Saturday in the Park with David

So, on Saturday we're in from the 'burbs, staying at our Upper West Side apartment, and we decide to take in the Natural History Museum and then a walk in Central Park, where it's all sun and clear air, a perfect last weekend of Summer. The museum still has its glory but it feels dated and the dinosaurs seem trapped in another era, and anyway it's too dark to be inside on a sunny day. So we cross the street and into another world. We have entered the serendipity of Saturday in the Park.


We're watching the rowboats on the lake, when the sound of guitar music drifts in from somewhere across, and we're looking over at a hill of New Yorkers sitting on the grass listening to a guitar guy. Later we discover his name is David, and apparently he's a regular (we're not, so we didn't know) and he sings Simon & Garfunkel and easy mellow tunes that appeal to us baby boomers in the crowd. A bride and her photog entourage cross the field and everyone applauds, then he sings a love song in their honor. Turns out our David also writes songs, whose lyrics have a bit of bite that brings us back to reality, fittingly, because let's be honest, this was a week in which the 24/7 cable news cycle was all about outbursts of uncivility. He sings out his latest tune, "Glenn Beck Scares Me" whose verses include "Tom Cruise Scares Me" and "Dick Cheney Scares Me" and you can fill in the blank and sing all day. The audience is with it, he gets an easy laugh up and down the grassy hill, and some even sing along. It's New York after all, and we're enjoying a carefree day in the park, but we're never more than a few hours away from our ideologies. And then as fast as they came, things go from politics to whimsy, and ThatGuitarMan (turns out that's his URL) challenges the crowd to get up and skip.

And some people say New Yorkers are jaded? Have a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLoT1c43MW0&feature=related