Pusher Volume 2

The Driver who fell from Grace with the Road

"But down these mean streets a man must go…"

There’s nothing quite like having to pull over to the side of the road on Broadway due to an absurd amount of smoke pouring from the front of your car and being offered, then given, a bucket of water by a sly-dressed cat named Mac D who’s telling you "You’re goddamned right you need to cool it off." Believe that. Luckily, it wasn’t the radiator as originally believed; the power steering fluid was just boiling. While I dropped a mean 50 cents on a single phone call, my counterpart on this mission (whose ever-ringing cell phone had died earlier in the day) was quickly making friends with Mac and his partner Dickie. Cell phones are like cops: never there when you need them, but always there to annoy you.

So I’m across the street on the pay-horn with my cousin, A.K.A my mechanic, who’s telling me that it sounds okay to drive—slowly—but bring it straight to him. Meanwhile, the Brown-Eyed Bandit is breaking everybody on Broadway off with copies of The BEAST. I walk up as he is giving his new friends a speech about The BEAST’s various departments, our recent full-color upgrade and the meaning of his tangled head of dread. We say peace to Mac and Dickie, who seem to be pros when it comes to playing high-post out front of a rundown storefront, and head to the hills defeated, unable to finish our route.

It turns out, the ride is shot. I’m not worried about how my lady (the real breadwinner) will be getting to work, rather puzzled as to how I will sling The BEAST. In style.

Turns out we may cop a van, as it is in the best interest for carting the family around, but how would it look? You know, slinging The BEAST in a van and not a beater? That could look like I’m pushing the Buffalo News, or worse, the Riverside Review, or the Metro Community news, or further down the totem pole, Artvoice. Well, I can blame The BEAST for using my car to be slung. It is its fault, you know. If it hadn’t needed to be slung, I probably wouldn’t have left my house.

The day before:

Everything was fine. I rollerbladed into Xtreme Wheels Skate Park to see if they would like to carry the best fiend of Buffalo. I began with the normal speil and asked the downtrodden young chap at the counter, who wore chagrin like Tom Neal in Detour, if I could leave some papers on the counter. With his head down, he says that he will go get the owner. Who was I expecting to see? I don’t know. What I’m sure of is that I wasn’t expecting to see a middle-aged white woman with a degree in business who, by the look of (not on) her face, rarely sheds the scowl she was force-feeding me. (Her owning a skate park is the ironic equivalent of that Hippy DJ Cutler owning a Starbuck’s.) Only in America. Briefly looking through the paper, she says it doesn’t look promising; however, she would take it home and give a better look to—you know—see if this paper is "right" for her "clientele." What does she know? The first people who gave me weed, acid, beer, or anything of that nature got from point A to point B on a skateboard. And that isn’t a negative stereotype. I know an emcee by the name of Ajent O who is throwing a show there, and he is as vulgar-mouthed as they come. That isn’t exactly negative either. What I’m trying to say is that The BEAST and Xtreme Wheels would go perfect together. What gives? Or rather, I mean what the fuck?!

Shout out once again to the Mill and Bert’s posse for being the most enthusiastic BEAST readers in Buffalo. People get geeked in many places (see Gecko’s, Meister’s [incidentally, both of those places happen to have extremely beautiful barmaids—which is not uncommon I’m quickly finding out]) when I roll in with the new issue, but nothing like I catch when going there. If there is one thing I will accomplish by writing this, it will be turning that place into a hot spot. Next stop for Mill & B’s: After Six.

Kosta’s? I feel like I’m on a crusade against social injustice. Why must The BEAST go under Artvoice? Why must I be told so weekly? It’s not as if I’ve once attempted to right this wrong. What’s next? Will I have to use a different drinking fountain than the guy who slings Artvoice? Do I have to call Costa-Gavras or Ken Loach to shoot a film on Hertel to help explain to this rich restaurateur the plight of the working-class? Is The BEAST not also human? Do we, at The BEAST, not feel? Not all BEASTS are animals.

Today:

Reflecting, I wish I could remember the place on Broadway where that filthy, toothless, nicotine-stinky biker was yelling: "nobody reads The BEAST anyway"; he was having trouble understanding why we bother. At least that is what he was attempting to convey in that pseudo-bible belt drawl you often find porch-crackers spewing, and as we were driving away his middle finger remained stuck in the air. Who is he fooling? He can’t read anyway. Tune in next week when I go to that place and that stinky bastard says nothing to my face, then I expose the name of the dive he gets pimped working for.

Anyhoo, I’m a van owner now. What further injuries and injustices will I suffer at the claws of The BEAST? Will I curse as much now that I will deliver in a minivan? Or will we use my BEAST co-slinger’s Ram truck to save face? All that I can say for sure right now is that The BEAST will be printed, and it will be just as vulgar as before it killed my car, regardless of my new soccer-mom status. Dedicated reader, I ask you to remember that all of this is true, except for the part about me rollerblading. So act accordingly if I’m breaking you off proper-like with the new color-cover BEAST, because you don’t want to mess with a guy in a soccer-mom minivan.