The winners of the Golden Rickie

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the presentation of the 2011 Golden Rickshaw Rider -- or the Rickie as it is more commonly known. I'm the Crescent City Pedicabbie, and I'm delighted to be your host for this evening's event. 


I must acknowledge at the outset the many wonderful passengers I've been privileged to transport on my pedicab over the past couple of months: Passengers who have tipped me generously. Passengers who have said all kinds of complimentary things about my calves. Passengers who have graciously forgiven me when I hit a pothole at full speed and made them spill their hurricanes all over themselves. There are dozens of riders who richly deserve special recognition and would have been a credit to this evening's prize. I regret that my time with each of these beautiful, captivating, and kind people has been so brief -- not to mention that my back was turned to them for almost all of that time. 


And now, ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for this year's runner-up: Mr. Justin Chambers. I must confess that as the sole member of the nominating committee and the jury, I was sure after meeting Mr. Chambers that he would take this year's prize. (Those of you who follow the adventures of the Crescent City Pedicabbie online will be familiar with the story of JC's historic ride.) If not for a truly extraordinary occurrence just two days later, Mr. Chambers would undoubtedly have walked away tonight as the richly deserving recipient of the 2011 Rickie. Congratulations, Mr. Chambers, and one more round of applause! 


And now the moment you've all been waiting for: The Golden Rickshaw Rider for the most amazing, wonderful, kind, and generous passengers of 2011. Once you hear the story, I think you'll agree that if there was a Nobel for niceness, this couple would win it hands down. 


And the winner is... Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I must confess that I don't know their names, nor even where they're from. They had that certain glow that makes me inclined to believe that they were newlyweds, but I can't say for certain. All those details must have come up in our conversation, but the memories were undoubtedly flushed from my mind by that afternoon's powerful surge of adrenaline. Nevertheless, their story must be told, even if they are to remain nameless.

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It was a quarter to 4 in the afternoon, and I was sitting at my daytime sweet spot on the corner of Decatur and Toulouse in the French Quarter when this lovely young couple approached me. The man showed me a slip of paper with the name and address of a rum distillery. Could I get them there in time for a 4 o' clock tour?

I glanced at the paper. Frenchmen Street. Yes, of course, I told them. For us New Orleans pedicabbies the path between the French Quarter and Frenchmen Street is our bread and butter. I've pedaled this route so many times that I could probably give my pedicab its head, and it would take me there without my having to steer.

Looking back, I was vaguely uneasy that as many times as I had traversed Frenchmen Street, I had never noticed any rum distillery; but I put my doubts aside and started pedaling. We caught a couple of red lights along the way, but even so, we made it to Frenchmen in five minutes flat. I asked to see the address again in order to pinpoint the location of the distillery.

2815 Frenchmen St.

2815?

Did Frenchmen really have 28 blocks?

I knew every club and cafe in the 400, 500, and 600 blocks. I knew the exact spot on the sidewalk where "the burrito man", an aging hippie whose rent is always due the next day, sets up every night at 11:30 to peddle his burritos for $5 each. (They're really good, by the way.). I knew every pothole in the road for those three blocks. Theoretically, I should have known that the street kept going past the point where I always turned off. But I had honestly never really thought about there being a 700 block of Frenchmen -- much less a 2800 block.

It was ten minutes till four. My passengers needed to be there at four. We were twenty-two blocks away.

It was at this point that I made a very poor decision. I should have helped them get a taxi. I mean the type of taxi with four wheels and an engine. That would have been the right thing to do in this situation. But I didn't do the right thing. Instead I announced: "I can get you there by four," and I started pedaling again.

The next few blocks were nice. I was pushing too hard to truly appreciate the scenery, but I overheard my riders remarking at the beauty of the leafy streets and old homes and congratulating themselves on having chosen the most pleasant mode of transport. Basking in their pleasure, I found the strength to pick up the pace just a little.

I believe it was at St. Claude Avenue that the change occurred. I don't remember showing anyone my passport, but we must have crossed into another country. Jared Allen recently remarked that New Orleans looked like some bombed-out, third world country. Considering Katrina, the comment was certainly insensitive; considering neighborhoods like this one, it wasn't in the least inaccurate.

People sitting on the steps of ramshackle houses hooted at us as we passed by.  Apparently, we were quite the spectacle. I mentioned the sense of having crossed into a foreign country; all of the words that were shouted at us as we flew down the street were totally incomprehensible to me. Once I even asked my riders, "What did that guy just say?", but they hadn't understood either. There was no mistaking the mood though. It was a strange mix of amusement and hostility, equal in their intensity. My passengers weren't singing the praise of the pedicab as a means of transport any more; but I no longer needed their encouragement to keep up the blistering pace.

I was drenched in sweat by now. I glanced down at my watch and up at the addresses of the houses we were passing.

"Seventeen blocks to go!" There was an audible gasp from the passenger seat. "Don't worry! We're going to make it on time," I promised them.

More sweat. More catcalls. Block after block of graffiti-scarred, Katrina-devastated urban wasteland. "Don't worry. I'll get you there!" I called out from time to time -- as much to reassure myself as my riders.

At precisely 3:59 PM we reached the end of the 2700 block and realized with deep dismay that Frenchmen street came to an abrupt end here at Florida Avenue. There were railroad tracks in front of us and just beyond the tracks we could see our destination:  The Old New Orleans Rum Distillery, 2815 Frenchmen St. There it was, tantalizingly close and totally inaccessible. Apparently, Frenchmen Street resumed on the other side of the tracks.

"No problem," my riders said recovering their cheerfulness after the momentary shock. "We'll just hop off here and cross the tracks on foot. Thank you so much! You actually got us here right on time. You did it!"

I wasn't really comfortable with this arrangement, but I didn't see that we had much choice if they were going to make it in time for the tour. "Are you sure you're OK with that?" I asked, still panting from the wild ride.

"Yes, we're sure. Look, it's just right there! All we have to do is cross the tracks."

As I pulled up to the edge of the road to let them off, we got another nasty shock. Running alongside the railroad tracks was a canal, which we hadn't seen heretofore. It was deep and wide and had steep concrete sides; without a bridge or a boat there was no way across it.

Not knowing what else to do, I pedaled up Florida to the next intersection looking for a way across the canal. No luck. We sat there in the middle of the deserted street for a minute trying to decide on our next move. By now four o' clock had come and gone. Darkness would be closing in soon.

A car approached, slammed to a stop next to us, and the window went down. "What are you doing here?" the driver demanded. She was a middle-aged African-American lady, probably from that neighborhood. "This is no place for you to be sitting in the middle of the street!" she said. "Please, get out of here. Now!" I looked at her face and saw raw fear. Up to that point I had been a bit anxious, but suddenly I was shaken. Seeing how frightened this complete stranger was for us, I realized that we had reason to be really scared.

There wasn't any more question about what to do. We had to get back where we had come from -- but not by the way we had come. Even apart from the safety issue, Frenchmen is a one-way street, so there was literally no going back that way.

We found our way to Elysian Fields Avenue and began the trek toward familiar territory. Elysian Fields is a bigger, busier street, so it felt a little bit safer, but not much. Exhausted from the race to the end of the road and weighed down by fear and failure, it was all I could do to keep the pedals turning. Somehow I also found the spare breath to apologize to my passengers. "I'm so sorry," I said. "I can't believe I wasted your time. And made you miss your tour. And risked your lives. I'm so sorry."

They would have none of it. "No way," they said. "It wasn't a waste of time. It was an adventure. And anyway, if it's anybody's fault, it's ours. We should have known how to get there before we set out."

This was pure nonsense. When a tourist gets in a taxi, the taxi driver is the one with the obligation to know how to get there, not the tourist. But nonsense or not, it sure was nice! I've been called names to foul to print in the dictionary for offenses of a much lesser magnitude. If they had chosen to give me a good cussing out, what could I have done but say, "Guilty as charged, your honor"?

These guys were going out of their way to show me grace when we all knew how badly I had blown it. And they just kept piling on more and more niceness. Sensing my exhaustion, they actually offered to take a turn pedaling for me! (It was a beautiful gesture, but as long as I was conscious I wasn't going to surrender the handlebars.)

At some point along the way I began to wonder whether I had gotten myself turned around somehow during the traumatic return trip. I've always had a poor sense of direction. Why was it taking so much longer to get back than it had taken to get there? Was it possible that with every turn of the pedals, I was actually taking us further away from the French Quarter? I voiced my concern, and the young man behind me spoke reassuringly: "No, I'm sure that this is the right way." Still, I wasn't fully convinced until I finally caught sight of the skyline of the Central Business District ahead of us in the distance.

Knowing that at least we were going the right way was a relief, but it was nothing compared to that sweet feeling that flooded over me when we finally crossed St. Claude Avenue. We still had some distance to cover, but the dangerous part was behind us. Oddly enough it was this moment of relief rather than the terror preceding it that triggered a vivid flashback to one of the scariest situations that my family and I had faced during our years in the Balkans.

It was early autumn 1999, about three months after the end of the Kosovo War. On an outing in western Kosovo we had unwittingly wandered across the Montenegrin border and deep into a dangerous situation, the details of which I will not take the time to recount here. Fleeing back toward home in a battered Land Rover, we slid around a switchback on the dusty road and came upon an Italian military checkpoint -- the  symbol of safety that we had been desperately hoping for.

As we crossed St. Claude Avenue on the rickshaw I instantly recognized the same emotions that I had experienced twelve years earlier crossing that remote checkpoint in Kosovo's Accursed Mountains. But even the relief,  intense as it was, did nothing to relieve my shame at having let my riders down. I offered another round of apologies, and once again this couple responded with their sweet assurances that it really wasn't my fault and that everything was fine now anyway.

When we came to the end of the ride, I had no intention of taking money from them. I really didn't. I tried to tell them that. Oh, I deserved payment alright, but not that kind. They could have reported me to the Taxicab Bureau, and they would have been well within their rights. Causing them to miss their tour, exposing them to mortal danger and all-around ruining their vacation might even have been grounds for a lawsuit. If any money was going to change hands, it should have been from my hand to theirs.

But when it came down to it, they got off the bike, and they thanked me; (They actually thanked me!) and the young man held out his hand to me with some bills in it; and I said, "No way!"; and he, still smiling, pressed the money into my hand; and they walked away holding hands; and I looked down at the money in my hand and realized that they had just given me the biggest tip of my career.

During the course of the ride, I mentioned to them that I had a blog, and they acted interested. So I'm hopeful that they will read this and know how much I appreciated their kindness. I actually hope that I get to see them again some day. Not that I could ever make it up to them, but I would really love another chance to give them a nice, relaxing, romantic -- and uneventful ride. This one for free, of course. But if they would prefer never to get on another pedicab, I wouldn't blame them at all.

Bubble Gum's Restaurant?

Some tourists approached me today to ask if I knew where Bubble Gum's Restaurant was located. I've at least heard of most of the restaurants around here by now even if I don't know exactly where they all are. But this was a new one for me. Turns out they were looking for Bubba Gumps.

Pedicabbie pickup lines

Lately I've been trying out a Christmas variation of my three-second sales pitch: "Come take a ride on my one-horse open sleigh New Orleans style!" As always, the goal is to get fares -- but failing that, at least a smile. A couple of pretty ladies have rewarded this new slogan with a smile plus a snappy comeback.

"Whoohoo!" one shot back as she walked by. "I bet you say that to all the girls!"

"Yeah baby!" another responded enthusiastically. "You're the stallion!"

Come to think of it, the three-second sales pitch is a pickup line in the most literal sense; so I suppose these are the kinds of responses I should expect.

A more profitable use of the pedicab?

Last night as I dropped off a rider at One Eyed Jacks, a young guy who was standing outside with a beer in his hand motioned for me to stop.

"Wanna ride?" I asked.

"No thanks," he said. "I just want to see if you can make it once around this block in 4 minutes or less. If you can do it, I'll give you five bucks."

I suspected some kind of trick. Almost all the streets in the French Quarter are one way, and he gestured in a direction that was the wrong way. I wasn't about to risk a ticket, or worse, a wreck, for five dollars. When I pointed this out, he said, "No problem! I didn't mean that you have to go the wrong way."

I thought it over and decided I didn't have much to lose. This was not an area where someone might easily set up an ambush. In terms of the challenge he had laid out, I was pretty sure I could make the block in less than four minutes. If I failed -- or if I succeeded and the guy refused to pay, which I figured was the stronger possibility -- I wouldn't have lost anything more than a couple of minutes time.

I set out at a good clip -- a bit more than a leisurely pace and considerably less than an all out sprint. As I turned the corner I got a call on the company cell phone. (The Lynch brothers who run our company are out of town for a few days, so a couple of us "veterans" are taking turns as shift managers, which means among other things, carrying the phone around so that we can send out dispatches on the fly. The whole pedicab  business is so new that with barely a month's experience under my belt, I'm among the veterans.) Still pedaling, I fished the radio out of my pocket and answered it: "Bike Taxi, Mark speaking."

"We need someone to come get us at Ursulines and Decatur," the caller said.

"Ok, I'll send someone right away," I promised.

I got on the radio and requested the nearest bike to make the pickup. A colleague responded quickly that he was on his way. I hadn't stopped cycling, but all of this had certainly cost me time. Still I was pretty sure that I would make it back before the deadline.

When I rounded the fourth corner to pull up in front of One Eyed Jacks, the guy was still standing there beer in hand. He looked down at his stop watch. "Wow!" he exclaimed. "You made it in two and a half minutes. I didn't think you could do it." He handed me a five dollar bill, shook my hand and asked if I would mind posing for a photo with him. "I want a picture with the guy who kicked my ass," he said.

I've been thinking about this incident and trying to figure out if there's any way to turn this into a permanent gig. Imagine if I could drive an empty pedicab around and make $5 every two and a half minutes! I've always been poor at math, but assuming I'm pushing the right buttons on the calculator, that comes out to $120 an hour. Lydia, my 15 year old daughter, wants to go to Cornell when she finishes high school in a couple years. At that rate, I might actually be able to send her!

I don't know... No doubt, pedaling an empty rickshaw around the block is a lot less work than hauling drunk riders from Bourbon Street to their hotel. But it's also a lot less entertaining.

When I posted the dude's photo on Facebook and boasted that I had made an easy $5 off him, an old college friend reminded me of another easy money method, which I had witnessed during trips to the Quarter many years ago. Here's how it works:

Entrepreneur (typically 10 or 12 years old) walks up to unsuspecting tourist and says, "Betcha five dollars I can tell you where you got those shoes at."

Gullible tourist replies: "You're on!"

Young entrepreneur: "You got 'em on your feet on Bourbon St."

I don't know if they still do that. I haven't seen it happening since I've been on the job, but I've got to admit, that's an even easier way to make five dollars than pedaling an empty pedicab around the block. And entertaining too! Maybe I should try my hand at it.

New Orleans vs. Minnesota

Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth, but so far all we've gotten is Minnesota and North Dakota.
Garrison Keillor

I've had a couple of riders from Minnesota recently. I was glad for the chance to try out on them some personal observations which have been occupying my mind lately -- observations concerning the differences between their home state and mine. I was gratified when these Minnesota natives assured me that I was on the right track (assuming of course that it wasn't simply a matter of their being too polite to disagree) because truth be told, I've never been there. My image of Minnesota is based largely on the work of the groundbreaking cultural anthropologist Garrison Keillor. If the real Minnesota doesn't bear any resemblance to Lake Wobegone, then all my analysis is way off base.


Let's start with the facts of the case: Minnesota  is home to the headwaters of the Mississippi River; New Orleans, on the other hand, is located near the mouth of the Mississippi. The "mouth" of course is the place where the river discharges its contents into the great septic pool of the sea. Which raises an interesting question: Why is it called the mouth? If we're going to go with body parts, wouldn't it... Ummm, never mind...


OK, where was I? Oh yeah, so Minnesota and New Orleans are located at opposite ends of the Mississippi. They say you can wade across the Mississippi at its source in Minnesota. You could also wade across it at New Orleans -- if you were 202 feet tall. (I've read that it's 200 feet deep; I figure you'd need that extra two feet just to keep your head comfortably above water.)


Anyway, the idea that Minnesota and New Orleans are at opposite ends of the river got me thinking about all the ways that we, the inhabitants of these two places, are mirror images of one another. Their culture is built on a  northern European (Scandinavian) base; ours is built on a southern European (Mediterranean) base. They're Lutheran; we're Catholic. (Not me personally, but you get the idea.) They reward restraint; we practice excess. They're modest; we're flamboyant. Their big annual event is the state fair, the highlight of which is butter sculpture. (I'm not making this up!) Our big annual event is Mardi Gras, the highlight of which is girls exposing their boobs for a set of plastic beads. (I'm not making this up either!)


What about the food? Here's an actual quote from the Wikipedia article on Minnesota cuisine: "Minnesota is also known for hot dish and jello salads." I'm not sure what "hot dish" is exactly, but I doubt that the heat comes from an abundance of Tabasco. And jello salads? Seriously? And they think sucking crawfish heads is weird?  The closest thing you can get to jello salad in the Vieux Carre is jello shots, which they sell at a certain daiquiri shop. Presumably these appeal mostly to the under-21-with-fake-id crowd. Either that or tourists from Minnesota who've come here to really cut loose.


Let's consider music for a moment. Bob Dylan is undoubtedly Minnesota's most famous music man. Here on the south end of the river, if you're going to have pick one singer/musician who best represents New Orleans, I think you'd have to go with Louis Armstrong. Now, picture their faces. Look them both up on Google images if you want to. But really, why bother? You know what I'm talking about without even looking.


Let's start with Louis Armstrong. I estimate that those bulging eyes and that huge smile make the white to black ratio of his face something like 3:1. In every picture he he seems to be showing an expression of either delighted amazement or amazed delight. Look at Louis Armstrong and you see the very embodiment of laissez les bon temps rouler. (By the way, I'm aware that the happy negro stereotype was one that was all too comfortable for a lot of white racists and deeply disturbing to blacks and that Satchmo took plenty of flack from fellow African Americans for being an Uncle Tom. But scholars seem to be recognizing more and more that he made a substantial contribution to the civil rights struggle. And he pulled it off with that big grin on his face the whole time.)  


What about Dylan? For all his rebellion against conservative Midwestern values, he embodies an austere outlook that must have deep roots in his Minnesota milieu. Like Armstrong, he has two variations in his repertoire of facial expressions: sneer and scowl. Unlike Armstrong, his eyes and teeth aren't so prominent. In fact, we know that Bob Dylan has eyes because we sometimes get a glimpse of them through the narrow slits of his eyelids, but as to his teeth, there hasn't been a confirmed sighting in forty years. (Someone pointed out that the Wikipedia entry on Bob Dylan features a recent photo of him smiling slightly and revealing teeth. I would urge caution. We're all aware that Wikipedia isn't exactly known for its reliability.) 

If I'm right that the cultures at the north and south extremities of the river are polar opposites, my next question is: Why? Is it really coincidence? Do you suppose that the river might actually have something to do with it? Here's my theory: The Mississippi drains an area of well over a million square miles. And the drinking water in New Orleans comes from the river. So perhaps we're enriched by all the nutrients of more than a million square miles flowing right to our doorstep. Or, one might argue, poisoned by the pollutants... Depending on which end of the river you come from, I guess. 

Gambling, fishing and pedicabbing

Back in our dating days Mary (now my wife) came back from her psych 101 class eager to share with me a new insight into my character. She had learned that gambling and fishing are similar in that their addictive power comes from something called intermittent reinforcement. Take fishing for instance. You make a lot of casts that don't produce anything. Then, on that 500th cast: BAM! The fish and the fisherman are both hooked -- the fish for obvious reasons and the fisherman because there's just no telling when it might happen again. Apparently, fishermen are especially vulnerable to gambling addiction.

You should know that I LOVE to fish; and when I'm fishing, I have a real hard time stopping. Whenever it comes time to quit, there are two possible scenarios. Either I'm catching fish -- in which case I can't quit because I'm catching them; or I'm not catching fish -- in which case I've got to keep going till I catch something. Make sense?

In light of all this, Mary made me promise never to set foot in a casino -- a promise which I have faithfully kept because I'm pretty sure she's right. I'm pretty sure that if I ever started gambling, I'd never be able to stop. I haul passengers to Harrah's all the time, but I'm terrified at the very thought of setting foot inside that door.

(By the way, this also helps to explain an aspect of my character that puzzles some people. How does someone like me who has terminal ADD muster the patience for fishing? The honest answer is that it has nothing to do with patience. No one would describe the guy who sits at the slot machine for 10 hours straight as patient. Clearly there's a far more powerful force at work here.)

Speaking of patience, if you're wondering what any of this has to do with being a pedicabbie, stay with me. I'm working around to that by way of the following story:

Yesterday when 6 PM rolled around, I'd been on the street for 8 hours. Both of my colleagues who shared my shift had already announced over the radio that they were calling it quits for the day. It was time for me to be headed to the house too, but I hadn't had a ride in the last hour and a half. Worse still, I was a bit short of what I had hoped to make for the day.


Just one more fare, I told myself. Just one more.


My persistence paid off a few minutes after 6:00 when I picked up an older couple from Oregon. They didn't have anywhere particular they wanted to go; they just wanted to ride around a bit, and I was happy to oblige. (I'm always careful to explain to people that I can't give tours because I'm not licensed to do that, but if they want me to just to take them for a spin, why not?) I told them that they were going to be my last fare of the day.

They were still aboard when a dispatch came over the radio for someone to pick up another couple at a certain hotel. I ignored it at first since I already had riders and was intending to head in as soon as I dropped them off. However, it turned out that there were no other pedicabs available, so my boss got on the radio again to ask if I could do it. My passengers, understanding the situation, graciously dismounted, and I headed for the pickup, thrilled to have gotten two more fares at the end of the day.

I took the second couple where they needed to go and turned my bike toward the shop. When I ride in at the end of my shift, I usually keep doing my 3-second sales pitch just in case I come across someone who happens to be going my way. I don't recall that it had ever worked before, but this was my lucky evening.

"Would you like a ride?" I called out to a pretty girl who was walking the same direction I was pedaling.

"I would love a ride! I'm just going a couple of blocks up to Canal..." She hesitated a moment, and her face fell. "You know what? Never mind. I'm really sorry. I've only got three dollars on me."

"That's not a problem," I said. "I'm just about done for the day, and I'm going that way anyway. I would be happy to take you that far for three dollars." Then I hesitated, wondering if I had misunderstood her reluctance. "Of course if you don't want to part with your last three dollars, I totally understand..."

"Oh, it's not that," she assured me. "I just feel bad for you."

"Well there's no need to feel bad for me. One way or the other, I'm going home. And as far as I'm concerned, I might as well go home three dollars richer."

"OK then!" she said as she jumped into the passenger seat. "This is my first time to ride a pedicab. I've been wanting to take one of these things for a long time."

"Well I'm honored to be your first pedicabbie!" I said. And I was.

At the corner of Canal St., she hopped off, handed me the three bucks, and went on her way. I continued on my way too, rejoicing at having picked up three rides in quick succession after an hour and a half drought.

A block and a half up Canal, a colleague flagged me down in front of a hotel. He was there for a pickup, waiting for his passengers to come out when a pair of ladies (not the ones who had called) approached him wanting a ride. Would I be willing to take them?

I was more than willing. I got them where they were going, then turned toward the shop once again, headed home at last, four fares richer, and so happy that it seemed to me that my pedicab had wings.

All that to say that my susceptibility to intermittent reinforcement sometimes works in my favor. But I'm still not planning to get any closer to the casino than is absolutely necessary in order to drop off riders who want to go there.

JC and me

I was waiting at a red light when this guy walked up to me. He had a battered leather jacket, a couple of days stubble on his chin, and a fedora pulled down low so that his eyes were in its shadows. Looking back, I think that my first impression was probably: Here's a guy who's trying a little too hard to be hip. A little bit flaky maybe -- but no more so than a large portion of the people you meet in and around the French Quarter.

"Where's your stand?" he asked me.

"Oh, we don't have any particular place where we wait. We just kind of circulate, you know?"

"OK. Well I've got to run up to my room right now," he said pointing out a nearby hotel. "I'll be back out in 10 minutes. Maybe I'll see you around."

He walked away while I continued to wait for the light to change. As soon as he was gone, I regretted that it hadn't even occurred to me to try to nail down a time and place to meet him. Oh well, I thought, I can park outside the hotel for a few minutes and watch for him to come back out. Sometimes on the day shift, you can go a couple of hours without a single ride. There certainly wasn't any harm in waiting there for 10 or 15 minutes.

I sat watching the crowds on Canal St. for a time and forgot all about watching my watch. After what felt like 10 or 15 minutes had passed, I glanced at the time and decided I'd give him another 10 before moving on. Right about then he came walking out and climbed aboard as though he had been expecting me to be there.

"Where are we headed?" I asked.

"To a record store. Do you know of one? And do you mind if I smoke?"

"Yes, I know where there's a record store, and no, I don't mind at all if you smoke," I said.

"I'm an idiot," he remarked. "I quit once for two years then went back to it."

"Reminds me of that Mark Twain quote," I said. "Why do people say it's hard to quit smoking? I've quit at least 20 times." (Here's the precise quote.)

"So what's your name?" I asked.

"JC."

"JC? As in 'Jesus Christ'?"

"I LOVE HIM!" he said with a sudden intensity that struck me as totally out of character and yet deeply sincere.

"Wow! Me too!" This guy was winning me over. He clearly didn't belong to the evangelical subculture in which I was raised, but I couldn't help but be touched by the fact that he seemed to genuinely love Jesus.

As the conversation progressed I found myself liking him more and more. Still, having initially judged him to be a bit on the flaky side, I was finding scraps of evidence along the way to support that presupposition. You know how it goes, right? Once we've taken the trouble to erect a prejudice, it's easy enough to find building supplies to keep propping it up.

When he said that he was an actor and that he was in town because he had a part in a movie, there was even a shadow of doubt in my mind as to whether he was telling the truth. (Long before I started picking up passengers on my pedicab, I picked up a whole lot of hitchhikers in my car; you learn to be a little bit skeptical.) It was certainly plausible that he was here for a movie role given New Orleans' recent emergence as Hollywood South. (See here for an article about the movies currently being filmed in the Crescent City and here for another story from my blog about taking an actor for a ride on my rickshaw.)

Later he mentioned something about playing in Grey's Anatomy. I've never seen the show, but I knew enough to know that it is very popular. Still it didn't even cross my mind that JC was any kind of celebrity.

We pulled up at the record store, and he asked me to wait for him outside. After a while he came out to tell me that the clerk was preparing his purchases and that it would be few more minutes. He sat down in the back of the bike, and we chatted a bit.

"Record stores are shutting down left and right," he said. "It's a shame."

"Yeah," I agreed. "We all get our music online these days, which is nice and all. But sometimes I miss the feeling of holding a real record in my hands. I was talking to my daughter just this morning. She's 15 years old. I don't remember how it came up, but I asked her if she had ever seen a turntable before, and she said, 'Only on TV.' Can you believe it?"

"I know what you mean," he said. "I've got five kids. What's your daughter's name?"

"Lydia," I answered. "But she likes to go by Lyddie these days. I have a son too. His name is Luke."

"Luke! That's from the Bible, right? How does Lyddie spell her name?"

I spelled it out for him. I wonder now why it didn't occur to me to wonder then why he wanted to know. Anyway, he disappeared into the store again and reappeared a few minutes later with a cardboard box. "This is for your kids," he said. "It's a record player." He had written a little note on the top of the box: "Your dad says great things about you."

I'm sure I said thank you. I sure hope so anyway. The truth is I was so shocked that I don't even remember what I said. (JC, if you happen to read this, let me say it again just to be sure. Thank you! It was an amazing gift, and my kids loved it. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.)

JC had a couple more places he wanted to go. I hate to admit this, but I was starting to get a little bit nervous. Generally we let people pay us whatever they want for any ride under 20 minutes. If it's more than 20 minutes, our fare is a dollar a minute. I've learned from experience that often when people want you to take them around on errands and wait on them while they shop, they're not anticipating how much it's going to cost. We try to be upfront about it, but in this case I couldn't remember whether it had even come up. This guy had just jumped on board without even bothering to ask about the price.

I decided I had better broach the subject. Looking back, this was one time I wish I had let it go. After he had just bought a nice gift for my kids, it was pretty tasteless to say, "Are you planning to pay me?"  Not that I had said it quite like that. I tried to be tactful. "I, um, just want to make sure we're on the same page. Because, umm, you know I've had misunderstandings in the past and stuff. So, you realize that anything over 20 minutes is a dollar a minute, right?"

"Yeah, that's fine," he said. "I'm not keeping track of the time, so you'll have to let me know how much I owe you at the end."

I took him to the pharmacy, which was the next place on his list, and he said, "OK, I think I'll just get out here, and I'm sure I can get around to the other places on my own. Thanks so much for the ride! How much do I owe you?"

At this point I was embarrassed at having made a big deal about the money, so I gave him a figure that was actually a bit low. He paid me what I asked, said goodbye, and we parted ways.

Later that day, I started feeling bad about the whole thing -- like I hadn't expressed proper appreciation. This was a genuinely nice guy who had just bought a wonderful gift for my kids, and maybe I had been a little bit rude to him. I started composing an open letter to him which I was going to post to the blog in hopes that he might stumble on it. I still didn't suspect in the least that he was a celebrity.

That night when I brought the box home for the kids to open it, I wondered how they would receive it. Would they see the point? After all, we don't have any vinyl records to play on it.

I needn't have worried. The kids were thrilled. When they pulled it out of the box, we all marveled at the beauty of the thing. It had a retro design --  kind of a 60s/70s feel to it, nothing like the ones that I remembered from my high school days when the phonograph was just about to be eclipsed. No glowing lights, no high tech controls. The whole thing was enclosed in a hard plastic red and tan case with the speakers built into the bottom. There were two knobs on the front: volume and tone.

I promised the kids that we would buy some vinyl albums.Mary suggested that it would be really cool to get some Christmas music to play on it. With its old-fashioned styling and bright red color, it actually looked kind of "Christmassy" somehow.

Later that evening, it occurred to me to go online and see if I could find JC. I went to a website that listed the cast and crew of Grey's Anatomy and glanced quickly through the list of the show's stars, pretty sure that I wouldn't find him there. And I didn't. No JC. No big surprise.

I checked out the list of "recurring roles" and didn't find him there either. Hmmm. I went back to the stars just to be sure I hadn't missed anything, and there he was! Justin Chambers. JC. Once I knew his full name, I started surfing the web for more information about him and quickly realized that the guy has some pretty impressive credits, even apart from Grey's Anatomy. (Here he is on Wikipedia, but the entry is a bit outdated. There are also several interesting interviews posted on YouTube.)

I've always considered myself above the whole celebrity obsession thing, but now I found myself starstruck. What about the box that the record player had come in? I had thrown it in the garage to be put out with the next day's garbage. It had his autograph on it with the note to my kids! I rushed out to rescue it.

Looking back, I'm glad that I got the chance to appreciate JC as a very cool, nice, generous, person before I found out he was famous. I would love to have the chance to hang out with him again. I would take him anywhere he wanted on my pedicab, and I wouldn't dream of mentioning money. Most of all, I would welcome the chance to show him how much I appreciate his thoughtfulness to my kids.

JC, if you're reading this, here's my prayer for you: May the Original JC, The King, bless your kids like you blessed mine!

Is it time to consider drastic measures?

I'm sitting in my car trying out the blogger app on my phone and enjoying a few more minutes warmth before I ride out on another dreary December day. Hope it's better than yesterday. The day shift is always a lot less profitable and entertaining than the night shift, but yesterday was more miserable than most.

It started out pretty well actually. I got three rides in quick succession, which almost never happens in the morning. I couldn't resist bragging about it over the radio, and my boss said, "Mark, we're going to have to pull you off the street and put you in the classroom so you can teach everyone else how it's done!"

I basked in the praise. Looking back I'm overcome with shame that the multitude of sermons I had heard on "Pride goeth before a fall" availed me naught in my hour of temptation. After those first three rides I only had four more the rest of the day.

The worst part was that I didn't get one single comment on my calves all day. Not one. Definitely a career first. If this keeps up I may have to look into calf augmentation surgery.

Southeast Asia - Southeast Louisiana fusion

In recent discussions about immigration and assimilation, the salad bowl and the melting pot are often set out as opposing metaphors. (Try Googling "melting pot, salad bowl". I got over 250,000 results.) In the case of New Orleans I believe that a third metaphor is more apt: gumbo.


With gumbo, you've got the base, the roux. Gotta have a good roux! Then you can add your vegetables: bell pepper, celery, and onions are standard. And okra of course. (I've heard that gumbo is actually some kind of African word for okra.) You can even put tomatoes if you want, though a lot of locals might take you for a Yankee poser. Don't forget the Tony Chachere's. And the filé powder, which can be added as part of the cooking process or set out on the table as a condiment. Then you add the chicken and sausage, or seafood, or some combination thereof. The possibilities are almost limitless. My mother-in-law, whose Cajun credentials no one should dare question, likes to boil eggs, peel them, then let them stew in the gumbo where they take on the roux's rich brown hue as they soak up the flavor.


In the case of  the city of New Orleans, the roux would be French-Creole culture. Each successive wave of immigrants -- German, English, West African, Croatian, Sicilian, Honduran, and others -- has enriched the stew without compromising its essential character. The Vietnamese community is a particularly interesting example. They came over in the 1970s. They have managed to maintain their identity while integrating so thoroughly into the city's institutions that it would be hard to imagine New Orleans without them. If you go to Cafe du Monde, which will soon celebrate its 150th anniversary, the person serving your beignets and cafe au lait will almost certainly be Vietnamese.


If you really think about it, it isn't all that strange that the Vietnamese have acclimated so well to warm, wet New Orleans. After all, Southeast Asia and Southeast Louisiana both bear the legacy of French colonial history. Many Vietnamese immigrants were Roman Catholic. Many were also fishermen by trade, so New Orleans' seafood industry must have offered a familiar element. Then there's rice as a dietary staple. (I'm open to correction, but I can't think of any other American city where rice is so central to the cuisine.)


I worked my first wedding as a pedicabbie last week. The bride was a New Yorker, of European stock as far as I know. The groom, however, was a New Orleans native of Vietnamese ancestry. The wedding was held at the Saint Louis Cathedral, America's oldest cathedral and the French Quarter's most iconic landmark. After the vows, the newlyweds and guests poured out of the church and formed a second line, twirling colorful parasols as they danced and paraded through the streets of the French Quarter behind a brass band. My fellow pedicabbies and I -- there were five of us I believe -- brought up the rear, bearing the groom's elderly relatives. I felt a touch of amusement, a bit of pride, and plenty of pure pleasure to be a part of this. 


The next day I was working the Saints game, and I stopped to ask a couple of traffic cops for permission to make a left turn at a place where the street was blocked. One of the policemen turned out to be Vietnamese-American, and we struck up a brief conversation.


"I'm so glad to see this here!" he said referring to the pedicab. "It reminds me of home. We have these in Vietnam, you know? We call them rickshaw."


The fact that they have rickshaws in Vietnam was not news to me, but somehow I had failed to make the connection. Had my previous day's passengers ridden rickshaws in their childhood days? Was it possible that I had taken them on their first rickshaw ride in 40 years or more? Was the sweet irony of the situation lost on them?  (Not so long ago many Americans would have viewed the rickshaw as a symbol of Asia's poverty and backwardness; these days pedicabs are commonplace on the streets of almost all of our major cities.) I don't know what my passengers were feeling, but I like to think that they felt more or less the same mixture of pride, amusement and pleasure at seeing us embrace their tradition as I felt at seeing them embrace ours. 


It is only now in retrospect that the beauty of that whole scene is beginning to really register. Elderly Vietnamese-New Orleanians riding in rickshaws at the tail end of a second line parade. Something old something new indeed! How strange! How apt!

---------------------------------------------

Bonus trivia question: Which Rolling Stones song (more recently covered by Old Crow Medicine Show) pays tribute to New Orleans' second line tradition?


Answer: Down Home Girl, which contains the following lyric:
I'm gonna take you back to New Orleans 
Down in Dixieland
I'm gonna watch you do the second line 
With an umbrella in your hand 

A level playing field

New Orleans is legendary for its flatness. The highest point in the city is probably Monkey Hill, which was one of those government projects invented just to put people to work during the Great Depression. According to local lore, Monkey Hill was built so that the children of New Orleans would have the chance to know firsthand what a hill was.

Then there's this bridge on Interstate 10 over the Industrial Canal. We call it "the High Rise". There's a sign at the approach urging motorists to maintain speed, but they never do. When you listen to the rush hour traffic report on the radio, you can just about count on there being a slowdown at the High Rise. The simplest explanation is that the car engines struggle to make the grade, but I remember a friend of my father's who had a much more intriguing if slightly less plausible theory. This fellow was from somewhere else. I don't remember where precisely, but somewhere hilly. Anyway, he figured that New Orleans natives, owing to their utter lack of experience driving on uneven terrain, are simply not comfortable not being able to see on down the road. No matter how many times they've crossed that bridge, deep down inside they don't really believe there's anything on the other side till they reach the crest and see it for themselves. Like I said, it's an interesting theory at the very least.

Fortunately, Monkey Hill and the High Rise are both off limits to rickshaws. Even so, when you rely on nothing but pedal power to move 400 or 500 pounds of human flesh (and that's not even counting my own 200!), you start to realize that the city's not quite as flat as everyone supposes.

I mentioned in an earlier post that almost everyone who gets on board suddenly becomes self-conscious about his or her weight. "Are you sure you can handle it?" they always ask. And I always promise them that it's not an issue. And it never has been. Until yesterday.

I've been on the job for a month, and yesterday morning for the first time I found myself in a very embarrassing situation. Then later that day the same thing happened again. TWICE ON THE SAME DAY! On both occasions, I picked up a husband and wife couple at a hotel. On both occasions, both man and woman were on the hefty side. On both occasions, I found myself trying to take off on a slight incline. And on both occasions, I found myself unable to budge the bike.

The second time was the worst. I really thought that there was some mechanical problem. Perhaps one of the wheels was stuck against a curb. That happens sometimes. I checked and saw that nothing was blocking the wheels. So why wouldn't they turn?

Trying to be gracious, the male passenger said, "We're a pretty heavy load,"

"That's not the problem," I insisted. "I've hauled more weight before. Maybe the chain has come off." I checked the chain, and it was fine. I was still pretty sure that something else had to be wrong. I grunted and pushed against the pedals some more but to no avail.

By now there were cars lined up bumper to bumper in front of me. I squeezed the brake tightly to keep the bike from rolling the six inches back down to the curb while I waited for a break in traffic. How was I ever going to get this thing moving and do it quickly enough to merge into traffic? Seeing my situation, a driver took pity on me and stopped to let me in. Abandoning all effort to pedal I got down and pushed. It was excruciatingly slow. Someone down the line lost patience and started honking. The whole line of automobiles was witnessing my utter humiliation.

After what felt like 20 years without parole, I crested the hump (We're talking about a distance of not more than a couple of feet) and was able to start pedaling. I was torn between relief that the bike really was in good working order and disappointment that there wasn't any good mechanical explanation for my failure after all. The rest of the ride was fine. I worked up a good sweat even though the temperature was in the low 40s, but that's nothing unusual.

Note: According to Wikipedia the elevation of New Orleans ranges from six and a half feet below sea level to twenty feet above.

French Quarter conversations, mostly crude

Male passenger A: My friend here puked in a taxi last night.
Male passenger B: Yeah! The driver made me pay $100.
Male passenger A: How much do you charge if we throw up on your bike?
Note: I thought about this later and concluded that the taxi driver was more than justified.  If it happened to me -- and I'm thinking that sooner or later it's bound to -- I believe that I would definitely be entitled to compensation (though whether I would have the guts to demand it is another question.) On a good night being forced to head back to the shop to wash down the bike could cost me $50 or $60 in lost fares. For an auto taxi there's also the expense of cleaning upholstery of course. 

Drunk girl staggers across the street in front of me, holding up her hand for me to stop. Her eyes swimming into focus, she sees my female passengers and addresses them:
 "All men suck! Even the gay ones."
Note: My passengers seemed to think that this was the funniest thing they had ever heard. When I safely delivered them to their destination, one of them said, "Wow, we found a man who doesn't suck! And he's not even gay."

Obese transvestite to me: What are you doing after you get off work?
Me: Going home to my beautiful wife.
Obese transvestite: Can I come?

Drunk female passenger to me: Can I touch your ass?
Her slightly soberer (and very embarrassed) date: No, you can't touch his ass!

Me to fortune teller on the street: How's it going?
Fortune teller: Terrible. I haven't had a single customer all day! I'm waiting and hoping for just one so I can get enough money for beer and cigarettes and go home.
Me: Sorry to hear you're having such a bad day. But you must have seen it coming, right?
Note: I know, that was a real cheap shot. I just couldn't resist.


Me to female passenger: I'm blogging about my job. So if you say something interesting, you might see yourself quoted online.
Female passenger: I was told once that my vagina has a hood.

Me to male passenger (from Mississippi if I remember right): I'm blogging about my job. So if you say something interesting, you might see yourself quoted online.
Male passenger: I shot a deer last week.

Doing the Dome part II: Saints game

At Superdome events the  3-second sales pitch doesn't matter so much because it's not hard to get passengers on the bike. The key to success in these kinds of situations is speed.

At Superdome events pedicabs have an advantage over cars. Before and after the game, traffic is typically backed up along Poydras (the main Superdome access street) but rickshaws can keep moving by threading in and out of the stalled lines of cars. (If this sounds dangerous, remember the cars aren't moving. The biggest danger is a scratched fender.) Police direct traffic at all the intersections; naturally they give priority to pedestrians, which is why the cars spend so much time stationary. Sometimes the police allow us to cross with the folk on foot so that we can leave a line of cars behind at an intersection and sprint ahead till we reach the next bunch of immobile automobiles, at which point we start weaving in and out again.

In these situations most of my colleagues have an advantage over me. They tend to be a lot younger and bolder (or more reckeless) than me. Even apart from the age issue, I've always had a kind of handicap when it comes to spatial awareness. This means that the other drivers are typically willing to squeeze through spaces between cars that I'm much too timid to attempt. Whenever we get a little bit of open road, I try to make up for lost time by out-sprinting them. I can never resist talking a little smack as I blow by: "Come on! Is that the best you can do? You know you're half my age!" (Which is often literally true.)

There are three pedicab companies in New Orleans, each of which can legally have up to 15 bikes on the road at a time. Saints games are pretty much the only time when all three companies make every effort to get their maximum number of bikes out there -- which means close to 45 rickshaws plying Poydras.

Before working my first game I wondered what would happen once the last stragglers were inside the Dome. Would 45 pedicabs be cruising up and down deserted streets like vultures watching a healthy herd hoping for something to die? Turns out I was right in one way. The streets were definitely deserted -- much more so than I had imagined in fact. The French Quarter looked as though the city's population had perished in some terrible plague. Buildings were standing, lights were on, but no one was moving. (I should note that this was a Monday night game; on a weekend it would have been another story.)

I should have known that my fellow pedicabbies were much too wise to waste their time patrolling cold, empty streets. I saw their bikes parked outside various bars and restaurants where presumably they sat in warmth and comfort watching the game on big screens. Felipe's Taqueria seemed to be the favorite pedicabbie haunt judging by the collection of rickshaws parked outside.

I rode around for a while, pausing from time to time outside bars where the broadcast was blaring through open doors and windows in order to follow the progress of the game. Finally I gave up on picking up passengers and  went to the Clover Grill on Bourbon Street where ordered a hamburger and settled into a booth to thaw my bones and watch the game on TV. I was the only customer in the restaurant. Next time I may join my colleagues at Felipe's or somewhere else, but on this occasion I enjoyed the solitude.

I headed back toward the Dome for the third quarter, which turned out to be a good decision. The Saints won a lopsided victory over the Giants, and it turns out that lopsided victories favor our profession. When the outcome of a game is decided relatively early, people start trickling out of the Superdome, which gives us more time to pick up riders. From now on I'll be cheering for the Saints to win every home game by halftime.