9 Comments

1. HomeRemedySupply on 06/16/2017 at 12:54 am

   In the 90’s, as I was driving down a suburban residential street on a hot, Texas summer day, I spotted a lemonade stand on the lawn of someone’s house. Well, …errh…actually I spotted the babysitter of the kid running the lemonade stand. The babysitter, a blonde about 23 years old with a very fit body was wearing a bikini holding a lemonade sign. Of course I made a U-turn and bought some expensive lemonade.

   In those days for a living I was “roadsiding”. I would make a deal for rent with an independent retail business owner to set up my stand of goods in his parking lot. Then I would get the city permit (in municipalities which had high code enforcement).

   Over the years of “roadsiding”, I have sold a vast array of products. During this particular summer I was selling sunglasses with tables and tables and tables of sunglasses, a gigantic variety. Sometimes on a Saturday I would make $500 profit or much more (cash…if you know what I mean).

   I would always try to get creative on my marketing.
   “Bodies in the shop” times “Average ticket” = Gross Revenue

   So to try something new, I hired the babysitter paying her a healthy hourly pay. She shows up on my lot wearing the bikini all exhilarated. In fact, she is so enthused that she starts doing a bump and grind dance by the pole of a street sign as the traffic went by.

   While I hate to stifle anyone’s creativity, this was a little too much even for me. So I gracefully had her wear a different hat. I had her be a shill pretending to be a shopper of sunglasses. All in all, this marketing pilot was a wash. I gained some male shoppers, but lost the female shoppers.

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   • HomeRemedySupply on 06/16/2017 at 2:28 am

     Roadsiding Anecdote – Shrimp
     One time, for a brief period I sold shrimp on the side of the road out of my box truck. I had an unplugged freezer which I filled with dry ice. I would buy frozen shrimp in prepackaged bags from a wholesaler and then resell them. (By the way, almost all the shrimp retailed in the U.S. is frozen, never “fresh off the boat unfrozen”.)

     So, I am in a northeast Texas town out in the sticks selling my shrimp. The game warden (Texas Parks and Wildlife) stops. The guy never smiled; probably face frozen that way. Anyway, he issues me a $250 ticket for not having a Texas Parks and Wildlife permit, nor a sign on my truck that says: “Fish”.

     I said, “Look, these shrimp come from China or Thailand, not from the Texas gulf. How am I supposed to know I need a permit from you guys to sell Chinese shrimp?”

     That ended my shrimp roadsiding.

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     • HomeRemedySupply on 06/19/2017 at 2:43 am

       Cool. Cool.
       …and cool cash too.
       Cash has some nice attributes, especially when self-employed.

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   • HomeRemedySupply on 06/16/2017 at 3:21 am

     Roadsiding Anecdote – Velvet Elvis & JFK
     Just as Oliver Stone wrapped up filming in Dallas for “JFK”, I set up a big display of Black Velvet Paintings on a vacant lot in the heart of Dallas, not far from the affluent neighborhoods.

     The primary focus was to sell my assortment of Velvet Elvis, knowing that they had inflated kitsch value. (Manny in Juarez could really turn out those paintings.) Sure enough, those Velvet Elvis sold like hotcakes at inflated prices (sometimes $50 or more for a large one which cost me around $10 or so). Rich people wanted them as kitsch ‘show and tell’. I made great money that day.

     I had an old 1959 bread truck to carry the velvets. Towards the end of the day, a guy drives up and tells me he works with a movie outfit. He wants to rent my breadtruck to use in a new movie, Ruby (1992 film).

     We make a deal and he also pays me for a rental truck to use until they are done filming. They put balsa wood on the truck and made it look like a TV crew truck. It is hardly seen at all in the film “Ruby”. Just a vague glimpse. The tail end of the truck is at the top of the ramp – (17 second mark) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWcs485lBKM

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     • HomeRemedySupply on 06/17/2017 at 2:37 am

       Thanks herrqlys.

       While I enjoy “telling old man stories” along with the personal therapeutic value of recalling past events, I also have entirely other aspirations with these anecdotes.
       Despite the genetic trait of Texans as braggarts, that is not actually my ultimate objective with stories and anecdotes.

       We all have had personal experiences which can offer others insight or stimulate creative juices to flow.
       Hopefully, some of these anecdotes help others along their path.
       Also, when members, or James Corbett and his guests tell a little about themselves, it increases the affinity which we have for each other.

       Now, I look at those Roadsiding days as having an almost “anarchist, agorism, voluntaryism” flavor. Those days were before the internet and I was in the guerrilla economy. Trying to be independent and survive with few resources within the fabricated, stilted system.
       Currently, I think many people are part of the guerrilla economy.

       And we all learn things along our path in life. I like to know what others learn on their path. I like hearing other people’s stories.

       I have had some real “wake up” moments, such as Money for Nothing.
       https://www.corbettreport.com/i-see-green-light/comment-page-1/#comment-39281
       And sometimes I have had great success and great failures.
       https://www.corbettreport.com/ft-admits-nwo-gatekeepers-heading-for-marie-antoinette-moment/comment-page-1/#comment-34474

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     • HomeRemedySupply on 06/19/2017 at 3:01 am

       Normally, in those days, “black velvet paintings” only sold well in poor, less affluent white neighborhoods.
       For the life of me, I never could see why a blue collar white guy wanted to pay $20-$30 for a painting of the “devil sitting on a toilet”. It was always a very big seller.
       PHOTO – https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images3/1/0615/28/devil-toiletblack-velvet-painting_1_86f55149aa33b833cefb7ef7f9a6cb48.jpg

       Eventually, the Elvis Presley Trust through its company, made it illegal for the Velvet Elvis paintings to come across the border from Juarez, Mexico to El Paso, TX.
       They were classic kitsch.

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   • HomeRemedySupply on 06/17/2017 at 2:52 am

     Some of those roadsiding moments, really imprint on a person’s mind…
     ~~Like…
     …the black projects of New Orleans when I watched a kid buy a treat from the ice cream truck. The truck looked like an armored truck with only a 6 inch window flap. The kid would stick his hand in through the flap with a bill and pull out a Popsicle.

     ~~Like…
     Naked Customer
     Selling jeans spread out on about a dozen tables in the black ghetto, I would hire a helper to stand at the back of my truck with an unloaded shotgun. I saw ghettos in many different cities. One “shotgun helper” was this 20 year old guy from Ithaca, NY who literally could not read and could get lost riding a bike because he couldn’t read street signs. He was hard to understand if you weren’t use to his speech.
     In St Louis, one week we sold a 1,000 pair on a street corner at $10 each. A couple from Austin was up touring the city and stopped. The guy from Austin asked my helper where he could try on the jeans. My helper mumbles “In the back of the truck.” Typically, a person would climb in the back of my truck, pull down the rear door and try on the jeans while inside the back of the truck.
     A while later, the Austin guy’s wife comes up to me and we can’t find her husband. Then in the distance, we see him running down the street towards us in exhausted panic.

     Here’s the scoop:
     The guy from Austin climbed into the wrong truck. He climbed into the back of a liquor delivery truck (the driver had stopped to buy jeans). The guy from Austin had pulled down the door and stripped down to his underwear. Suddenly, the liquor truck driver takes off with the truck while the Austin guy is in his skivvies. The truck driver is behind on his deliveries, because he stopped to buy jeans which was against company policy. The Austin guy starts banging on the side of the truck and making noise. While yelling and banging with one hand, his other hand is holding the rear truck door closed so he is not exposed to everyone while standing in his underwear. The truck driver thinks it is someone trying to steal the liquor, so the driver swerves back-n-forth, drives faster and heads for a police station.

     Finally, at a traffic light with a line full of stopped cars, the Austin guy jumps out of the truck onto the street while still in his underwear. He runs up to the driver’s door and explains what happened. The driver lets him get his pants back on, but says that he can’t drive him back to the jean lot. So, the Austin guy had to hoof it back. (I pieced this story together because the liquor driver came by the next day to fill me in.)

     ~~Like…
     From ghetto partner to Hollywood actor
     https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1262-new-world-next-week-with-james-evan-pilato/comment-page-1/#comment-36974

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2. madmovond on 06/22/2017 at 7:49 am

   Sounds like Japan is taking notes from the Cardassians. Trials are merely a formality for the government to exploit their victims and flex their muscles as they get to a 100% conviction rate. Rights are just warm and fuzzy talking points for the corrupt to spout at their brainwashed constituents to make them feel like they’re a worthy part of the system. Soon they’ll even start wearing pointy shoulder pads that are clearly meant for fatally spear tackling people whenever the opportunity presents itself.

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3. generalbottlewasher on 06/22/2017 at 10:28 am

   Herqqlys , wish I could have seen it. You tube pulled all down.

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