I Remember Her Teeth

Bike Disappears From Where It Was

The bike being stolen was sort of a surprise but, had I noticed that there is some kind of construction going on at Harrah's Casino, right across the street from where I park my bike, in the hopes that the casino is heavily surveilled by camera and that everybody knows it and that nobody would risk stealing a bike even from across the street.

"I'm buying that bike from you!"

I'd gotten used to that spot being well lit and having a lot of people passing by. But the construction has diverted them to different entrances and is even blocking some of the light and probably at least one "camera angle" from the casino's most likely state of the art surveillance system. 

I mean, their stuff has to include the surrounding areas so that in the case that, say, someone produces a gun and robs all the other roulette players, and then makes a run for it on foot, he can be virtually pursued by someone with control over all the neighborhood cameras. So, that had been the logic behind me locking my bike there when I go busking with Jacob. I think some very enterprising bike thief took note of all the camera views that the construction trailer and the cranes and tractors were obstructing and concluded that a bike could be stolen off the rack I use, off camera.

It was a very old, perhaps antique, bike that had some damage done to it such that it was about the crappiest thing that I could ride, in the practical sense. The seat was at a gruesome angle, for example, from Patrick my alcoholic ex-friend, having tried to put a better one on the thing. It, sadly, was a better seat that wouldn't fit and would mangle and render useless the part of the bike that holds the seat should you try to brute-force it with a sledgehammer, or something; you drunk. 

So, I was ready to go and sell plasma today for 75 bucks and was going to try to buy another bike for as small a percentage of 75 bucks as I could...

But, none of that is as important as a memory I have of riding the yellow bike that Dorothy, a social worker of sorts who worked, or maybe still does, at Sacred Heart once gave me..

It is a mystery to me why some of the bikes I have owned have elicited a lot of compliments from random people. I suppose that the bikes which they say nothing about, speaks volumes about them, too.

"That's an antique!" had been the most glowing of praise I'd gotten in 2 years of riding the "antique." An old beach cruiser that is painted in the "black and gold" of the local football heroes, and even had a "Saints" logo of some kind on it.

I will miss is the fact that the thing was equipped with tires that were made of such thick rubber as to almost be solid. Even when they were flat you could ride on them because they were made of such thick rubber. I'll miss the tires. Not so much the seat, or the fact that it had no gears; it was stuck at beach cruising speed. 

The yellow bike was also a beach cruiser, but actually had 5 gears; and in the top one, you could get home from the beach in a hurry; maybe 20 miles per hour. Not bad for something with a cushy seat.

She Knew I Had A Price

But that yellow bike got the most compliments of all, with the best one coming from a certain skinny tarot card reader (I found a picture of her [top] but she was at least 10 years older when I rode by and she pointed at it and said: "I'm gonna buy that bike from you!!" imparted along with: "I'm saving up for it already!" or words to that effect. I kind of admired her attitude and her belief that she could indeed have the bike; she only had to save up enough to meet my price -something that every man has a one of.

It was easily a $300 bike and, being brand new and yellow (and having gears) meant, I guess that the: "That's a really nice bike!"s had flowed steadily.

I actually thought about selling the bike to the skinny tarot card reader with interestingly positioned teeth. She is a brown skinned Cajun or Creole or whatever the most exotic bloodline is in greater New Orleans, and she looked so much the part of the tarot card reader, because you could tell from looking at her that her bloodline went way back to some isolated clan that you would imagine could really read the hell out of some tarot cards.

She looked like "the savage that might wander out of the bayou and try to communicate using hand signals and such." What she lacked in sophistication she altogether probably, just from the looks of her, could make up for by being able to tell you your future pretty accurately. I do believe she, whom I have seen, off and on, over the entire 13 years that I've been around here, is in the upper echelon of tarot card readers, ranking amongst those who stay in pretty nice hotels in the Quarter when not sitting behind their tables.

This skinny one with interesting teeth (she has slight gaps between them, but they are symmetrically spaced gaps between each tooth such that the pedals of a flower are evoked in her smile, more so than lack of access to qualified dental professionals in the bayou. She places a crystal ball type thing which is illuminated but has some color to it; it's not crystal clear. It's a yellowish glow that it wouldn't surprise me if it was making her skin tone look more beautiful; like the savage that came out of the bayou is a very pretty one. 

But, I had always thought she was a very pretty tarot card reader, and 13 years after first seeing her, she was still looking girlish when she pointed her finger and said: "I'm gonna buy that bike off you!" as I rode past.
I immediately started to compose a scene in my head where I would indeed make overtures towards offering the bike for sale; and I would be very easy to negotiate the price with, as I had been given the bike for free, by Dorothy. 

I would probably have come up with a figure of $125 for a bike that went for $375 new and was in new condition. I sort of wanted her to have the bike because she wanted it so much. 

I just wanted to conduct the deal such that, after she went for a spin on it, to see if it would be love at first ride, and after she had handed me the $125, I would have said: "Well, all we need to do now is the kiss to make the sale official," and act incredulous over her being unwise to that particular French Quarter tradition. "They believed that the essential ownership of the bike didn't truly change hands until the kiss to seal the deal is performed. I thought that was a Cajun thing..."

Then, I might have offhandedly asked: "Can you put your tongue in my mouth, too, when we do it?"
That's kind of why I would have reduced my asking price, but the fact that I had gotten the bike for free factored in. I really wondered why she wanted the yellow bike so much; why that one?

"It symbolized a kiss for luck as the new bike owner rode off; you're pulling my leg, you must have never bought a bike before...."

A tarot card reader who looks that authentic, and can afford to stay in hotels and just come out with her crystal ball and her "just crawled out of the bayou-ness" surely has a good chance of having a boyfriend.

Someone had made a donation of the bike and had placed it in the stewardship of Dorothy, who had held onto it for quite a while and had rebuffed more than one advance upon ownership of it. It had sat in her office and I guess she was trying to decide who to give it to when one of my bikes was stolen.

Which brings things full circle to being grateful that the busking business will pick up in October.

And there are brighter lights illuminating the 900 block now, since the installation of some pretty bright halogen type bulbs into what used the be the quaintly dim gas burning lamps that were replicas of the ones that were in the neighborhood for about 260 years; until now.

They are so much brighter that I was remarking to Jacob how it used to be a tragic oversight to ever forget to bring my spotlight to the Lilly Pad. I would have to ride all the way back home and get it, then return 45 minutes after having left, with it.

Now, It's almost bright enough to busk without extra light. Before tourists used to cross over to the other side of the street when approaching the few buskers that ever tried to play there. As dark as it used to be, you couldn't really tell if those were banjos or rifles from a distance at which it's safe to cross over to the other sidewalk.

It used to be that every repair made to Lilly's block had to meet with the approval of a committee of historians who would make sure you were using 260 year old building supplies so as to preserve the historic look of the block. But, it became hard to extrapolate that law out to webcams, which are in every nook and cranny; and so why not open the floodgates and bring in the LED halogen street lights.

The days of gas flames and little battery powered spotlights have come and gone...