Free shows at Oceanfront give guests reason to come back

The corner of 21st Street and Atlantic Avenue is a tough place to give a concert.

Interstate 264 pours traffic onto 21st, which stops just shy of the beach in the heart of the commercial Oceanfront.

Tom and Rose Schlater are making music, competing with the noise of cars, pickups, motorcycles, to please the army marching by.

The couple is part of the free entertainment the city provides every night, weather permitting, from early June through Labor Day, 7:30 to 11 p.m. Jugglers, magicians, musicians, ventriloquists and others set up on the Atlantic sidewalk or on side streets from 17th to 25th.

It's a bouquet the city tosses to tourists, hoping to give them pleasant memories they'll recall when they're planning their next vacation.

Tom plays an electric/classical guitar while his wife, Rose, plays an acoustic guitar and sings.

It's their third year with BeachEvents. They're based in Virginia Beach and travel to gigs around the eastern United States in an RV. He's a retired Navy optometrist from Portsmouth Naval Hospital. She's a veteran performer from the Philippines.

Their set list on a recent summer night includes "Umbrella" by Rihanna, "Rock Around the Clock" and "Classical Gas." "Big Girls Don't Cry," a hit for Fergie, gets a nice round of applause from a family of six that had stopped to listen. That is the biggest crowd that stops for this set.

Plenty of people strolling by appear to enjoy the music, though, giving a thumbs up and a smile to the Schlaters, bobbing their heads to the music or getting a little jig in their step as they stroll by.

A Norfolk family was among those who stopped. Ashley Robinson of Norfolk and her children Jayvion, 5, and Tionne, 3, and grandmother Lisa Whitehead stopped to enjoy the music.

Whitehead said they enjoy walking on the beach and then listening to the music. "It's free," she said. "You can't beat that."

Shane Nicely, operations manager for BeachEvents, which runs the program, is responsible for coordinating the entertainers every night.

He keeps an eye out for the weather, schedules the acts, makes sure they're in the appropriate spaces. He's as much of a juggler as Hilby, a popular regular from Berlin. Most performers work only a week or two at a time. Some, like Hilby, are international acts who like to spend some time working at the Oceanfront every summer. Many entertainers are from Hampton Roads.

Mike Hilton, marketing and programming manager for BeachEvents, said they do regular surveys of tourists to gauge their reaction to the program and to particular entertainers. It's all part of the effort to be a family-friendly resort.

As Nicely said: "We want to give the guests at Virginia Beach another reason to come back."

Dan Duke, (757) 446-2546, dan.duke@pilotonline.com

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Maybe it was his dorky lederhosen, or perhaps his cartoonish Eastern European accent, but whatever it was, Hilby the German Juggler had lured quite a following to his stretch of space at 23rd Street.

In fact, his crowd took up the whole block, watching him perform his ridiculous feats.

"I have a wedgie," he said to the two burly men he plucked from the crowd to help him as he steadied himself atop a unicycle, the seat of which is at least 5 feet off the ground. "Can you get it for me? OK, I don't have a wedgie."

The kids sitting on the pavement in front howled with laughter, and Hilby began juggling a plunger, a plastic bowling pin and a sword while treading back and forth on the bike.

Certainly, we've all seen someone juggle before, but Hilby, a native of Berlin who was discovered for this gig through his work at Busch Gardens, merges the mere act of throwing and catching with unrepentantly goofy jokes to make for an act both kids and adults dig.

"I liked it a lot," said Jesse Strickle, a 13-year-old visiting from Pennsylvania. "He's really silly."

- Malcolm Venable,The Virginian-Pilot

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One of the big, unwritten rules of performing is that the audience isn't supposed to see the star sweat, no matter what technical difficulties might arise during a show.

Yet, during his set at 20th Street, Dextre, of the Minneapolis-based Dextre & Jayna, would audibly voice frustration as he tried to juggle his way into the hearts of adults if things went slightly awry. Case in point: If you were juggling and say, dropped your balls, you might consider uttering some snappy bon mot that would convince your viewers that was intentional, rather than muttering, "The thing about these balls is that you can't predict which way they'll go on concrete."

These kinds of uncomfortable exchanges plagued their set: a too-long recruiting mission ("Come on over, guys! Come check us out!) and even a bold, needless plea to make people sitting on the curb scoot in closer to the front - including a woman holding her baby.

Fate even played a part in making their act sometimes totally hard to watch; their streetlight flickered on and off, and a youngster who was supposed to climb up a ladder to hand Dextre a prop became a diva. ("Why can't I just throw it to you?" he asked, which, admittedly, was a legitimate question.)

Jayna's stilt walking and acrobatic tricks were OK. Some people who'd stopped walked away after a bit. "It's good, it's OK," said Douglas Glamane, a 21-year-old from Virginia Beach. "Not quite Barnum & Bailey."

- Malcolm Venable, The Virginian-Pilot

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On the sidewalk next to an ice cream shop on 18th Street, a crowd of about 60 people were gathered around a middle-aged guy behind a microphone. He could've been mistaken for a housewares hawker, except for the stuffed duck named Dangerous on his right hand and the frequent laughs coming from the audience.

Tom Crowl is a ventriloquist from Maryland who travels all over the country with his comedy routine, and is in Virginia Beach for a couple stints, one already past and another running Aug. 2-15.

His style of humor seemed to appeal to the broad group of folks who stopped their stroll along Atlantic Avenue to watch. He plays the straight man to a cast of cheeky characters that also includes Wilson the tennis ball and Nancy Drew, a cartoon he draws from an audience member's face. And there was only a little movement from his mouth visible behind the big, black microphone.

At one point in the act, Crowl and Dangerous wanted the crowd to "oooh" and "aaah" for a magic rope trick. The audience apparently didn't respond with enough enthusiasm. "You people need caffeine," Dangerous prodded. "Oooh... aaaah," the audience yelled back, setting up Dangerous for the punch line: "That kind of sounds like the hotel room next to us."

- Elizabeth Thiel Mather, The Virginian-Pilot