Posts Tagged ‘Little Grass Shack’
-
October 19th and Still Busking
0October 22, 2017 by admin
“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 125th 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.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
-
Endless Summer
0October 11, 2017 by admin
This summer won’t end. The plantings in the park could use a killing frost; instead they are dying of old age. The second growth of lantana has taken on the look of spring. Pink roses bloom amid orange hips. The chestnut tree, at least, looks dead and its sister tree looks not much better. The wood anemone score: 6-20. On the lawn to the south, people are working on their tans under yellow- and orange-leafed trees.
My first donation was from a young man who said he was a comedian. He gave me a dollar and took my card. A woman walking by dropped 57 cents. A man asked if he could take a picture of me, but first I made him put on a lei. “Where are you from?”
“I am from Paris,” he said, as if that said it all. He gave me back the lei and walked off.
A young man from Ohio had a dollar for me. He was from a small town outside Cleveland. He had not come for the baseball game. Another young man, with his skateboard tucked under his arm, chipped in another dollar.
A quintet of Venezuelan 20-somethings gathered at the fountain. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“We have no money.”
“That’s ok,” I said. Usually, after a hula dance, those with no money manage to find a buck or two, but not in this case. After the dance, they huddled over a map and set out for new adventures to the south.
A woman in her 40’s was leading 3 other people through the park. She wanted to hula but her friends were not interested. “I’m from New York,” she answered my question. “They’re from Kentucky.”
“They don’t want anything to do with you,” I said, as the friends moved farther away.
“F**k ‘em,” she said, then off we went to the hukilau, after which she returned the lei and ran off.
I’d more than broken even on this slow, October day. Finishing up “Little Grass Shack,” I sat down and counted $3.57, when a group of youngsters from Edmonton, Alberta, stopped to check me out. “We’re doing hula dances today,” I said.
A slight woman, dressed in red, wanted to dance, so I stood up with my uke and played “The Hukilau Song.” She was lithe and graceful. “Is this your first public hula?”
“I dance in public all the time, just not the hula.” She told me they’d been to the Yankee’s game last night, and were going to a hockey game tonight. As she and her friends prepared to move on, she found a ten-spot in her wallet for me, turning a so-so outing into a winner.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
-
A Respectable September Thursday
0September 8, 2017 by admin
At the entrance to the park, the rose hips have gone deep orange. Gomphrena and celosia still dominate, but now there is an invasion of wild asters. They push forward, out from under trees, showing up in the more organized beds and at the feet of Daniel Webster.
The wood anemone is 6 feet tall, and has flower clusters forming at the growing tip of every stem. The first plant sported 5 open flowers, no more than 3 inches in diameter, among scores of buds; the second plant, farther from the path, was shorter, with only 3 flowers.
Center stage was mine. After a quarter hour, I got my first tip from a man who’d been there when I arrived. A song or 2 later, a woman, who’d also been there before me, came up and gave me a dollar. “I like your backup group,” she said, with a nod to the trio of toy hula girls rocking in the sun on the ledge of the fountain. She reminded me that we’d met before. Her name was Carole. “My mother said we spelled it with an ‘e’ like Carole Lombard.”
A teenage girl, walking by, gave me a quarter.
When a pack of bicyclists entered the area, their leader, a swarthy 20-something man with a radiant grin, gave me the thumbs-up. I asked if he had time for a hula today.
“A hula? I’m Mexican, we don’t hula in Mexico.”
“You’re in New York now,” I said. The other bikers in his group teased him. They were a mixed assortment of attractive people, like a Benetton ad. I reeled him in, got a lei around his neck, started telling him about the hukilau, then he balked.
“He needs help. Come join him,” I said to the others. A slim blonde Slovakian got off her bike and took a lei. At the end of “The Hukilau Song,” the man put $2 in my case. “Thanks,” I said. “You’re a good sport.”
Later, another pack of bicyclists rolled in. This time, an Ecuadorian girl ended up with a lei around her neck, but she didn’t want to dance if her friends wouldn’t dance, and her friends wouldn’t dance. She gave me back the lei and walked away.
On the bench, a 20-something woman, with earbuds, rolled a cigarette. Through several songs, while involved with her phone, she took one puff at a time, having to relight her cigarette with every puff. When she got up to leave, she gave me a buck.
It was time now for me to leave. I prepared to sing “My Little Grass Shack,” when a man, who had been standing to my left, out of sight, put a dollar in my case, thereby closing the day with a respectable $6.25.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song
