Sailors’ Delight : ‘Boat People’ Hear Concerts Free Near Humphrey’s

Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Buffett sang to them, Waylon Jennings and Roseanne Barr cursed at them, and the proprietors of the Humphrey’s concert venue on Shelter Island regard them with benign, even bemused tolerance. They are the “boat people”--locals who siphon the sights and sounds of the Humphrey’s shows from their perches at the adjacent Half Moon Anchorage marina.

On Tuesday night, a total of 1,700 fans at two shows paid $25 a pop to sit inside the open-air venue for the first show of Humphrey’s 1992 “Concerts by the Bay” season, which featured the Four Tops. In an amusing parallel, it also was opening night for the couple of hundred boaters nearby who heard the shows free--if you don’t count the food, the Champagne, and the other comestibles with which they observed the special occasion.

From day one of the Humphrey’s series more than 10 years ago, the boat people have been a presence at the concerts. In the early days, their numbers were limited to owners of boats moored at the marina. Cheap access to the sounds of well-known pop-jazz artists was a good excuse for some San Diego-style wining and dining and more than compensated for a less-than-optimal side-view of the stage area.

But, as the Humphrey’s series flourished, word of the “free” music spread throughout the bay community. Soon, owners of boats docked elsewhere were piloting their small utility craft into the southeast corner of the marina, where both the sound and the view are much better. Many of these boaters already knew each other, and over the years an easy camaraderie developed that has become almost as important a component of the phenomenon as the music.

Because the boaters are visible from the stage, it has become something of a Humphrey’s tradition for performers to address them during a show. In his 1984 appearance, Jimmy Buffett climbed atop a stack of speakers with a microphone and sang several songs to the boat people. Another time, Roseanne Arnold, nee Barr, asked the boaters how they were doing, and then countered their boisterous response with an expletive about their freeloading.

According to Kenny Weissberg, producer of the Humphrey’s series, most of the artists love playing to the boat people, and the venue’s management has never sought to discourage what amounts to free access to their product.

“We’re aware that the boat people hit us a little bit in the pocketbook,” Weissberg said Wednesday, “but they also add to the overall ambience of what Humphrey’s is all about.”

Weissberg recalled that the largest crowd of boaters convened for Chuck Berry’s 1989 show.

“There were wall-to-wall dinghys as far as you could see,” he said. “I couldn’t even see water.”

As the popularity of the Humphrey’s series has grown--last year 21 of the shows were sellouts--the resulting premium on tickets has had a trickle-down effect on the boat people. Not surprisingly, enterprising boaters even found a way to capitalize on their good fortune. For a few years now, classified ads have appeared in local newspapers offering prime seats on boats moored at the marina for those shows expected to sell out. One offered “six tickets at $50 each to hear Kenny G.” Another advertised “great view of the stage.”

But the true spirit of the boat people phenomenon is exemplified by the regulars. On Tuesday night, an armada of 45 dinghys--inflatables, rowboats, hunting boats, even a kayak--converged from all over the marina district, many of them from the Southwestern Yacht Club in Point Loma. To reach Humphrey’s in time for the first show at 7 p.m., they wended a serpentine path, single file, around the slips at which large and small vessels lay at anchor. The sight of these tiny boats and the muffled purr of their outboard motors created the impression of being on an E-ticket children’s ride at Disneyland.

Once at the site, the dinghys crowded hull-to-hull, ostensibly to hear the aging Motown soulsters knock down a rack of their hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s. But the music would be the entree; first came the socializing. Cheese was sliced, fruit displayed, wine poured. Some who hadn’t seen each other since the end of the 1991 Humphrey’s season renewed acquaintances. Longtime friends caught up on each others’ lives. On one dinghy, a board laid across the bow was covered with a red tablecloth, on which rested candles, a vase of fresh flowers and a bottle of champagne.

In another inflatable, Dick and Diane Jones of Point Loma, who have a boat moored at a marina on Harbor Island, were celebrating their 34th wedding anniversary with their son and daughter-in-law. Like several of the boaters, the Joneses had purchased regular tickets to Humphrey’s until fellow boaters alerted them to the marina scene.

“We’ve been coming here for about four years,” Diane said. “We’ve seen a lot of great concerts--Lou Rawls, Dionne Warwick, B. B. King, Chet Atkins. One of our favorites is Harry Belafonte. Not only does he do a great show, but he always sings to us out here in the boats. Last year, he started a (singing) round with the audience, and included us in it.”

“The beauty of this is that everybody is so friendly,” Dick added. “If you run out of wine, someone will share theirs. No one gets rowdy; it’s very mellow.”

As if on cue, a woman in a nearby inflatable asks the Jones foursome to try of of her “very special French wine.”

Like the Joneses, John and Suzanne Pew are marina regulars who occasionally purchase tickets to the venue.

“If it’s someone we especially like, such as Pat Metheny, we’ll pay to sit inside,” Suzanne said.

“We also pay to see some of the solo acts, especially the vocalists who might be harder to hear from here,” John said.

Don and Jo Ann Czech have been boat people for seven years. From their home nearby, they can easily hear the music emanating from Humphrey’s--not all of which they like. But they prefer to join the boat crowd, and they dispute the notion that the boaters are by their actions less supportive of the performers.

“Sometimes, I think boat people are actually more appreciative than the people in the seats,” Jo Ann said. “We really hoot and holler out here, and the artists can hear us.”

According to Don, the performers don’t always return the appreciation.

“Most of them are pretty great,” he said. “Waylon Jennings is the only one I can remember who was tasteless. He looked out here and accused us of stealing his (censored) music.”

Surveying the cluster of dinghys, one concluded that the boaters generally fall into the demographic bracket of people who have reached the successful slope on the career curve. One boat contained Bill Hosey, an attorney with the prominent local firm of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps. In another sat Dr. Dick Virgilio, who years ago was instrumental in establishing the city’s trauma units. And, naturally, one conservative-looking gent sat talking into a portable telephone.

At show time, the boaters’ attention turned to the stage. Three decades after they began scoring hits for Motown Records, the Four Tops seem more a product of Las Vegas than Detroit, but the boaters couldn’t have cared less. They clapped, cheered, and moved as rhythmically as they could in the confining dinghys. When the Tops’ lead vocalist, Levi Stubbs, turned toward the water and urged the boaters to sing along, they did with gusto--thus unwittingly demonstrating why most of them went into law, medicine, real estate and other non-musical fields.

At the conclusion of the 70-minute show, about half of the boaters started up their outboards, creating a fog of exhaust that sounded the evening’s only sour note. According to Diane Jones, some of them would return in time for the second show.

“Hey, people have to go to the bathroom,” she said, laughing.