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Monday, November 9, 2009

Other Folks in the Park



Boris plays sax around the corner from the tunnel every day from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. After two Valentine takes his spot. Boris is ok as far as music goes, plays the typical pop tunes we’ve all heard a million times: Killing Me Softly, Elton John, that sort of thing. The problem with Boris though is that he always seems to be in a horrible mood. Every time he walks by me he has his head down, brooding, a frown on his face, the look of the desperate clown.

For about five days straight he walked by me after his shift, always looking in my case to see how much money I had; then into the darkness he goes with his beat-up sax case and up the stairs and into the streets of Manhattan. I stopped him one day.

“You play sax?”

“Yah,” he said, in a tone that said, what the hell do you think I play? “Why you play here? No good. No money,” says Boris, angrily.

I have about five dollars in the case, but another twenty in my pocket from earlier in the day.

“Ah, you know, just having fun, I like the acoustics.”

“No good. You shouldn’t play here. I play thirteen years here. I play ‘dis tunnel in ‘vinter. Cold. Dark. But here, no good. ‘Dis recession. No good. No money.”

Boris walks away shaking his head. Since then he avoids the tunnel. One day he peaked from around the corner to see if I was there, then walked in a different direction. I ask Valentine what the deal with Boris is and he says he’s crazy. He does a really mean looking face and walks around in circles grunting. He says Boris is always angry.

Valentine’s brother plays by the bathrooms and playground around the corner from Wollman Rink. Sometimes he goes into the tunnel over there. He doesn’t say much and speaks very little English and I doubt he really makes much, but like Valentine, he seems to enjoy himself.

Not far from the Chess gazebo is an old Chinese man that sometimes plays something that looks like a one-string violin, but instead of resting on his shoulders, it’s held straight up from the ground. He also plays an instrument that resembles a lap-steel, except it has a bar that points up about a foot which gives the instrument a bending noise. He has an amp playing ambient music. I like the sound the instrument makes, reminds me of Kung-Fu movies, but it does grow very repetitive after a while. There’s another guy who plays something similar down in the Grand St. subway station in Chinatown.

On Saturday’s there’s a guy that stands still on top of a box. He doesn’t move and he has balls in his hands. A sign with an open bag sits in front of him that reads, “Feed me and I juggle.” Personally, I think it’s a lame gimmick. I figure do your thing and if the people like it, they’ll throw in some money. Most people walk by not paying him much attention.

Walking up towards the mall which leads to the Bethesda fountain. It’s one of the more picturesque and popular spots in Central Park. In a little courtyard is a violin player that plays standard classical pieces: Bach, Chopin, etc. She places the sheet music in front of her case. There is background music to go along with it. She’s very good as far as violin players, but rigid and serious, always bowing when she finishes. She often draws a decent sized crowd on the benches, folks enjoying the relaxed confines of the park.

Not too far from her is the green pixie, good ol’ Tinker Bell. Another mannequin that stands on a box, wearing a bright green sparkling dress with green wings, toothpick-thin young girl with white-caked make-up and big blue eyes staring rigidly straight ahead. Her green gloves are folded eloquently to the side. To be honest, I’m not a fan of mannequins or mimes. As a kid I think I liked them. There’s an old picture of me as a child in San Francisco, on a stage with a mime; I look happy. Somewhere along the line something went wrong. Years later I was with a girlfriend of mine, on a wild bender down in New Orleans. We’d spent the past few days staying in a really shabby hotel, The Hummingbird in the skid row area off of St. Charles, roach-infested, prison cell feel. We were looking at 100 dollar a week adds for rooming houses out of the Times-Picayune and went to check out a place, it was in the Treme, a two bedroom house that looked like it hadn’t been quite finished, the lack of a floor and dirt in the kitchen being the sign. Anyway, we’ve got this sketchy guy showing us around in the place, but we notice all kinds of mannequins in wheel barrels around the place. There’s another room next to where ours will be.

The conversation ensues.

“Uh, who lives in the other room?”

“Oh, he’s cool, real quiet, never around.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a mime.”

I look at my girlfriend and no words need to be said.

“Well, thanks, but we can’t live here.”

“What’s the problem?”

“We can’t live with a mime.”

“But he’s all right, he doesn’t even say anything.”

“That’s the problem. He don’t talk.”

A week later we got another place from this guy off of Esplanade: an old mansion rooming house filled with crack heads. A few days later the place burned down, but that’s another story for another time. Apologies. I ramble.

So, back to Tinker Bell. Despite my distaste for mimes, I was in a good mood so I put a couple of quarters in the pixie’s leather bag and then walked away, but I heard something that sounded like a chirp and looked back. She had twisted around, robot-like, and her hand had moved. She had something to give me. I stuck my hand out was given sparkly green confetti. Interesting. I thanked her and let it fall on the ground around the corner.

Walking down further along the mall, the benches on each sides, the trees perfectly landscaped, branches drooping across on each side to form a roof of sorts, folks milling about in a good spirits, it has the feel of Paris, or maybe England although I’ve never been to either. The paintings of Monet, Pisarro; that’s what it makes me think of.

Then there’s the little kid performer. He’s maybe eight or nine years old. He juggles while riding a unicycle around the crowd, an intense look of concentration painted on his face. He rarely ever fucks up. He also has some kind of spinning thing that goes on a string. He throws it up in the air, twirls around, and then catches it. Most people are quite impressed with the act, but what I enjoy most is seeing other kids around his age watching him; they seem quite awestruck and fascinated that another kid can do what he’s doing. One day I heard one big Italian guy wearing a Yankee cap say in what sounded like a Long Island accent. “Fuck. That fuckin’ kid’s fuckin’ good!” Often I see the little performer counting his money inside the bucket and from what I’ve witnessed he’s probably making the most out of anyone in the park.

Continuing on, to the area where the little Greek amphitheatre is. Sometimes there’s a sax player, shades, derby cap on backwards. He’s a lot better that the other Russian sax players I know. He plays a lot of hard bop, 60’s jazz style.

Next to him are the skate-boarders all dressed in New York skate fashion: baggy pants, red and blue baseball caps, doing their ollie’s and kick-flips alongside the roller-bladers/Ice skaters who do circles in their make-shift rink, pirouettes with their headphones on, grooving to the music.


Sunday’s you’ll find Africans in their drum circles with their strange-sounding horns, shakers, repeating the same beat over and over, bongos, bass drums, people dancing in front of them, sometimes chaotically, sometimes in an easy rhythmic fashion.

I suppose my favorite on the summer weekends are the roller dancers that lie west about fifty yards away. I remember roller-skating as a kid, school events in elementary school. I wasn’t much good, never could quite master the backwards deal, always looking around from the corner as every girl I had a crush on was already taken in the couples skate. That said, I had no idea that roller-skating still existed with adults, especially in this fashion, but hey, it’s New York, one can never be surprised.

I would describe this as a straight-up roller-skating, carnival dance party with quite an array of characters, spanning from little kids to folks in their eighties. DJ’s spin 80’s New York hip-hop and r&b, plain ol’ get down fun music with a good beat. Round and round the skaters go, groovin’, spinnin’, laughin’, for hours and hours on end. Some folks don’t even have skates. They just get in the middle and shake it.

There’s an old woman in tight black spandex with her Oakley sunglasses, white hair in a high bun, hamming it up with large crowd of on-lookers, tourists and New York natives side by side, her arms spread out like she’s some sort of Sparrow, or more like an Ostrich off of Broadway. She’s tireless and probably the fittest senior citizen I’ve ever come across.

There’s the buff, chiseled, enormous black guy, shirtless, with parachute looking pants made out of towels. He looks like someone out of Arabian times. He balances water bottles on his head with an extreme sense of determination as he skates, sometimes as many as six at a time. He also does a slow-motion act in which he skates slower and slower until he finally stops.

Next to him, prancing around is an old pirate drag queen wearing a white Southern dress with flowers. A colorful neon wig covers his bald head, bright yellow socks, a screaming blue purple parrot on top of his hat, he pulls the dress up and a little and sways it around. Sometimes he changes hats and wigs. He loves the crowd and posing for pictures, a pure natural and as I watch him, laughing aloud, memories of the beautiful menagerie of New Orleans come back to me. He has a baby stroller in which his pink and blue died poodle rests in. After much parading he leaves the rink and heads over towards the drum circles.

There’s a cute Puerto Rican girl flying around the rink, people doing tricks on the side, flamers alongside of tough guys; Asians, blacks, Hispanics; a beautiful bouillabaisse of New York City. A man dressed in full Batman attire roams around the rink. He has a bike done up like the Batmobile. Anytime the Arabian buff guy drops a water bottle Batman runs over to “save the day.” When he leaves the rink he walks some kind of makeshift red carpet and stops to let everyone take pictures of him.

Down the steps into the arcade that leads to Angel of the Waters fountain. A Mad Max/Renaissance violin player/opera singer/dancer combo, something out of a Fellini movie. Thoth is done up all Egyptian style, dreads, purple dress open at the chest, wearing all kinds of gold jewelry, shakers on his feet. The other violin player is round-faced, pale complexioned girl, a homemade dress, her bikini so loose you can see her nipples. She sings some sort of unintelligible opera and together they do a theatrical dance. Medallions and candles and stars lie around their instrument cases. It’s got that freak element to it, but the music drives me absolutely nuts, but of course, they do well with the tips and the foreigners seem to be into it.

The other day I sat by the fountain and watched a very tall, lanky man on a bicycle with headphones ride around the fountain for a good thirty minutes. He waved his arms like he was conducting Beethoven's 9th, round and round he went in his own world. He was tireless.

Lastly, I can’t leave out Leroy Hoops, probably my favorite of anyone I’ve come across in Central Park. This guy has the most fun of any of the performers I’ve seen. He is a bongo player, hula-hoop instructor, and drum teacher for kids; a singer and comedian, a regular vaudevillian joyous jester of the park. Sometimes you’ll see him set up on the Bethesda Terrace overlooking the fountain. Other days you’ll find him in a random part of the park next to a tree, little kids and their parents all around him. With his big eyes and smile he sings his own originals: “I’m that baby’s daddy, I’m that baby’s mama,” putting on a blond wig every time he says mama. Kids approach the miniature drum set he has next to him with an air of curiosity. Most times they just bang on it. Leroy stops what he’s doing and goes into instructor mode. The parents try to pry their kids away and apologize, but Leroy says, “No, no, it’s all right. But kid, you got to play soft and with the beat. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. See like that. Soft. Now you try.” The kid takes the drumsticks and continues banging on the drums.

He’s also got a various assortment of hula-hoops all around, small ones for the kids, big ones for the adults. He’ll even jump up from the bongos and show you how to do it if you’re struggling.

“Legs bent, like this, one in front of the other, smack that hoop right on the side, come on guys, front, back, front, back, you know what I’m talking about. And ladies, if you’re man don’t know front and back it’s time for a new man.”

Suddenly there’s a full crowd of hula-hoopers.

I’ve seen few people give Hoops some money, but he doesn’t have any basket out. I think he’s truly doing it for the love and joy of seeing other people have a good time. It’s quite a beautiful thing when you really think about it.

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