Right now I'm living the life in New York City. They say if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. Being in the process of trying to claw my way to the top I'm in great spirits. Yesterday I got my 50 yellow bicycles in. They are beautiful. I can't wait to take a huge crowd of people out on them. It's going to make the kind of visual splash that Bill Cunningham has been waiting for. 20 people on these bikes at one time in NYC!!!! OMG it's going to be awesome. 

Life's good. Engaged to the best woman ever. Owner of the coolest company I could imagine. Working with my bike mechanic, Simon, who's the best dude ever... and we're listening to Otis Redding's version of "Cigarettes and Coffee". 

Still, it's New York. Yesterday I had to step over a heroine addict who snuck into my entrance way and was shooting up. He was all apologetic, "Sorry, I'll move, I"ll move." I just said,"I don't care what you do. This isn't Kansas but I'm going to step over all of your drugs and your needles because I need to go do something. Are you ok with that?" He nodded. I stepped slowly over his stash. 

And on tour this past week I've had people from all over the world and they've loved the bike tour. Reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor are forthcoming but I'm impatient and really want to get more people signed up on the tours. Yesterday I had four people sign up from California. They just randomly found me on line and told me they loved the website. 

It's all in process. It's all happening. 

Peace. 

THE FIRST TWO TOURS!

A couple of quick things before the blog: 1. We're open. If you want to come on a tour or send people on it, here is the link for reservations: https://adam-benedetto-t34t.squarespace.com/config#/|/calendar

And if you could I'd really appreciate it if you could "LIKE" the Facebook page for Loudest Yeller. Here's that link: https://www.facebook.com/LoudestYeller/

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Pictures first. The story Below.

So I'm pretty excited today. This weekend we had the first two tours. Technically I wanted to open April 1st but the weather has been horrible for the first two weeks of April and... I was waiting to get my insurance approved FOREVER!!! 

Anyways, all of the red tape has been sorted and the bike tours got to go out. Saturday was a ride for people supporting Bernie Sanders. We dressed our bikes up with a bunch of ribbons and signs and went riding around NYC. We even stopped by Wall Street! I didn't talk about the history. Mainly I needed to get the timing down with a group riding through the streets so I didn't delve into the history. Lots of people cheered as we went by and a million people took our picture. Hopefully one of them was Bill Cunningham. 

Sunday, my good friends, Haeky and Nosh, came on the actual tour. My very first. We had an exceptional day. It was about 65 degrees and sunny. No wind. Plenty to love about NYC. We rode the ferry across from Williamsburg to the Financial District of Manhattan. 

At some point during the picnic in the park I thought, "This is my new life. Riding bikes with people. Having fun with history and culture. Picnics. And finally working for myself." Pretty fun. 

The tour ran long because we stopped at Joseph Leonard to say hello to everyone as I know Haeky and Nosh from the restaurant. It's supposed to be four hours. We took our time and it was six. What fun! New York City is such a stunning place to see by bicycle. It just presents itself. 

Why "Loudest Yeller"

Loudest Yeller is a reference to a song that Woody Guthrie wrote about Stetson Kennedy. Stetson is most famous for infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, learning their secrets and then making their violent acts and rituals known. My favorite story about this is how Kennedy worked with the writers of the Superman comic book to essentially tell kids what all of secret handshakes and such meant. Kids in the South then recognized their dad's using the signals just like the bad guys in the comics were doing. It made them look like fools to their children.

Stetson Kennedy also worked for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to educate people about the Poll Tax and was a writer for The Nation Magazine (for which my good friend John Nichols is currently the National Affairs Correspondent).

In 1952 Stetson Kennedy ran for Governor of Florida and that was when the song "Stetson Kennedy" was written by Woody Guthrie. The song speaks a lot about how greed leads to war and names the companies have been the cause of war - I've pasted them below.

When I was running for Sheriff of Dane County, Wisconsin, in 2002 I sang this song a lot while I was out knocking on 10,000 doors that summer. It was easier to fight the Don Quixote fight for justice in light of all of the simple actions people had taken before me. It gave me courage to think of all of the small songs, the political runs, the comic books published and Unions organized, in the historical March for Progress.  People ask me now, "Did you win?" and while I didn't win in my run for Sheriff I won in speaking my mind plainly, being the "loudest yeller" in my own way, at that time, about the stark injustice of what was (and is still) going on with the USA PATRIOT ACT or the massive incarceration rates of African Americans in Dane County jails. And no one owned those actions but me. I knocked on the doors, I asked people for their vote, I published literature saying, "Handcuffs fit people who wear ties too."

And so the song means a lot to me and so do the people involved and the spirit of where those words came from.

In 2000 I had the opportunity to introduce Billy Bragg, who recorded the song with Wilco, to Ralph Nader at a Green Party Event in Madison and I felt very close to Americas fight for democracy, equality and justice. I loved that part of my life.

And so in creating a business that consists of telling stories I don't want to tell just any story. I hope to tell the stories that helped make New York a great and interesting place. Stories of people fighting for a foothold here in America, stories of people trying to improve their lives once they got here, stories of how America improved with time and perspective.

Howard Zinn endorsed me in my run for Sheriff, the least I can do now is continue to tell the People's History as best I can and that's why I've named it Loudest Yeller Bicycle Tours. We're going to tell some good stories.

I should mention too that "Yeller" is also kind of slang for my favorite color... which is Yellow. Marc Franz's cow is yellow,

I painted a yellow cat I really like

, and France is yellow on a lot of maps and I like France a lot.

It's a good color. Makes me happy just thinking about it.


Stetson Kennedy 
by Woody Guthrie

I done spent my last three cents
Mailing my letter to the President
Didn't make a show, I didn't make a dent
So I'm swinging over to this independent gent

Stetson Kennedy, writing his name in
Stetson Kennedy, writing his name in

I can't win out to save my soul
Long as Smathers-Dupont's got me in the hole
Them war profit boys are squawking and balking
That's what's got me out here walking and talking

Knocking on doors and windows
Wake up and run down election morning
And scribble in Stetson Kennedy

I ain't the world's best writer, ain't the world's best speller
But when I believe in something, I'm the loudest yeller
If we fix it so you can't make no money on war
Well we'll all forget what we was killing folks for

We'll find us a peace job, equal and free
We'll dump Smathers-Dupont in a salty sea
Well, this makes Stetson Kennedy the man for me

The Loudest Yeller Office is just a tiny little space in the basement of a very big building that sits at the bottom of the Williamsburg Bridge. It's just a room big enough to hold 50 bicycles and a lot of helmets and bike tools (And some art left over from the art show). 

The basement of this building hosts a number of small businesses like this one. There are some computer nerds, a couple of etheticians, a tattoo artist… and my favorite; a sound recording studio that I share a wall with. They have a voice box in there, so they do all sorts of audio and voice recordings. I like it because it's a lot of hip hop with good beats and it's fun to hear how they develop the lyrics and change things. Yes, it does literally sound like I have a radio on in the same room. It's just loud enough that it's not distracting. They also have a steady stream of interesting artists hanging around which is fun too. It's a New York experience for sure. 

That reminds me of when I saw a rap video being filmed the other day down the street. There was about 25 African American Males between the ages of 18 and 25 bouncing to music, wearing bling and saggy pants and gesturing into a camera that resting Nike high off the ground. It was a big party. Great to come across a block from home.