Pimp My Ride

Jul 13, 2010

"Where are you?" asked the bike wrangler, or rather, the agent who had contracted my motorcycle for a photo shoot this morning.

"I'm putting on my helmet right now," I said.

"How long is it going to take you to get here? It's the first shoot, everyone is ready to go."

"Seriously, I live five minutes away," I reassured him. "I'll be there on time."

The shoot was scheduled for 7:30 AM in scenic Brooklyn Heights, which, in reality, turned out to be seven minutes away instead of five, so I was two minutes late. "No problem," the agent said when I pulled up to the location. We had never met before and he was probably a little nervous that I was going to be an hour late, if I showed up at all. I got off the bike, pulled off my helmet and gloves, and shook his hand. "Good to meet you," he said with obvious relief.

I took off my gear and put it in a pile on the sidewalk, and then we did a walk around of the bike, looking it over, discussing its age and condition, swapping stories of accidents and near accidents. He owns a Scrambler, he said. (A bike from Triumph's current line inspired by the old models from the Sixties) "Unfortunately, I took it to the track and wrecked it," he said, pulling out his iPhone to show me pictures both pre- and post-accident. "I've been riding my old Honda CB750, but I have to be careful, it's overdue for an inspection."

I felt like a stage mother or worse (?) a pimp when, after we finished with the small talk, the agent pushed my bike into position and the crew began surrounding it with lights and reflectors. After a few test shots, a male model came out of the trailer -- a twenty-year-old guy dressed in a clean pair of jeans that were cut off at the calf, tennis shoes with no socks, and a Cocoa Puffs T-shirt. It seemed like a funny outfit for a model to wear while posing on a vintage Triumph, and I said so -- though I only mumbled it to one of the assistants as I looked over his shoulder at the test shots that were showing up on his laptop.

"He looks like he's about to get his ass kicked," he said.

"Why did they need a vintage bike for this shot?" I said. "It doesn't make any sense."

"They've been shooting all kinds of vehicles. We did a Vespa last week, and a cool old car the week before."

The assistant was a freelancer, like me, and he complained that, aside from this particular catalog shoot, work has been essentially non-existent. "How about you?" he asked.

"Slow," I said. "Why do you think I'm whoring out my bike?"

"Ha, yeah, 'You know things are bad when…'"

"...When you let a kid in a Cocoa Puffs shirt pretend to ride your bike for a day."

"I'm actually thinking about moving to China," he said.

"China? Seriously?"

"Yeah, man, that's where a lot of photo production work is moving. Staples already does all of their catalog work there. A friend of mine lives there, and I have some connections, so I'm going to check it out for a week and see how I like it. If I do, fuck it, I'm moving there."

"I really like that Cocoa Puffs shirt," said one of the other assistants who came over to check out the test shots. I thought he was joking and laughed. "Nah man,” he said, “I'm serious."

The stylist overheard him. "You shouldn't have said anything to Michael about it," she said. (Names have been changed to protect the fact that I'm terrible with names.) "It could very well have gotten 'lost' at the end of the shoot, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Oh yeah, shit, well. Do they sell that shirt in the store?"

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna buy me one for sure."

When I first got the call from the agency, I didn't even think to ask what the shoot was for, only how much money they were paying. Topless supermodels in skin-tight leather leggings, studded boots with six-inch heels digging into the pavement? Maybe a suede bikini under a lamb's wool vest? You never know. But when he mentioned it was a catalog shoot, I knew better. Although I wasn't fully prepared for a hobbledehoy in a Cocoa Puffs T-shirt, what I envisioned wasn't that far off.

"There are a couple of girls for the second half of the shoot," I was told as we stood around waiting for them to emerge from the trailer. No topless supermodels, of course, just a couple of fresh-faced tweenagers, smiling and shaking their hair against the wind machine. "Great," said the Photographer, snapping away, "super cute, nice, really good..."

A couple of hours later, and we were done. The agent thanked me, handed me a check, and waited until I kicked the bike to life. "Thanks again," he said. "We'll let you know if anything else comes up."

"I'm around," I said, then headed home. "Sorry, ol' girl," I said, patting the gas tank at the first stoplight. "I promise never to humiliate you like that ever again."

But between you and me, we'll see. When all I have to do is show up somewhere with my bike, money not only talks, it won't shut up.