Tips For Keeping It Real In The Hood

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m moving to Los Angeles this month.  Or not really Los Angeles, because nobody lives in Los Angeles itself but one of the suburbs.  It’s something called La Cienega Heights which sounds nice.  It’s probably hilly.  Probably looks down on something which is always good.  At least it’s not La Cienega Flats or La Cienega Valley.  That’s the straight up ghetto.  I Google’d “La Cienega Heights” to get an idea of what this pastoral stretch of suburbia is like.  I expect words like “idyllic” and “bucolic” will be oft used.  Here’s the first page of results:

Hmmm, shootings, taggers, burglars, more shootings?  In just the first page?  I am going to have to keep it so real.

I have lived in some sketch neighborhoods before.  In Minneapolis, for a year or two I lived in the Seward neighborhood which at the time had the most rapes of any neighborhood in that area of Minneapolis.  Now granted it was near the U of M campus.  And before everybody gets up in arms and says, “Are you implying that college students rape more than the general populace?”  Let me just say yes, they most certainly do.  They get out of class and they can’t wait to get to the raping.  They go home.  They load up on 99 Bananas and it’s off to the rape races, so to speak.

In San Diego, I lived in North Park for almost 3 years.  On the west side of North Park heading towards Hillcrest (the gay neighborhood in San Diego) things were pretty safe but the further east one travels, the sketchier it gets.  The consensual sodomy to non-consensual sodomy ratio gets way out of whack.  I lived on the east side.  When I lived there, it was not uncommon for people to follow you on the street or just lurk in alley ways waiting to roll you just for minding your own business.  You had to keep your head on a swivel watch out for people running around holding bottles of 99 Bananas*.  It was terrifying.

*For those of you who think I am impugning 99 Bananas good name and equating it with rape; I am.  High potency, tastes like bananas.  It’s pretty much flavored roofies.  There should be a background check for people that buy 99 Bananas.  You’d solve 90% of all date rapes and the number of pictures on the internet of skanks peeing in public and on themselves would plummet.  Here, I made a graph that shows the correlation:

99 Bananas; 99 Rapes

So here are some strategies for surviving in the hood and how to deal with some situations that you will likely encounter.  The point of these strategies is to keep people from fucking with you or in the case that they do fuck with you, that ultimately you escape unharmed.  For the most part they are preventative.  Mostly because I am not a good fighter.

Basic Strategies

• The “Mean Mug”: This is your basic face that you should put on when walking the streets.  I recommend a meaner mug the later it gets.  Come 2 or 3a you should look pissed as fuck when you walk around.  Yank your Kangol down so it hoods your eyes and shit and just menace motherfuckers.
• The “Strut”.  Throw your shoulders back and walk with a purpose.  You want to give off an aura of cockiness but not arrogance.  At the same time you don’t want to walk too quickly so that it looks like you are nervous.  Make it look like you have somewhere to be.
• Do not ever dress like this guy:

• 

  People will rape you just on principle.

• The “Crazy Talk” : This is a slightly more advanced strategy for when you see some shady motherfuckers that look like they might want to give you a tune up.  Just start talking to yourself in an excited tone.  Repetitive nonsense interspersed with spooky exclamations (Grandma’s skull swims in the chili!) should do the trick.
• The “I’ll be right there” fake phone call:  This is another good one if somebody seems to be giving you the eye.  Let’em know somebody is waiting for you.

Advanced Strategies:

• Always carry a blank CD with a crappy case on it.  According to Teh Internetz, people will constantly come up to you trying to give you a “free” CD and then somehow you’ll need to give them $10.  It is unclear why.  However, if you carry a blank CD with a made up name on it like Lazer Phazer you can turn the tables them.  When the local ghetto resident tries to shake you down with their fresh to def mix tape you can trade them your own hot out the kitchen mix tape.  Nobody likes having their own hustle used on them.  It’s like showing up at a 3 card Monte table, pulling out a deck of your own, and asking them to “pick a card, any card”.
• Do Not roll up to 3 card Monte tables and try the pick a card, any card.  This will backfire.  Into your butt-hole.
• Carry a small powerful flashlight.  Shine it at people that look dicey.  People tend to shy away from bright lights and if they seem a little too interested in you, it’ll blind them while you make a run for it.
• The “I’ma cut that bitch!” fake phone call.  This is much like the fake phone call above but more aggressive.  Make loud threats about somebody owing you money and drugs and that you are going to show up at their house and put a needle full of meth in their eyeball if you don’t get your $20.  The more extravagant the threat in relation to the amount of money owed the better.
• Start running at your harasser.  If somebody seems to be following you from a distance or watching you intently from across the street, sprint right at them.  I’m talking arms chugging.  Nobody likes to see somebody sprint right at them.  It’s unnerving.  Note:  Do not use this technique when there are two or more people.  No reason to sprint to an ass-whipping.

Finally, if none of these techniques have worked and you are in a situation where you are going to have to protect yourself there are a couple of last resort techniques you can use that might get you out of having to fight:

1. As the other person gets into a fighting stance, start taking your pants off.
2. Yell loudly that you are going to spray them with semen.
3. Try to get a boner going.
4. If you are able to cry on cue, now’s the time.  Nobody wants to fight a guy who’s crying and has a boner.

If you are a girl, obviously these last few tips aren’t going to work.  You should be carrying mace and maybe a baton of some sort if you are going to walk home alone through a bad neighborhood.  Or make sure to get some guy who can cry on cue to walk you home.  While the thugs try to land punches without being touched by his fear boner, you should be able to make a break for your apartment.

/