Bikes and Hors

I went to a party last Saturday night
I didn't get laid, I got in a fight.
Uhuh. It ain't no big thing.

Remember this Lita Ford lyric from the late 80s? Well it fits to have this tune in your head as you hear this latest tale. I went looking for a bicycle to ride around my neighborhood. There 's no local bike store and no close Wal-Marts to get a bike. I had in my head exactly what I needed. Not a mountain bike, not necessary for the city. A cruiser, a nice one speed for cruising around the hood. But no bike shop, where do you go?

All the bike shops line one street in Centro, so I made my way there. There's a lot of cruising go in and it s not for bikes. In approaching the street with bike shops, I noticed a slow disintegration taking place and soon the slope turned to seedy. I turned onto the street to find bicylcle tires hanging out of open store windows, one after another. But as you look at the tires flooding on to the sidewalk, you quickly notice what else this street has to offer, plentiful prostitutes!

Bicycle tires sit on the same sidewalk where inches away plastic high-heeled platforms seperate the dirty sidewalk from the painted toenails, long legs exposing knees and thighs swimming into a miniskirt, some turquoise, pink or black, some tight and some with ruffles. Stomachs are fit due to the young age of the women, although you can see age and food consumption with a gaze at other exposed mid-sections. Continuing upward, tight shirts or tank tops cover three ribs and natural and silicone breasts to the stem of a throat flowering a face of heavy make-up and dark hair, sometimes bleached orange. Black mascara eyes look at scantily dressed self, waiting to be approached, rouge beams from each cheek to the next beaming cheek just feet away, bordering blue eye shadow beating in competition.

I looked past the hookers, surprised at the juxtaposition of tramps and bikes. Interlaced were two very different types of people with different purposes of purchase. Some parents walked hand in hand with a child between to buy a bicycle with training wheels. Others stood, loomed, choosing the best option for sex. I webbed past hundreds of prostitutes and found my Silver Italian Cruiser. Mission accomplished. I swiveled down the busy street past the people on one of two missions, back to my neighborhood where the extremes of intent are not so polarized.