~Saturday~ Joe and I were on slightly different schedules this morning, so ate breakfast separately. We found out later that we’d “flip-flopped” on our breakfast order from yesterday—today I got the mushroom and Swiss omelet and he got the three-cheese one.
The Annual Bed Race was scheduled for 2:00 today, but we made no effort to be down there at 2:00. Last year, it started at least an hour later, and there was no reason to believe it’d be any different this year. We ended up getting down there at around 2:45, where there was still no sign of the thing starting. Duval Street wasn’t even cordoned off yet.
We stopped in Crazy Shirts for a quick look at a white t-shirt for me, but I didn’t see any in there I liked. Our next stop was for lunch at Willie T’s, whose claim to fame evidently is having dollar bills, most of the marked up or signed in some way, stapled all over the walls and beams of the place.
We had terrible service, but good food. I had their Blackened Mahi Wrap and Joe had their BBQ Chicken Wrap. While eating, we had fun watching at least three parties say, “We’ll take the table over there in the sun,” and then like clockwork, within about five minutes, call the maitre’d over to be moved out of the sun.
After lunch, we stepped into the Life is Good t-shirt shop nearby for one more look at white t-shirts. It only took one look at the price tag on their t-shirts to halt any chance of shopping there. “I’m not paying $32 for a t-shirt,” I said to Joe. “We can go now.”
We walked up Duval and noticed that they’d finally cordoned off Duval for the Bed Races and at around 3:45, almost a full two hours later, they finally started the line up.
I didn’t take any pictures this year, as I took enough of them last year. In fact, it was kind of hot and crowded, and we ended up just heading back to the guest house before the thing even started. Tired old queens. (I’ll let you, dear reader, decide if that remark refers to us or them.)
We walked back a different way, as we usually just walk back and forth to Duval via Fleming Street, and we ran across this place with a bizarre name:
and once back on Fleming, we walked up on this shot of a few varieties of Bougainvillea:
We joined Jim and Andrew for happy hour tonight, and we had a fun time sharing the various names we’d each given to various guests. Their name for me was “DW,” which is the name of a friend of theirs whom I favor, including some of my mannerisms, such as shaking my legs. My biggest education for the session was about “tight fat,” an expression of which I’d not heretofore heard.
Joe and I wanted to get something quick for dinner, perhaps a sub, but no sub-serving places being close by, not wanting to walk down to Duval, and not really wanting to order a delivery, we ended up going back down to the poolside restaurant and bar and having dinner.
I had their tropical chicken salad, which is described as, “chunks of roasted chicken breast tossed in tropical mixture of mayonnaise with macadamias and almonds, pineapple and coconut, sweetened with a touch of honey served on a toasted, sweet hoagie bun with lettuce and tomato. Delicious.
We debated whether to pay $15 to get in a drag show at Aqua, which we knew would be a better quality show, and drink less, or to go to the cheaper show at 801 Bourbon Bar and possibly drink more.
We opted for the latter, and unfortunately, they don’t make enough alcohol to make up for the poor quality of the show that we experienced there tonight. The one drag queen, Kylie I think is how you spell her name, is an okay performer, but she is a terrible, terrible emcee, and that’s what she was doing tonight. We left after about the third or fourth number in the show. Tragic.
We stopped in the little convenience store that’s pretty much next door to our guest house, where I had an ice cream sandwich, and stocked up on some sweets to have in the room—deciding on a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bar, a 10-pack of Twizzlers, and a Caramello Bar. Life is sweet.
At the stroke of midnight, Joe turned older.