K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 24May2014

It was Memorial Day weekend, but instead of the usual hot and sunny day, it was gloomy with occasional sprinkles. But we went down anyway, and when I saw how hard it was to find a parking space, I realized that the crowds had shown up, too.

When we got there, a guy who usually plays his mahogany acoustic in the natural-reverb corridor down the street was set up, because someone else had taken "his spot". He had some specific monetary goal in mind, and was still six bucks short. Rather than wait around until he managed to scare that up, I just contributed it myself. He sang one more song and left The Corner to us. I'm pretty sure I earned that six bucks back faster than he would have.

So we started out with the three girls that had been listening to him, and kept up a great consistent crowd all night -- lots of "Let It Go" sing-alongs, lots of friendly grownups. We started about 6:15 and ended up playing until 11:45 when we had a slew of requests for kids' Disney songs from a batch of Asian college students. I suppose "college kids" still qualifies as a "Kids' Party"...

I have a sign up that says that the CDs are five bucks, but nobody seems to read it, 'cuz they keep standing a foot away from it and asking me, "How much are the CDs?" So I revised the sign to make the CD price much bigger. It seems to be working, 'cuz I usually sell one or none of them, and this time I sold five.

We came up just three dollars short of the all-time tips record. Warren took off, and as I was just about to leave, a party swept through and a guy asked me if I could sing Happy Birthday to "Esmeralda". I did, and he slipped me, you guessed it, three bucks.