Dear Tourists...Open your cab door on the sidewalk side next time
Close to dead broke during the second of Jazzfest, I went down to the Race track to see if I couldn't move some piggy Teehs to the masses waiting in line. It was my sign I was waving ["Official BP in Louisiana Shirts"] that attracted the first officers attention. After only 30 minutes on the grind and only one sale they pulled me aside to talk and wait for their superior to see what he wanted to do with me.
"Gotdammm," I squealed to myself after they let me go and I headed back to my apartment. I spent the rest of the day inside, licking my wounds, cursing the flood of people that had suddenly appeared in my quiet neighborhood and the cops that had been kind enough to correct my hustle ("You gotta say they're FREE, kid, but that you're excepting donations") but still hit me with a ticket for pedaling without a permit. That they CONFISCATED the rest of the shirts before sending me away was what really stung.
"But Fuck it," I said. I still had some dough from the single sale I made and the one on my back and surely some better place to be in the company of friends. So I left MidCity and started on back outside towards downtown. But no sooner had I gotten out the door did I realize the whole neighborhood was swamped with fest-goers. All my usual routes were flooded with people. I made it to the river downtown but only found out my people were all somewhere else. An invitation later for dinner with a cutie-pie uptown was all I needed to hear to get it moving in a new direction.
So I took off down St. Charles Ave the most direct route to anywhere else and felt like I was finally catching my stride this night after so many false starts in the day.
Fortunately I saw the cab door open far away enough to pump the brakes without flying over the handle bars. But there still wasn't space enough to come to a complete stop. I swerved around it in the tiny wedge of space left between lanes and the two cars. It was an impossibly small space but somehow I just squeezed through in the nick of time it seemed... except for that keychain carabiner in my pocket. The door caught me on that tiny piece of metal I had clipped inside my pocket and SHHHHRT ripped my pocket right out of my pants with a tear that left my whole right thigh exposed. "Praise god and I'm glad i wore underwear today," I thought as I assessed the damage on the sidewalk.
I was halfway to the dinner house and so I left the dazed cabby and his dumbass clietele and kept moving. I showed up looking like a Raggedy Andy, hungry and happy I arrived in one piece. What a day. You can try to keep it moving in the city but some days you'll just have to struggle with the currents against you all day.
