Doing the Dome part I: The Bayou Classic

I worked my first Superdome events this past weekend: the Bayou Classic and a Monday night Saints vs. Giants game.

For the uninitiated, the Bayou Classic is a football game between two HCBUs, Grambling State University and Southern University. The game, which is held in the Dome every year the Saturday after Thanksgiving, is sometimes referred to as The Black Superbowl.

According to some estimates the event draws 200,000 visitors to downtown New Orleans. The seating capacity of the Superdome is only 75,000 or so, if the 200,000 figure is accurate it would mean that well over half of the crowd is in town more for the party more than for the actual game. (This may or may not be true of other big sporting events in New Orleans. I really have no idea.)

I'm going to to tread very carefully here... In the week leading up to the event, I learned that most of those who work in New Orleans's tourism trade look upon Bayou Classic with deep dread. Is there an element of racism in this? Perhaps. But of all the complaints I heard, the most strident by far came from a hotel employee who was himself African American. "I've been doing this 20 years, and I don't think I can take it one more year," he said. "I'm going to call in sick."

Having heard that kind of talk all week, I was prepared for the worst. In the end, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had been led to believe. Looking back I can't remember a single passenger who was drunk, disrespectful or disorderly, which is an exceptionally good weekend's work in my profession!

There was one aspect in which the naysayers were right. It was a pretty poor weekend from a financial standpoint. For many of us in the tourist trade, tips are our bread and butter, and the Bayou Classic crowd aren't extravagant tippers by any stretch. Several of them even complained about paying what is generally considered a bare minimum price for a ride. Ahem... I'm thinking I better change the subject here before I get in over my head. There's something a bit unseemly about a white guy whining about black folk not being willing to pay him a fair wage.

All in all, I sincerely enjoyed transporting the Bayou Classic guests. A real highlight for me was the chance to share the story of my personal Grambling connection with so many of the university's students, alumni and fans. For those of you who don't know, here's the synopsis of that story: My wife and I met for the first time 24 years ago at Grambling. She was a junior at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now U. La. Lafayette), and I was a senior at the University of Southern Mississippi. (I like to say that USL stands for the University of Super Women and USM for the University of Super Men!) We met at a conference of Chi Alpha, a Christian student organization with which we were both involved.

The Bayou Classic actually featured two separate Superdome events: an epic Battle of the Bands on Friday night and the football game on Saturday night. Most of the partying and carrying on actually happened on the first night. Game night was a bit anti-climactic with a soaking rain that probably sent a lot of would-be partiers straight from the Superdome to their hotel rooms.

At one point during the game, I ducked into a Starbucks adjacent to a hotel lobby to escape the heavy rain. The hotel concierge saw me standing there at the Starbucks counter and rushed to me with me a towel to dry myself off. "Stay in here in the lobby as long as you want," she urged. "Our doorman will keep an eye on your bike." God bless her!

The New Orleans police department unveiled a new security plan for the event -- partly in response to the Bayou Classic's reputation/history and partly in response to an infamous series of shootings this past Halloween. I read news reports that spoke of 700 plus cops on the street. Honestly, I would have guessed a much higher number. I had never seen so many police in one place before.

As the crowds spilled out of the Dome, the police kept blocking more and more streets to deal with the traffic flow and to stay on top of the security situation. I ended up feeling like a rat in ever-changing maze. After the Battle of the Bands on Friday night, I got stuck in traffic on the Superdome side of Canal St. for more than an hour -- and this just at the time when all of the pedicab action had shifted across to the French Quarter side of the street. It was frustrating of course, but I comforted myself with the thought that the lessons I was learning during this, my first Superdome event, would enable me to position myself in the thick of the action next time.

My most precious passengers

The Thanksgiving holiday offered me the chance to finally take the wife and kids out for a spin on the pedicab. It was a huge treat for Lydia and Luke and maybe even more so for me. I think Mary enjoyed it too, but she's not the type to get over-enthusiastic about that sort of thing.

Memo to self:

Next time you're going to be riding and there's rain in the forecast, don't forget to pack some towels to wipe off the passenger seat. People are apparently a lot more tolerant of getting their heads drenched than getting their seats soaked.

Perfecting the 3-second sales pitch

Night and day

Today was better than yesterday but still painfully slow. I mentioned in yesterday's post that it's much easier to make good money at night. There are certainly more tourists out and about in the Quarter after dark; but I'm starting to wonder whether there isn't another factor at work beyond sheer numbers. I've noticed that the people that I approach act differently in the daytime than they do at night.

Day or night, the vast majority of them decline my offer of a ride, of course. But they don't decline it in the same way. After sundown, if I say to someone, "Would you like a ride?", he's likely to look at me with a big smile and say, "No thanks. We're good!"; whereas, in the daytime, he'll probably look away, scowl, and shake his head no. What's up with that?

At least a smile

Challenging days like these give me more opportunity to perfect my 3-second sales pitch. I'm constantly experimenting with endless variations on a basic theme:

"Need a ride?"
"Would you care for a ride?"
"Wanna ride?"
"Would you like a lift?"
"Care for a lift?"
"Who's ready to ride?"

Getting people on the bike is the goal of course, but failing that I hope to at least get them to smile. Sometimes the border between being funny and obnoxious is pretty thin. Here are some the things I might say:

"Take a trip on my magic chariot!"

To the male half of a couple: "What kind of a gentleman are you making a lovely lady like that walk?"

To someone who looks overweight and tired: "Ready to get off your feet for a bit?"

To a parent with a child: "I'll bet the little fellow there would like a ride!" (Kids always want to ride. Sometimes I'll address the kid directly, and the kid will say, "Yes!" In these cases I don't get very many smiles from the parents. They look at me with spitting cobra eyes and say, "No thank you!" in such a way that you know the "thank you" wasn't at all sincere before turning their attention to comforting the bitterly disappointed tot.)

To girls in stilettos: "Aren't you ready to get off those heels?" (All joking aside, alcohol, high heels, and the broken pavement of the French Quarter streets are a dangerous combination. I see girls stumbling and falling  all the time. I played ambulance driver last week to a girl who had twisted her ankle badly. She was celebrating her 24th birthday, poor thing.)

To someone sitting on a bench: "Hey, you could be resting and moving at the same time!"

To people emerging from the convention center when I know that there's a teachers conference going on: "We've got discounts for teachers today!" (We generally let people pay whatever they want for anything under 20 minutes, so the discount is whatever they want it to be.)

One of my biggest challenges is that I can only take two passengers or three at the most. Packs of four or more tourists seem a lot more common than couples. Here's a common scenario:

Me to a group of six tourists: "Anybody ready for a ride?"
One of the six (laughing): "Can you take all of us?"
Me: "I can take the two tiredest!"

This rarely fails to get a smile.

My first night on the job a prostitute called out to me as I rode by: "Hey baby, where you going?" I guess she was working on her 3-second sales pitch too.

Bright spots on a bad day

I've been experimenting lately with working a mixture of nights and days to figure out what works for me. There's a lot more money to be made at night -- and probably better stories for the blog. The downside of the night shift is that it makes it a lot harder to be a good dad and husband. Also, Mary is teaching in New Orleans, so if I can synchronize my schedule with hers we can commute together -- thus carving out a little more couple time and saving some money on fuel. Long term, I'll probably have to choose either days or nights because switching back and forth is just too physically demanding.

Last week I did better than expected on the day shift. I mentioned the H&R Block convention in an earlier post. Just as the accountants were clearing out the National Alliance of Black School Educators came to town, and I did OK with those guys too. I rode up and down in front of the convention center shouting, "We got a teachers' discount today!" Even when I didn't get riders, at least I got lots of big smiles.

Since it's so much harder to make money in the daytime, the rent that our company charges operators to ride during the day is ridiculously low compared to the night rate. As I was paying up at the end of a profitable shift, one of the brothers who co-runs the company said, "We're probably having to raise our day rate soon." And the other brother said, "Yeah, we'll call it the Mark factor."

Like I said, that was last week. Apparently, there aren't any conventions in town this week. Financially, yesterday was the worst day of my brief career. I had very few riders, and though all of them were fair with me, none were particularly generous tippers.

The good news is that I ran into two old friends whom I hadn't seen in many long years. Both of them are now working in downtown New Orleans, one as a concierge at a hotel in the Central Business District and the other as a tour guide on a mule carriage in the French Quarter. (The CBD and the French Quarter are two adjacent parts of the city that that make up most of our territory.)  I'm excited to know that these guys are in the neighborhood and for the chance to renew old friendships.

(When I mentioned that I has having a slow day, the concierge said that Thanksgiving week is always a slow time for tourism in New Orleans.)

Another bright spot yesterday was a pair of passengers who gave me a really good laugh, which I suppose is the next best thing to a really generous tip. They were middle-aged, very overweight women, and as we sailed down Decatur, one of them was singing at the top of her lungs: "Don't cha wish your boyfriend had a bike like mine!" (to the tune of "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me.")

"Are we the fattest people you've ever hauled?" they asked me.

"Not by a long shot." I answered. "I had these two girls the other night. I told them I might have to charge them by the pound!" (This was true by the way.)

"Well, we may not be the fattest, but I bet we're the most fun," one of them said.

"Well I'd have to say that you rank pretty high up there," I told them.

Before I found this job, I turned down a job selling life insurance. That job offered the potential to make a lot of money. But I figure that even a bad day driving a bike taxi is a lot more fun than a good day selling insurance. I'm just speaking for myself here. I've got a good friend who absolutely loves selling life insurance, and I'm happy for him.

Trying on someone else's glasses

I had a couple from Atlanta on the back of my bike the other day. They were about 10 or 15 years older than me and African American. We rode past the police station on Royal Street, and the man spoke up:

"That's a police station isn't it? Can you pedal a little faster?"

Chuckling, I said, "My dad grew up here in New Orleans, and he was in trouble with the law all the time when he was young. But he raised me to be a law-abiding citizen."

My passenger paused a minute before replying: "That's nice in theory... But you know, you're white."

His words took the wind out of me for a moment then left me irritated at myself for having been been totally oblivious to the racial subtext of the "pedal faster" comment.

Mentally groping for some common ground, I thought of the twinge of fear I feel when I pass by the Iberville housing project. But the limitations of the analogy were immediately obvious to me. Being afraid of outlaws is bad enough; but being afraid of the law must be many, many times worse. That's something I've been privileged not to have experienced.

Conversation between two drunk Cajuns riders from Lafourche Parish

Drunk Cajun A: Man, look at those calves!

Drunk Cajun B: Those aren't calves, no. Those are full grown cows!