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| He was just casually shopping at Target without any pants on, like any teen! |
Every summer the city pops off into violent squalls, punctuated by house-party gangland murders. It's so regular to us town-and-country New Yorkers, we plan for it and even text about it to each other, like how we know that the drunks living next door to us will creep out of their rank dank holes once the sun comes out in May, to get violently drunk and cause problems now that winter's over, causing them to carve out their boringly repetitive and totally dysfunctional turf wars on property that isn't theirs, just like the descriptive term "porch monkey" was actually meant for: nonexclusive of skin tone, and they are indeed a stereotypically lazy lot at that (and also white).
Clichés are very good and especially functional for all societies, while also ripe for game-playing idiots. In Brooklyn, it means you can flip a perp into a martyr by trotting out some cleaned up high school grad photos over yo kid's most recent mug shot when the shit hits the fan and he's screwed up with the law, yet again: neck tats not included, which is exactly what happened in Flatbush last week.
For years I've known about the teen phenomenon called "wilding", which is cutesy slang for this century's "jumping in": a vicious, seemingly random beat-down that's very much planned. When I lived in the Slope, I'd walk down 5th Avenue to Atlantic Avenue because it has an awesome Target store, and I could flip through the designer racks without fear of molested goods, like the pawed over markdowns in the Spring Valley shops here, that are picked over a billion times by Hasidim women with a lot of children, covered in makeup, sweat marks, deodorant stains, and other stuff you don't want to know about.
And so, I shopped in relative comfort for the "phresh" duds I needed to play my "Slick, Big City, Cover Designer" role to perfection by looking the part. It was (and still is) part of my overall presentation, and in any really good business, presentation counts. After one such journey through the clothing stacks, I was back on the floor putting back some duds that didn't work for me. It's a habit I picked up during my tenure as a teenie retailer in the old Nanuet Mall, an 80s heaven of a shopping mall when doing such a thing counted as a recreational sport.
I saw the fitting room racks clogged with clothes left by lazier shoppers than I, so I figured I give the floor ladies a break and do my own put backs onto the racks. Within a minute of leaving the changing rooms for the floor, loosening up the rack, and talking to a floor clerk who asked if I needed help, a...something broke out. I write that because it happened so fast, I was totally scared and unprepared for it, which turns out to be the point: pure shock value.
"What was that?! What happened?" I quickly turned to the store clerk. She sighed and said to me: "Yeah, this happens every afternoon around this time. Every day, and it's always between 3 and 3:30 in the afternoon, when the high school gets out. They're called 'wildings'. The kids text each other at school all day long, so they can arrange to meet here and have fights with each other."
Jesus! That's so scary!! I said to her, while my heart still raced. It was so fucking violent, and I'm a fighter. I thought someone had been stabbed. She told me that was the point, and that as far as "wildings" go, the one we just witnessed was pretty mild, in terms of violence, because no one had been stabbed. "So they do that, too?!", I asked. It was surprising to me, because the Slope and the surrounding neighborhoods are really good, well-established, old neighborhoods, independent of racial background. I mean, the hoods have been the hoods for a really long time, and not within the past 100 years. Where exactly do they come from? Prospect Heights? Fort Greene? Boohoo!
Many an African-American kid from around the way has a dentist for a dad, and a mom who volunteer teaches modern dance in the afternoons at the local BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). The real "Fight da powa!" had passed for them a long time ago. But, I guess like a Bay Ridge kid's right of passage climbing the Verrazano on a dare, they needed to simulate danger and feats of strength as trials to their fragile identities, so they could brag to each about it later.
"Yeah", she sighed again, as she slowly reached for her walkie-talkie, when I asked if security knew. "Oh, yeah. They know," she clicked the call button, "so does the local precinct, because we call them almost every afternoon." She would know, because as I hurriedly shelved my rejected clothes and walked towards the elevators, she looked like she could be one of their own grandmothers: a decent, hard-working lady starting the second shift of her second day job.
Don't believe the hype, man. It ain't what it seems "in da 'hood" these days. Flatbush kids, I mean you, too. You can't get away with murder for kicks by blaming "the white man" anymore. We all have cameras in our cell phones, regardless of it's price point, and this savvy-with-retail working class mom knows the how much gear (yo shit) costs, or at least a roundabout guesstimate, anyway. Get real wit it, kid.
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| Look at this purely ghetto-ass shit: the "moms" (or "grandmoms", who was probably made that at 40 fuckin' years old, or some twisted shit like that) jumps into the action with her nasty-ass attitude, while the baggy pants "security guard" loping around in the foreground (in reality, working his minimum wage after-school job while dreaming of his "big time" music career in the city as a "hiphop artist", most likely), looks on ineffectively, just like his punk ass has been doin' all along, totally hip to "da game". Tell me they don't fuckin' know about the trend that I've known about for at least 12+ years! That's some fake ass shit, right there. Home girl had the audacity to play victim with her boy's clean-cut yearbook pic on the evening news programs, which was a heck of a lot nicer than his fucked up (and much more recent) neck tattoo mug shots. But that's life in "da hood": a place where every day is some kind of bullshit con job. We on to you, hardcore, girl. Get it right! Jeeesus...what in the bitch is that....???! <shakes head in disbelief> "Oh, you triflin', petty-ass fool. Always lookin' for handouts. Fuck y'all man!" (That's what I said to the t.v. when I saw it play out on the local programs here in New York) "That's it! I've had it! Fuck y'all! I'm writing 'Targhetto' next week , bitches!!" <scowls mostly to self). |
