Bicycle Annie

In the early 1970s, Bicycle Annie frequented West Campus businesses one after another on a regular route, walking alongside a balloon-tired Schwinn or some such. If memory serves, her bike sported both a handlebar-mounted basket up front and dual, rear saddle baskets, always stuffed with newsprint.

Her dress was unusually colorful and her legs were swaddled in hose, even summertime. She always wore PLENTY of makeup: rouge, mascara, and bright-red lipstick on a big, puffy pre-Botox puss. She was never up for much conversation with passersby; in fact she could be downright dismissive.

I first heard "the straight scoop" about her at Nau's Pharmacy on San Gabriel at W. 24th street, next door to where I lived, and where I had a charge account, mainly used to eat breakfast and lunch and buy whatnot. Cigarettes were 35 cents a pack, coffee 15 cents, a hamburger and fries maybe $1.00, and--while seated in the cafe--you could "preview" whatever magazines were on sale.

Consequently, I was in Nau's several times each day and got to know the staff there well. One, who'd been there for years, told me that Annie's deceased husband had run a local neighborhood newspaper and that, after his death, she had delusionally continued to make the rounds of the paper's former advertisers, asking them to place ads in upcoming issues. At Nau's, they sympathetically played along: she usually left with a complimentary soft drink.

Later, in the mid-70s, she disappeared for a while; the story was that she had been struck by a vehicle. When she reappeared, she carried a crutch and tugged the bike along. She couldn't make quite as long a trek as before and wasn't seen quite as often. Still later, she jettisoned the bike and added a second crutch and bandages on her shins. Her appearance became increasingly, let's say, "less neat" (I remember her hose gathered around her knees.), and her demeanor evermore snappish.

I moved away in the late 70s and don't remember seeing her when I returned in the 80's.