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jack_babalonThe bike trail is technically shut down from dusk 'til dawn. I'm sure this is to cut down on the recent rash of drug dealers & pimps who have been operating off of their 10 speeds in an effort to answer the Presidents call to conserve fuel. I for one would like to thank "T-Bone","Kid Money","Nasty Slice" & his girls for doing their patriotic duty in this time of national crisis (also "Kid Money" is you're reading this I get paid on Friday so there should be no need to break my kneecaps on Saturday).
Anyway here it is dark as hell and i'm on the part of the trail that cuts across Virginia Highland. I've just reattached my chain after avoiding what could have been a rather nasty spill over a pack of feral lap dogs that burst out of the bushes yipping at me. This is where the trail runs parallel to North Avenue and I don't know what they were exactly but there were six of them at least, and none of them could have been any bigger than a cat but there they were, mean, pissed off & little. I bobbed & weaved through them, and figured I could burst out a little speed and lose them. That's when I realized I shifted gears too eraticly and was pedaling without a chain. Luckily I was on a downhill slope and had some decent speed still going so I just glided as fast as I could while they pursued me, yapping at my heels all the way until I reached Euclid Avenue, were for fear of these frou-frou hellhounds I bolted through oncoming traffic and somehow made it safely across without being maimed. I turn around and see them sulking off and for some reason I feel like Indiana Jones escaping the Pygmie Dogs of Little Five. I needed a cigarette so I walked my bike to the above mentioned intersection for maintenance & nicotine. I've got my baby up and running, granted the batterys dead on the front light and the rear tires gonna need some air soon but I should be good for the next few miles. That's when I see them. A series of bright white headlights, swerving left and right down the trail behind me. Too slow to be a scooter and too eratic to be a fellow bicyclist. Then I see the lead light and figure it out. It's a group of rollerbladers and they're wearing helmets with little flashlights attached, from here they look like the ghosts of coalminers coming back for some Scooby Doo bullshit. I let them get closer. I let my imagination take over. I smile and flick out my cigarette when the first 'blader becomes visible in his spandex, coalminer helmet and goggles.
"ROLLER ZOMBIES!!!!" I yell at the top of my lungs (and it's Atlanta so no one really listens to you when you scream). The lead blader looks around him confused as his 'gang' starts to catch up. I hop on my bike, the light turns green and I yell again "You'll never catch me alive". They seem a little confused but they're getting closer...closer...NOW!!!... and I fly across Virginia, maneuvering through the parked cars blocking the ped-X-walk. I take the first hill and can see them a few dozen yards behind me, most of them got caught up with the traffic but the alpha blader is on my ass, he either knows i'm racing him or just wants to know why I called him a "Roller Zombie" either way, i'm outta here me! I take the corner pretty fast, but so does he, he's zig-zagging himself some serious momentum but I got a secret weapon- raw desperation. I stand up on my bike and yell back "Scotty I need Warp Speed or we're all dead" and I pump those pedals harder than Ron Jeremy on a Viagra-Coke Cocktail bender. I fire forward up the hill and hit a down slope, I look behind me and see the little coal miner helmet lights recede but the alpha blader is in it to win it like Chris Rock, he's got something prove. I love when people have something to prove... I hop off the trail and hit the Jimmy Carter Center parking lot. I pull up behind a dumpster and kill my rear blinker. I'm panting, sweating like a pig and giggling. I keep an eye on the trail and pray i've developed sufficient Ninja Skills... or else I guess they'll have to chase me around the Carter center all night. I count backward from 20 and the first one arrives on 12. He slows down, pivots, looks around. He looks over towards the Center and I press myself against the dumpster. I can see the spotlight scanning the park cars and bushes around me. He's good, i'll give him that, he's got the instincts but i've got experience. I hear a bunch of voices now a muffled conversation. Laughter. He probably told them about me and our little impromptu race and they probably thought he was just being a dick. I hear the conversation fade away and I risk a peek around the dumpster. There they go, fading down the hill, I ride back to the trail and stay behind them and then I drift off the trail and ride down to John Wesley Dobbs Rd. I just love that name, it sounds so Southern & Lovecraftian at the same time. "John Wesley Dobbs and the gibbering horror that crawled out of Fulton". From there I take a series of side roads and bridges that lead me to Little Five Points. I glide up Euclid and pull in right by the mural by 7 Stages. My favorite part of this mural is the giant portrait of the singer/activist Paul Robeson, dressed in the uniform of an admiral (from Showboat maybe?). There is a qoute of his bannered above his countenace that reads:I must do what the farmer does. Feed the people with my songs. I spread my arms out wide and read that qoute outloud. Letting the words echo down the alleyway to lend them the weight of a reverberating bass. By now you can gather that I seem to talk to myself a lot , but living in the South has taught me that I can say whatever I want because people only listen to me when i'm talking about someone else. I have the freedom of the marginalized, the invincibility of the invisible. I lower my arms and go down the alley and into the rear parking lot. There I see it. Another mural but this one has NINJAs! It's painted along the wall behind the gas station on Moreland, right by where the recycling dumpsters for Sevanada used to be. It's done in the fluid style of graffite & manga tags. There is a swarm of ninjas, cresting like a wave, little slashes of eyes appearing out of their darkened hoods. There is a Samurai Demon warrior, armored, ugly & glorious ready to face them. To the left there is a giant mechanized robot thingy as well. Looking like a cubist anime, if there were such things as cubist animes. I swear if I only had a digital camera and some of my friends eye for setting up shots and working with light. I could do a whole book on the tags & pieces thrown up around town. Oh well, but I don't, so all I can do is revel in this magnificent work of art. Still how can you live in a city like this and only want to take pictures of fetish models in b&w poses with candles,ropes & gas masks. They're lovely to be sure, but it's like eating pizza for dinner every night of the week. After awhile ... well anyway I digress. I'll find a way to get myself a camera. Not for art. Not for this or any other story. But because all this will be gone one day, repainted, or tagged over or maybe they'll tear it out for being too interesting and build another coffee shop here. But it's here for now and all I can think is all the cool shit that's come and gone in this two block slice of faux bohemia. I form a frame with my hands and snap the murals picture with my memory. I ride off and head home. Another quiet adventure in my secret, secret life complete.
Anyway here it is dark as hell and i'm on the part of the trail that cuts across Virginia Highland. I've just reattached my chain after avoiding what could have been a rather nasty spill over a pack of feral lap dogs that burst out of the bushes yipping at me. This is where the trail runs parallel to North Avenue and I don't know what they were exactly but there were six of them at least, and none of them could have been any bigger than a cat but there they were, mean, pissed off & little. I bobbed & weaved through them, and figured I could burst out a little speed and lose them. That's when I realized I shifted gears too eraticly and was pedaling without a chain. Luckily I was on a downhill slope and had some decent speed still going so I just glided as fast as I could while they pursued me, yapping at my heels all the way until I reached Euclid Avenue, were for fear of these frou-frou hellhounds I bolted through oncoming traffic and somehow made it safely across without being maimed. I turn around and see them sulking off and for some reason I feel like Indiana Jones escaping the Pygmie Dogs of Little Five. I needed a cigarette so I walked my bike to the above mentioned intersection for maintenance & nicotine. I've got my baby up and running, granted the batterys dead on the front light and the rear tires gonna need some air soon but I should be good for the next few miles. That's when I see them. A series of bright white headlights, swerving left and right down the trail behind me. Too slow to be a scooter and too eratic to be a fellow bicyclist. Then I see the lead light and figure it out. It's a group of rollerbladers and they're wearing helmets with little flashlights attached, from here they look like the ghosts of coalminers coming back for some Scooby Doo bullshit. I let them get closer. I let my imagination take over. I smile and flick out my cigarette when the first 'blader becomes visible in his spandex, coalminer helmet and goggles.
"ROLLER ZOMBIES!!!!" I yell at the top of my lungs (and it's Atlanta so no one really listens to you when you scream). The lead blader looks around him confused as his 'gang' starts to catch up. I hop on my bike, the light turns green and I yell again "You'll never catch me alive". They seem a little confused but they're getting closer...closer...NOW!!!... and I fly across Virginia, maneuvering through the parked cars blocking the ped-X-walk. I take the first hill and can see them a few dozen yards behind me, most of them got caught up with the traffic but the alpha blader is on my ass, he either knows i'm racing him or just wants to know why I called him a "Roller Zombie" either way, i'm outta here me! I take the corner pretty fast, but so does he, he's zig-zagging himself some serious momentum but I got a secret weapon- raw desperation. I stand up on my bike and yell back "Scotty I need Warp Speed or we're all dead" and I pump those pedals harder than Ron Jeremy on a Viagra-Coke Cocktail bender. I fire forward up the hill and hit a down slope, I look behind me and see the little coal miner helmet lights recede but the alpha blader is in it to win it like Chris Rock, he's got something prove. I love when people have something to prove... I hop off the trail and hit the Jimmy Carter Center parking lot. I pull up behind a dumpster and kill my rear blinker. I'm panting, sweating like a pig and giggling. I keep an eye on the trail and pray i've developed sufficient Ninja Skills... or else I guess they'll have to chase me around the Carter center all night. I count backward from 20 and the first one arrives on 12. He slows down, pivots, looks around. He looks over towards the Center and I press myself against the dumpster. I can see the spotlight scanning the park cars and bushes around me. He's good, i'll give him that, he's got the instincts but i've got experience. I hear a bunch of voices now a muffled conversation. Laughter. He probably told them about me and our little impromptu race and they probably thought he was just being a dick. I hear the conversation fade away and I risk a peek around the dumpster. There they go, fading down the hill, I ride back to the trail and stay behind them and then I drift off the trail and ride down to John Wesley Dobbs Rd. I just love that name, it sounds so Southern & Lovecraftian at the same time. "John Wesley Dobbs and the gibbering horror that crawled out of Fulton". From there I take a series of side roads and bridges that lead me to Little Five Points. I glide up Euclid and pull in right by the mural by 7 Stages. My favorite part of this mural is the giant portrait of the singer/activist Paul Robeson, dressed in the uniform of an admiral (from Showboat maybe?). There is a qoute of his bannered above his countenace that reads:I must do what the farmer does. Feed the people with my songs. I spread my arms out wide and read that qoute outloud. Letting the words echo down the alleyway to lend them the weight of a reverberating bass. By now you can gather that I seem to talk to myself a lot , but living in the South has taught me that I can say whatever I want because people only listen to me when i'm talking about someone else. I have the freedom of the marginalized, the invincibility of the invisible. I lower my arms and go down the alley and into the rear parking lot. There I see it. Another mural but this one has NINJAs! It's painted along the wall behind the gas station on Moreland, right by where the recycling dumpsters for Sevanada used to be. It's done in the fluid style of graffite & manga tags. There is a swarm of ninjas, cresting like a wave, little slashes of eyes appearing out of their darkened hoods. There is a Samurai Demon warrior, armored, ugly & glorious ready to face them. To the left there is a giant mechanized robot thingy as well. Looking like a cubist anime, if there were such things as cubist animes. I swear if I only had a digital camera and some of my friends eye for setting up shots and working with light. I could do a whole book on the tags & pieces thrown up around town. Oh well, but I don't, so all I can do is revel in this magnificent work of art. Still how can you live in a city like this and only want to take pictures of fetish models in b&w poses with candles,ropes & gas masks. They're lovely to be sure, but it's like eating pizza for dinner every night of the week. After awhile ... well anyway I digress. I'll find a way to get myself a camera. Not for art. Not for this or any other story. But because all this will be gone one day, repainted, or tagged over or maybe they'll tear it out for being too interesting and build another coffee shop here. But it's here for now and all I can think is all the cool shit that's come and gone in this two block slice of faux bohemia. I form a frame with my hands and snap the murals picture with my memory. I ride off and head home. Another quiet adventure in my secret, secret life complete.
