USS odopod

On Friday night my office had a party. It’s theme was “Yacht Club.” I wore my terrycloth nautical flag shirt, and K. wore a perfect yacht club dress. On Saturday morning, thanks to that party, I didn’t feel so good. Thank heavens for prescription headache medicine. I made it to my 9:30 a.m. ukulele class, but just barely.

Waiting for our tea at Samovar

K. went with me this afternoon to Yerba Buena Gardens, where they were having a ukulele festival, with lots of free music. It was fun and pleasant to sit on the grass in the garden, but we were hungry, so we had lunch at Samovar.  It was really lovely and pleasant, and we could hear the music, at least sort of, from our outdoor table. It seemed really nice inside, too. It was very relaxing and lovely.

We left for a while, then I came back for the big finale, a performance by Jake Shimabukuro. He’s pretty darn impressive. Here’s a video so you can see what I mean.

Lanikai LCD-C Concert Uke

July is my birthday month, and the first day of my birthday month seemed like as good a day as any to buy myself a present, so now I’ve got a Lanikai custom series LCD-C concert-size ukulele. Of course, I took a bunch of pictures.

I mentioned that I was attempting to learn the uke a few posts ago, and it’s not like I’ve become a great player or anything between then and now, but I decided it was time to upgrade from my $30 uke because I was having some pain in my thumb, I think from having to press so hard on the uke’s neck to play chords without buzzing.

So, since a friend of K.’s has loaned us her car while she’s out of town, and K. is out of town too, I drove out to the East Bay this afternoon and test drove ukuleles. I had heard lots of good things about the Flukes and Fleas and I thought maybe that was the way I wanted to go, but it turns out I didn’t really like the way they sounded all that much. I also tried a K-Wave Les Paul style uke, but I wasn’t impressed with the sound enough to get me past the fact that it weighed a ton, more than other ukes with pickups I tried. I even played a Lanikai 6-string tenor uke, which had a nice deep tone, and was very neat sounding, but not exactly what I was looking for right now.

There were two serious finalists: The Kiwaya KS-5, which I played at the 5th String (a very nice place even though I didn’t buy there), and the Lanikai, which I found at The Thin Man. I was pushed over the edge by the price (the Lanikai was at the top of my price range, and the Kiwaya was a little bit above the top) and the prettiness of the LCD-C. I’m also interested in trying the concert size, just to mix things up.

I actually was very intrigued by a vintage 30s-Era Royal Hawaiian Hotel-branded soprano uke at The Thin Man; it had an awesome loud sound, but I felt like it might be too fragile for my ungraceful paws.

So, now I have the lovely Lanikai uke, which sounds great when I play “Amazing Grace” on it, my least hesitant number. I also got a bargain on a hard-sided case for it, and I optimistically bought a book on fingerpicking, thinking perhaps I’ll try to move past simply strumming.

Don’t get me wrong — I won’t toss my little cheapo uke. It will be a fine traveler, and it sounds pretty good especially since I put good strings on it. Yeah, I still have the distressed uke I found on the street, and new strings helped it too … but maybe not enough.

So, that’s my first birthday present. I’m also buying myself a nice new yellow motorcycle helmet, although I think maybe I’ll lump that in with scooter-related necessities in my budget and not call it a birthday present. Although it’s pretty neat, too.

My uke skills aren’t quite ready for prime time yet, so I’ve got no recordings to share. But if you want to see what’s cool about the ukulele to me, here’s a pretty entertaining example:

So, this is actually my next-door neighbors’ recycling bin that you see here. The funny thing is that I have recently decided to learn to play the ukulele, and I practice in our apartment. This weekend it was very hot here (I actually wore shorts on Sunday) and we’ve had the windows open a lot. I like to think that my neighbor has been listening to me play the four chords I know over and over and it reminded him that he had a ukulele in his house he should get rid of right away.

I picked this one up, but the strings are shot, so, at least for now, my cheap uke sounds a lot better.

I found a few other good things in the street, and you can see them here.