What a shitty ass way to start off a weekend.

[Guest shai_hulud]

EPA is GULLY.

 

I rode my bike through there recently. It's about a million times better than it used to be, but I didn't exactly want to hang out there longer than necessary.

 

DAO- I think we agree much more than you realize. I don't live in fear. I'm just aware that there's certain parts of town where I've GOT to have my guard up or I'm gonna get rolled up.

 

It's complicated. No, it's not. Youngsters back then were kept in check by the OGs more than they are now. There's little-ass kids running around with thangs like never before. Random people are getting jacked and killed more now. Back then, hood people killed other hood people over hood business. Now, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can get your card pulled.

 

I used to walk routes in Oakland round the clock. Not anymore. Kids aren't getting raised right anymore. They'll fuck with just about ANYONE for no reason. That's why I got robbed. I was walking to the store from my old squat. Got hit up about 300 feet from my front door. The area is a little bad, but it's mostly just a black, middle-class neighborhood. I never felt threatened there before. Now I don't roll through there without a shank.

 

I'm just telling you the way I see things here. It's a big part of the reason I want to get out of here. I'm too old for this shit.

 

Maybe I'll go to Philly next summer and check it out.

[DRUNKEN-ASSHOLE-ONER]

 

DAO- I think we agree much more than you realize. I don't live in fear. I'm just aware that there's certain parts of town where I've GOT to have my guard up or I'm gonna get rolled up.

 

It's complicated. No, it's not. Youngsters back then were kept in check by the OGs more than they are now. There's little-ass kids running around with thangs like never before. Random people are getting jacked and killed more now. Back then, hood people killed other hood people over hood business. Now, being in the wrong place at the wrong time can get your card pulled.

 

 

 

 

But you see that's my point. Kids are actually packing alot less heat and popping less shots than they were when we were coming up.

How can you not remember this? You're from Cali. Cali was the gangbanging capitol back then.

And the youngbouls were taught by their OG's, they were initiated by having to roll up and smoke random people just to prove they were down. Weren't drive by's a part of daily life in Cali back then?

 

And on my side of the country, we didn't even have that whole gang culture, but shit was def alot more violent then than it is nowadays. And I remember skateboarders even packing heat in book bags. I remember when you had to watch everything you did and said otherwise you might get vamped for your shit.

I remember driving through certain neighborhoods and having 40 bottles thrown at our car just for being white. These same neighborhoods I've walked routes through on the dolo in the past 7 years.

At least that's how it was where I'm from.

 

Like I said, I can't speak for Oakland. But didn't yall have alot more of a gangbanging culture back then?

[DRUNKEN-ASSHOLE-ONER]

 

I used to walk routes in Oakland round the clock. Not anymore. Kids aren't getting raised right anymore. They'll fuck with just about ANYONE for no reason. That's why I got robbed. I was walking to the store from my old squat. Got hit up about 300 feet from my front door. The area is a little bad, but it's mostly just a black, middle-class neighborhood. I never felt threatened there before. Now I don't roll through there without a shank.

 

I'm just telling you the way I see things here. It's a big part of the reason I want to get out of here. I'm too old for this shit.

 

Maybe I'll go to Philly next summer and check it out.

 

 

I feel you though. I've heard stories about how gully Oakland is. My boy Zeb went out there for a minute in the late 90's or early 2000's and came back telling stories of hand grenades being tossed in the hood on the regular.

 

I'm sayin though, is it as grimey now as it was 15 years ago?

[Guest shai_hulud]

All the shit going on in Oakland back in the day was all dope business.

 

I grew up in LA. I grew up around gangs and shit.

 

Out here, there just wasn't that much random violence until the past couple years. Now kids are fucking disrespectful knuckleheads. They act that way because their parents are scared...or on the pipe...or dead, or locked down. Same with their older siblings.

 

It's a trip, DAO. There's a literal generation gap here. There's not that many black folks around who are my age. As in, 25 to 40. That, or I just don't see them. Lots of kids are being raised but their grandparents or aunts and uncles...or cousins. It's fucked up. When I talk to these old Panthers, and they're just devastated by what they see. It's like, all that hard work...down the drain.

 

So, no. It's not 1990's bad, but it's getting worse.

[DRUNKEN-ASSHOLE-ONER]

I could imagine how fucked up the old Black Panthers feel about how shit went.

 

They need to teach the new generation.

[Guest shai_hulud]

I think they'd rather talk to me, instead. Which is a little weird, but hey.

 

Yeah, they don't know what to think.

 

I just remembered. The murder rate went through the roof around the time Cointelpro started doing all their dirt involving the Panthers. Heroin became a real big problem in the 1970s.

 

Crack made heroin look chill, as far as people killing and getting killed over it. There was SO much more of it. There's still more crack here than heroin. That's part of the reason I moved back. Nowhere to get dope here. I don't smoke crack. Made sense, and still does.

 

It's such an easy choice, for some people. Do you want to steal and fence shit, or sit on the corner and have other people steal and fence shit so they can buy your dope?

 

Straight economics.