The other day, I was walking out of Thugz Manse very late at night when I heard something that I had been expecting to hear for quite some time now – the clap of a gat, or for those not familiar with the vernacular of the streets, a gunshot.
But more specifically, eight gunshots. Having spent a small amount of time at a shooting range back in Seattle, I fancied that I had enough experience to not confuse a gunshot with, say, a car backfiring, or even the deceptive snap of a firecracker. Moreover, a car does not tend to backfire eight times in a row, and nor are the fuses of the eight run-of-the-mill M-80 firecrackers laid end to end so standardized and exact as to produce eight distinct, evenly spaced explosions.
Finally, neither a car with engine problems nor children with pyrotechnic aspirations, no matter how audacious, will cause a small, non-descript sedan to peel out of a parking lot down the street and run a red light. “No,” I thought to myself dangling my car keys idly in the middle of the street while casually scanning the sidewalk for cover, “those had to be gunshots.”
A week later, I stepped out of Thugz Manse again around midnight to notice the street a little more brightly illuminated than usual. I shielded my eyes, and a quick glace up revealed a police helicopter sweeping our street with a powerful spotlight. I gave the pilot and gunner a friendly wave, got into my car, and drove off. I put two and two together and figured that this was LAPD getting around to responding to “numerous gunshots fired along Budlong Ave.” about a week ago.
Having driven up to Stanford this past weekend, I realized that this is the kind of thing most people not living off campus tend to be blissfully unaware of. Not, of course, to play up the honestly very little danger my current residence poses – in fact, my street’s the freaking Hamptons compared to a lot of Los Angeles – but simply to state that there is something reassuring about walking around at night and only having to deal with drunken cat calls (not targeted at myself, I’d assume).
Down at the intersection of Adams and Vermont, there’s a little 76 Station that gets its fair share of customers. Rush hour or weekends usually means waiting in line to get a turn at the pumps followed by a mad dash of deft maneuvering at awkward angles to try and weasel your way into position, not unlike a round of drunken, naked Twister with a meth user in charge of the spinner. I cannot count the number of times some poor soul sees a spot across the pumps, pulls all kinds of tricks with their car to get over there in time including, but not limited to, reverse 180s and driving around through oncoming traffic, only to find the space has been occupied by a rusty pickup truck blasting Reggaeton hip-hop.
I need to stop my formidable train of thought here to address this particular issue – Reggaeton. If a form of music could be tried for crimes against humanity, I would be the first in line to get tickets for Reggaeton’s trial and summary execution. Reggaeton is a form of dance hall music with strong Jamaican and Latin influences. This would seem to be fairly benign if it weren’t for one simple fact:
The definition of Reggaeton requires every single song to share the exact same beat from the same two-second sample.
Yes. Not sharing the same rhythm but recorded or arranged differently, but taking the exact same beats and putting them over your track. The Reggaeton CD sample kits for aspiring DJs and producers could consist of a single track and you could make Reggaeton just fine with that.
Just imagine booyah if every booyah single post booyah I made booyah had to booyah conform to booyah some ridiculous booyah rule like booyah inserting the booyah same word booyah throughout the booyah body of booyah the text. Booyah.
I just can’t understand it – you couldn’t get away with that kind of shit anywhere else. You wouldn’t stand for it if every other scene in every Shakespearian play consisted of the “Who’s on First” routine. You would roll up your program and jam it into your eye if every ballet had a row of people in the background constantly doing the Macarena. You would probably force yourself to choke on popcorn if every movie starred Gilbert Godfrey and Adam Sandler. But as soon as this shit manifests itself in music, you’re perfectly content to grind your crotch against some sweaty body in a dark steamy dance hall.
Not me – I’m the one in the corner shaking my head. Nobody is trying to rub up against my crotch.
My deep hate for Reggaeton is compounded by the fact that, for a period of about six months, every car that drove by Thugz Mansion blared Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” Every day, I could count on hearing at least three seconds of this song on at least four separate occasions. This song is known for it’s thought provoking and catchy chorus lyrics and sociopolitical commentary: “She likes Gasoline (Give me more gasoline!) / How she adores gasoline!”
Back to the ol’ gas station – this particular gas station is noteworthy in my opinion because it utilizes a security feature I’ve only seen here in Los Angeles – the bulletproof transaction window. After about 9 pm, when you want a bottle of Coke or a pack of gum, or twenty on pump number eight, you walk up to the teller and conduct your business through three inches of glass and a steel sliding drawer. The only other place I’ve seen something like this is, of all freaking places in the world, a Taco Bell in Los Angeles.
Not only is the drive through window completely surrounded by bulletproof glass and all your food delivered via locking steel drawer mechanism, but the entire counter inside the actual restaurant is covered by bulletproof glass as well. I can only imagine that employees must have some kind of security airlock type entrance wherein they must match their voice prints and submit to a retinal scan before they can clock in and start making tacos for the day. I mean, this is Taco Bell here. This is not a Bank of America. A Chalupa, no matter how finely crafted, does not need to be produced nor protected in a Fort Knox environment.
While marveling at this modern fast food oasis in the middle of what is obviously a crime ridden neighborhood, Kevin and I reminisced that of all places, this Taco Bell, right here across from the Target, would be mankind’s final outpost should the zombie infestation ever take hold. I made a note of the address, just in case I needed to spend the rest of my days on a zombie filled earth squirting sour cream and nacho sauce down my throat in a feeble attempt at sustenance, while the zombie hordes pound the windows demanding my brains.
With nothing but Taco Bell food to eat, I could probably hold out for about 3 hours.
But both the Taco Bell and the 76 Station are probably justified in their security measures. The 76 in particular has a meticulously maintained “wall of shame” proudly displayed inside with frame grabs from their matrix of security cameras of perpetrators stealing food, trying to rob the teller, and in one particularly disturbing case, beating down on a customer. While paying for gas one night, I noted to my chagrin that the shot of the customer being pistol-whipped happened the day before, right about where I was standing.
As I took out my wallet and scanned for cover, I asked the teller about the pictures and if the perpetrators ever came back. He rang me up, handed me my change, and beamed: “Nope! They never do!”
Sure as hell didn’t stop me from locking my door as soon as I got into my car, though.
-fw.
