ROAD BLOCKS We’ve had a temporary setback in the tour. Jefferson contracted bad strep throat and completely lost his voice on Tuesday. Tuesday through Thursday night shows were all cancelled and the band changed their plane reservations and all went home yesterday. There is another artist who has been sharing my “van accommodations” so I stayed in the city to drive his gear to their shows last night and will tonight. I won’t face that ever-lovin’ Holland Tunnel until Friday morning when I start for Nashville, some sense of decency, the hope of a better life, no tolls, normal traffic patterns, friendly human beings, clean-smelling air, food priced within a $100,000 budget, everything on one or two floors and my car. Yesterday I drove the van over to Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge. It took ten minutes to maneuver the six blocks southeast on Canal, cross the bridge, travel down Flatbush Blvd and arrive at the venue location on Washington Ave. Because they had the van unloaded by 4 and had to play until midnight, I decided to go back to the hotel instead of hanging around for 8 hours. Another WRONG move. I have found it interesting that nothing is ever “the same” on this trip. Maybe it’s the city. Maybe it’s this trip. Maybe it’s just me. Living in Nashville you can count on “the same” every single day. Here “the same” only refers to the same smell, the same mechanical smiles on the employees in the lobby and the bazillion people on the sidewalks. According to Mapquest and my GPS, it was only 4.5 miles to the venue from the Sheraton. That was the case going when I arrived in ten minutes flat. When one drives in a city like New York, he better take note of what’s around him and streets because sometimes the GPS decides to take a small vacation in between the tall buildings. So when I left, I made my way back down Flatbush Blvd, crossed the bridge and discovered road barricades everywhere… CONSTRUCTION! That dreaded concept we fear on the interstate is nothing compared to the sudden panic one feels when he sees road blocks in the way of the only route one is familiar with. The hair on the back of your neck begins to tingle and your BP begins to skyrocket. I could not take the first left onto Canal and had to veer right down Christi Street, smack dab between Chinatown and Little Italy, ordinarily no big deal. The next four streets to the left were also blocked. It was a city road crew pow wow and one meant to take me all over the lower part of Manhattan as a party favor. I finally was able to take a left on Delancey which I figured would take me over to Broadway where I could backtrack but it doesn’t. It stops at Cleveland Place where you take a left and then an immediate right over to Broadway but since Miss Thang on the GPS was still screaming “RE-CALCULATE! RE-CALCULATE! I unplugged her and threw her into the floorboard. I won’t go into all this here because you’ve heard my traffic reports before. Suffice it to say, rush hour in Manhattan is just as bad as they say. To me it seems like rush hour 24 hours a day. What took me ten minutes going… took me two hours and fifteen minutes coming back!! I walked into the lobby, handed the keys to the first bellhop, headed for the bar and downed a very strong martini before playing around in the elevator for twenty more minutes because, yet-again, my elevator/room key was malfunctioning, going to the desk for a new one, finally making it back to the 9th floor to spy a housekeeping cart right outside my door and a little Chinese woman, grinning at me from ear to ear, bowing repeatedly and saying, “OOH WUUM? OOH WUUM?” All I could do was smile, feebly and nod. She said, “I KEEN! I KEEN!” I smiled back and said, “YOU KEEN! I GO BACK TO BAR!!
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:28:59 +0000
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