Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Gangs?




I ran into some gang bangers last night while dumpster diving.
They asked what the tall bike was about, and I told them it was for ease in looking into tall dumpsters.
They were grossed out about my little salvage operation, but were interested in riding my bike.
When I told them about our clown bike gang, they got really excited.
I told them that for their own saftey there was no way in Hades they could be in our bike gang.
Then one of them started with the pubecent posturing that always looks to me like frightened little gorilla, basiclly beating his chest and asking me if I thought he wasn't "Hard" enough.
I just told him that the hand signs that he was using would require him to take both hands off the handlebars and thats a direct violation of our gang's charter.
That was a lie, we go hands free all the time, but I know he had never seen our gang's charter.
I really just don't want any violent, pistola-packing gang members in our non-violent gang.
Normally, I wouldn't have spoken so harshly to anyone with gold teeth while in a dark alley, but they were sufficiently grossed out buy my dumpster cologne that I knew it was ok.
I do have a special relationship with some gang bangers, see years ago, when we lived on Michigan ave., our free bike shop served a lot of the kids who are now twenty-somthing-year-old gangsters. We did what we could to steer them away from crime as a lifestyle, but it's really hard to beat lessons of the hood.
Anyway, sometimes I ride by a corner full of bangers on my stupid looking bike and one or two of them tend to break character, and give me huge warm smiles and wave, until they get noticed by the other sour pusses and return to the grim face.
I don't like unpleasant crime.
Is blowing up a weenie truck a crime? No it's a BBQ.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i ran into some gangsters last night too but i was riding down the street. quickly. it's a good thing too, because they weren't happy with me rolling into their car jacking in progress and decided to take chase.

the cops thought it was funny that i made a report seeing as i wasn't hurt or robbed, only nearly so.

good call discouraging the riff raff. even if you gave 'em a chance, i doubt they would make the cut. those guys like to keep their sneakers white. white like a dentist fresh smile.

glad to meet ya. i've been around, you just haven't seen me.

tanya