K&W in Laguna Beach -- Sunday, 27July2014

We went down at 4:00 to get the ice cream corner, which worked. There was a slow section around dinnertime, but it was a pretty great night, overall -- lots of friendly tourists.

And not-so-friendly. A family came and sat on the bench to eat their ice cream, so I brought a list over to them. The mom curtly said, "No, thank you." Ouch, but OK. I put it back, and played a few songs anyway, as I do. After a while, they apparently noticed that I was really playing decent music, and not some kind of panhandler. The teenaged girl came shyly over and looked at the list, and picked "Time After Time", and put a dollar in the jar. By this time, I could tell they were Not From Around Here, and asked. Apparently, in Austria, us street musicians have a reputation of being shifty. Or something. But it was gratifying to earn their trust after such an awkward introduction...

The Tommies were playing on the opposite corner, and we had a short visit from little Tomi herself in her jaunty hat during their break.

Around 9:30, there was a vacationing family from Arizona on the bench, and a group of dressed-up young ladies appeared. They both were big Disney song fans, so I played "Part of Your World" from "The Little Mermaid", and we had a huge sing-along. So I invited them to come up for the next one, and ended up with a "battle of the bands", with two girls from each group singing away on "Let It Go".

The Dress-up girls had somewhere to be, though. After they left, the Vacation cousins wanted to sing "I See the Light" from "Tangled". I had them stand in front of me, moved the music stand so they could follow the words, and let them hold my mic between them so they could be heard. I almost never let someone else sing on the mic, but they had proven themselves with the previous song, and it was great -- and probably a pretty good vacation memory for them.

It went dead at 10:00, so we packed up. The owner of the ice cream shop is always inviting us to have some free ice cream, but I can't eat it while I'm singing, so it never happens. But this time, we were done, and the shop was still open, and he was still there, so I finally had a scoop. Pretty good, too.