I've got some really cool colleagues. Like this guy, Conan, for instance.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
The best pedicabbie pickup line ever! (If only it were mine.)
I find myself doing the three second sales pitch (also known as the pedicabbie pickup line) much less frequently now then when I first started the job. In general, folks who flag me down are willing to pay more than the ones that I have to persuade to get on the trike. These days, I generally save the sales pitch for slow nights when I have to be more aggressive in order to pick up fares.
Last night after we got off work a couple of colleagues and I went out for burgers. (Technically, it wasn't last night; it was 3 AM this morning). One of these fellow pedicabbies, who started riding around the same time as me told me this story about committing an act of desperation on a dull, dreary day:
It had been raining for hours and the colleague had spent the day hunkered down under a tree feeling miserable and not getting a single ride. Finally the rain stopped, and he spotted a couple approaching at a distance. He hopped in the driver's seat and pedaled toward them furiously, screeching to a halt beside them.
"Get on the pedicab now!" he ordered breathlessly. "I'll explain later." Looking at one another in bewilderment, the couple complied. (I should explain that this colleague is in the Marine Reserves. He's not a big guy, but he's probably pretty imposing when he wants to be.)
I asked my friend whether the couple actually ended up paying for their ride and what kind of explanation he offered them. He said that, yes, they did pay and that he merely explained how desperate he was to get a ride.
I have to say that I'm a bit jealous. I don't think that any of the pickup lines I've come up with could touch that one for creativity and humor. And even if I were imaginative enough to think up something that outrageous, I doubt that I would have whatever it takes to actually pull it off.
Last night after we got off work a couple of colleagues and I went out for burgers. (Technically, it wasn't last night; it was 3 AM this morning). One of these fellow pedicabbies, who started riding around the same time as me told me this story about committing an act of desperation on a dull, dreary day:
It had been raining for hours and the colleague had spent the day hunkered down under a tree feeling miserable and not getting a single ride. Finally the rain stopped, and he spotted a couple approaching at a distance. He hopped in the driver's seat and pedaled toward them furiously, screeching to a halt beside them.
"Get on the pedicab now!" he ordered breathlessly. "I'll explain later." Looking at one another in bewilderment, the couple complied. (I should explain that this colleague is in the Marine Reserves. He's not a big guy, but he's probably pretty imposing when he wants to be.)
I asked my friend whether the couple actually ended up paying for their ride and what kind of explanation he offered them. He said that, yes, they did pay and that he merely explained how desperate he was to get a ride.
I have to say that I'm a bit jealous. I don't think that any of the pickup lines I've come up with could touch that one for creativity and humor. And even if I were imaginative enough to think up something that outrageous, I doubt that I would have whatever it takes to actually pull it off.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
The city's smellscape
Riding around in a car there's a curtain of glass and steel separating you from the sounds, sights and smells of the streets. Roll the windows down if you want to, but there’s still no way that you’re going to get the kind of intimate experience of the city that you would get on the back of a pedicab. Lest this sound like some clumsy pedicab propaganda piece, let me hasten to say that the street-level intimacy I’m talking about is not necessarily pleasant. Sometimes it's pure bliss, but not always.
I mentioned sounds, sights and smells, so let's begin by considering a couple of examples from the auditory realm. Having nothing between you and the melodies of the musicians on Royal Street may be nice. On the other hand there’s that car with the
shock and awe stereo system blasting out something that resembles the sound of a jackhammer, only less melodic and about a hundred decibels louder. That will make you wish fervently for some
windows to roll up.
What about the city's sights? You may well appreciate the improved opportunities for admiring the Spanish colonial architecture from the passenger seat of the pedicab; but sit in that same
seat for long, and you'll start to feel like you’re on an urban
safari in which Rattus norvegicus (the common rat) is not early as rare and elusive as we
all might wish. (Early on in my pedicab career I
saw a rat darting between a drain and a dumpster, and without thinking I
blurted out: “Wow, look at that rat!” to which one of my riders responded: “Umm…
I don’t think that’s the tour we paid for.”)
Then there’s the olfactory experience, to which the remainder of
this post will be devoted.
On the plus side there's the warm, sweet fragrance of frying beignets at Cafe du Monde.
In the minus column, there are those piles of manure left behind by the carriage mules and police horses. (Read here about the controversy this has been creating lately.) In the interest of full disclosure, I've been working lately as a buggy driver in addition to the pedicab gig. The company I work for, Royal Carriages, recently had an hour-and-half meeting to discuss creative solutions to the mule poo problem. (Our mules wear "diapers", but they're not entirely effective. Of course, the horses used by the mounted police don't wear diapers.)
Back to French Quarter fragrances: The block of St. Phillip between Chartres and Decatur is especially nice. At the Chartres end, there's the enticing smell of Creole/Italian cooking coming from Irene's; at the Decatur end, there's the French Market Restaurant with its exquisite, spicy and distinctly New Orleans boiled-seafood aroma. I think they're pumping it out to the street on purpose. No doubt New Orleans has much better restaurants, but as far as I'm concerned, 1001 Decatur might just be the sweetest smelling spot in the city.
On the plus side there's the warm, sweet fragrance of frying beignets at Cafe du Monde.
In the minus column, there are those piles of manure left behind by the carriage mules and police horses. (Read here about the controversy this has been creating lately.) In the interest of full disclosure, I've been working lately as a buggy driver in addition to the pedicab gig. The company I work for, Royal Carriages, recently had an hour-and-half meeting to discuss creative solutions to the mule poo problem. (Our mules wear "diapers", but they're not entirely effective. Of course, the horses used by the mounted police don't wear diapers.)
Back to French Quarter fragrances: The block of St. Phillip between Chartres and Decatur is especially nice. At the Chartres end, there's the enticing smell of Creole/Italian cooking coming from Irene's; at the Decatur end, there's the French Market Restaurant with its exquisite, spicy and distinctly New Orleans boiled-seafood aroma. I think they're pumping it out to the street on purpose. No doubt New Orleans has much better restaurants, but as far as I'm concerned, 1001 Decatur might just be the sweetest smelling spot in the city.
When it comes to picking the Quarter's stinkiest spot, I don't think that there would be much controversy in the pedicabbie community. The stench of vomit is common up and down Bourbon, but the corner of Bourbon and Iberville is the foulest by far. Not just the corner actually, but that whole right-angle stretch from Canal and Bourbon to Bourbon and Iberville to Iberville and Royal. I'm not sure what it is that makes that bit so bad. It must have something to do with the cluster of oyster houses there. If you think about it, they have to be discarding gillions of oyster shells, and all those juices are dripping out of the dumpsters and draining right into the streets.
It was a fellow pedicabbie who suggested that I devote a post to the smells of
the city, so I decided that it would be a good idea to solicit input from my colleagues for this piece. I put the word out on the our Facebook page, and I got an enthusiastic response, the highlights of which I now pass on to you my readers. (The quotes are in italics. My comments are in plain text.)
- You can't forget about marijuana. There have been a couple of occasions in which I have become aware that someone was smoking pot on the back of my bike. Strangely enough I didn't smell it those times. I'm guessing that the smoke just drifted along behind us like exhaust from a car. But whenever I ride past someone who's toking on the side of the street the acrid odor is unmistakable.
- The jerk chicken man on Frenchmen St. This is a Jamaican dude with a barbecue grill. I bought his chicken once. It was OK, but definitely one of those things that doesn't taste nearly as good as it smells.
- You can smell those crust punks from 50 feet away sometimes. Three different people mentioned the body odor of crust punks.
- You can't leave out the sweet olive trees and confederate jasmine during springtime.
- Piss-covered, passed-out frat boy with a hint of sugary Hand Grenade vomit.
- Coffee roasting at the P&G plant in the Marigny that wafts over to us in the Quarter sometimes.
- Standard coffee and Aunt Sally's in the Marigny. Candy and coffee. Are there any better smells?
Friday, July 13, 2012
A good cop story (which has nothing to do with the pedicab)
New Orleans has long been infamous for its corrupt cops, but today I heard a story about a New Orleans police officer who, with one simple act of kindness and creativity, helped transform the lives of six troubled teens.
My car's in the shop, and my bicycle has a flat, so I called a cab this morning to come pick me up today. (Yes, I called a car cab. Hey, I'm all for patronizing pedicabs, and I do so whenever the circumstances allow it. And you can be sure that I pay generous tips. But I'm living in Gentilly -- about three miles from downtown -- so running my errands in a pedicab would cost a lot more time and money than I have to spare. We all have our niche, right?)
After greeting the driver and giving him my destination, I expressed my condolences for the murder of his colleague earlier this week. He told me that although they worked for the same company, he only knew the victim in passing. However, he was close friends with another cab driver who was murdered in May 2011.
I asked my driver whether he had ever been robbed on the job, and he said no, which wasn't all that surprising. He was a big, burly African-American dude with his hair pulled back tight in a little ponytail. If I were in charge of casting someone to play the part of a bouncer, I don't think I could do any better than this guy. If, on the other hand, I was out looking for someone to rob, I'd probably look elsewhere. As it turned out he didn't just look fierce; he was actually an ex cop. He had started working as a cabby only after retiring from a full career with the police force.
He had gotten into quite a bit of trouble in his younger years he told me. "I was never really bad," he said. "Just mischievous." But that mischievous streak might have eventually pulled him down a darker path had it not been for one particular encounter with the law. Here's the story as he told it to me.
Some friends and I had climbed over the fence at the school to shoot some hoops. After a while we got thirsty, so we pried a door open to go inside and drink some water. Without knowing it we had set off an alarm. We went back outside to play and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by police cars. Some of the cops got out carrying shotguns. We were really scared.
The chief came over to me and pulled me aside. "I know you from somewhere," he said.
I said, "Yeah, I work over there at Winn Dixie by the precinct station, so you've probably seen me around."
"Look," the chief said. "I don't think you're a bad kid. Tell me what was going on here."
"Nothing, man. We just broke in to get some water."
He walked back over to his colleagues and ordered them all to leave. "I'll handle this one," he said. Then he cuffed all six of us and put us all in his car. It was tight, but he made us all squeeze in. Then he asked us where we lived, and one by one he took every one of us home and talked to our parents. I vowed that day that the next time I met up with the law, I was going to be the policeman.
After I got out of the academy, I saw that same police chief, and he recognized me. He cried!
Of the six of us who got into trouble that day, me and another guy went on to become policemen. One became an attorney. One became an executive of a big financial firm. One owns a construction company. And one is a social worker with a PhD in psychology.
By the time he was done with his story, I had tears in my eyes. "Look, I hate to bring this up," I said. "But you know how it is here in New Orleans. Whenever you talk about crime and police -- or anything else, for that matter -- race is always part of the picture. So, your friends... They were all African American?"
"Yes," he said.
"And the policeman?"
"No, he was white."
I told the cab driver that I write a blog and that I would love to share his story. He said that was okay. I asked permission to use his name, and he respectfully declined.
Assuming that his story was accurate, he and his companions definitely beat the odds. You've probably heard the grim statistics about African-American men. If anything the situation is worse around here. A couple of years ago a report calculated that a black male in Jefferson Parish (an area which includes most of New Orleans' suburbs) was more likely to be murdered than a U.S. soldier deployed to Iraq was to be killed there.
I want to be careful not to put more weight on this story than it can bear. First of all, I can't say whether that policeman's behavior was anything out of the ordinary. For all I know he may have merely been following the police policy manual. Secondly, there must have been many other people who helped point these young men toward a productive path -- schoolteachers, pastors, social workers, and who knows who else -- to say nothing of their parents. Let's not overlook the fact that involving the boys' parents was a key component of the policeman's plan.
Still, the cop-turned-cabby who shared his story with me today credits that one policeman and his wise action at a critical time with setting him on the road for a successful life.
My car's in the shop, and my bicycle has a flat, so I called a cab this morning to come pick me up today. (Yes, I called a car cab. Hey, I'm all for patronizing pedicabs, and I do so whenever the circumstances allow it. And you can be sure that I pay generous tips. But I'm living in Gentilly -- about three miles from downtown -- so running my errands in a pedicab would cost a lot more time and money than I have to spare. We all have our niche, right?)
After greeting the driver and giving him my destination, I expressed my condolences for the murder of his colleague earlier this week. He told me that although they worked for the same company, he only knew the victim in passing. However, he was close friends with another cab driver who was murdered in May 2011.
I asked my driver whether he had ever been robbed on the job, and he said no, which wasn't all that surprising. He was a big, burly African-American dude with his hair pulled back tight in a little ponytail. If I were in charge of casting someone to play the part of a bouncer, I don't think I could do any better than this guy. If, on the other hand, I was out looking for someone to rob, I'd probably look elsewhere. As it turned out he didn't just look fierce; he was actually an ex cop. He had started working as a cabby only after retiring from a full career with the police force.
He had gotten into quite a bit of trouble in his younger years he told me. "I was never really bad," he said. "Just mischievous." But that mischievous streak might have eventually pulled him down a darker path had it not been for one particular encounter with the law. Here's the story as he told it to me.
Some friends and I had climbed over the fence at the school to shoot some hoops. After a while we got thirsty, so we pried a door open to go inside and drink some water. Without knowing it we had set off an alarm. We went back outside to play and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by police cars. Some of the cops got out carrying shotguns. We were really scared.
The chief came over to me and pulled me aside. "I know you from somewhere," he said.
I said, "Yeah, I work over there at Winn Dixie by the precinct station, so you've probably seen me around."
"Look," the chief said. "I don't think you're a bad kid. Tell me what was going on here."
"Nothing, man. We just broke in to get some water."
He walked back over to his colleagues and ordered them all to leave. "I'll handle this one," he said. Then he cuffed all six of us and put us all in his car. It was tight, but he made us all squeeze in. Then he asked us where we lived, and one by one he took every one of us home and talked to our parents. I vowed that day that the next time I met up with the law, I was going to be the policeman.
After I got out of the academy, I saw that same police chief, and he recognized me. He cried!
Of the six of us who got into trouble that day, me and another guy went on to become policemen. One became an attorney. One became an executive of a big financial firm. One owns a construction company. And one is a social worker with a PhD in psychology.
By the time he was done with his story, I had tears in my eyes. "Look, I hate to bring this up," I said. "But you know how it is here in New Orleans. Whenever you talk about crime and police -- or anything else, for that matter -- race is always part of the picture. So, your friends... They were all African American?"
"Yes," he said.
"And the policeman?"
"No, he was white."
I told the cab driver that I write a blog and that I would love to share his story. He said that was okay. I asked permission to use his name, and he respectfully declined.
Assuming that his story was accurate, he and his companions definitely beat the odds. You've probably heard the grim statistics about African-American men. If anything the situation is worse around here. A couple of years ago a report calculated that a black male in Jefferson Parish (an area which includes most of New Orleans' suburbs) was more likely to be murdered than a U.S. soldier deployed to Iraq was to be killed there.
I want to be careful not to put more weight on this story than it can bear. First of all, I can't say whether that policeman's behavior was anything out of the ordinary. For all I know he may have merely been following the police policy manual. Secondly, there must have been many other people who helped point these young men toward a productive path -- schoolteachers, pastors, social workers, and who knows who else -- to say nothing of their parents. Let's not overlook the fact that involving the boys' parents was a key component of the policeman's plan.
Still, the cop-turned-cabby who shared his story with me today credits that one policeman and his wise action at a critical time with setting him on the road for a successful life.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A nice ride rudely interrupted. (Plus bonus interactive survey.)
I was doing a drop off at a French Quarter hotel just before
midnight last week. A couple of soccer-mom types, one blonde and
the other brunette, were standing in front of the hotel entrance.
"Hey, let's see your calves!" demanded the blonde as my
passengers disembarked. I dutifully flexed my calf muscles for her.
"Do you go Uptown?" asked the brunette.
This is a common question and one that is almost never sincere.
People seem to get a big kick out of asking me to take them to outlandish places:
the airport, the West Bank, California... Technically Uptown doesn't fit in
this category since it is located inside Orleans Parish and is
therefore, in theory at least, a possible pedicab destination. (See here for a previous post on distance rides
including the story of a trip Uptown.) But nine times out of ten, when someone
asks to go Uptown the request is intended as a joke.
I gave my stock reply: "It's not a question of how far I can
go; it's a question of how far you can afford."
"Hmmm... Well, how much would it be to --?" asked the
lady, naming an Uptown address well beyond the Garden District.
So maybe this one was serious. Or more likely, she had been joking
initially but on a sudden whim was giving the idea serious consideration.
I hesitated a moment. Did I really want to do this? It would be
the furthest I had ever traveled on a single, one-way ride. There was almost
zero chance of picking up a fare on the return. It was hard to estimate how
long it might take, but I figured that it would be more than an hour round trip
-- probably a good bit more.
On the other hand, it had been a slow night with slim tips so far.
It was a warm summer evening, and the prospect of a long, leisurely ride Uptown
with moonlight filtering through the leafy branches of the live oak trees
overhead was very appealing. In the interest of full disclosure, I should
probably also mention that these ladies were very pretty. (It turned out that
only one of them needed a ride, but I didn’t know that yet.) Not that I had any
untoward intentions, but if you read my last post you may not be surprised to
know that I’m a bit hungry for any kind of female companionship lately.
"Thirty dollars," I said.
This was a lot more than it would have cost to make the trip by
taxi -- but dirt cheap for that distance on the pedicab. I really wanted to do
the ride but not badly enough to do it for nothing.
"Oh, I see," the lady said, sounding a little
disappointed. "I'm probably better off just taking a cab."
"Yes, I'm sure you can get a cab a lot cheaper if that's what
you're looking for," I admitted.
She hesitated a moment before blurting out. "You know what? I'm
going to do it!"
"Are you serious?" her friend said, suddenly realizing
that the joke had gone farther than she had expected.
"Sure! Why not? It'll be fun," the brunette replied.
"You've got to be kidding!" the blonde protested.
"I'm going to tell your husband."
The brunette ignored the threat and settled into the seat behind
me.
"Take good care of her," the blonde ordered me as I
began pedaling away. "She's got three kids and a husband at home."
"Yes, please be careful," echoed the brunette.
"I've got three kids and a husband."
"Hey, do I look dangerous?" I asked.
"No," she admitted. "But the dangerous ones never look dangerous."
The ride started out well. She was friendly without being
flirtatious. I don't think she told me her name; if so, I don't remember it. I
did learn that she was a school administrator. I asked about her Katrina
experience, which is a pretty reliable way to open up a conversation in New
Orleans, and she told me a brief version of her story. Our conversation moved
on, and we both talked about our kids a bit.
About five minutes into the ride she got a call on her cell phone.
I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help overhearing.
Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be home in a little
bit.
…I’m on my way now. It’ll be a few
minutes.
…Yes.
…Yes. I’m on my way.
…I uh…took a uh...pedicab.
…Did she really call you? I’m going to get
her! She betrayed me!
…No! I could have gotten a taxi if that’s
what I wanted.
…I’m going to pay him forty dollars.
…No!
…NO!
…NO! I’m fine. Really.
…NO! I don’t need you to come get me.
…No, really, I’m fine. I’m OK, hear? I’ll
be home soon!
“Uh-oh,” I said when she hung up. “Sounds like you’re in trouble.”
“Oh yeah, a little,” she said dismissively. “It’s no big deal.”
We picked up the conversation where we had left off as we
continued the ride. Another ten minutes passed pleasantly before a car came
zooming up out of nowhere and screeched to a halt beside us. The driver shouted
something that I didn’t quite catch through the open window, presumably my
passenger’s name.
“Oh no!” she gasped.
“Your husband?”
“Yes, my husband. I can’t believe it! This is so embarrassing! I’m
really sorry,” she said as she fumbled through her purse for the money to pay
me.
“No need to apologize,” I reassured her. “No damage done to me.”
Of course there wasn’t any damage done to me. To the contrary, she
paid me the price we had agreed upon plus a ten dollar tip, so I ended up
getting a fairly decent fare for the distance, which would not have been the
case had I carried her all the way to her destination. No damage at all. Just a
twinge of disappointment.
______________________________
Here’s a chance for you, my readers, to weigh in on this story.
I’m interested in knowing what you think about the husband’s behavior.
A. His action was reasonable and responsible. His wife had put herself in a potentially dangerous situation that
demanded his intervention.
B. His action was romantic. He went above and beyond the call of duty out of a noble desire
to protect his lady. Any girl should be grateful to be so well cared for.
C. He was acting like an overbearing jerk.
D. Other. (Explain.)
Monday, June 25, 2012
Homecoming
Homeless!
Well, I grew up in the area, but I moved away for 27 years, and I finally found my way back here last August.
That's what I've been telling people lately when the question of where I'm from comes up. I've noticed that this stock reply has undergone a subtle shift recently. I used to say: I grew up in the area, but I moved away for 27 years, and I found myself back here in August.
Did you catch the difference? I suppose that "finding my way back" as opposed to "finding myself back" reflects a growing sense of being at home. This place certainly didn't feel like home when I first got back. In the early days after my return I would say things like: "I thought I had escaped the orbit of South Louisiana, but here I am again."
When my family and I came back to the States last summer, we had been living in the Balkans for 13 of the last 16 years. We had lived in three different countries -- Albania, Kosova, and Macedonia -- but always among ethnic Albanians, and I had dedicated myself to learning the Albanian language, immersing myself in their lifestyle, and loving their food and their folk music. (Speaking of which here, here and here are some really cool songs.) One of the highest compliments anyone ever paid me was author Katherine Paterson's comment in an interview with Publisher's Weekly that when she saw my photos of Kosova, she knew that she had found someone who knew and loved the land and its people. When I imagined my future, I saw myself living among the Albanians for at least the rest of my working days if not the rest of my life.
Still, I never had any illusions of being truly "at home" there. Whenever an Albanian friend flattered me by saying, "You're one of us!" I received the compliment joyfully without ever believing for a moment that it was true. "I'll never really be Albanian," I used to say. "But after all these years living with Albanians, I'll never really quite be American either."
My wife Mary and I were both from Louisiana -- she from the northwest corner of the state and I from the southeast corner; but neither of us had much emotional attachment to the places we had grown up. In fact, both of us had been glad to put some distance between ourselves and our hometowns as soon as we graduated from high school.
Our kids, Lydia and Luke, had both grown up in Southeastern Europe. A year or two ago Luke asked me: "Dad, when people ask where I'm from, is it OK to just tell them 'New Orleans'?" He had never lived in New Orleans. (In fact, I had never actually lived in New Orleans -- more about that in a minute.) But Luke had become a big Saints fan, and he had decided that if he had to identify with some city, New Orleans would be his choice. I doubt that the thought of actually living in New Orleans had even occurred to him as a possibility. He was just looking for a convenient way to respond to a very common question, which for him and his sister had no simple answer.
We all loved our life in Macedonia, and none of us wanted to leave. However, the relationship between Mary and me had been crumbling over the last several years. We had traveled far and wide for counseling -- Akron, Ohio; Springfield, Missouri; Budapest, Hungary; and finally Seattle, Washington, where we took a six month leave in order to devote ourselves full-time to marriage therapy. After each of these trips we returned hopeful that our marriage was on the mend. By last summer it was clear to everyone around us that we were still struggling, and the leaders of the organization we worked for finally concluded that for our own sake and the sake of the work we were a part of, we needed to leave Macedonia where we were living at the time. When the word finally came down that we had to go home, we came face to face with the fact that we had no idea where home was.
Mary and I responded at first by looking for job opportunities that would allow us to continue to live in the Balkans, but we couldn't come up with anything in time. When it became apparent that we really had to return to the U.S., we sent emails to our parents and siblings saying: "We're coming back to the States, but we haven't picked a place. If you would like for us to live near you, feel free to make your pitch." One step removed from putting on a blindfold and throwing darts at a map.
My youngest sister replied to say that she and her husband had a house in Slidell, Louisiana that they were trying to sell. She would rent it to us at far less than the market value until it sold, which was likely to be several months. So based on this offer of a cheap and convenient place to live, we settled on Slidell, the town where I had grown up.
Suburb vs. City
These days when I'm riding the pedicab in the French Quarter, and I tell people "I grew up here in this area," I'm using language that is just vague enough to avoid an outright deception. In terms of sheer distance it's true that Slidell is not so far from New Orleans; but Lake Pontchartrain, the barrier between suburb and city, is no mere imaginary municipal line. The 30-some-odd mile commute requires traversing a featureless bridge across five miles of open water -- not to mention several miles of uninhabited marshland with the carcasses of road-killed alligators strewn alongside the freeway.
Slidell has virtually no industry of its own. It's often referred to as a "bedroom community" for people who work in the city but don't want to live there. The relationship between Slidell and New Orleans is best illustrated by a recent conversation with an acquaintance in which I was complaining about the lack of public transportation between the north and south shores of the lake. Given the large number of people making this commute every day, it was shocking to me that there was no way to get back and forth other than in a private car. The guy I was chatting with, who's a few years older than me and has lived in this area his whole life, said, "Well, you understand why, don't you? There have been attempts in the past, but Slidell and the other cities on the North Shore have always been against it. Not that they would mind being able to take a bus or train to New Orleans. But they don't want to provide an easy way for the undesirables from New Orleans to cross to the North Shore. You know, the crime and all that?..." I can't say for sure whether this explanation is accurate, but it rings true to me. For many of the inhabitants of the North Shore the lake serves as a security fence. Car ownership is a key that lets you cross the fence whenever you need to. (If you're picking up racial overtones here, you're probably on target.)
In my growing up years New Orleans was just foreign enough to be a little bit frightening, mysterious and thrilling. When I was in college, I got into the habit of bringing international students home with me for weekends and holidays, and I enjoyed taking them into the city and showing them around. The truth is I didn't know my way around all that much, but I could find the aquarium and the zoo and Cafe du Monde and the Superdome. Every time we made the trip, and we didn't get mugged and my car didn't get stolen or towed, I felt as though I had successfully completed some epic quest.
Returning to Slidell last August, things looked different. Having lived almost eight years in Kosova, what could be so scary about New Orleans? Mary and I disagreed about many things, but we agreed from the get-go that we weren't really the kind of people who wanted to live out our lives in the suburbs. My sister's house was a big blessing in a time of need, but from the beginning we decided that if we were going to live in southeast Louisiana, we wanted to get to the other side of the lake as soon as we could.
Something better than Sam's Club
Before we could think about moving, we had to find work. When people asked me how I ended up on the pedicab there are two distinct ways to answer. On the one hand, I found myself in a situation where I really didn't have a lot of other options. A couple of years earlier I had told our counselor in Budapest that as much as I loved my life and work in the Balkans, I was ready at any time to return to the States permanently for the sake of my marriage. "That's bullshit!" he told me. "You'd end up as a greeter at Sam's Club." (I figured that I might enjoy being a greeter at Sam's and that I'd probably be very good at it; but I had to admit that it would be hard to make enough money to take good care of my family.) As it turned out the counselor had a point. I ended up returning to the U.S. armed with a 23-year-old degree in journalism at a time when newspapers were going broke left and right and a highly specialized set of skills for which there was no market. (Know of an job openings for an albanologist anyone?) I sent out quite a few resumes but never heard back from anybody.
None of this is to suggest that becoming a pedicabbie was an act of desperation. When I saw the help-wanted ad, it looked to me like a dream job -- which turned out to be true more or less. (By the way, the timing of the whole thing was pretty close to perfect. We arrived back in the States in August.The very next month pedicabs were finally cleared to operate in New Orleans -- the conclusion of a two-and-a-half year legal battle. I didn't actually start the job till November, but I still manage to catch the industry in its infancy. I was among the first full-time pedicabbies in the city.)
When I first began pedicabbing, I knew next to nothing about the layout of the city. I didn't know how to find Frenchmen St. or Pat O'Brien's. Despite investing in a smart phone with GPS and a bluetooth headset, I managed to get myself into some pretty embarrassing situations in those early days. But it wasn't long before I was finding my way around like a native. After all, there's probably no better way to get intimately acquainted with an urban location than to spend days and nights riding the streets on a big trike for eight hours at a stretch.
Rediscovering my roots
Speaking of getting intimately acquainted, the more time I spent on the pedicab, the more I found myself captivated by the Crescent City. Despite the fact that I had never lived in New Orleans, it started to make sense to me that these streets would feel familiar. After all, my father had grown up here as had his father before him. My great grandfather had immigrated to New Orleans from Spain by way of Cuba. I hadn't really given it much thought before, but my roots were generations deep in the city's swampy soil.
Riding by the exquisite Le Pavillon Hotel on Poydras St., I remembered my dad having pointed it out to me when I was a kid. "That's where your grandfather used to work," he had said. I called him up to make sure that I remembered right. Turns out that my memory had served me well. It was called the Hotel Desoto back then, but it was the same location, same building, same Romanesque facade featuring fifteen-foot tall limestone statues. My grandfather, who died before I was born, used to sell tours there for a company called Gray Line. (Bike Taxi Unlimited, the pedicab company I work for, has a contract to provide transport for Gray Line guests.) I couldn't resist telling my passengers every time I dropped off or picked up at Le Pavillon: "My grandpa used to work here!"
On another occasion I was riding in the Garden District, and I suddenly recalled hearing my dad say that he grown up in that part of town. I called him to ask for the address. It turned out that he and his family had lived in two different Garden District houses. Later, when I had the time, I found the houses and photographed them. Both were shotgun houses tucked in among the antebellum mansions for which the Garden District is famous. In one of the houses, my father, his brother and their parents had lived together with two other families. Imagining three families living in such cramped conditions gave me a picture of the poverty in which my father was raised.
Immediately downriver from the French Quarter I discovered another utterly delightful neighborhood, the Marigny. In a conversation with my youngest sister (the one who provided us with the house and the only of my three siblings still living in the New Orleans area) I was telling her how enchanted I was with the Marigny, and she said, "You know that our great grandfather lived over there on Spain St. when he immigrated to New Orleans, right?" I hadn't known. It's possible that I had heard this fact before and hadn't found it worth remembering, but now I was intrigued. Just as with Le Pavillon, I began pointing the site out to my passengers as though they had actually signed up for a tour of the Crescent City Pedicabbie's ancestral homeland.
Postscript. Finding my way home as my home breaks apart
Well, I grew up in the area, but I moved away for 27 years, and I finally found my way back here last August.
That's what I've been telling people lately when the question of where I'm from comes up. I've noticed that this stock reply has undergone a subtle shift recently. I used to say: I grew up in the area, but I moved away for 27 years, and I found myself back here in August.
Did you catch the difference? I suppose that "finding my way back" as opposed to "finding myself back" reflects a growing sense of being at home. This place certainly didn't feel like home when I first got back. In the early days after my return I would say things like: "I thought I had escaped the orbit of South Louisiana, but here I am again."
When my family and I came back to the States last summer, we had been living in the Balkans for 13 of the last 16 years. We had lived in three different countries -- Albania, Kosova, and Macedonia -- but always among ethnic Albanians, and I had dedicated myself to learning the Albanian language, immersing myself in their lifestyle, and loving their food and their folk music. (Speaking of which here, here and here are some really cool songs.) One of the highest compliments anyone ever paid me was author Katherine Paterson's comment in an interview with Publisher's Weekly that when she saw my photos of Kosova, she knew that she had found someone who knew and loved the land and its people. When I imagined my future, I saw myself living among the Albanians for at least the rest of my working days if not the rest of my life.
Still, I never had any illusions of being truly "at home" there. Whenever an Albanian friend flattered me by saying, "You're one of us!" I received the compliment joyfully without ever believing for a moment that it was true. "I'll never really be Albanian," I used to say. "But after all these years living with Albanians, I'll never really quite be American either."
My wife Mary and I were both from Louisiana -- she from the northwest corner of the state and I from the southeast corner; but neither of us had much emotional attachment to the places we had grown up. In fact, both of us had been glad to put some distance between ourselves and our hometowns as soon as we graduated from high school.
Our kids, Lydia and Luke, had both grown up in Southeastern Europe. A year or two ago Luke asked me: "Dad, when people ask where I'm from, is it OK to just tell them 'New Orleans'?" He had never lived in New Orleans. (In fact, I had never actually lived in New Orleans -- more about that in a minute.) But Luke had become a big Saints fan, and he had decided that if he had to identify with some city, New Orleans would be his choice. I doubt that the thought of actually living in New Orleans had even occurred to him as a possibility. He was just looking for a convenient way to respond to a very common question, which for him and his sister had no simple answer.
We all loved our life in Macedonia, and none of us wanted to leave. However, the relationship between Mary and me had been crumbling over the last several years. We had traveled far and wide for counseling -- Akron, Ohio; Springfield, Missouri; Budapest, Hungary; and finally Seattle, Washington, where we took a six month leave in order to devote ourselves full-time to marriage therapy. After each of these trips we returned hopeful that our marriage was on the mend. By last summer it was clear to everyone around us that we were still struggling, and the leaders of the organization we worked for finally concluded that for our own sake and the sake of the work we were a part of, we needed to leave Macedonia where we were living at the time. When the word finally came down that we had to go home, we came face to face with the fact that we had no idea where home was.
Mary and I responded at first by looking for job opportunities that would allow us to continue to live in the Balkans, but we couldn't come up with anything in time. When it became apparent that we really had to return to the U.S., we sent emails to our parents and siblings saying: "We're coming back to the States, but we haven't picked a place. If you would like for us to live near you, feel free to make your pitch." One step removed from putting on a blindfold and throwing darts at a map.
My youngest sister replied to say that she and her husband had a house in Slidell, Louisiana that they were trying to sell. She would rent it to us at far less than the market value until it sold, which was likely to be several months. So based on this offer of a cheap and convenient place to live, we settled on Slidell, the town where I had grown up.
Suburb vs. City
These days when I'm riding the pedicab in the French Quarter, and I tell people "I grew up here in this area," I'm using language that is just vague enough to avoid an outright deception. In terms of sheer distance it's true that Slidell is not so far from New Orleans; but Lake Pontchartrain, the barrier between suburb and city, is no mere imaginary municipal line. The 30-some-odd mile commute requires traversing a featureless bridge across five miles of open water -- not to mention several miles of uninhabited marshland with the carcasses of road-killed alligators strewn alongside the freeway.
Slidell has virtually no industry of its own. It's often referred to as a "bedroom community" for people who work in the city but don't want to live there. The relationship between Slidell and New Orleans is best illustrated by a recent conversation with an acquaintance in which I was complaining about the lack of public transportation between the north and south shores of the lake. Given the large number of people making this commute every day, it was shocking to me that there was no way to get back and forth other than in a private car. The guy I was chatting with, who's a few years older than me and has lived in this area his whole life, said, "Well, you understand why, don't you? There have been attempts in the past, but Slidell and the other cities on the North Shore have always been against it. Not that they would mind being able to take a bus or train to New Orleans. But they don't want to provide an easy way for the undesirables from New Orleans to cross to the North Shore. You know, the crime and all that?..." I can't say for sure whether this explanation is accurate, but it rings true to me. For many of the inhabitants of the North Shore the lake serves as a security fence. Car ownership is a key that lets you cross the fence whenever you need to. (If you're picking up racial overtones here, you're probably on target.)
In my growing up years New Orleans was just foreign enough to be a little bit frightening, mysterious and thrilling. When I was in college, I got into the habit of bringing international students home with me for weekends and holidays, and I enjoyed taking them into the city and showing them around. The truth is I didn't know my way around all that much, but I could find the aquarium and the zoo and Cafe du Monde and the Superdome. Every time we made the trip, and we didn't get mugged and my car didn't get stolen or towed, I felt as though I had successfully completed some epic quest.
Returning to Slidell last August, things looked different. Having lived almost eight years in Kosova, what could be so scary about New Orleans? Mary and I disagreed about many things, but we agreed from the get-go that we weren't really the kind of people who wanted to live out our lives in the suburbs. My sister's house was a big blessing in a time of need, but from the beginning we decided that if we were going to live in southeast Louisiana, we wanted to get to the other side of the lake as soon as we could.
Something better than Sam's Club
Before we could think about moving, we had to find work. When people asked me how I ended up on the pedicab there are two distinct ways to answer. On the one hand, I found myself in a situation where I really didn't have a lot of other options. A couple of years earlier I had told our counselor in Budapest that as much as I loved my life and work in the Balkans, I was ready at any time to return to the States permanently for the sake of my marriage. "That's bullshit!" he told me. "You'd end up as a greeter at Sam's Club." (I figured that I might enjoy being a greeter at Sam's and that I'd probably be very good at it; but I had to admit that it would be hard to make enough money to take good care of my family.) As it turned out the counselor had a point. I ended up returning to the U.S. armed with a 23-year-old degree in journalism at a time when newspapers were going broke left and right and a highly specialized set of skills for which there was no market. (Know of an job openings for an albanologist anyone?) I sent out quite a few resumes but never heard back from anybody.
None of this is to suggest that becoming a pedicabbie was an act of desperation. When I saw the help-wanted ad, it looked to me like a dream job -- which turned out to be true more or less. (By the way, the timing of the whole thing was pretty close to perfect. We arrived back in the States in August.The very next month pedicabs were finally cleared to operate in New Orleans -- the conclusion of a two-and-a-half year legal battle. I didn't actually start the job till November, but I still manage to catch the industry in its infancy. I was among the first full-time pedicabbies in the city.)
When I first began pedicabbing, I knew next to nothing about the layout of the city. I didn't know how to find Frenchmen St. or Pat O'Brien's. Despite investing in a smart phone with GPS and a bluetooth headset, I managed to get myself into some pretty embarrassing situations in those early days. But it wasn't long before I was finding my way around like a native. After all, there's probably no better way to get intimately acquainted with an urban location than to spend days and nights riding the streets on a big trike for eight hours at a stretch.
Rediscovering my roots
Speaking of getting intimately acquainted, the more time I spent on the pedicab, the more I found myself captivated by the Crescent City. Despite the fact that I had never lived in New Orleans, it started to make sense to me that these streets would feel familiar. After all, my father had grown up here as had his father before him. My great grandfather had immigrated to New Orleans from Spain by way of Cuba. I hadn't really given it much thought before, but my roots were generations deep in the city's swampy soil.
Riding by the exquisite Le Pavillon Hotel on Poydras St., I remembered my dad having pointed it out to me when I was a kid. "That's where your grandfather used to work," he had said. I called him up to make sure that I remembered right. Turns out that my memory had served me well. It was called the Hotel Desoto back then, but it was the same location, same building, same Romanesque facade featuring fifteen-foot tall limestone statues. My grandfather, who died before I was born, used to sell tours there for a company called Gray Line. (Bike Taxi Unlimited, the pedicab company I work for, has a contract to provide transport for Gray Line guests.) I couldn't resist telling my passengers every time I dropped off or picked up at Le Pavillon: "My grandpa used to work here!"
On another occasion I was riding in the Garden District, and I suddenly recalled hearing my dad say that he grown up in that part of town. I called him to ask for the address. It turned out that he and his family had lived in two different Garden District houses. Later, when I had the time, I found the houses and photographed them. Both were shotgun houses tucked in among the antebellum mansions for which the Garden District is famous. In one of the houses, my father, his brother and their parents had lived together with two other families. Imagining three families living in such cramped conditions gave me a picture of the poverty in which my father was raised.
Immediately downriver from the French Quarter I discovered another utterly delightful neighborhood, the Marigny. In a conversation with my youngest sister (the one who provided us with the house and the only of my three siblings still living in the New Orleans area) I was telling her how enchanted I was with the Marigny, and she said, "You know that our great grandfather lived over there on Spain St. when he immigrated to New Orleans, right?" I hadn't known. It's possible that I had heard this fact before and hadn't found it worth remembering, but now I was intrigued. Just as with Le Pavillon, I began pointing the site out to my passengers as though they had actually signed up for a tour of the Crescent City Pedicabbie's ancestral homeland.
Postscript. Finding my way home as my home breaks apart
On Wednesday (day after tomorrow as I write this) my wife and I will finally be leaving my sister's house in Slidell and moving to New Orleans. After having shared our lives for 22 years, we will be sharing the moving truck on that day, but unfortunately, we will be unloading our belongings at two separate houses. It has finally become clear that our marriage is beyond repair. We have chosen to live just four blocks apart so that our children will continue to have the benefit of two parents.
Looking back over the last few months, I realize that I have relied on the pleasure of pedicabbing to help deaden the pain of seeing my marriage come to an end. And now, as I enter the next phase of my life minus Mary's companionship, I am seeking comfort in the Crescent City's warm embrace.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
My fame spreads
I predicted here that it was just a matter of time till I was being hounded by paparazzi. I wouldn't say that it's come to that quite yet (unless you count this one Amish woman), but my picture was published in a USA Today slideshow. Apparently being cycled around by the Crescent City Pedicabbie is one of the most romantic things to do in New Orleans. Here's the link. Flip through to picture number 9 to see me.
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