Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Archive for the ‘Inner-City Life’ Category

I’m no lawyer, but I could have sworn there was a difference between committing a crime outright, and being lured into committing one.

Despite that, law enforcement agencies all over the country have instituted the practice of using “bait cars” to fight rampant car theft.

The idea is simple. Cops modify a nice car—usually an Escalade or other ghetto-irresistible ride—with monitoring devices (cameras) and tracking technology (Lo-Jack). Then they sweeten the deal even more by loading the car up with nice shit, like an iPod and some Luther Vandross CDs. Sometimes, they even leave the keys in the ignition. After that’s done, they drop it off in an area where lots of cars are stolen. And wait.

Needless to say, these are the ingredients for some hilarious ghetto antics. In fact, there’s an entire television show devoted to playing footage of people trying to explain themselves to police before being hauled off to jail. You hear shit like, “I was just moving it out of the way so I could get my car out,” or “this is actually my cousin’s car. He knows all about this.” Of course, they don’t realize we’ve all been watching (and hearing them) steal the car all along. I’ve enjoyed more than a few laughs at these poor idiots’ expense.

But I nearly shat my pants (not in a good way) when, during a routine evening out, I spotted this sign in a parking garage here in LA:

Say what? This shit is real? The bait car instantly went from a playing-in-the-background-type-of-show to some real shit in my life. I mean, however unlikely, I could have conceivably been seduced by the bait, and ended up on the very show whose actors I ridicule. I was shocked and pissed.

Look, I’m all for fighting crime, especially crime that puts my insanely in-demand car in any kind of danger. But, what’s next? Where will it end? A bait twenty bucks falling out of a douchebag’s acid-wash-jeans pocket?  A bait just-underage girl? A bait set of answers to the test?

I say that if cops can bait us into committing crimes, we can bait them into thinking they’re fighting crime.

“Oh, sorry Mr. Officer, I didn’t really snatch her purse. Laugh out loud. See, this is Julie, my friend. And we’re just rehearsing for our hipster wannabe-legitimate-theatre play. And, by the way, we were also taping the whole thing. You’re going to be on TV!”

Nothing says shady (or in select contexts, bad-ass) more than using a dollar sign in place of the conventional letter S (or wearing it around your neck).

But, let’s make an important distinction. If you’re a hip-hop arti$t or a pimp named $ilky or a 99-cent $tore, you’re likely to improve your image by using the dollar sign. Chances are it resonates with your “demographic.” But, if you’re a law office or a bank, you’re probably better off sticking to the core 26 letters of the alphabet.

You’d think all of this goes without saying. But, I often run into poor uses of the dollar sign around town.

In the wrong context, the dollar sign does the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do. (For instance, I’ve since withdrawn all of my money from Ca$h Bank.) But, the way I see it, currency-symbols-as-letters is a risky move if you’re a business of any kind (except maybe a rapper named £e$ter €x, which would be kinda the shit).

My guess is that the few people that are actually swayed to buy something because every S on the billboard was a dollar-sign, aren’t that desirable as customers in the first place. And, the significant percentage of people you turned off with your dollar-sign-replacements probably were.

For a while now, I’ve suspected my neighborhood was developing a serious hipster problem. Admittedly, it’s pretty hard to live in any decent apartment-dense area in a major U.S. city without running into at least of few of these characters, with their manicured beards, year-round beanies, and two-sizes-too-small striped sweaters.

But, one day, I looked up and saw this.

There’s nothing like a pair of “old-school” high-top Nikes—except maybe a pair of girlish skinny jeans—to telegraph hipster. It’s probably no coincidence that right below this hipster territory mark is:

• a store that sells turn-tables and other equipment for “DJs” (a common hipster pastime);
• an ostensibly “dive” bar, frequented exclusively by mid-to-late 20s city transplants;
• an “ironic” t-shirt and skateboard store.

I guess this is—to the extent that these wimps are capable of it—a hostile hipster takeover.

I don’t know about everyone else but, to me, one of the most irritating things on the road nowadays are those unnecessarily bright headlights on certain late-model cars. In response to this modern nuisance, our "production team" has put together a crude animation on some ideas for getting your revenge dealing with them.

I’m not a big sci-fi fan, but there’s a famous episode of the original Star Trek series from the 60s called “The Man Trap” that speaks to me. In it, the members of the crew land on a desolate planet and encounter a beautiful woman living there alone. Strangely, she looks different to each of the male characters. To Captain Kirk, the creature’s a young blond girl. To another guy: an older, sophisticated brunette. But in reality, the beautiful woman is nothing more than a “Salt Vampire,” a shape-changing creature that tricks men so it can extract the salt out of their bodies–its principal source of nourishment.

How do I look?

At some point or another, everybody has known a Salt Monster–a girl who, despite not outwardly displaying a single one of the traditional indicators of beauty, still got treated as if she was a hot ticket. Overweight, uninteresting, no charm, bad skin, mangled teeth, unfunny, manly back, grating voice, no ass, no tits, generally stupid, annoying laugh, bitchy attitude, manly haircut. Whatever. It didn’t matter. This girl got the attention of both genders, to the befuddlement of a lot of people like me, who were left to wonder if we were seeing the same thing as everybody else. And, to make things worse, all of that undeserved validation inevitably went to her head.

Recently, I’ve been starting to feel like one of the most important females in my life is a little like this: Josephine, my car.

About a dozen times over the past few weeks, I’ve gone out to my (skillfully) street-parked car to find a note on the windshield that looks like this:

Now, to be fair, Josephine doesn’t really deserve to be called a Salt Monster. For one, she’s a beautiful shade of mid-90s teal. She’s charming, well-built, and aging gracefully. Sure, she has some dings and rust, but that’s not surprising at her age (a teenager). She’s loyal and always comes through when I need her. She doesn’t complain, only whining when I turn her steering wheel a little too hard when her belts are cold.

But, all this attention seems a bit excessive for a lady like her. She’s not a classic. She’s not scarce. And she’s definitely not in exceptional condition. She’s blue-collar and functional.

So what’s with all of the unsolicited offers on my car? As an urban, ethnic guy I’m suspicious of all questions and compliments. Is this some sort of car scam I’ve never heard of, or does Josephine have a little Salt Monster in her?

Whatever the case–and for the record–my car is not for sale. The sign goes up tomorrow.

The past few concerts I’ve attended have revealed to me that things I was foolishly chalking up to an unfortunate succession of isolated annoying incidents are, in fact, disturbing trends. Whether these trends apply to all public events or only concerts is still unclear.

1. People trying to record the entire thing so they can post it on their YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, or whatever-the-hell-else.

I’m not sure what these people are thinking, or how they’re able to suspend their arms in the air for 90 minutes (especially when they’re obviously and profoundly out of shape), but a full 25-33 percent of the people were doing exactly that at last concert I attended. Do you think these people ever ask themselves: How good high can my production values be if I’m recording this on my LG Storm 3000 cell phone held erratically over my head?

And...cut. That's a wrap.

2. Puddles

There’s nothing more unnerving than a wet or sticky floor—especially if you have no choice but to marinate in it for hours. This isn’t actually a new problem. But lately, it seems to be getting out of control. Let me give you all a piece of advice, from experience: don’t put your nice-anything under your seat at these things. Unless, that is, you want it smell like a cocktail of cocktails. I don’t know if there’s some unreported epidemic of vertigo, or if beer vendors are experiencing an unusual bout of generosity, but there oughta be law: lids (and straws) for all drinks.

Last I heard, there's store called Lids.

3. Dramatic increase in requests for audience participation.

Dear artist: I didn’t pay you (and a pimp with the street name of “Ticketmaster”) many-many rupees to come and sing myself. I came to listen to you. After all, you’re much better at it. Trust me: if you do a good job tonight, I’ll sing the whole car ride home. Just imagine if you paid good money, let’s just say, to watch me type this blog entry. Then, somewhere in the middle of it, I shout “everybody!”, and hand you the keyboard to start writing. Exactly.

What the audience should say, in unison: "No, really, it’s okay. You sing."

A few weeks ago, this screen capture hit the internet like gangbusters. It inspired a wide range of reactions from “no way” to “oh snap.” The big question was whether it was legitimate racist programming embedded deep in the shag of the Google search algorithm or just another clever Photoshop hoax.

Oh snap.

We may never know the truth—since Google reportedly fixed the problem shortly after word got out. But the whole controversy got me thinking about ethnic people’s unique relationship to their cars—especially in our urban centers. For reasons that remain largely a mystery to most, ethnic youth seem to have a special fondness for after-market parts and accessories. If someone stole your car, and kept it, a reasonably keen eye could discern the degree and hue of ethnicity of the perpetrator, simply from the “modifications” you found on the car. Cars, it seems, can tell you quite a bit about a person—if you know what to look for.

Too fast, too furious.

Hollywood capitalized on the ethnic car phenomenon with the Fast and Furious franchise, featuring a largely ambiguously-ethnic cast, including the king of that group—Vin Diesel. I still haven’t succeeded at sitting all the way through any of the installments, but word has it that they devoted an entire one (Tokyo Drift) to Asian people. Dave Chappelle famously addressed Latinos’ fondness for animal prints in his Lost Episodes. And every other hip-hop video catalogs black people’s undying love for the mighty Escalade.

I’ve realized that we can potentially learn a lot by paying a little more attention to what people are driving. The first in the series: the Volkwagon Jetta.