“I saw you rolling in on your bike,” said Hugh when I ran into him under the food tent where I was huddled against the ferocious rain.

“Yeah,” I said, “Another sucker.”

“It’s good,” he said. “You gotta to get soggy now and then.”

The block was lined with vintage motorcycles doing exactly that. “I hope my bike starts after this,” said another guy under the tent who was busy slathering mustard and ketchup onto a cheese covered hotdog.

During the worst of it, most people were crowded under the various tents but others continued to up and down the block, some covering their heads with newspapers or plastic bags, a few others carrying umbrellas, and others still resigned to being wet, hair matted, shoes saturated, carefree and soaked to the skin.

A band onstage finished up a song. “How you all doing?” said the singer. “Getting wet?” The sky yawned and the rain crashed down. “Goddammit.”

The band launched into another number despite imminent threat of electrocution. On the street in front of the stage, a group of people held a big blue tarp over their heads and danced.

The food tent was a hotspot — in both senses of the word — and too smoky and crowded to linger, so I headed to where, by far, the biggest crowd stood — inside Works Engineering, the motorcycle garage that was hosting. While eating my burger, I ran into a former garage-mate of mine, Patrick, who I hadn’t seen in over a year, maybe two. Although we haven’t really stayed in touch, we did trade emails a few months back, and so he knew about two my broken-bone motorcycle stories — about how I broke my foot last summer, and broke my arm six months after that. “About six months after breaking my arm,” I said, “I started getting really superstitious that something was going to happen again.”

“Ha, yeah, I don’t blame you. Such a crazy story, man. How are you doing though? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s all good.”

“Your bike’s looking good,” he said. “I saw it when you pulled in.”

“Yeah, thanks. You’d never know it had been hit, right? How about you? Did you come here on your Norton?”

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s parked at the other end of the block.”

Patrick had the insane good fortune of being gifted a Seventies Norton Commando by a fashion photographer h used to assist for. The photographer owned it, but never rode it, and Patrick was always very vocal with his admiration for the thing. One day, on Patrick’s birthday if I’m remembering the story correctly, the photographer surprised him by giving him the keys. Like mine, some crazy stories are a drag, while some crazy stories are too good to be true. But it is, and I’ve seen the bike. It wasn’t his only crazy story, though. He had a new one.

I asked him how the Norton was running.

“It’s been great,” he said. “I’ve been riding it a lot this summer. A funny thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I’d been riding around and was parked the bike on the street and this chick comes up to me and says, ‘Nice bike, is it yours?’ I’m like yeah, it’s mine. ‘Nice’ she says. I look up at her and she is just smokin’ hot, okay? She’s wearing a short little mini skirt, with legs that won’t quit. I’d guess she was maybe 22. And I mean, really, super cute, looks like a fucking model, okay? She asks ‘Will you take me for a ride?’ I hesitate. I couldn’t do it.”

He didn’t say why he couldn’t do it and I didn’t get a chance to ask. Something to do with his girlfriend, maybe? Who knows.

“So she’s all pouty disappointed,” he continued. “She tries to talk me into it. I’m like, give me your number and I’ll call you a call in a few days and I’ll take you for a ride then. Okay, she says, and we trade numbers.”

If some of my other friends had been telling this story, I might’ve tempered my vision of what this girl looked like with a bit of skepticism. But Patrick works as a professional photographer and has also assisted for some of the top fashion photographers in the city. In the world, in fact, having also lived and worked in Paris for a few years. Patrick is no slouch himself. He’s a good looking guy, in his mid-thirties, and it’s totally within the realm of possibilities that a young attractive model would hit on him –or at least ask him for a ride.

“So we go our separate ways, and I kind of forget all about it. A week or two later, I get a text message. It’ this chick. ‘What happened to my ride?’ she asks. Like I said, by this point I’d forgotten all about it, so I call her and say, can you be ready in an hour? Yes, she says, and tells me where to meet her. I get myself ready, get on the bike and head over to her place. She comes out of her apartment and, no lie, she’s even hotter than I remember. She gets on back of the bike and we ride around. I take here and there, just ride around town for an hour. Now, we haven’t said more than three words to each other. She just got on the bike and we rode. After a while we stop for a drink. So we’re sitting at a table, making small talk when I notice she has this tattoo on her arm. I couldn’t really tell what it was, just some kind of design. I’m trying to come up with things to say, so I ask her about it. She tells me it’s in memory of her father. ‘My father dies three months ago.’ Oh man, wow, well I’m sorry to hear about that, I say. What happened? She says, ‘He died in a motorcycle accident.”

“Wow,” I said. “Was she working out some issues or what?”

“I know, totally. So we finish our drinks, I drop her off at home and that was that. I felt kind of like I was operating some kind of door to door motorcycle rides service.”

“I’ve had girls ask me for rides before,” I said. “One time I was on the street just outside my apartment — I used to live across the street from this restaurant and when it was nice out, people would hang out in front of the place. Waitresses and their friends. Shit like that. Anyway, this chick comes over and says, ‘My friend over there wants a ride.’ I look over to where she’s pointing and there’s this beautiful young girl in a sundress sitting on the sidewalk. She waves. I wave back. ‘Will you give her a ride?’ he friend asks. ‘I can’t,” I said. ‘Oh c’mon, just around the block?’ I gave her every excuse I could think of — that I didn’t have a spare helmet, that the girl’s little dress wouldn’t protect her legs from getting burned on my bike’s high pipes. Of course the real reason was that we were standing directly under my apartment window and if my darling wife happened to look outside, well, let’s just say that we would definitely need two helmets.”

The Hot Rod show held under the BQE every year was held the previous day — much nicer weather for that, unfortunately. I mean, the bike show was an open air block party while the car show was under the shelter of the elevated highway. It would’ve been nice if the weather had been the other way around, but so what? The rain was kind of fun and it didn’t keep too many people away — the beer still ran out by mid-afternoon ad the food followed soon after.

This Sunday is the annual vintage motorcycle show/barbecue/party and general good time.

Click for details.

There will be a test. Attendance is mandatory.

Did I mention there will be free beer?

Photos by Jason

I rode with Jason and Maqui in Jason’s ratmobile to Carlstadt New Jersey to pick up as many cases of Ashai beer as would fit in the the cargo hold. Jaon told me he was picking up Maqui in front of Works Engineering — the motorcycle garage that’s hosting the show — at 1 PM and told me to meet him there. He was fashionable late, however, and didn’t arrive until about 2. Maqui, who I had not met before, was there on time, sitting in a folding chair in front of the garage, juggling her laptop and iPhone, trying to get ahold of various vendors and sponsors. I introduced myself and pulled up a folding chair next to her. Erik, owner of Works Engineering, was there, too. He was rolling his eight year old son up and down the street in a handtruck. His son was wearing his father’s motorcycle boots and helmet, and was strapped in with greasy blue tie-downs.

While sitting there, a shirtless old man rode up on a rickety bicycle decorated with dingy plastic flowers and asked in a creaky northern european accent if he could borrow a wrench. He wiggled his front wheel to show us what he needed it for. “Ask the guy over there,” I said, pointing to Erik.

The guy looked at Erik, who was at the moment rolling his son up and over a skateboard ramp that someone had built against the building.

“Just need it for a moment” the man said.

“I understand,” I said, “but you need to ask him.”

He became obviously frustrated that I wasn’t more accommodating and seemed to think I was giving him the run around.

“Can’t you get me one?” he pleaded. “Just a wrench, for just one minute.”

“This isn’t my garage, I don’t work here,” I said. “Ask him, I’m sure he will help you.”

A minute or two later, Erik rolled his son over to us and listened as the old man explained his problem. Erik unstrapped his son from the hand truck and went about helping the old guy out.

Erik’s son followed his father into the garage and came back out on a skateboard. He was a little unsteady on it and held onto the arm of my folding chair, as he rolled back and forth. “Can you skateboard?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Do you have a skateboard?”

It seemed a funny question to ask. If I didn’t skateboard, why would I own one? But I do.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you ride it?”

“Because I’m no good at it, and these days I’m liable to break an arm if not my neck.”

“Wat color is it?” he asked.

“It has a drawing of sharks on the bottom, It’s kind of gold and gray and white.”

“Can I have it?”

I actually considered it for a moment. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Just because.”

Eventually, Jason rolled up in his van, Maqui and I piled in, and we headed to the Ashai beer warehouse in New Jersey.

“Can you thread the needle?” Jason asked the forklift operator who drove out of the warehouse with a full palette of beer. Jason was hoping the operator could load the palette directly into the back of the van, which would’ve made our the job a cinch, but the operator just laughed, shook his head and said, “No, no. I put here,” he said, and we went about the job of moving the cases one by one.

Once we finished the job, and other warehouse worker came out to see what we were up to. Jason gave him a flier and said, “Motorcycle show. Do you ever go to New York?”

“Sure, sure.” he nodded, looking at the flier.

“Free beer,” he said.

The guy looked up from the flier and into the packed van.

“Vintage motorcycles, live music, free beer, pretty girls, you can’t go wrong.”

“I like to go, but this weekend no good. I go to Hushypahk.”

“Hushypahk?” I said.

“Hushypahk, Hushypahk,” he said.

“Oh, Hershey Park.”

“Yes, Hushypahk. I have resuhvashun.”

“Well cancel it,” said Jason. “You can go to Hershey Park some other time.”

“No, no. I have resuhvashun inside in Hushypahk.”

“The hotel is inside the park?” I said.

“Yes, yes. Inside park.”

“Family vacation. Hotel in Hushypahk. Three hundred fifty dollah.”

“Three fifty bucks? Per night?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Holy smokes.”

He returned his attention to the flier.

“Oh well, family is family,” said Jason. “Maybe next year.”

“Next year, yes, next year.”

By the way, I love Jason’s van. He bought it for 500 bucks to take his vintage dirk bike on a trail ride in New Jersey. The New Jersey trip didn’t work out quite as he had hoped, for a variety of reasons, but regardless, I think he’s more than gotten his 500 dollars out of it. Come to think of it, I think he had to put a couple of hundred dollars worth of repair into it, but still. He told me he drove it to a Pep Boys to buy some oil or something like that, and one of the mechanics came running out of the garage. “Nice van,” the mechanic said. “How much you want for it?”

“I told him I’d think about it,” Jason said. “But I’m probably going to take his offer.”

“Your father and I got engaged in Atlantic City,” my mother informed us over dinner, when Deborah and I stopped at my parent’s house on our way to America’s Favorite Playground. I guess you could say that if it weren’t for Atlantic City, I might not be here.

We pulled into town at noon but since we couldn’t check into our hotel until 4PM, we decided to drive around and explore the town. Boarded up buildings, crumbling facades, houses for sale, vacant lots where little kids played on mounds of sand dotted with broken glass like sprinkles on a melting ice cream cone. I pulled over at a pharmacy so Deborah could buy some sunblock. I waited in the parking lot, sweating my balls off in the car, waving off one guy after another as they wandered up to my window asking for spare change. It took Deborah nearly a half hour to emerge from the store.

“What took so long?” I asked.

But she didn’t get a chance to answer me. “Ugh, this stuff smells awful. Smell it,” she said, waving the bottle of sunblock under my nose. “I’ve bought this brand before. I don’t remember it ever smelling like this. I think it’s bad.”

It smelled like liquid plastic — as if the bottle had been melted down and poured into another bottle. We were on the outskirts of town, away from the casinos and resorts, where, judging from all the weather-worn faces, no one used much sun block. “I’m sure it’s really old,” I said. “But it beats paying 20 dollars for a bottle of the stuff on the boardwalk.” That might’ve been true, if Deborah didn’t throw the bottle away after slathering a handful on her shoulder and getting ill from the smell. She smelled like a chachka for the rest of the day. Or at least until we checked into the hotel and hit the pool.

We relaxed poolside for the rest of the afternoon until it was time for our dinner reservation — the first of three restaurants Deborah chose for her birthday celebrations. We stuffed ourselves to oblivion with a multi-course tasting menu at a delicious, if somewhat hokey, Cuban chain restaurant on the second floor of the Tropicana called Cuba Libre. In fact, we got so stuffed that we cancelled our reservation for seafood the following night because our stomachs still felt like ripe watermelons 24 hours later.

Instead of eating at another fancy restaurant, we ate at a cheap-o depot called Country Kitchen or something like that. We sat next to a table of five women, each heavier than the next, including one in a wheelchair with an oxygen tube running up her nose who easily weighed four hundred pounds. Most of our fellow tourists — the ones we passed on the boardwalk, or saw camped out in front of slot machines — were card carrying members of the current obesity epidemic, so I might not have paid them any attention if, as they were finishing their dinner, the one in the wheelchair didn’t say, “I want to get wings later.” She hadn’t even finished swallowing her last bite, let alone digesting it, and she was already planning her next meal. “Mmm, yes,” the lady next to her said, while the others slurped their Cokes and grunted in agreement.

“I’m done,” I said, and pushed away my plate of half-eaten hamburger.

We passed the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum which was made to look like a building that had been struck by a giant model of Earth. The globe was stuck in the facade and the entire building was frozen mid collapse. “That might be funny,” I said, “If we didn’t see buildings all around town that actually looked like that.”

The entire Boardwalk is roughly five miles long and the next morning we rented bicycles and rode to the southernmost end — the high falootin’ side of town where the buildings that look like people might actually live in them are. We would’ve turned around and ridden to the north end, too, except that we were being charged 8 dollars an hour for the bikes. There was a group of homeless guys sitting on a bench near where we returned the bicycles after our ride. Two white guys and a black guy. The two white guys looked exactly alike, like twin hobo surfers with long bleach blonde hair and leathery skin. Both quite handsome, honestly. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but judging from their conversation one of the guys was considerably older than the other. “I’m an ugly old man,” one said to the other, “But you, you’re lucky, you still got your looks going for you.”

We hung poolside, laid on the beach, ate crappy seaside resort food, rode beach cruisers down the boardwalk and gambled away our pennies, so what else was there to do but check out the amusements on historic Steel Pier.

Back in the day, my mother’s cousin used to ride a diving horse into a pool of water on Steel Pier. These days the famed amusement pier isn’t nearly as amusing. Other than a helipad at the end of the pier where you can rent helicopter rides up and down the shoreline for forty bucks per person, the only other thing for adults to do was a small ferris wheel, and a thing called “The Rocket.” A bungee contraption where two people sat side by side in a round cage and were flung skyward at a million miles an hour. 20 bucks each for that thrill. We sat on a bench and watched two guys get strapped into the cage. When they were hurled into the sky and twirled head over heels over several times, I said that if we did that, “Everything would fall out of my pockets.”

“Never mind that,” said Deborah. “Everything would fall out of my stomach…And my bladder…And my ass.”

The Rocket, Steel Pier Atlantic City from Jamie Boud on Vimeo.

Don’t ask me why this struck me so funny, it just did. On our way back to the hotel, passing various casinos, restaurants, massage parlors, boarded up stores, souvenir shops, and so on, we saw several billboards for an upcoming show by Barry Manilow. Judging by the billboards, Barry Manilow has dropped the Barry and is going by simply “Manilow.” I guess, unlike Cher or Madonna, his first name isn’t unique enough. I tried to imagine, if we saw signs for “Barry” if we would’ve known who it was. In a place like Atlantic City? Probably.

There seem to be a lot of Russians working in Atlantic City — waitresses, sales clerks, etc. — so it was funny that when we went to a place called “Red Square” for Deborah’s second birthday dinner, we didn’t have a Russian waiter or waitress. Instead, we were served by a classic Jersey Boy. “Howyazdoin’ tonight? Can I start yuz out with some Vodka?”

After looking over the menu and hearing about the specials — sixty-five dollars for this, seventy dollars for that — the seven course tasting menu sounded like a bargain for fifty-five bucks each. But we got snookered. Although the tasting menu came with a “wine pairing” that included four glasses of wine, nowhere on the menu did it warn us that the wine pairing was extra. Eight glasses of wine between us cost more than the food. Hello credit card, howzyadoin?

Atlantic City from Jamie Boud on Vimeo.

Well, at least we weren’t escorted into a back room to get our kneecaps broken, but we did nearly get tossed out of the Hilton for taking pictures. “No pitch-uhs in hea,” said the gruff eighty-something security guard to Deborah who had just popped her point and shoot at a string of slot potatoes and was setting her focus on what was by far the best people-watching-sighting of the entire trip: A guy looking a lot like Hunter S. Thompson in a Hawaiian shirt, Aviator sunglasses, a straw fedora, polyester slacks with a wide leather belt and white loafers, with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth, was pushing a woman we assumed was his wife, who also had a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She had clip on sunglasses over her regular glasses, a curly brown wig, a brightly colored shawl, pale blue slacks and a stack of bills in her lap. The security guard got in the way before Deborah had time to fire the shutter.

“Are you serious?” said Deborah.

“No camruhs, no pitch-uhs. Put it away.”

“Why?” she asked, but wasn’t given an answer.

“Put it away or you’ll hafta leave.”

Nothing on earth is as disorienting as a casino, elaborate carpets in a maze of pathways through flashing lights and ringing bells, and by the time Deborah put her camera away, we lost track of the wheelchair couple.

“Where’d they go?”

“I think they went that way.”

“We lost ‘em.”

“Damn.”

I’m not much of a gambler. The one time I ever had any luck at a Blackjack table, I was suspected of counting cards. I was only up a couple of hundred bucks but because I was being fidgety with my fingers a floorman tipped off the pit boss and I was suddenly surrounded by goons in black suits. The funny thing is, I couldn’t count cards if my life depended on it. What they were witnessing wasn’t an math whiz keeping track of the deck, but simply a guy who needs his fingers to count 8 plus 7.

So Deborah and I didn’t gamble much. Sure, we gambled some. It was impossible to walk through the casinos without being seduced by the subliminal messages that are rumored to be mixed with the music pumping over the loudspeakers, but it only takes losing as little as 20 bucks for me to start cursing Donald Trump’s toupee. I couldn’t help thinking, “Why am I handing over my money to billionaires?” Though, to be fair, I ask the same question about my phone bill every month.

Fortunately we stayed in a non-gaming hotel, so we weren’t forced through all the flashing toll booths to reach our room.

Just because we didn’t gamble much, doesn’t mean we didn’t get ripped off. Living in New York, you’d think I’d be used to paying too much for things, but even after I started increasing my already bloated price predictions by buck or two, I still continued to be sticker shocked at every turn. (I still feel dumb for not taking the time to find an ATM that didn’t change a $4.50 service fee, but who knows if one even existed?) Adopting a “What the hell, we’re on vacation,” attitude is precisely what tourist traps prey on, but what else can you do?

The weekend’s only real bargain was our hotel room. I’ve paid more for a musty, smoke-stained flea bags in the middle of nowhere than we did for an ocean view at The Chelsea. As long as we didn’t touch the mini bar we were safe. “They screw themselves with their greed,” said Deborah when we came back to the room one night. “They could easily charge five bucks for a bottle of water and still make a good profit — and right now, I’m thirsty enough that I’d break down and pay five bucks for that water — but seven fifty? No fucking way. Uh uh.” We didn’t even bother checking the prices of anything else in the mini bar, the candy bars, the pretzels, the beers, wine or champagne. Until the following night when Deborah wanted to pop the cork on a 35 dollar bottle of five dollar wine. “It’s my birthday,” she said. Which was almost true. Deborah’s birthday is actually on August 14th, today. But that didn’t stop her from getting a dessert with candles three nights in a row. (Four, if you count the dinner we had with my parents, who happen to live less than an hour north of Atlantic City.) Birthday dinner details to come.

—————————————————
The fantasy:

The reality:

—————————————————

End of Part I.
Stay tuned…

I’m not sure exactly what prompted the last minute change of plans, but we somehow decided to drive to New Jersey instead of Long Island for a little beachside R&R. As we sat nearly motionless in a freshly paved glue trap on the Garden State Parkway, I began second guessing the switch. “Whatever,” said Deborah, “there’d be traffic no matter what. Besides, we’re in no hurry.”

Off the Parkway and onto Rt 36, things didn’t get any better. Only ten miles from the park’s entrance, we sat in traffic moving 10 miles per hour. Construction delays, the signs warned, though there didn’t seem to be any workers or backhoes of dump trucks anywhere. Just miles and miles of cars lined up as if evacuating a disaster area.

“I guess we should’ve left earlier,” said Deborah.

“It’s going to be a bitch trying to get back into this mess, but I need to get gas,” I said, and pulled into a service station.

“Whatdaya need?” the gruff white-haired, ruddy-faced attendant asked. He looked to be in his sixties, though his weather-worn skin may have been misleading. He was wearing navy blue chinos and a light blue polo shirt.

“Fill it with regular, please” I said.

He lifted the nozzle, and jammed it into the tank with enough force to shake the whole truck. “Heading to the beach?” he said as he pumped.

“Yeah.” A beach umbrella and a couple of chairs in the truck’s bed, and Deborah in a bikini must’ve given us away.

“Staten Island? You guys from Staten Island?” I suppose he’d seen the New York license plates on our truck and assumed we’d driven from the closest borough.

“No,” I said.

“Where yas from?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Hmph. They don’t have any beached in Brooklyn?”

“Um, yeah, they have beaches in Brooklyn,” I said.

“Then why’d you drive all the way out here for?”

Maybe because this is America, and I have a car, I wanted to say. “I don’t know. For a little variety, I guess. Besides, I grew up in New Jersey and old habits die hard.”

“You grew up in New Jersey?” The fact seemed to take a little edge off of his attitude, but he was suspicious. “Where?” he said.

“New Providence.” He didn’t seem to have ever heard of it. I wasn’t surprised; it’s not a very big town. “My parent’s live in Barnegat,” I added, to give myself a little shoreline cred. He was unimpressed. I think the only thing that would’ve satisfied him was if I came from the same town as he did, or at least from a town whose high school football team played his high school’s team.

“You goin’ to Sandy Hook?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You gonna keep your clothes on?”

As I’ve written about before, Sandy Hook has a nude beach. I guess he figured if we were bothering to drive all the way from Brooklyn, it was probably to hit the nude beach. He might’ve been right, but we hadn’t decided. “Yeah, we’re gonna keep our clothes on,” I said. “Well, not all of ‘em. It is a beach after all.”

By the time our tank was full, he was convinced enough that we weren’t a couple of perverted New York City weirdos to give us a little friendly advice: “Sea Bright is a nicer beach,” he said. “It’s where the locals go. Sandy Hook, is like the fuckin’ League of Nations, know what I’m saying.”

Yeah, I think I did.

“Did you hear me when I said we live in Brooklyn?”

“Pfft,” he said, rolling his eyes as he handed me my change. “Good luck.”

We pulled out of the gas station and into the line of traffic, which had thankfully picked up its pace. “If by ‘locals’ he means Sea Bright is where his likeminded cronies go, then I’m not interested.”

In fact, we headed to the clothing optional beach, just on principal. It turned out to be not such a great idea, but that’s another story for another day.

How hot was it? It was so hot, entire buildings were melting.

I had a hard time enticing Deborah to come outside with me. She wanted to stay inside our air conditioned apartment and study Portuguese. “I’ve been slacking off,” she said, which may or may not be true.

“You can study later,” I said. “Let’s go for a bicycle ride.”

“Ugh, it so hot.”

“We don’t have to go far. We can ride to DUMBO and get a couple of those Lobster Rolls I was telling you about.”

“No.”

The lobster rolls are sold in the Brooklyn Bridge park at a little stand that serves as an outpost for a place called “The Lobster Pound” in Red Hook with a website that claims their lobsters taste more lobstery. I saw the little stand on a bicycle ride last weekend and although I didn’t stop to try one, or even to see what they looked like, the idea of eating lobster rolls in the park sounded like a nice way to spend a couple of hours.

“Where is this place again?” said Deborah.

“It’s right in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. A ten minute ride. C’mon, let’s go.”

A few minutes waiting for Deborah to get dressed and we were on our way. But when we got there, the lobster stand wasn’t open.

“They’ll be here around one o’clock,” the guy at the ice cream booth told us.

In case you haven’t heard, the Brooklyn waterfront is undergoing a major transformation. Most of it is still under construction, but areas have begun to open up. We wanted to sit in one of the new parts, but, unfortunately, the trees there are new, too, and too young to offer much shade so we backtracked to the area under the Brooklyn Bridge and found a nice shady tree near the water to sit and wait for the lobster shack to open.

We watched a few parents take their kids into a nearby playground when Deborah spied the playground’s sprinkler. “Whoa, a sprinkler! I’ll be right back.”

Technically, you’re not supposed to go into the playground unless you’re with a kid, but it was too hot for Deborah to resist. I waited under the tree with our bikes while Deborah frolicked in the sprinkler for a few minutes.

“Ah, so nice,” she said when she returned, refreshed. “Don’t they realize adults like sprinklers, too? Why don’t they set up sprinklers around town for the grown ups…why do kids get to have all the fun?”

Probably because adult sprinklers would turn into homeless showers, although that might not be such a bad thing. Or is it? I can’t decide.

Soon enough it was one o’clock and we headed back to the lobster shack for a shocker:

“$16.50? They have got to be fucking kidding!”

I had stupidly assumed that the prices would only be slightly ridiculous not utterly absurd. “That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s a fucking tourist trap,” said Deborah. “There’s no way. Let’s go.”

I bicycle along Manhattan’s West Side bike path from time to time and recently, on a similarly hot day, I ran out of water. I stopped at a hot dog cart near the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum to buy a bottle of Poland Spring, the bottled water of choice among hot dog vendors. “Three dollars,” the vendor said. My first thought was to topple his cart and spill his rancid hot dog water all over the pavement, leaving his hot dogs to dry in the sun like worms after a rainstorm, but I resisted and instead dropped my jaw and then dropped the cash, forking over the three bucks and riding away a sucker. Albeit a re-hydrated and refreshed one. But you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em and $16.50 for a lobster roll was out of the question. “Let’s blow this clam bake,” I said. “Er, I mean lobster shack.”

We decided to continue on our merry way, but unfortunately we had lobster rolls on the brain and couldn’t stop thinking about them so, after riding around just a little longer, we began to scheme alternatives.

There’s a quasi-gourmet market in the first floor of our apartment building that, lucky for us, has a fresh fish counter. “Do they carry lobster meat?” I wondered

“No,” said Deborah. “I’m pretty sure they don’t.”

“How about crabmeat?”

“Hmm…I think they might. It’s not quite the same thing, though.”

“No, I guess not, but it’s close.

“Yeah. Close enough.”

We biked homeward, stopped at the market, and bought all our supplies for making a half dozen crab rolls — crabmeat, celery, chives, tomato, lettuce, mayonnaise, buns, as well as a full bag of potato chips and two freshly made frozen mocha drinks — for less money than two $16.50 lobster rolls would have.

“Fuck that place,” said Deborah. “If I’m going to pay tourist-trap prices, I’m going to wait until I’m a fucking tourist somewhere.”

I’m tempted to sign up for this class just to see what they’re teaching and who they’re teaching it to. Then again, I guess I wasn’t that curious, since I didn’t even bother to take one of the free catalogs.

I need a new hobby.

In other news, Deborah won her suit against her non-paying client. Since the case was heard by an Arbitrator rather than a Judge, there is no appealing the decision and the woman is required to pay up within thirty days. We’ll see. Deborah contacted the woman, as suggested on the back of the judgement slip, but she hasn’t heard back. I have a feeling it’s not going to be as easy as that, but Deborah is determined to see it through, whatever it takes.

It would be nice to get the money in time to blow it all in Atlantic City, where Deborah and I are going for Deborah’s birthday in a couple of weeks. I’m not sure why we chose to celebrate in Atlantic City, other than the fact that it’s so close — although, that was never reason to go before. (I’ve only been to Atlantic City once in my entire life.) Las Vegas is a couple of thousand miles away and I’ve been there more often. Then again, I’ve never been to Las Vegas as a destination in and of itself, either — only as a brief layover on my way to Utah or Death Valley or some other remote desert location with the intention of getting away from all the nonsense represented by places like Las Vegas. Still, I’m determined not to think about things too much and just have a good time. Either way: photo ops up the yin yang.