First take a gander at a motorcycle that probably sells for $40,000 that I would not park in my driveway. Your tastes may differ. Where does the gas go? Maybe in the handlebars, because you would not dare take this rig far or for very long. You might get dust on it. What you don’t see when you are riding a bicycle past.
Maybe those $94 bike tires aren’t that far away, after all. Soon, a new air conditioner, which I leave on most of the time. It was another happy crowd at the Show-Off (correctly spelled as a hyphenated word). I will definitely be working on new interactive and comedy material this week. I have three and a half solid hours of diverse material and I really crank out those tunes, up to 24 per set. Thus, an evening with me will be, on average, over 100 tunes. Hand-picked classics, and I’ve been getting repeated compliments about my choices.The money. All I can tell you is when I picked up the tip jar, it was heavy. No, not because people were tipping me with nickels. I am totally surprised by the number of $5 and $10 bills in there. Next week I’ll be targeting that reputed afternoon crowd that is supposed to be there on Saturdays. (I had to do a late show these past two weeks due to working at the Thrift.) The Show-Off staff is very happy with my work. Originally I’d asked for a $30 cover because of the distance, but I’m thinking of dropping that to $10, or eliminating it altogether. Yes, business is that good.
There were, of course, the usual couple of jerks who “requested” Procol Harem and one Grateful Dead bozo, but they even looked like failed guitarists. You know, overweight, mullet haircuts. The usual heckler was there commenting on why I had a microphone but he was booed down. Later, for a lark, I dropped over to the Friendly Inn. Lorraine is still working there, and I bumped into Luis, the Blues guitarist. Remember him? I invited Luis down to Jimbo’s next Friday, or any Friday, actually. I stayed and bought a round, paying with handfuls of uncounted one-dollar bills. They were making a misleadingly large bulge in my pocket anyway.
Opportunists. When I ordered the round, one lady ordered a milkshake-looking drink that cost $9 where she had earlier been sipping beer. Welcome to Florida. The new waitress at Show-Off (also named Lisa, I’m losing track of my Lisas) used to work the Hard Rock. She is a funnel of inside information. She talks of how on opening week [seven years ago?], they had to round up every available member of the Seminole tribe to fill the “upper” positions. This apparently caused permanent hard feelings for the more qualified. Two hours before their orientation for opening day, for which nobody was ready, the roof of the meeting hall caved in and the “swimming pool caught fire”. [Later, it was the water slides that actually burned, it turns out.]
She handled the payout window. The daily payout was “three to four million dollars”. The [Hard Rock] development, including the hotel and café cost $413 million, but Lisa reports that over here, in Gulfstream, they are putting in a $1,200,000,000 (one billion two hundred million dollar) entertainment and hotel complex. Wallace, you know that parking spot to the south where we parked and walked over? It won’t be there when you get back. That whole acreage to the south will be built up. Lisa also knows the inside people and I may be able to get you into any event for like, two bucks. Great shows and concerts there all the time.
It seems there is some technicality about whether Gulfstream is in Broward or Dade County. This is important, as there are (I’m told) different grades of gambling, some of which are not legal in Dade. Lisa to the rescue again, she reports that because one of the entrances to the parking lot is in Broward, the entire racetrack is honorarily now in the same county. (It may be the one Wallace asked about. On the way to his favorite Walgreen’s he asked why that driveway was so new – if that is the one (I’m not sure), it should have been paved with gold!)
At the Thrift, the most unlikely couple came in, from Chicago. The guy was like six foot eight and his girlfriend had no breasts, but what a cutie. He instantly finds a pair of vintage leather slacks that fit him, which according to him just does not happen. It made him happy enough to wear them out of the store into the summer heat. Sales were average so I tried to begin hanging clothes back on the racks. Why is it the people who do the least spending make the biggest mess? I see that my days of bending over and picking up after people are getting limited, so my back tells me.
I took a break to download some music. I give the tunes a quick listen to make sure I’ve got the right thing. Sure enough, there was a lady in the store who didn’t like that. As long as just the radio played, she was rooting around. Yet as soon as I played the computer music, same volume and all, she picked up that I was listening a little more than before. That is the true peasant mentality, they just know when you don’t want them around, they have a sixth, seventh and eighth sense about that. Immediately she needed to ask questions. She’d keep it up until I turned off the computer audio and went back to the radio. This happened about five times in an hour, each time I tried to listen to a track. Don’t we all love people with a talent for getting in other people’s way? You want another picture of the motorcycle? Sure.
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