to their stone bench, dug out their wallets and returned, each holding out a $5 bill. The girls were in New York for a special program at the United Nations.
Some time later, 3 girls from Wisconsin walked by, but only one would dance, for which I received a dollar.
A group of 11- and 12-year-olds came running down the path toward me. “Who’s in charge here?” I asked.
“I am, I am,” several announced.
“Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Yeah,” they screamed, reaching for the leis.
“NO,” came the true voice of authority, a slender young woman with a clipboard and hell’s fury in her eyes. “I’m trying to teach a lesson,” she warned me, while a few adults wrangled the youngsters toward the rim of the fountain, where they overwhelmed my case and fidgeted as the teacher alternately shouted instructions and threats. The purpose of the lesson was to “daylight” the streams that flowed here in 1609.
So it was I packed up early, with a quite respectable $12.36 in my pocket.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song
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Last Licks
0November 17, 2015 by admin
Giant white snowflakes have been hung over Columbus Ave. Along Central Park West, they’ve set up the aluminum grandstand 7 tiers high for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Inside the park, the crowds are thin, despite the 65 degree weather. The hydrangea behind the benches has turned wine red. On the almost leafless rose bushes, a few pink petals have opened wide, as if asking the sun for a handout; orange hips swell on the lower branches.
At the Imagine Mosaic, the homeless guitarist led the crowd in “Imagine,” encouraging the multi-part harmony with shouts of “lovely, beautiful” between line breaks. Fuzzy buds have lengthened on the tips of magnolia branches. Through the bare trees, I could see the tops of the tall buildings of Mount Sinai Hospital on upper Fifth Ave. In the arcade, the Boyd Family Singers have expanded their repertoire of sacred music to include a few secular Christmas carols.
Andrew, the young guitarist, was packing up when I got to center stage. “I like these European crowds,” he told me. “They drop a five where New Yorkers drop singles.”
A 40-something man gave me a dollar and asked if he could take a picture. “Do you play ‘Ukulele Lady’?” he asked. I told him I’d be getting to it soon. Not soon enough, I suppose, because he wandered away.
A guy and his gal from Brooklyn gave me a fiver and said, “Ok, entertain us.” I had just finished “Fit as a Fiddle,” and launched into “I Saw Stars.” The girlfriend bopped along to the beat, but refused to put on a lei. “How much to come out in a rowboat and serenade us?”
I hesitated. “150 bucks,” I told him, certain that at that rate I would keep my feet dry.
“No, don’t you get it?” he insisted. “You’re missing a great opportunity. People will row up to you from every direction to give you money.”
After haranguing me for a while longer, off they wandered to the boathouse. A man wanted to know if I would stand for a picture with his girlfriend. I put a lei around her neck for the shot. She would not hula.
A little girl came by and wanted to dance. “If it’s ok with your mom,” I said. It was. The girl was at a loss as to what to do, so I put a lei around her mom’s neck and told the girl to follow. It was a charming scene, recorded by several passers-by. Two women, who had been sitting on the bench for a while came by with a dollar.
The first photographer came back. “Thanks for playing ‘Ukulele Lady’,” he said. Marcel walked by with Maggie the dog to say hello, marvel at the weather and wish me a pleasant winter. The couple from Brooklyn pulled their rowboat up to the steps leading from the lake to the fountain area. They hailed me.
“Yo, Brooklyn,” I shouted to them.
At the end of my set, a thirty-something man got up from the bench and tossed a fiver in my case. “I gotta tell you,” he told me, “you’re the most talented man in Central Park.”
With his $5, my total came to $15, as good as any day in the summer, let alone a week before Thanksgiving.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Fit as a Fiddle, I Saw Stars, Imagine, Ukulele Lady
