Alcoholica

Metallica played the St Pete Times Forum Saturday night, a giant thrill for local metal fans. The hard rockin' hall-of-famers aren't familiar to me, so I figured it would be best to be prepared for anything when I drove eight die-hards to the concert.

One lesson one learns quickly in the limo game is the ancient one of not judging a book by its cover. My customers for the night might have looked like well-used paperbacks, but who the hell am I to judge? They were polite and friendly, and although I couldn't figure out just why their teenage children were coming, seemed like first-rate parents too.

Look, it's easy to be a snob about these things. Metal bands are a mystery to me, but then Scarlatti is probably a joke to them, unless there's an Italian hair band of that name floating about the place. Customers are customers, and as I say to The Boss, they all get the best treatment until their behaviour dictates otherwise.

Tampa is a dozy kind of place, with many one-way streets, and evidence of bored uninterest from the city fathers (and female mayor) that a clean sweep would rectify. Public performance venues like the SPTF are used all the time, and yet the organization around parking, traffic flow and (especially!) limousines is abysmal. The cops do their job as well as you'd expect, but the feeling one is left with is that administrators could care less what happens when the sun sets and they're comfortably ensconced somewhere else having dinner with a lobbyist.

That's a whole other issue.

A driving gig to Tampa for a concert like this is about as good as it gets, because everyone's in a good mood. They're also deaf and swaying when they come out, but that's fine too; I just turn up the heat, and they're all asleep by the time we've hit I-75 southbound.

The real fun lies in the time between when the show ends and the customers find me. Metallica girls are given to taking their tops off, I understand, an outstanding turn of events. When the sweaty crowd is melting out of the arena, there's plenty of eye-candy to keep a bloke occupied, even if they're with scary looking dudes.

They're probably shit-scared of my tie.