Hello, welcome to the famed Weekend Gene Pool, which has just won the coveted Weekend Gene Pool Award, awarded yearly to the newsletter with the most awards.
Since The Butcher has topped all the stars on bicycles stories, I'll just add a postscript, I was almost run down by a shaggy-haired homeless-looking man on a bike on [fancy] Las Olas Blvd. in Ft. Lauderdale just after I'd moved there around 1996. I dodged out of the way and thought, "Damn if that hobo doesn't look like Nick Nolte!" Went into my hair salon, mentioned how our bums looked like movie stars, and my hairdresser said, "Oh, that' IS Nick Nolte. He lives here."
I was walking up Park Ave. in the East 70s in NYC when I saw a guy dressed in a white suit and a white wide-brimmed hat, and I thought to myself, "Who does that guy think he is -- Tom Wolfe?" Um. . . yep.
About those young Hasidic extremists doing a reverse "Great Escape..." Almost as shocking (but not quite...) --- sharing their tunnel vision in their own way --- was a whole host of other extremists online spewing age old anti-semitic conspiracy theories, including the granddaddy of them all from the Middle Ages, the blood libel conspiracy theory. Well, at least the mouth breathers couldn't rant (much) about shifty-eyed "Peeping Pinchases." That female "mikveh" the tunnel reportedly connected to, turned out to be a long-closed male ritual bath. Strange times.
Even odder (if possible...) in connection with two-wheeled transportation and Dylan's Nov. 4-5, 1981 concerts in Cincinnati at the Music Hall, is this anecdote from Mary Judge, the long-time former principal librarian for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, whose home venue is also the Music Hall.
"In 1981, Bob Dylan was performing at Music Hall. It was very shortly after John Lennon was killed, and Bob was convinced that someone was out to kill him, too. Even though he has eight bodyguards and his dressing room was 100 feet from the stage, he refused to walk. At curtain time, I heard a loud backfiring sound and then Bob Dylan came roaring down the hallway on a huge motorcycle! He jumped off the bike just feet from the stage and rushed on stage! The stagehand who caught the bike turned it around and, when the first half was almost over, revved it up . . . and sure enough, Bob jumped back on and roared back to his dressing room, filling the backstage with exhaust and gas
fumes."
--- Mary Judge quoted in Graley Herren's Substack newsletter "Shadow Chasing," about contexts and conversations in Bob Dylan's art
That is so weird, and it sure makes it even weirder that the next morning he’d be riding around downtown alone on a bicycle. I don’t know what to think about that. Seems very unlikely that I would see a dead-ringer for Dylan riding a bike blocks from the concert hall the morning after the concert (especially when spotting Dylan was the last thing I expected) if it wasn’t actually Dylan.
Strange indeed. Hard to believe the anecdote is apocryphal, considering the source (librarians tend not to be fabulists in my experience), the location and the detail. Apparently the period in question was one of significant change for Dylan musically and personally --- that fear for his life, being one aspect --- so maybe he figured riding a "bike" of one kind or another made him a more difficult target. "Curiouser and curiouser!"
Since The Butcher has topped all the stars on bicycles stories, I'll just add a postscript, I was almost run down by a shaggy-haired homeless-looking man on a bike on [fancy] Las Olas Blvd. in Ft. Lauderdale just after I'd moved there around 1996. I dodged out of the way and thought, "Damn if that hobo doesn't look like Nick Nolte!" Went into my hair salon, mentioned how our bums looked like movie stars, and my hairdresser said, "Oh, that' IS Nick Nolte. He lives here."
I was walking up Park Ave. in the East 70s in NYC when I saw a guy dressed in a white suit and a white wide-brimmed hat, and I thought to myself, "Who does that guy think he is -- Tom Wolfe?" Um. . . yep.
Ha! Very cool.
About those young Hasidic extremists doing a reverse "Great Escape..." Almost as shocking (but not quite...) --- sharing their tunnel vision in their own way --- was a whole host of other extremists online spewing age old anti-semitic conspiracy theories, including the granddaddy of them all from the Middle Ages, the blood libel conspiracy theory. Well, at least the mouth breathers couldn't rant (much) about shifty-eyed "Peeping Pinchases." That female "mikveh" the tunnel reportedly connected to, turned out to be a long-closed male ritual bath. Strange times.
Even odder (if possible...) in connection with two-wheeled transportation and Dylan's Nov. 4-5, 1981 concerts in Cincinnati at the Music Hall, is this anecdote from Mary Judge, the long-time former principal librarian for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, whose home venue is also the Music Hall.
"In 1981, Bob Dylan was performing at Music Hall. It was very shortly after John Lennon was killed, and Bob was convinced that someone was out to kill him, too. Even though he has eight bodyguards and his dressing room was 100 feet from the stage, he refused to walk. At curtain time, I heard a loud backfiring sound and then Bob Dylan came roaring down the hallway on a huge motorcycle! He jumped off the bike just feet from the stage and rushed on stage! The stagehand who caught the bike turned it around and, when the first half was almost over, revved it up . . . and sure enough, Bob jumped back on and roared back to his dressing room, filling the backstage with exhaust and gas
fumes."
--- Mary Judge quoted in Graley Herren's Substack newsletter "Shadow Chasing," about contexts and conversations in Bob Dylan's art
That is so weird, and it sure makes it even weirder that the next morning he’d be riding around downtown alone on a bicycle. I don’t know what to think about that. Seems very unlikely that I would see a dead-ringer for Dylan riding a bike blocks from the concert hall the morning after the concert (especially when spotting Dylan was the last thing I expected) if it wasn’t actually Dylan.
Strange indeed. Hard to believe the anecdote is apocryphal, considering the source (librarians tend not to be fabulists in my experience), the location and the detail. Apparently the period in question was one of significant change for Dylan musically and personally --- that fear for his life, being one aspect --- so maybe he figured riding a "bike" of one kind or another made him a more difficult target. "Curiouser and curiouser!"
I guess nobody's seen anything, huh?
Send into the "button" - let the editors see it first.