I snapped this photo for the name, because how fucking cool is that? And if his name had turned out to be the coolest thing about Crescent Clozeus, that would have been enough. It’s the little things in this town, you know?
I really appreciate dope cab drivers. It’s a shit job and the dudes who do it, like the dudes who do most shit jobs, are undervalued and underpaid. Also, there’s no real middle class in this country anymore. The value of wages continues to stagnate and decline as we cram a nervous and marginalized workforce into an ever more crowded race to the bottom, from which there’s less and less hope of escape. It’s not a good look out there.
That’s why dudes like Crescent make me insanely happy. Given the drunken retards he deals with on a regular basis, present company included, he’s got every right in the world to be a disgruntled misanthrope. Were I him, I certainly would be.
Instead, though, at 4 AM on a Tuesday, going over the Williamsburg bridge with the windows open, it’s Crescent and me singing “Thunder Road”, often in two-part harmony, at the top of our lungs. I mean, just singing our faces off. We both knew all the words. I’m not nearly a good enough writer to do justice to how that made me feel.
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on,
But when you get to the porch they’re gone
On the wind, so Mary climb in.
It’s a town full of losers
And I’m pulling out of here to win.
Godspeed, Crescent Clozeus. Your name’s nowhere near the coolest thing about you.