GANGS ARE A SUBCULTURE
They have their own laws of the jungle in forms called literature. They have their own police force called enforcers. They have their own underground pharmacies. Own banks. Gun stores. They have their own vernacular and code book. They have the old cats who bestow gang-wisdom down on the youth.
They also have their own hypocrisy and intense levels of violence. Gang violence whether to other gangs or laid down on innocents, altogether incorporates 75% of all violence in America. Why would anyone in their right mind want to join a gang? Well, I'm not in my right mind by clinical standards -- I'm in my left mind.
WANNA-BE
There was a prestige to gangs in smaller town and cities that wasn't enamored in Chicago. Since about 30% of the West Side of Chicago is gang-affiliated, there's too many chefs in the kitchen for them to be important. Go to a smaller city down state -- you go from a small fish in a big pond to a big fish in a small pond. And any gang-member, even if kicked out of the hood for smoking crack, we're all the sudden legends in the smaller cities. Legends that smoked crack, but still legends. Didn't matter, they were from Chicago where the main gangs were founded from Latin Kings... to the rest down below...
Movies like Colors and Boyz-N-The-Hood came out. Sensationalism cologne spraying began, and the scent traveled downstate like a French whore parade. Movies made them cool.
LA riots showed the world the colorful side of LA gangs. The red-headed stepchild that many cities tried to keep in the basements were coming out -- gangs became popular. And every crestfallen kid from life like me, wanted a piece of honor in a despicable way. Dishonor among thieves.
We look up to older brothers -- because they're first to experience things before we are. Such as when my brother stated a vagina had three holes and if I missed the right one, I was screwed. This Rubix cube woman maze he falsely laid upon me probably kept me away from women more than I should have been. If trying to find the right hole was a crap shoot -- I didn't want to gamble my pride and embarrassment if I came up with the wrong one. My brother made it sound like they could die if you missed. He was an armchair vagina specialist and hadn't even hit second base. But when you're young, you're gullible.
What's a wanna-be? -- someone that is beneath the stain stuck to a well-used toilet. It's someone who wants to be in a gang.
By the time I moved in with my aunt: My self-esteem, self-worth, and ego was shattered to the point I was a walking broken mirror, reflecting my angst back at everyone who did have self-worth, confidence -- and those people the chicks bowed down to. I guess they could find the hole. Bastards.
In St. Louis I was raised around Blood and Crips.
In Illinois there were...
G.D.'s and V.L's
This unnerved me that the gangs in Illinois were using acronyms and not full names. Blood and Crip graffiti would take an calligrapher expert to decipher -- G.D.s and V.L's liked symbols and needed a hieroglyphics expert to tell you what the hell you were looking at.
G.D.'s were Gangster Disciples under the six point star of David. They wore black and blue. Their mortal rivals were the Vice Lords, and they were under the five point star. They wore black and red. Universally they had a rainbow of different colors in different branches on both sides.
I'll go more into the history in a later blog. But basically they have been fighting each other for almost fifty years. They weren't tap dancing and using trashcans to sing a tune like the West Side Story -- they were singing with the sounds the little grim reapers(bullets) made.
Me, I wanted to choose the most popular side. One problem, I was as skinny as a string of dental floss and could offer neither warring faction any prolific quality but my big mouth. And the streets were a silent form of warfare -- big mouths weren't a commodity.
So I attended some rumple in nice clothes middle-school and the G.D.'s had brothers attending there. They were the most popular. They wore the Starter jersey's that had the ladies drooling over them. They owned the school -- just by being the brothers of G.D.'s. Vice Lords had no influence there. They were talked about as the welfare gang with the dumpy members. Out-numbered. Loathed. At this school the Vice Lords were considered non-existent and only tantamount to janitors in street cred.
So I decided I wanted to join the G.D's
One big colossal problem. I didn't know any G.D's, nor was popular enough to their brothers. And I didn't wear Starter Jerseys. I was poor and wore the 20.00 dollar Sears knock-off jerseys. Actually I did eventually wear them -- when they went out of style and on wholesale.
My brother even had hubris for knowing a G.D. at the buffet he worked at. The scorn of my mother's loins had more clout than I did. My stinkin' brother!!!??? I had to do something... and fast. So the first thing I needed to do was buy a bunch of gangsta rap tapes and memorize them like school texts. Done. Did it. And I was still puny. Okay, that didn't work. Next step...
If you can't beat them -- make a gang up under the 6-point star and declare myself a leader...
Sounds good. WELL, IT ALMOST COST ME MY LIFE...
On that cliff-hanger...next up, tea at Martha Stewart's...wrong cliff hanger -- Next up... the beating that let me see hell. And after all these years... hell still doesn't have an ice machine....
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