Sunday in the Park

April 12, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Walking from the subway exit to your place,” said my brother once when he came to visit, “in that one block, I saw a greater diversity of people than I see at home in a year.” He lives in a small town near Princeton.

He should have been in Central Park last Sunday. The first beautiful spring weekend day – it was as though the weather had sent a text message to everyone in the New York metro area telling them to come to the Park. It was Sunday in the Park with Georges and Marisol and Byong-suh and Dmitri and Shlomo and just about everyone.

Here is the Imagine circle in Strawberry Fields, just inside the West 72d St. entrance. If you want diversity, stop here for a minute (take a close look at the people in the picture). Listen to the conversations, and you’ll hear a half-dozen different languages. You’ll also hear Beatles music. Yesterday, it was these four men of a certain age. Here they’re doing “Eight Days a Week.”

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Later they were joined by three other guys – same certain age – who asked to sit in and then sang a perfect cover of country harmony on “What Goes On?”

The Park had much other music to offer. One group was singing something that sounded like medieval church music, with the tunnel giving an echo effect like that of a cathedral. Not far away, these girls were playing a classical tango.



They were at Bethesda Fountain. But the big attraction there are the AfroBats. They do some impressive flips, but it’s their comedy that entertains the crowd, who fill the steps and the plaza above and stand five or six deep at ground level.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

To make themselves heard, the AfroBats deliver their lines in unison – three guys speaking in perfect unison and with great comic timing.

I love street entertainers. This kid was trying to pick up some spare money with his juggling.



People use the park for all kinds of purposes. Koreans do wedding photography there. This guy, in addition to the usual posed shots, was having the bridal couple run up a low hill while he followed with his videocamera. (The bride has shed her shoes, which are out of their picture, but not mine.)


The roadways are filled with bicycles, the casual pedalers and the serious cyclists in their bright spandex. Certain venues have become the turf of roller skaters and roller-bladers doing their graceful dances while their boom boxes boom.

The cherry trees were not quite in bloom. But there should be full of pink and white blossoms for Easter, today.