I Switch To Performing In Drag

• Seventeen Dollar Saturday
• Red Dress Run
• Desperate Times/Desperate Measures

Just kidding. Photo created by Dom at Uxi Duxi,

using some kind of gay app on his phone...

It was early Saturday evening, as I passed a lively busking scene on Royal Street.

These were buskers who have not yet figured out that August is dead around here; or ones who are alright with the amounts of money they make, not caring that it is one tenth of what they would be getting at the same spot if it were March, and their names were either Tanya Huang, or Christina Friis.

These summer buskers are able to grab the prime spots vacated by the likes of the above named, like hermit crabs crawling into the shells of recently expired snails.

Busking at the spot where Jerry Jeff Walker once stood; priceless!

Groups like "Yes Ma'am" make their perennial return (like migratory birds) every fall, with stories about having lived like kings in places like Golden, Colorado, Gatlinsburg, Tennessee, or Anchorage, Alaska, while their contemporaries in New Orleans were suffering through heat and humidity and 30 dollar nights.

I rode past slowly, careful to keep my wig from blowing off my head...
 
I'm still serious about going to Massachusetts.

Lilly is balking at keeping Harold the cat, though.

I know I could just lock him out, then disappear for a month, and he would be just fine; probably knows of a half dozen unguarded bowls in the neighborhood. A clue is the fact that, when I put something in his dish that he wont eat, he will often be scratching at the door to go outside in short order. There is probably a connection there.


The Red Dress Run

As the calendar is pretty much booked solid here, there was, of course, something going on this past weekend. It was the Red Dress Run.

An annual event, that is, which I have forgotten the significance of, although I do recall one participant last year telling me: "It's really not a race race," then pointing to the fact that several runners carry drinks as they "run" for the finish line.
This may have been at the Lafitt's bar that I play next to, or not.

There was a big banner, hanging high across the street in front of the bar, welcoming the Red Dress runners.

But, alas, PA speakers had been set up and were blasting music when I got there at the early for me time of just before 11 PM.

Red China?

This made me think that it is too bad that "the oldest bar in America," which eschews electric light in favor of candles, in order to replicate the atmosphere of the 18th century, a time when Jean Lafitt the pirate, and his brother Pierre, fenced pirated goods out the back door by Lilly's swimming pool, would spoil that environment by blaring loud hip hop music out of electrical speakers. And not even the kind of hip hop that Jean and Pierre would be "down with," I'm sure.

Colored people like it too!

Since I was forced to move down the street, I did so, and set up across from The Quartermaster, where I made 17 bucks, with the first 5 of it coming from Michelle, the night cashier from in there.
The second 5 dollar bill came from the girlfriend of a guy who had kicked over my Spider energy drink, while leaning in to see what kind of guitar I had.
"Is that a Yamaha? Oh, my bad, sorry about that..."
The farcical thing was that we both reached for the can to try to right it at the same time, butting hands and canceling each other's efforts out as the orange liquid escaped onto the sidewalk.
"That's why I gave you so much," said the girlfriend, tipping me off to the fact that the Red Dress Run participants might be in the same boat as me financially if five bucks is "so much" to them. I know it has become so to me these past ten years..

Just before being gunned down by NOLA police,

who later claimed that one of them pointed an arrow at them...