I was on my way to get a haircut on Saturday, when, turning down Broadway, with the sun on my face, I decided to make an impromptu debut at Bethesda Fountain.\u00a0 It was just 60 degrees.\u00a0 Unshorn, I returned home and retrieved my outside ukulele, a Lanikai tenor with low-G tuning.\u00a0 The low-G string was the one I\u2019d replaced on the fly at the end of the 2018 season; I restrung it more carefully, then tuned the uke down a halftone, to F-sharp, which gives my voice maximum range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the subway station, I tipped the lounge singer a buck for\ngood luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bulbs around the Women\u2019s Gate to Central Park, at 72nd<\/sup> St., had started to emerge:\u00a0 purple croci, pink and white chionodoxa, miniature daffodils.\u00a0 At the Image Mosaic, mounds of snowdrops bloomed behind the benches, while farther down the path, hellabores turned their faces to the ground in glorious humility.\u00a0 Yellow forsythia hinted at so much more to come, and the rose branches, just green, would soon be covered in red growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The jazz combo played across from Daniel Webster; the acrobats on the mall were highly amped.\u00a0 Bethesda Fountain was teeming with tourists, and center stage was mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started slowly through my repertoire. It had been months since I\u2019d played some of\nthese songs. A young man started me off\nwith a dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three generations of Indian women stopped to listen. \u201cHave you got time for a hula today?\u201d The youngest, a 5-year-old named Samantha,\nstepped forward. Glancing over her shoulder\nat my solar powered hula girl, she imitated the swinging hips and jerky arm movements. At the end of the dance she ran back to her\nmom, who rewarded me with a ten-spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A man walking by dropped a single. Two late teens came running. \u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting for you since last year,\u201d\none said, tossing in a buck. \u201cHave you\ngot time for a hula?\u201d said the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou even know my shtick. \nSo,\u201d I said, \u201chave you got time?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re big fans, man, we waited all winter, and now we have to go.\u201d They walked away laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three teenaged girls from Connecticut danced a decorous hula\nand gave me a fiver. I got another fiver\nfrom a man who\u2019d been listening from the bench. \nA tall, bearded 30-something recorded \u201cLittle Coquette,\u201d dug into his\npocket and tossed me a quarter. Toward\nthe end of my set 4 young women from England danced a raucous hula; they gave\nme $2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was my first day of busking in 2019, my 13th<\/sup> year as Mr. Ukulele.\u00a0 I\u2019d kicked off the season with a very respectable $25.25, just about the price of a haircut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"