You won’t be seeing this sign for a little while in Mid-City because my pirate BBQ operation has been shut down. That’s right — closed. Shuttered. Put on hiatus. Whatever you want to call it — Da Man showed up and demanded to see my papers and (surprise!) not all my permits were still valid. I felt bad for the cop, who was apologetic and made sure to tell me he wasn’t sent over by the folks at NOPD headquarters up the street (who have been among my best customers). Bottom line — I’ve got a court appearance scheduled this week to ’splain to the judge why I didn’t jump through all the hoops. It’s really pretty simple, yerhonor — I needed income the fastest way possible and quite honestly didn’t have the time, inclination or money to put up with any red tape. That’s no excuse or reason, I know — but it’s the truth. Folks wanted to buy and I wanted to sell. End of story.

That said — my place has been cleaner than half the restaurants in this city BEFORE Katrina. And, now that I have my renewed occupational license and my inspection is set for Wednesday, I’ll be legal again. But it appears only to go back to my cheese business. Seems if I want to do cheese AND BBQ, I need two difference facilities. The jury is still out on whether I can use the same place to produce both the cheese and just the BBQ SAUCE (”I’ll have to get back to you on that,” my inspector said. He’s a good guy and has been very helpful to me, but he’s kinda hamstrung by lots of rules).

There are plenty of eateries in this city that have indeed played by the rules and gotten all the permits lined up before opening their doors. I would have done the same thing, had I gotten a roof and electric power earlier than, oh, two weeks ago. In the meantime, it’s simply been a case of doing what I can with what I’ve got to avoid 1) moving or 2) bankruptcy or 3) both. At least I still had some tools and space to work with, along with generous, caring friends to support me. It has been seriously appreciated.

So — in the space of a little over eight months, my business has been flooded, abandoned, looted, flooded again, gutted, flooded, cleaned, flooded, partially rebuilt, flooded, burglarized and, finally, closed and then cleaned again (the repeated flooding because there wasn’t a complete roof until just recently). Oh yeah — and I got an insurance check for $1400 a couple months ago. It went to pay some badly overdue household bills.

Self-employment is a challenge anywhere. Particularly right here and right now. But it’s funny — I still can’t imagine being anywhere else. God, I can be a stubborn bastid.

Related posts:

1. Unclean! Unclean!
2. Astronomy Update
3. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
4. Location, location, location
5. Time Well Spent