I decided to sleep at the Episcopal Church spot last night, after I had parked myself on the sidewalk in front of the TV at Pat's Bar to watch the Monday Night Football game between Houston and the New York Jets for about 5 minutes until one of the staff came by, carrying a tray of food on his way to serve it to people that were probably going to tip him for carrying it 50 feet and placing it down in front of them, and said "Sir, you can't watch that TV."
Technically the sidewalk is NOT owned by Pat, and if they want to face one of their giant TVs toward it to attracts customers who might be looking for a place to watch the game and overpay for food and drink, then the game will be visible to anyone who stands on the sidewalk. They want to have it "both ways." They want to attract paying customers and to run off people wanting to watch the game for free.
There are people who will pause and look at the TV. They might be wanting to see the score and determine if the game is closely contested enough to warrant watching the rest of it, and nothing is said to them, outside of something like "We are having 3 dollar well drinks for the next hour, sir" or words to that effect.
I went on to the swank hotel on Royal street and stood outside, watching the game unmolested.
I have so far not failed to strike up a conversation with whomever had emerged from that place and to have even broken my guitar out and played music for them, in the past. I have no trouble watching football there, through their window. I must have gotten on someones good side there.
The thing is, it appears to be very important to you, to look like a bum. Long greasy hair, the whole 9 yards. If you looked neat and clean like "astronaut guy" back in NOLA, you'd be able to move around in society much better than you do now, and you might even get better tips (since I don't think your level of playing, or style of playing, is going to change, about all you can change is your appearance).
ReplyDeleteYeah the blog post was going to be a compilation of backlashes against the long greasy hairs; such as the water spigot being and the electricity at the church where we sleep being locked shut; you can't watch that TV and someone strongly cautioned me not to sleep "south of Broad Street" which sounds eerily like the Baton Rouge thing of don't sleep west of I110; and I was going to work all that into the post but the connection was so slow that I didn't even bother to color my paragraphs...about the music, I truly might be hitting the point where acoustic guitar has lost its ability to keep me interested; am listening to Joe Satriani and electric almost seems like it is an evolutionary step forward; even Tanya plays an electric violin!!
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've taken care to do after losing everything is to not let my hair go. Out here in Cali, we have these Vietnamese lady barbers who do very good, neat, buzz cuts. That's good if buzz cuts are your thing, but they can do longer styles too.
ReplyDeleteWhere I'm living now, no running water. And the whole building is so jammed full of electronic equipment, well ... the guy renting it, my rocket-scientist friend, came in with more shit last night that was given to him. Good shit, all kinds of cool stuff but ... there's very little room in the place! And as I write, there's no room for me to set up my plastic tub and take a bath without getting the stuff in that area wet. So right now I smell bad. But I still don't look too bad, nothing about me screams, "Squatter!" and once I've got the stuff stowed, it's bath time for me.
I know about the Internet being slow, trust me. It's far slower than it was 10 years ago and I'm in the middle of what's termed "Silicon Valley" and it sucks wind compared to how it was even in very rural areas years ago. I wouldn't want to be foolish enough to count on the Internet being functional, or even around, for my living.
As for instruments, I was doing a TON of reading a couple of days ago, and it seems the sax is just about the killerest busking instrument there is. People are sick of the guitar. The clarinet is the best preparation for the sax, because it's actually more demanding, but it's also cheaper (a decent student one is less than $100) and very small and easy to carry, and it's got a really nice sound. If I were you, I'd see about getting a clarinet, maybe Doreen can even hook you up with one, and learn off of the Internet, get tips from locals who play, etc and give that a try.