Bad Bike Week- Part 2

So Richard fixed my flat for the standard $15, which brought my cash-spent-over-bike problems bill to $50 (the other $35 were cab fares.)

Monday, June 15th 

8:20am

I'm biking to work, turning from Gold onto Nassau street in DUMBO, which is completely torn up with construction. I'm a civic cyclist, and thoroughly want to obey all of thebicycle laws, both to express my desire to comply with a city that is showing more support and sympathy for the cyclists, and also to avoid another $150 fine for riding on the sidewalk.

So, it's a tough decision: risk another ticket for safe-riding on the sidewalk, or risk another flat for riding on a road that resembles Mickey Rourke's complexion. I rode on the road and had a flat on my front tire two blocks later. It's 40 minutes until my tour starts and I'm dragging my sorry bicycle to the High Street A train station to get to my tour on time, leaving a blue-streak of explatives all across DUMBO.

1:45pm

After a rousing 4 hour tour for girl scouts (who all wanted to know how the saga of my bicycle drama ended.) I'm back in DUMBO hunting around for Recycle a Bicycle, the local bike shop of the 'hood. I try to keep my bicycle repair-work to the same bike shop if necessary, but it's never that easy. When your bike malfunctions in the middle of a ride, there is a combination of a sense of being stranded, suddenly reduced to 10% of your transportation speed, and anxiety of watching your entire schedule for the day crumble. Instead of a machine that makes you move faster, you are now in possession of 60 lb albatross around your neck. The closest bike shop is the only thing you have to depend on.

So, Recycle a Bicycle fixes my tire for the requisite $15 (at $67 now, including the $4 subway fares) and they tell me it was a pinch-flat from not enough air in my tires. I could've sworn I just inflated them. . . Oh well, I guess that's that. One flat on each tire, and now they're fresh and new.

7:55pm

Ahh. After a nice hour-long class at my dojo: NY Jiu Jitsu on Bond and Broadway, I'm off to meet my tour-guiding buddies Tony and Matt to shoot the shit about the business and complain about the irritating clients we've had to deal with recently.

THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, I'm biking along East 2nd street and there is clearly something wrong with my tire. The one that was just fixed. What's this? There appears to be a lump on the side of my tire, and it's hitting my brake-pads every time it rotates. Well, I better get that looked at ASAP, or else it'll-

POP!

So loud, everyone on East 2nd street heard it. And so, breathing heavily through my teeth, I'm hauling my bike once again, suffering the 2nd flat tire in a day, and my third in four days to the Three of Cups bar and restaurant on 1st avenue and East 6th street to bitch and moan and yell about my luck.

Bad Bike Week- Part 1

June 12th, 2009

6:15pm

"Um... I'm sorry, but there's something in your back tire." I'm on the L train at first avenue and I'm just slightly damp. This has been the rainiest year that I can remember, and global weirding is the only answer. (It doesn't just get "warmer" folks. . .) So I'm riding the subway again, which I grumble about every time cause I buy pay-per-rides now as a way to trying to make myself bike everywhere. Well, this weekend I was going to spend biking all over the Northside Festival and across the Pulaski to Astoria to make some honey-time and instead, I'm idiotically pulling a thumb-tack out of my back tire.

"Don't pull it out!" The skinny-dress wearing hipster-chick yelped. She was the one who first alerted me to the problem.

SSSSSssssssss Oh no. and my whole evening starts to cascade. . . 

7:02pm- I SHOULD BE

walking in my front door, ready to make curried-chicken quesadillas and ginger-mango cocktails as I ready myself for The Hold Steady at The Music Hall of Williamsburg

7:02pm- I AM

Pulling up to the bike shop as the lights go out and Richard, the portly Puerto Rican man who runs the place and shares my penchant for fedoras tells me I had to be there at least 15 minutes earlier.

7:36pm- I SHOULD BE

Pleasantly and calmly enjoying my quesadillas and cocktails

7:36PM- I AM

Sitting in the back of Spuyten Duyvil Bar The finest beer & wine bar in Brooklyn with my friend and fellow human sky-scraper Vanessa, bitching about bikes, taxes, and relationships. She sent me a very sweet E-card recently.

8:41PM- I SHOULD BE

Calmly bicycling through a curry-and-rum buzz in South Williamsburg while keeping a keen-eye for fully black-clad Hasids walking out right in front of my bicycle. I'll get to the Music Hall over an hour before The Hold Steady, easy.

8:41PM I AM

Shoving quesadilla and cocktail down my throat while buttoning my last buttons and wondering what second I should call the car service that I'll spent $10 on to take me a half mile, which I could have bicycled  in 10 minutes, tops.

12:31AM

I'm sitting at some Bar in Greenpoint with my two brothers, and bestest buds, bitching about how fucking tired we were at the start of a four-day music fest. For the elder Matt, it was working another weeklong Aussie-fest with the wonderful people at Contiki Holidays . Jonah had been juggling acting in a play, working on a web-series and working his first full spring-season of tour guiding, and I was bitching about my popped tire.

I missed The Hold Steady of course, but instead saw a sweet band called Discovery (don't love the name though) fronted by a hoarse-voiced blues broad who also serves up drinks at one of my favorite bars, Barette. Discovery, check 'em out.

Then I walked  by another band rehearsing called The Press. Pretty good as well.

Now how the hell am I going to get myself to Astoria?

2:31am

$35 and counting on cabs. 

But yeah, it was worth it.

PCT- Paid Chill Time

11:47am

I'm sitting in the Hayden Rose Planetarium watching an asteroid collide with the earth and in the burst of fiery destruction, the bits and pieces that kicked up into orbit coalesce together and form our moon. The best part about it? I'm getting paid to watch it. It's narrated by Robert Redford, and I'm surrounded by 8th graders from Cape Cod, accents and all, who keep asking me if I'm Jason Mraz. I understand, they're young, high on sugar and raised in a celeb-centric culture. The last handful of jazzed 8th graders from New England I had thought I was Dane Cook. Precious little hormone-factories think anyone interesting in New York City must be some someone they can liken to something on TV or the interwebs or wherever they feed their heads. No matter to me, I'm getting paid for eight hours of work and I'm doing only about 90 minutes of actual working. The rest of the time, is PCT.

12:51pm

Patsy's Pizza on 74th & Columbus is one of the half-dozen in the pantheon of "Greatest Pizzerias in NYC" (Name the other five. I dare ya.) It's been around since 1932, which means that their coal oven was grandfathered into legality when New York City outlawed any new coal ovens, resulting in a new era of gas-ovens. The result is a pizza that's softer, and more foldy than the classic Buffalo Mozzerella, Pomodoro sauce, and the thin, crispy-crust that pops out the coal oven in 8-12 minutes. But today, I'm getting the chicken cacciatore, which is also excellent. I ask for the bill, and am told that there is none. The manager, a beautiful plump woman in her fifties with a lovely black dress and greathighlights asks "When you gonna bring more people in here?" I promise to try, but make no guarantees, drop $5 for a tip and laugh my way to my bicycle.

1:45pm

Porto Rico Coffee Importers, on St Mark's Place is the only place I buy my coffee. I'm not out of coffee yet, but the group is ending their day at STOMP at the Orpheum Theater right around the corner, so I might as well ride down here on my paid free time, get some coffee and hop the F to the B train back. If only this damn broad behind the counter would take my order. And then the F train is ten minutes late. Dammit, I have to be back at the Museum by 2:30!!

2:28pm

Nice. "OKAY KIDS!! ON THE BUSES!!"

4:55pm

I'm sipping Thai beer for $3.25 a piece at a very charming Thai joint on 38th and 9th avenue. Should've remembered the name. But it doesn't matter, I got my Wednesday new-comic book fix out of the way, and now I'm finishing Bonfire of the Vanities and am dying to know what's going to happen to Sherman McCoy. I'm wearing the new sneakers I bought at the 34th street Payless, and I've got my new black ink cartridge taken care of as well. All while the group is at Madame Tussauds, then going to Planet Hollywood for dinner. I don't have to join them for either of them, and I'm still getting paid.

7:30pm

"Arright you guys! Enjoy STOMP and enjoy your time in NYC." I leave them to retrieve the bike I left trustfully locked up on the corner of 2nd ave and Houston, and I'm laughing all the way to the Williamsburg Bridge.

9:42pm

Maggie Brown's on Myrtle ave and Waverly makes really great burgers. And the lights are low enough to sit and huddle over a computer  and recount my thoughts of the day. A good day. A Perfect day, if only to make up for the less than good day I had yesterday. It was last night however, that still haunts the outer rings of my memory. 

The stroll down East 7th street, the bright cerulean tank top she wore with black cardigan over her shoulders and blue jeans. A body stacked like a mountain and eyes that dared me to look away. One should be well-composed on a first date, but I was frumpy from a day of getting caught in in-and-out rain storms while killing time in the city in-between two ill-conceived 1-hour tours. One at 8:30am, and another one at 4pm. A bunch of unpaid time on an alternating rain & sun day made me cranky. My lousy, crumbling sneakers were wet and my feet ached while I tried to put on my most charming demeanor, and was unsure if it was successful.

I'm seeing her again on Monday. 

I guess today was my victory lap.

Flash Fiction: The Liars Address

THE LIARS ADDRESS

 

            The horrid winter wind pushed and pressed against the hallowed hall on the night of the Grand Cezar’s annual Liars Address in the Kingdom of Truthavia. The thousand Senators leapt to their feet when their fearless and god-filled chief marched in past them. This son of privilege with the prestigious university pedigree walked through the Dome of Justice in full military regalia. His cape flapped behind him and a shimmering constellation of medals from wars that the Cezar dreamed up glinted in the harsh light above them. Some of the Senators ached and clawed at the chance to speak and hurl their words at their fear-filled and godless Cezar, words that would cause the devil to curdle and heave. But their tongues had long ago been severed and locked away in the Treason Chest which was outstandingly displayed in the Justice Dome’s foyer. Instead they applauded wildly and threw flower petals beneath his feet.

            “The plenty of summer is upon us.” The Grand Cezar bellowed to his encircled comrades and civic leaders. “And the subjects who praise our names out there in the gentle sun are basking in glorious bounty.” The wind outside gave up a hungry howl so deafening that it drowned out the screams of the men-with-minds-made-wolf who shivered in rags as they crept around the tarnished Hall. There was no more wood to burn against the cold, but they still clutched axes in their tired arms and continued their march inward.

            “But the vultures-“ The Cezar “still hate us for their own failures in the face of our God-given success. They see the full faces and radiant smiles upon the citizens of Truthonia and they can only feel envy and hate. But as we have done time and time again we rain the ethereal fires of the skies down upon them when they dare molest our citizens or defile the earth within our borders.”

            Boys who’d survived long enough to wear the badge of Men stood upright on the Hall’s barren lawns. They could set their rag-wrapped paws on the frozen Earth. Neither rain now snow would fall in Truthakia any longer, and the dry earth froze hard and gave them a clear path to toward prey.

Their fathers eyes had once shimmered the faint glow of hope upon holding a child who dared to live and breathe in this infertile domain. Those fathers were long gone. They’d reached the grounds just past the borders of their wasteland, to scrape a little chaff from the plentiful fields beyond. They’d stumbled and staggered back with just enough in their hands to fill the young mouths that wailed for them but were cut down far too far away.

They sent only their ghosts in their stead.

            “Our children look upon us-“ The Cezar “and see the light of Gods illuminating their paths. And with wisdom and compassion, they will carry our prosperity over to our backwards and lost neighbor. He who lives in dirt and knows no reason for why he walks beneath Her benevolent sun and drinks from Her bountiful streams.”

            Mothers still found a way to feed these fatherless boys from the roots and the bits that she pulled from the unyielding earth. In time these wailing things learned to stand on two legs, and when their mouths could form words, they could finally give voice to the scratching and clawing in their bellies the tears that poured from their reddened eyes. And when the pain-filled wail of “why” echoed through their empty homes, the mothers sucked in their lips between toothless mouths, and pointed to the dome that stood high and lonesome above them all.

            “The wells of innovation that fuel our industries-” The Cezar “will never run dry. The spark of genius that glows in the minds of our people will always reign supreme.”

So the sons of the fathers made their own trek. Not outward in hope like the fathers had once made, but inward in wrath, like the beasts that this winter had turned them.

“And those who falter and stumble and fall around us-”

They had saved the only strength that their gaunt frames could muster to chop down the doors that kept them from their masters.

“Can always turn to the light of the Civilization of Truthistan-”

And the Senators offered their necks willingly to the men’s hand-held guillotines.

“For the United People of Truth will always welcome the heathen pilgrims with open arms, for as long as our Empire shall last.”

And the medals burst from the coat of the Grand Cezar and clattered to the ground as the uniform was ripped from his god like body. He was ripped naked and torn about by the skeletal phalanx. An army of hunger and hate taking their long owed birthright from the well-nourished flesh.

“And our Empire will shine for a thousand y-“

Four Options for Three Slots

Any given day offers Four Options-

Work. Social Life. Writing. Sleep.

Work and Sleep as far as I'm concerned are necessity, which leave me to choosing daily between Social Life or Writing.

7:27 am

So 9:30 at 50th & Broadway, right? The text message reads. Asshole, I txted my accompanying guide for today's tour that exact information last night! Why'd he have to ask me again, three delicious minutes before my alarm was set to go off? Dammit. That's three more seconds of lazy, frustrated non-sleep that I'm going to have to forgo. I leave a blue streak behind me as I trail from my bedroom, to the coffee-maker, to the shower.

12:31pm

Clever group this one is. Eighth graders from St. Louis, and a bright bunch too. One girl knew the punchline to my borough joke and said it before I could. (Anyone know what a Borough is? It's a small donkey! HA!) And then there's the kid who wanted to see my business card, and then passed it around so he and his buddies could all text message me mid-tour. Slick bastards these were. But this was the second group I'd gotten to walk through the newly half-traffic free Time's Square. And with clear skies, 68 degrees, and lawn chairs in Times fucking Square?? I've got nothing to complain about.

1:47pm

One tour down, and one to go! And after that, I'm going to the Anarchist Metalshop Block Party in Gowanus to see a home-made jet bike.

4:30pm

Christ in a Shit Bucket, I am FUCKING TIRED and there's NO WAY I'm going to a goddam Anarchist Metalshop Block Party, even if there is a home-made jet bike! I am biking my sorry ass across the Williamsburg Bridge and going straight HOME! Straight fucking ho- wait, is that Leslie? I didn't know she was in town, I'll stop for a minute and say hi.

5:39pm

Okay, now I'm going home. 

6:51pm

Two beers, a bowl,  a change of clothes and a few DVD featurettes later and I've decompressed from a New York Day. I've also been listening over and over and over to the truly magnificent song Young Liars by TV on the Radio and it's planted a rather intriguing flash-fiction story in my head. . . . 

I'm going to be sore tomorrow. . .

9:05am

Bike or subway. Bike or subway, bike or subway. . . Bike. It's much more reliable than the goddam MTA these days, especially when you live on the G train.

She may be short, and she may be slow,

But G is for Getting where you need to GO.

People feel an intense loyalty to their subway line, especially for the official underdog of the system. The G train is literally the short bus of the MTA. Only 4 cars long, versus the rest of the system's luxurious 8-car caravans and it's the only train in the whole subway that doesn't go to Manhattan. For a Brooklyn partisan such as myself, how can I not feel a certain underdog pride for my line? It's the only car that can get you cross-town through Kings County, and its really no big deal that you need to pull a triple-train shuffle to get to the West Side of Manhattan in 45 minutes during rush hour. But I'm running late, and feeling athletic, so it's a biking day today. The only question is: What am I going to do with it once I hop on my tour bus? I hate having to get myself from downtown back up to midtown just to pick up my bike. . . unless. . . I can stash it in the undercarriage of the tour bus!! Gideon, you're a genius!!

1:37pm

Mutherfucking dick-cheese, my tour was supposed to end 37 minutes ago, but my fucking bike is underneath the tour bus, which is nowhere to be fucking found, and the shell-shocked, migraine-laden teacher who has been half-comatose throughout the whole tour is also MIA, and he's still holding my tip!! The kids I was touring around today cared about nothing but shopping, and all I want to do is get my tip, get my bike and take a nice long dose of the GTFOH. (Get the Fuck Outta Here.) I find the teacher, snag my tip, collect an extra $30 from the downtown Deli that gives me $1 a head for each kid I bring in for lunch, and only 50 minutes late, but $80 heavier than I started my day, I start riding to the Jewish American Historical Society to get some long-overdue research done.

2:14pm

Biking toward the Historical Society, I happen to pass by the clown I was sleeping with a couple of weeks ago. This may seem like an insulting and derogatory way to speak of a former lover, but no, seriously, she's a clown. Make-up, and physical comedy and all. I sit down with her and catch up a little over a samosa and an asian pear. That was nice. Back on my bike.

4:36pm

Research is intimidating. It's confronting the abyss of history, hoping you come out of it internalizing just a little bit more of the endless chasm of history that can only be glanced at through pinholes and murky crystal balls. Through historic accounts, each of which are tainted by the author's unreliable memory and subjective opinions one can only hope that the puzzle pieces can be jammed together enough to maybe tell a story from an era before any of us were even born. This is the task of writing a historic novel. The Edge of the East Side: a Lower East Side Crime drama that places an Irish, Jewish, and Italian boy together at the birth of organized crime, each of them hoping to claim just a coin's worth of The American Dream, even if it means scamming, stealing, and hustling their way there. But there's only so much I can fake it and load up the cliches before I sit down with a stack of books and really dig into what the lives of Irish, Jewish, and Italian boys were really like in 1905. I've been here for two hours, and I'm a little more informed than I was when I began. It's a start, but my brain is just about ready to clock out for the day, and my body's ready to take over.

7:10pm

I'm trying to wipe the sweat off my forehead with my T-shirt while my work out partner is goading me on to keep punching. The sweat-wipe isn't working. My shirt's already drenched. Saturated. It can't hold any more moisture, but the sweat keeps dripping, and I have to keep hitting the pads. Kick, jab, cross, hook. Kick, jab, cross, hook. This is my first Kickboxing class in six weeks, and I'm hurting. Good god, am I hurting. NY Jiu Jitsu is on Bond street off of Broadway and I'm rounding out my second hour and my body is begging for respite. I put my account at the dojo on hold for the peak of the tour season, and i was finally ready to jump back into the fray. The first class was a belt-advancement techniques class and I'd forgotten most of the combinations that I had worked so hard to memorize for my yellow-belt. Now I'm in the cardio-kickboxing class, and I have twenty more minutes before I can shut down completely. But I can't shut down completely. I brought my bike into the city. I've got to bike back across the Manhattan Bridge to get home. . . Don't think about it. Just hit the pads and think about that stupid teacher that left me running up and down Broadway to get my tip.

8:42pm

My legs hurt. My arms hurt. My brain and hands and eyes all hurt. A lot. But I'm at the Brooklyn Public Ale House on DeKalb avenue in Fort Greene with my New York Magazine, a tall glass of dark ale, a friendly Irish bartender, and an N.Y. Sirloin steak on it's way that I can definitely say I have earned. I might ache like hell tomorrow, but at least tonight I can say:

It's been a fine day.

Cell Phone Detective & Third-Day Indians

8:51 AM

I'm jittering past Trinity Church on an egg, toast and a too-tall cup of home-brewed that I picked up from the coffee importer on St. Mark's place yesterday. My tour starts at 9AM for the third time in three days, and the G to the A has been kind and timely. I don't want to risk it by getting caught on a slow-moving 4 train to the Battery, making three stops in a quarter mile. I can jet down to the Battery on my steel-beam legs just as fast as the rush hour MTA can lurch it. 

A New York Minute: The time it takes for a NEW YORKER to walk a single block. Test it sometime.

I've got the Indians for the third day in a row. The company from California that hires regularly but pays me erratically is bringing their Indian groups back to town for the 3rd year in a row. Last year was a windfall. I pulled off the NYC Tour Guide Scam to End All Scams, where I bought childrens' tickets for all the adults at a $7-per difference. 30-50 pax per bus, the gig was once a week. When handed the stack to the Ferry Line Man, I said:

"So how 'bout them Mets?" And the tirade went as long as it needed for him to rip the tickets en masse without looking at them once. The cats in Anaheim, CA were so busy chasing their own tail most of the time, they didn't have the time to check my receipts. I bought a flat screen television with that hustle and I salute Lady Liberty every time I get to bask in her oxidized copper glory. 

Though I didn't really get around to paying my quarterly taxes like a good Freelance Tour Guide and Democrat should, so this year I'm scraping up every tour gig I can wrangle to pay off the government so they can pay off some bank that I never belonged to and still got to slap their name on some lousy new stadium.

Statue Cruises scan the tickets now, and California checks their numbers.

Anyway, the Indians. They're lovely people, they care dearly for their families and their fashion is a perfect blend of traditional Indian garb and familiarly corny Midwestern American. They drink good scotch, their food is delicious, and their table manners are polite yet emphatic. They understand that a fine, yet moderated belch is the sign of a well-enjoyed meal!

But they don't listen. I explained a full history of the Lady in the Harbor and then fielded 15 minutes of questions that required me to re-iterate everything I had just said. They have no sense of time-urgency, or the very real concept that the boats leave strictly every 30 minutes, and 11:50 is not just-as-good as 11:35. They yell their demands, and after saying that they had no interest in a walking tour, demand to see the Wall Street Stock Exchange, which no automobile is allowed anywhere near, and coach buses must circle the Byzantine labrynth of Lower Manhattan for a 20 minutes to give them their 3 minute photo-op. Then they complain about the walking.

And tomorrow, I get to reward myself with sleeping until 9, and have a leisurely morning cleaning the apartment that has gone into deep disarray. But today is day three. And today is a two-bus move, which requires a second guide. It's Dave McMahon, who is a older gentleman of theatrical training. That's an entire subset of the Tour Guide roster. He resembles Jack Nicholson enough so that I can't remember that his name is actually Dave, and at 6 minutes until launch time, I have to see if he beat me to starting point.

There's a 212 number in the early set of my recent calls and I dive in. An ambulance wails by (shit, before 9? This fuckin' city.) and I don't hear the "hello" when I pick up.

"Hey! Where are you?" I yell

"Umm. Greenwich Ave?" Greenwich. . . He must mean Greenwich street, near the Battery Tunnel Building. 

"All right, I'll be there soon!"

"Wait, sir! We're not open yet." Sir? . . Who the F-

"I'm sorry. Is this Dave McMahon?"

"What? No!" Shit. I called some poor bastard before 9am, that a'int good. Wait. It's 9 now, and I'm passing Bowling Green.

"Sorry, wrong number." Who the hell did I just call?

4:37PM

They had to see the United Nations Building. Didn't matter that we passed by it turning off of First Avenue on to 42nd street on the way to lunch an hour late, had to get off and take a photo. Which gave us the opportunity to offer them the absolute New York expeirence: driving a bus west on 49th street at rush hour. The rest of the day had gone smooth enough, why did the final fuckitall have to stretch 37 minutes after I was supposed to clock out?

Going out last night was a bad idea. No, Going out was good, just being out to 1AM was a mistake. Actually, out till 1AM I can handle, if I go straight home after work, it was the $2 margaritas that made it a mistake, but hey, it was her birthday party, she chose the poison. 

It would have been a lot better if that burrito joint was open when I had left. It was open when I first passed by it on my way to the bar,  but when I called them, they said they were just closi-

Aaahhhaaaa. . . . . 

Benny's Burritos in the West Village, I owe you one.