Here I am taking care of business, and teasing many of them. Or to quote from the Naked Gun movies: “How can you be so cruel … You forget, I used to be a building contractor.” Or needed a good one.
(This story is allegedly sponsored by the legal firm of You Always Need them LLC).
As spring turns into summer, and summer into fall … Then Red September yields to Blue October … Wake me up when September ends. But as far as not just music, but equal doses of meteorologist temps and temporal politics, as these are businesses too, I offer this as a mixed-theme story content alert. There are infinite ways to ply your trade.
And when it comes to working with housing, also, you really have to watch the seasons.
For, more to the point over those exact months, This Old House became the newest lowkey and decidedly non-loud, house-party-type-place. Now that its been run through a Realtor and thus revamped, like a reality series. I’m guessing there’s been no “short” sale, for as you will see, lets make this as festive as it is long.
It seemed that the former residents just might have vacated early. The shrubs and flowers were not trimmed in much of a coif manner, much less having a landscaping company, stuff setting around outside … Not unlike so many others, except that a few gallon jugs of what looked like motor oil were setting on the steps. Day after day into the night. That just might be a differential, if one can make such a judgment. Especially since the almost always open blinds, in the window next to the door, revealed a TV — along the far wall — that was “on” close to 24/7. Check with your design firm. Quite a bit past the witching hour. So there was someone there.
— There then was a fantastic encore that gets the party started, by hanging up some Party Zone Inc. plants with decals and making a perfect place to hang out. —
Fast forward, just a bit, Swiss Clock Company. New residents, I assume, and what seems a new beginning. Place is much more spiffy, and close at hand was erection of a small but well structured deck with various sizes of comfy chairs, an Ottoman or two from Target, and glowing lights from Home Depot that had a tropical theme or were strung neatly across the back wall. And people are serious when even in daylight hours, there were remnants, in turns, of things such as WalMart insect spray and lighter fluid organized neatly, until the next go-round, Which was not every night, mind you, but it wouldn’t have to just be a weekend. And the responsible citizens would not hold the party open until all hours, and reigned in their dog quickly if he barked at any passers-by, trained by Puppy Pros. Even with just one yelp.
This in a residential area where not far afield there was an extended corner where even on something like a typically non-party Monday night, there’d be many cars, trucks and an RV or two — but not as many as at an auto dealership — legally parked on-street all around their turn, past the time when midnight passed.
Why is any of this relevant? Even to business(es)? After all, good neighbors don’t complain too much about other neighbors — I could include myself — as it is not, should I say, neighborly. Its that these days, the process played out in a way that could be seen, although easily overstated, as a small matter of redemption and just street smarts in times when even very small doses of these are sorely needed, as they will add one onto another, and the overall good that it brings will show and indeed grow through the process. Or so our publicists write at a dollar a word.
But can we go a bit darker, and a lot deeper, into the suburban underground scene, and there is indeed, I think, such a thing as this part of this scene can be seen on a quite quiet but somewhat-auto-driven residential street through the form of a — big gray-scale utilities construction truck. The name could be that of a band, or is it something that digs into the dirt, like the underground should. Call it Dubya? The side of the truck could be like that of a stage, featuring cool utility-work-related doohickeys, and backing into a duplex driveway to … set up the stage girders to support a drum kit? Or three? For an underground band like Slipknot? Though three tiers high. But that would no longer be an underground set-up. Union rules. (To finally be serious, I hope these local hard-working guys and their bosses won’t be too mad at me for making some dark humor at their expense, even if it has compared them to a smaller group of also hardworking guys, in a metal band, even though the latter, and only the latter, confess to being a bunch of maniacs when at work on stage).
On that same city street, late at night, was a group of people partaking in a Random Party Bus LLC, after going to a concert, or just awry? A few of them got out, ran in a partial what-used-to-be-gotten-away-with-being-called a Chinese fire drill, jiggled over to the nearest house and then returned to the curb. Others looped around street-side. All were at times only partially below concert volume. Maybe like the toned-down Synth Alt Music Store intro that befalls a black stage. All hands back onboard, the bus inched forward, then picked up speed, only to slow down again, then stop to deal with whatever was needed to be taken-care-of just in the nick of time.
Ditto back in North Hudson at a stop sign, as a convertible top-down driver was topped off with a lone passenger who circled around the back then parked herself right behind him. Then go again. All the while I stood a car-door’s length away.
— Even great dancers, to stay on-point, need the services of workers who keep their studio spiffy below the stage, or the sidewalk. —
To extend the earlier road-work theme, and even learn how to do a mosh or jig or other step, bust a move down to the Short dancer studios, showing a figure much like Jagger in their promotion, but a few inches less tall. (Just kidding). There was a company doing work on the storm sewers, I think it was, again, very late for two or three nights outside, with a hose long like an anaconda down in a hole. It seems they’d in no way be caught on the short end of preparations for their ongoing open house, so all their great dancers can stand tall as they take charge of this great big, two-story building. (I will refrain from making a Tiny-Dancer-Elton-John-song joke).