Letter
“E” is for Entrepreneurs, but not the kind like, oh say, Donald
Trump and his ilk. No, these are the street entrepreneurs that pop up
just about any old place. All you need is a blue tarp, probably left
behind by FEMA, after one of our many hurricanes in 2004, something
to drape said blue tarp upon and if you don't have any aluminum tent
framing, a bunch of 1x1 sticks duct-taped together, or a 40-foot
ladder that you bought from 4 guys one night, MAY work, but you'll
have to be damned clever to pull that off, and a spot to set up shop.
This is kind of what our street Entrepreneurs look like, only not as prosperous. They usually have a card table, with a very small selection of crappy CDs, and crappy dresses, maybe. But, they're just starting out.
Usually
giving 5 bucks a day to some gas station or one of the festering
eye-sores' parking lots, that we refer to as “strip malls” with
their mostly-closed stores, or “antique” shops that are mainly
picked-over junk from Goodwill boxes that the bums didn't even want
will serve as your spot to conduct business.
And
boy, howdy, do we have a selection of goodies to tempt even the most
jaded shopper. CDs that are a bunch of randomly mixed ghetto hip-hop
generated on a Casio, with an electronic drum loop. The lyrics go
something like this: “Yo... yo, yo... Bang! Bang!” (Repeat eleventy-billion times) And we're all
excited to hear the dance version that goes on for like, fifty
minutes. Most of these CDs are ripped off from some other ripped off CD and are chock-full-o-bugs. So, you can count on having to call
your local computer geek (that's ME!) to get your shit fixed, so that
you're not always getting that crappy FBI page and nothing else when
you boot up your laptop.
I found this on the sidewalk. The entire playable side is totally scratched up, so I never tried to play it, but you gotta love the title. Also, the first time I tried to insert JUST this picture of the CD, it boogered up my blog post, so you gotta know this thing is just chock-full-o-bugs!
The
TPD keeps an eye on these budding moguls because they also sell Spice
which has been known to have the nasty side-effect of causing the
user to eat other people's faces, and they also are supposed to have
some sort of license to sell their goods if they are not selling from
home. I'm going to take a wild leap here and guess that our budding "The Donalds" don't have homes to sell from. When you talk to them,
they often mention that they're opening a new franchise somewhere
else, but they are kinda iffy on the details on “the somewhere
else” part.
This is the Velvet John Wayne picture I saw at the street Entrepreneur's "shop" the day I visited. I'm not sure what period of The Duke's career this is supposed to represent, or if it is a catch-all for all of his many phases; The Quiet Man, The Conqueror (Mongolian Cowboy), True Grit, or the War Wagon. The Duke also seems to be missing his right eye, or maybe the artist got tired and needed a lie-down before completing his masterpiece. We will have to content ourselves with guessing, which also may have been part of the artist's intent.
The
ones who have stepped up their game are also selling crappy dresses
for 10.00 a pop and God Forbid, painted velvet rugs, ever so classy,
somewhere. They offer painted tigers and Jesuses, and John Waynes, which look nothing like the real John Wayne,
nor are they even vaguely humanoid. I had to ask the proprietor, out on
the corner of Hillsborough Avenue and Nebraska Avenue if I was
looking at early Picasso. He had no clue as to what I was talking
about, but he did ask me if I would like to buy some Spice. I said,
“Hell no, I'm tripping bad enough on this painting. What or who is
this?” He rummaged around and looked at the back of it, “Is John
Wayne. Famous American Cowboy!”
I
passed on the John Wayne and all the crappy dresses and the horrible
CDs. But it's fun to go and see these guys. The following week, his
little shop had moved elsewhere. I wish him prosperity and luck with
his endeavors, but lose the Spice, dewd. It's dangerous!
