My new car got smashed at the gig last night.

I played a very long gig on Frenchmen St. last night in New Orleans. As I'm packing my stuff up at 2:30am, some guy decides to smash into my open car door.

I had just bought this car a month ago - it my first car in about 5 years of not driving. It was a cute little 1991 Honda Civic with low mileage and gets about 41 miles to the gallon. Cosmetically and mechanically everything on it was perfect. Now both of the doors on the right side of the car will not open or close without quite a bit of force. It's looking pretty ugly - it's not just dents, but actual crinkles in the metal. Not good.

Not a fun situation: myself and about 20 other people at the bar watched this guy plow right into my car. He stopped, and I walked over to see if I still had a car door left. The woman in the back seat started yelling at me, screaming that I should have left the door open and it was my fault. I have been having a pretty rough time in my life lately, and I came unhinged and totally blasted her, basically telling her to [explitive] off, and that I didn't need to be yelled at by a backseat driver. The driver was apologetic, but she was histerical. Not cool. Then another driver in a giant SUV pulls up behind him, and starts honking and yelling, as she was trying to get by. I walked over to her and asked her to back up so the other driver could park and get out of her way. She refused, and started driving up, almost smashing a friend's legs in between the two cars, and continued to honk. Even more uncool. We finally got the first guy's car moved, and we traded information, and that was it.

Then I got a call this morning from my insurance company - all the info the guy gave me was bogus. Address, phone number, everthing: bogus. My insurance can't do anything for me, as I have just a basic liability on the car to keep it street legal. I was planning on selling this car next month as soon as I arrived in San Francisco, and now the value of the car just dropped by $500. I'm going to have to replace both doors and probably paint the whole thing, and it's all going to come out of my pocket.

The gig only paid $66.

 

This was not a fun lesson to learn the hard way.

 

Playing blues songs is what got me into this mess.