Total earned: $60.
My blog has been going poorly. I need to update it and promote it more. Maybe you can help promote it. You can send them an email like this:
“I, [insert name], urge you to read my friend’s blog. It’s really good and amazing, I’m sure you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be blessed with a newfound look upon the world. While you’re at maybe you should check out this piece of shit blog too. It’s by some flaming idiot in Baltimore.”
In this blog I manage to break two of my own rules. Call me lazy.
It’s been nearly a week since my ordeal of passing out fliers. I’ll never do that again. Bob called and asked if I wanted to work again. I told him that my left knee hurts like a gopher is gnawing at the tendons and my right foot might be broken. Saturday, a full five days after delivering 467 fliers, my right foot felt broken. Still now, on Monday, it hurts. I can hardly walk on it. The inside heel part of my right foot is all bruised and swollen. Taking a podiatrist hostage is suddenly within the realm of doable.
Meanwhile, my exploits to start a business have been going poorly. On Friday, I went to Towson to try to open a bank account for Patesco Service & Supply. The bank lady told me I needed to first register a business name so I went to the courthouse per her instructions. I parked the car, walked to courthouse, entered, but then had to go back to the car to return my cell phone which was not allowed in the building. Back to the building with empty pockets, make my way past the baliffs, ask where the business registration office is, and am told to walk four blocks to a different courthouse.
Upon arrival at the second courthouse, I begin filling out some paperwork. When the clerk looks at my paperwork, and sees the address marked “Baltimore City” he informs me that I have to go to the city courthouse. He hands me a piece of paper with the address of the city courthouse. My journey into governmental beaurucracy begins!
I wait until Monday to go the city courthouse because Friday it was too late. I park in a Mercy Hospital parking garage. The rates are awesome, that much I do notice. $4.50 for the first 90 minutes. I leave the car, only returning to drop my cell phone. Enter the courthouse, get through the baliffs, ask where the business office is, and am told it’s at the other courthouse across the street. Make that courthouse number three.
I walk across the street, hobbling on my bad foot, waddling on my bad knee, manage to get through security and hitch a ride in an elevator to the sixth floor. The business license office is in the same room as the marriage certificates. I notice a young well dressed black man kissing a white girl holding a baby wearing a bridal gown, talking to what I perceive to be her father, who looks very flustered and might need a drink.
Unfortunately, this courthouse also cannot help me. Why, if I had wanted to renew a business license or get a permit might they be able to help me start a business? I’d have to go to Preston Street where the state courthouse is.
I get back to my car and head out of the garage. Handing the teller my little garage slip she tells me: “That’ll be thirty dollars.”
“Huh?” I manage, thinking I heard her incorrectly.
“It’s thirty dollars if you are not validated by Mercy Hospital.”
I go on to explain that the sign had given much different figures. She explain that the sign clearly said $30 for other patrons. I looked at the sign, there was no mistaking, it did say it. Yet, I won’t give in to this type of bullying. I head to the main office, where the teller pointed me, to make my case. A lanky white woman wouldn’t budge. She even admitted that the price was ridiculous. In the end, I asked her to call the cops because I wouldn’t pay it and she wouldn’t let me out. No truce could be found, between despite my niceities, which run in abundance when I need a favor.
Back in my car I came to a decision. I pulled back in front of the teller.
“Can you open the gate for me if I slip you ten bucks?”
“Do you want me to lose my job?!?” she blurts at me while rolling her eyes and acting bitchy.
“No, but I don’t want to pay $30 for sixty minutes of parking. It’s just absurd.” I proclaim.
“She didn’t change the price for you?” The teller asks referring to the lanky white stubborn authority figure.
“No.”
“Give me your ticket. That’ll be four-fifty.” She sighs, sounding exasperated.
I hand her an additional five, making half good on my ten dollar price to her. I did pay the four-fifty after all.
[Total: $60 – $4.50 – $5 = $51.50]
I get to Preston Street and literally park in the projects. For you country folks, the projects are mostly two story small townhome like structures, either brick or concrete. Window air-conditioners lean out of every other window no matter the temperature. I wonder if my car is safe. I hide my cell phone.
It’s funny, I typed in “Baltimore City Projects” & “Baltimore City Housing Authority” in an attempt to get a picture for the blog but nothing comes up. Men in suits and the old high rise, which has been imploded, are the results. The hise rise, of course, looks like lots of other high rises because you couldn’t really deface it 30 stories up. But the low rises, like the ones on Dolphin St, are hideous. No one will even take a picture of them and post them to anything on the web, apparently.
I’m sent to the eighth floor where, with little fanfare and $75, I register my trade name in five minutes. I head to to the second floor where, in about 40 minutes, I register for the liberty of paying the state 6% sales tax on everything I sell.
It’s here where I break one of my rules. I don’t have $75. I was told that registering a trade name is only $25 but if I wanted it done sooner than seven weeks I need to pay an additional $50 which will speed the process up to only take a week. I can’t wait 7 – 8 weeks, that’s nearly a sixth of the length of the project. I could also come back. Well, I am here now and ready. And I will, technically, have the money by the end of the week. I have more money coming in from my flier delivery madness this week.
[Total: $51.50 – $75 = -$23.50]
That’s it. All that hassle, being told where to go, incorrectly, time after time, is pretty painless in the end. Perhaps even less painless than my damned foot.
Now I need to get my business cards printed up.
More later.
(It should also be noted that after I posted this my wife and I were watching The Wire, season 5, episode three. Detective McNulty walks right past the parking garage where I parked. Perhaps this is kind of an absurd co-incidence but being that they both happened on the same day I thought it odd. If you want to see the garage, should you care at all, it’s when McNulty grabs a newspaper out of a machine. The garage is marked “Mercy: Saratoga Garage” or something similar.)
Broke 
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