Mad Dog Marketing, Ground Zero...

 

See that rectangular building on the horizon between Carla and myself?

Jon and I had an office on the top floor back in 1996. Then and now, the tallest building in St Augustine. Our windows looked out over the iconic Bridge of Lions on the Intracoastal waterway. We ran our business, Mad Dog Marketing out of those 200 sq. feet. A desk and phone for each of us above the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the USA. (I've been programmed with that spiel by the 30+ years we've lived here. Native Americans may take issue, but we did say European settlement...)

We were in bed with two crazy English millionaires who flew across the pond to bring us a suitcase with $6000 cash in it, once a month. Jon and I split that to hold up our software distribution end of the deal, Mad Dog Marketing, here in the states.

That was a sweet gig.

Our office, there in the old First Union Bank building, was a two-man space that only cost us $225 a month.

Jon and I each had our desks pulled up to one of the two windows. We watched the Bridge open and close for the steady procession of water traffic. Yachts, sailboats, civilian and commercial, shrimp boats with their nets held high, flanking both sides. We watched the cars scurry over to the Island and bottleneck at the base of the bridge as they came back into town, everyone forced to stop when the gates dropped as the bridge opened its mouth for the boats to pass. We sympathized with the occasional windsurfer, struggling to navigate around the pilings under the bridge.

Best views in all of St Augustine.

As soon as our Englishman hit town, they wanted to get out, they thought this town was so hokey. Both lived in expensive London flats. One of them asked “should I bring a banjo next time?" 

They insisted that all of us to fly to Vegas, which we did, so they could have lap dances in the strip clubs. Rich guys married to much younger trophy wives. I asked them, why on earth do you want lap dances when you could just go hire some upscale girl and spend the night?

No answer. They were like little boys away from home being naughty.

I hated it, but that delighted and encouraged them even more, so they paid multiple girls to come lap dance for me, just to see if I would get embarrassed by the attention. They simply never believed that it was possible for a grown man to not to want some woman he doesn't know to grind her barely covered crotch on his ear.

I'm not a prude, I simply thought it was childish and creepy.

Mr. Excitement, I just wanted to back go home, take a sponge bath in Lysol, and hang out on my back deck.

But I admit, I did like the middle-of-the-night slot machines, the sound of the bells designed by experts to please, and the cavernous, calliope of a room, where there was no way to distinguish between 3am and 3pm.

An unending party in a place where time itself had been banished.

But I was always more than pleased to get back to my observation deck at the office, watching the ebb and flow of life, six stories down.