Friday, November 13, 2015

Not To Mention Cigarettes

Tell Me, Have You Seen Her?
It is Friday morning; I was up at 4:30 AM and decided to try to play at an off ramp of I-10, even though I can hardly be heard there.
The first time I played there, I made 13 bucks in about an hour and was looking to do the same, Thursday morning, but only wound up with 2 bucks.
I went to Decatur Street and played some more and wound up with 6 dollars by about 10 AM, and decided to just go home. I never went back out that night.
I got to sleep right after sundown, and after eating a pretty good meal.
I had the feeling that I would have made something had I gone out and played.
Now, I am at the library, for the first time in months. One of the reasons that I came here was to see if Karrie was around.
I want to print out a picture of her off my blog and then show it to the security guards at the front desk, asking them if they had been seeing her lately.
I got to the off ramp at the relatively early hour of 6 AM, and there was already a skeezer standing there, holding a blank piece of cardboard.
I tried to ask him if was "working" there, "flying a sign," but the heavily accented mumbling that he returned made me think that the reason that there was nothing written on his sign was that he knew not enough English in order to write any on it.
It sounded like he said that he was trying to get 2 dollars (the price of a 25 ounce can of Bush beer).
I walked on and was surprised and disgusted to see skeezers set up all over the place with their signs and their dogs.
There just weren't enough people in sight at that early hour, and I walked all the way to the Decatur spot where I had played the previous morning, passing the Lilly Pad along the way, which was pretty desolate.
Making my way back to Canal Street, I noticed that the traffic of pedestrians was picking up, as it was 8 AM, and I wound up sitting by Harrah's Casino, at a spot where I used to play late night, before I got the Lilly Pad. I used to consider it a pretty much guaranteed 15 dollars after midnight.
This morning, I got $2.75 in about an hour of playing, when I noticed that the traffic noise was pretty bad, and that a couple notes on my harp were pretty bad, and that my strings sounded pretty dull.
All this was stuff that I should have addressed when I had about 60 bucks a week ago.
Now I have 50 cents, because I bought a beer on my way to this library, and now, I might try to hook up with Tim the violinist, who is buying my amp off me and who said he would give me 50 bucks a week towards it. It has been almost a week, and I am really hating the out of tune note or two on the harp and the dull strings, and the lack of a spotlight, which has me playing daytime hours and being reminded of how much drudgery that is; with the skeezers every 100 feet, and the tourists not anywhere near being drunken and satiated with food and on their way back to the hotel, but rather, just venturing out and holding on to their money.
Tanya and Dorise will make a killing, and most others will wind up saying that they did "alright," and then add something like "I broke 20 dollars," but then also mention the copious amounts of free food and drinks that people left them, not to mention cigarettes.

1 comment:

  1. So is it that you fear the skeezers are skeezing better than you are, and making more?

    Maybe a puppy makes a better prop than a guitar? It doesn't take a genius to observe that on the street.

    If you really want to be looked upon as a guitarist rather than a skeezer with a guitar, I suggest a visit to the barbershop, and some clean clothes. Also you might consider a louder guitar like an ovation. And some singing lessons! But start off by not looking like a skeezer, that's the easiest.

    ReplyDelete

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