Got those Adventures in Dentistry, Jaw-Molly, Kickin' the Hydrocodone Blues - Part 3, the last

When last we met I was talking about coming down the Levee Path at the South Boulevard access point. I don't know how to explain the way I felt about coming down that decline onto the road. There are so many aspects to it - the decline itself, the bollards blocking the way, the short sharp final descent into the curve where all the gravel and trash accumulates and where you have to turn left onto the road or miss the turn and regret it deeply, the potential of traffic on River Road or South Boulevard meaning having to maybe STOP on that relatively steep ramp to avoid a collision . . . when things come together and it all works it can be quite fun.

Yeah, same one as the last one but I wanted to 

remind you (and me) of the site.

Fortunately, traffic was light as I pulled up to the red light at Saint-Someone-or-other feeling great. It's only a short ride up South to Napoleon where I turned right and headed to the Carver Branch library.

While I was returning my book - David Brin's "Existence" -I asked about the tippy-top secret, special category Library User Designation . . . don't tell anyone but, if you're 50 years old or older, you can check shit out for 6 weeks at a time! Yes friends, once you get to be 50 years old the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System allows you EXTRA TIME with your library materials. Yet another perk of living longer!

Now a certified "Senior Citizen" as far as the Library is concerned I remounted my bicycle and went off in search of the BREC Interstate Park HQ building, soon to be site of the first public meeting for the Downtown Development District's Greenway Project. I say "in search of" because a Google Maps search yielded a Street View of a lot with nothing but a slab surrounded by weeds on it. Not a good sign.

I eventually found it but what did I find? From appearances, an abandoned building with boarded up windows and broken glass in the parking lot.

See what I mean?

Even in context this isn't exactly inviting.

Of course, the Interstate Park isn't all that inviting either. The pathetic thing is, this is one of the most heavily used BREC facilities in large part because of the football practice field in the park.

Yes, you are looking at the football practice field.

This is the only practice field in the area and it's used by one of the local schools for their football program. As the field is unlit, parents have had to drive their automobiles onto the field, surround the field, and run their engines to power their lights to light the field. Why? Well, football is a Fall sport, right? Guess when the sun goes down in September . . . right . . . 6 PM-ish. No lights on the field means no practice unless you figure out how to get light onto the field.

Did I mention that the park was graded so that rainwater drains ONTO the field? No? Well, it is.

Another view of the practice filed. You can kind

of see the uprights through the interstate supports.

How anyone can hear calls on the field is beyond me. Even on that Sunday afternoon when traffic was relatively light the roar of motor vehicles and the constant dumpa-thump of tires hitting all the expansion joints in the roadway made it hard to hear anything. At busier times, like, say, 4:30 - 5:30 PM when practice would be held, it must be deafening . . . unless, of course, traffic is once again at a standstill due to a crash or goats on the roadway or some other tragedy.

Mr. Jones was beginning to make me grit my teeth at this point so I headed off in the general direction of Brew-Ha-Ha. "General" because I wanted to look for a few sites that we were planning on having on the Velo des Artes ride in April and I didn't exactly know which direction they were from the BREC park except for "east and south."

As I headed out I went down to Myrtle rather than up to South. It was a serendipitous thing as I found this great example of ritual art on an (perhaps) abandoned house.

Consecrated by blood!

Look at all the ritual symbols and power spells!

Door detail

In some other cities this would be a completely fabricated art piece. Not here.

A fairly new development first built in the 1920s, what we now call Old South Baton Rouge has been largely Black from the beginning. Once a center for the Black middle- and business-class, this part of town has been in decline for nearly 50 years. Seems the only place "they" could build the new Interstate was right through the center of this once-bustling neighborhood with a number of Blacks-only hotels, theaters, businesses, and a robust street life backed by a solid, stable neighborhood.

 Well . . . we can't have that, now can we? Might as well gut it and put an elevated interstate highway right through the middle of it. What possible harm could come from that? With all those successful Black businesses gone all the White businesses will prosper, right?

Alas, those short-sighted fools with the money and the power . . . 

Getting the Jittery Junkie Jumps, care of Mr. Jones, I got back in the saddle and headed toward Brew-Ha-Ha. I did find a couple of other moderately interesting graffito pieces along the way not far from the House of Pleas.

Here Kitty, kitty, kitty

You are always welcome . . .

By now I'm doing the Jittery Jake and have to hit it pretty hard. I fairly flashed through the Garden District on the straightaways (for me that means between 15 - 19 MPH) and took corners as fast as I could. Didn't miss a one (thankfully)! By the time I'd slalomed through the Westmoreland Plaza parking lot dodging pot holes, speed bumps, concrete curbs, and a few stationary and moving cars to pull up to the crossing on Acadian I was pumped and had remembered The Radio Bar was doing a new Snday-afternoon-at-the-bar thing with games and free BBQ. BBQ! Hot diggity dog, Dawg! I almost turned around but decided to head on to coffee.

Not that I needed coffee at this point, mind you, it's just that I'm not inclined to just go for a ride. I have to have a destination in mind most of the time. It's a weakness in me but I'm learning to live with it.

Made it to Brew-Ha-Ha, had an espresso and a cake ball of some ilk then threw my leg back over the saddle and jetted back to The Radio Bar. I figured I needed a little self-dosing to take the edge off the Jones and what better duller of edges than alcohol, yes?

Dodging back through the Westmoreland parking lot I managed to hit the light at Hearthstone green in my direction! The Traffic Gods were with me!

I locked up at the best bike rack in town and walked around the corner to go in The Radio Bar. Before I could I looked up and saw that the giant eyesore of an abandoned building on the corner of Bedford and Government was different. O . . . M . . . G . . . someone had pasted up what looked like 24" X 24" paper prints of portrait photographs all over the facade on two sides of the building, three sides counting the flattened off corner. Gorgeous!

Don't take my word for it.

The Shady Side . . .

 The Sunny Side

Detail of the Shady Side

Fortunately, the stencil of Nathan Crowson was still there.

Having satisfied my photo jones I went to knock back that other Jones. The Radio Bar was hoppin' on a Sunday afternoon! Not too crowded and delightfully scented with BBQ smells, I stopped to say hello to some friends in a booth then headed to the bar. It tool a few minutes to greet some folks there as well but I eventually took my pint back to the booth, sat down, got up, sat down, got up and went to see the BBQ offerings. Huuummmm . . . chicken, beans, potato salad, smashed potatoes, a little green salad . . . yes indeed . . . I'll have some of that and that and a dollop of that and just a  soupçon of that green stuff, thank you very much!

Back to the booth as the conversation, seasoned with more alcohol than I had had yet, slurred its way between topics. I have some happy friends, I have.

See? Happy!

In the above photograph you'd be a fool to miss the Woman in Blue. I mean, yeah, I'm gay and all but I'm not blind and I can enjoy esthetics as well as the next Horn Dog.

What you can't do is SMELL the table next to her. Seems she's about to launch a new business enterprise making cookies and chose this event to debut a number of her intended varieties. Not only that, but she and some of her friends were soliciting ideas for beer / liquor / cookie parings. BRILLIANT!

It helped that there was this tray of sample-size treats that a couple of her friends brought over and (somewhat) foolishly stuck in front of us asking if we'd had any yet. HAH! Why no, we hadn't . . . may we?

They eventually caught on that we were lying and just wanted more of those delicious treats. Too bad as we had managed to deplete the stash fairly heavily and it seemed to have become an unspoken challenge to eat them all before the trusting fools discovered out feint.

By this time I had beaten the edge off the Jittery Jumps and needed to go home . . . after a lovely neat rum to perfume my way home.

It was only two days later that I came to discover the Jittery Jumps were the precursor to the real show . . ..

So, kids, when you have a licit stash of opiates just remember That Peculiar Piper WILL be paid in time.