Serenading The Crips

 

Back at the Dawn of Time, which any reputable cosmologist will tell you was the Spring of 1990, I had no idea what a maudlin, self-pitying drunk I turn into when I’ve had too much. Just a complete Barry Manilow-singing drama-queen the second I cross the 2.5 drinks-per-hour threshold. Of course I was only 18, so I had no good reason to know that back then, but I chose the absolute worst possible time and place to discover this about myself. In fact, it was so epically stupid that the fact that I lived to tell the tale practically qualifies as proof of God’s existence. I’ll go further and say that the phrase “God loves fools and drunks” found its origins in a Friday night stroll that I took that Spring, just loaded to the gills on Bartles & Jaymes wine-coolers.  

And thank you for your support.

I don’t know if Bartles & Jaymes are still in business nowadays. If I’m not mistaken, today when you want to let the world know that you’re an effete with at least one undescended testicle, you drink White Claw. But back in 1990, it was Bartles & Jaymes, and specifically Peach or Tropical, because the other flavors were a little too intense. At 18, I was 5’9”, weighed a buck-thirty-five dripping wet, and my inseam was inches longer than my waist was around. Needless to say, I didn’t have to tip too many back to get me going on those first few bars of “Oh Mandy.” That fine Spring evening wasn’t the first time I'd ever been a little blotto. I had lived in Naples, Italy for a few years before that and there’s no drinking age there, so I’d had a few a few times. But never out in the wild, never unsupervised by my peers, and never on something that I actually liked the taste of. So finding out that night there was an alcohol that tasted like kool-aid turned out to be a bit of a problem.

Even in the land of first-world problems, the kind of problems I had rated about a 2 on a bad day. But when you multiply that by 18 years-old and alcohol you arrive at the Protagonist in the Story of The World being shat upon by the Universe Itself. I was working my first-ever tax-paying job, which cramped my recreational time without providing significant financial means. I was meandering aimlessly through my first year of City College with no idea what I was doing there aside from getting free rent at home. And then there were the perpetual girl problems. Oh, the humanity! It didn’t help that I’d been swindled out of my paycheck the previous week by a grifter named Bantu, who ran the Pigeon Drop con on me like I’d been born yesterday. So I was almost dead broke and being expected to take my girl out on a Friday night. Aces.

But my girl’s BFF had a friend visiting from out of town and they wanted to take her out to show her a good time, so we rallied at a mutual friend’s place out in Signal Hill for a pre-function drink to loosen up. I was driving my first-ever car, a red VW Bus with camper conversion that had come pre-named Red Floyd. Because I was too broke to just be cruising around willy-nilly—to say nothing of the fact that Floyd was a complete hooptie—it was decided we’d take another vehicle, which meant that I was free to tip back a few of the ol’ Bartles & Jaymes. Then me and 5 Woo-Girls piled into somebody’s Jeep Grand Cherokee and headed to the only all-ages club in Long Beach, Toe Jam. I rode in the rear cargo area behind the back seat, surreptitiously guzzling the cooler I’d kiped from our host’s fridge. One for the road, and thank you for your support.

Red Floyd

In my day, which ended mid-1991, Long Beach wasn’t much of a club-scene town. It was a Reggae-Sunsplash outdoor-venue kind of town. It did have a thriving Rap scene, but that mostly went north to Compton for production and shows. There were a few dives around where local bands could play, and when the Skeletones, Fishbone, and Sublime occasionally made their way out of Orange County to play some Long Beach shows, Toe Jam was pretty much the place. And if you were under-age and wanted to dance, Toe Jam was literally the only place. It was in the East Village right next to the first location of the far more famous Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles. Toe Jam closed in ’92 after a shooting on the sidewalk outside, so now everyone and their brother swears they saw Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and No Doubt play there. But on my fateful night, it was just a wall of thumping bass and nothing else.

Toe Jam

Walking into a place like that already wasted doesn’t make for a great start to anything. I’d begun the evening feeling sullen and put-upon by the world, then added 4 wine-coolers, 5 Woo-Girls, and 2-Live Crew. What could possibly go wrong? The answer to that question was forthcoming within the hour. After we’d secured a table, we made our way to the dance-floor where my John-Hughes-Breakfast-Club dancing was not a hit, nor was my rendition of the Cabbage Patch or Running Man. Although I will not allow anyone to besmirch my Robocop, even to this day. I’ve got that shit dialed in. But being the only guy dancing with a bunch of Woo-Girls is a heavy burden, one my narrow shoulders were not built to bear, so I made my way off the dance floor and back to our table. 

After an interminable time waiting for my girl to notice that I was stewing petulantly—possibly 3 entire minutes—I headed to the men's room where I discreetly vomited into the first open urinal I saw. I felt decidedly better after that and realized that I didn’t need to stay there and get treated like this. I could go anywhere and get treated like this, and I decided to do just that. So, fueled by righteous indignation, I stumbled out the door into the night without so much as a "by your leave" to anyone. Just drunk as a lord and filled to the brim with unwarranted confidence in my abilities to traverse the 38 blocks between me and Floyd on foot. About 10 blocks into the journey, I realized that I’d made a terrible mistake and taken my life into my hands. 

Pound for pound, Long Beach is literally the most diverse city on Earth. It has large and thriving populations from almost every demographic background: Blacks, Latinos, Whites, Pacific Islanders, Cambodians, Vietnamese, and Japanese all find homes and businesses throughout the city. 7-Elevens, Bodegas, and Korean-owned liquor stores all got robbed on an equal-opportunity basis, and if you had enough money, you could live in the true melting pot parts of town. If you didn’t, you’d find a distinct neighborhood where you could live based on your ethnicity, most of which came complete with their own neighborhood gang. 

Large portions of Long Beach are made of pre-war Craftsman Bungalows and post-war apartment complexes, most of which are covered in stucco. Various swaths of it are always falling into decline while others are renovated according to the vicissitudes of capitalism. The stretch of town between me and Floyd was almost entirely made of the parts that were in decline. Lots of gates, fences, and barred windows defining what’s yours, mine, and ours. For 11:00 at night, there was a surprising number of young men out in the street. Groups sitting on stoops behind closed gates, drinking from brown paper bags, dudes leaning on light-posts, lounging against tricked-out Impalas right next to cars up on blocks with no wheels. Smoking, drinking, laughing, cat-calling to each other, and hitting blunts right out in the open. Obviously not worried about even the shadow of a cop car hitting the ground anywhere near them.

Enter 135 pounds of drunk Whiteboy.

Dressed head-to-toe in black, hair tressed-up in Robert Smith-lite fashion, clearly oblivious to my surroundings, just a be-bopping along to the music in my head, which I may or may not have been singing aloud, I was on my way from Broadway & Lime to Burnett & Cherry. Following my internal compass inerrantly North and East toward that destination with only an instinct to avoid busy streets where my erratic ambling might attract police attention. Or, you know, where I might stumble into traffic and die? North and East, young man, North and East!

While that course was geographically sound, the impracticality of it didn’t strike me until I was deep into Rollin’ 20s Crip territory. For those living in more harmless parts of the world, that’s a gang. And a famously deadly one, at that. I didn’t know they were Rollin’ 20s Crips specifically, but I knew they were some flavor of Crip by the part of town I suddenly realized I’d stumbled into so blithely. Ordinarily, I avoided this quadrant of the city like the plague. Even in the daylight, even in a car. Now I was strolling through on foot in the dead of night, three sheets into the wind. I may as well have signed my own death warrant. 

I was blotto enough not to realize where I was, or what was happening, until I was many blocks into their territory. But not so blotto that I couldn't recognize the danger I was in as my situation slowly dawned on me. Up to that point I’d stopped to pee a couple of times in random alleys, and then woozily, boozily made my way up the street, humming and singing along to music only I could hear. Occasionally stumbling, otherwise swaying, sauntering, rambling, meandering, and moseying like Mr. Magoo in the cartoons, tip-toeing between hazards unaware. Then, somewhere on 11th between Lime and MLK Ave, I caught the attention of one of the corner boys, who in turn caught my attention by calling out from his stoop behind a closed gate. 

He was sitting with his homies, drinking from a 40, and wearing an LA Raider’s hat. I knew instantly what that meant, and a bolt of adrenaline shot through me. Better than an entire pot of coffee or cold shower could, that adrenaline woke me up to the mortal danger I was in. A Raider’s hat, jersey, or jacket always meant gangs. It might be Crips, it might be Longos. Hell, it might even be the Cambodian gang the Tiny Rascals. But in Long Beach it was never, ever a sports enthusiast. And since the gentleman was Black, it meant Crips. There were a half-dozen other fellas on the stoop all dressed in similar attire, wiling away a lovely Friday night in the LBC.

“‘Sup, Whiteboy?” He called to me, his insouciant tone loaded with menace. He and his buddies were all smiles, murmuring and pointing, with low chuckles passing among them.

Since the day I moved back to Long Beach five years before, I’d never once had a satisfactory answer to the question “‘Sup?” I certainly didn’t have one then as I turned to look at him, swaying side to side, the whole block spinning around me. I had to say something, but at the moment, all I could think of was trying not to bring up the rest of my Bartles & Jaymes on his sidewalk. To this day I have no idea why I started singing right then, but it may well have saved my life. The last song I'd heard on my way out of Toe Jam had been on a loop in my head ever since, and I just opened my mouth and belted it out to the cheap seats: 

“Oh, it's opening time down on Fascination Street

So let's cut the conversation and get out for a bit

Because I feel it all fading and paling and I'm begging

To drag you down with me, to kick the last nail in”

To a man, they fell out laughing together, pointing, pumping fists, shouting encouragement to me. “You go, Whiteboy!”  “Hellz yeah, boiiii!” And other sentiments to that effect.

I floundered through some kind of drunken hybrid of a bow-curtsy-pirouette  and was on my way, still singing "Fascination Street" at the top of my lungs. Even through the fog of my inebriation, I knew where I was, I knew I didn’t belong, and I knew I sure as hell couldn’t blend in to my surroundings. My former high school was just blocks away, and in my time there 2 guys had been killed on the campus right after Friday night football games. Needless to say, the dire consequences of my breathtaking idiocy had become clear to me: This was no joke. Any one of these guys could snatch my life as soon as look at me, and there were easily 100 of them between me and Floyd, some 25 blocks distant. 

But the only way out was through, and I was filled with a sudden certainty that my sole chance to make it to the other side was to stand out. To purposefully get myself noticed by the most dangerous people in town, by singing, dancing, and generally making a complete ass of myself all the way through their neighborhoods. Because if I slunk off, skulked through the alleys, or just straight-up ran, there would be no hope. I was outnumbered, outgunned, and their territory was 20 square blocks easy, so making myself an object of sport for predators like that was out of the question. But making myself an object of ridicule and entertainment? Hell, that’s practically my middle name. 

From Toe Jam to Signal Hill on foot

I performed the entire Cure album “Disintegration” from start to finish, including some pretty unfortunate air-guitar solos. I threw in a couple of ditties from “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me” randomly, choosing to stick with The Cure for some reason, and sobering up with each step I took. Mostly I was met with laughter and catcalls, and a perhaps ironic appreciation for my dance skills. Although I still choose to take their enthusiasm for my Cabbage Patch as sincere. Hey, you don’t know! I mean, sure there were any number of hurled malt liquor bottles, but none of those came close enough to hitting me to be taken as a genuine threat. More like an encouragement to keep on singin’ and dancin’ so nobody got any other ideas about how else I might be of entertainment to them. No matter what came my way, I doubled down on my crazy, drunk Whiteboy strategy, never breaking character for a second. Loud, proud, and trying not to piss myself all the way down Martin Luther King Jr. Ave.

When I saw the World Famous VIP Records sign across from the Poly High athletic field, I cut over to Alameda on 17th because I knew there would be a gaggle of OGs in the VIP lot, flexing on each other with pimped out Impalas, Crown Vics, and LTDs. I didn’t want to chance my act with any homeboys not on their stoop and chilling for the night. I mean, maybe all them corner boys along the way couldn’t be bothered to do more than fuck with a dumbass Whiteboy for their own amusement and from the comfort of home, but who knows what a bunch of strutting gangsters out marking their territory might think of me? Whether this was sound strategy or not, I can’t say. I can say that I made it all the way back to Floyd with nary a scratch on me, and only a couple of blisters and a hoarse voice as mementos of my little suicide stroll.

World Famous V.I.P Records

My girlfriend and her BFF were sitting in the Grand Cherokee waiting for me when I got back. Although it felt like the Bataan Death March, I’d really only trekked across about 3 miles of the city. Due to my meandering performance and the switchbacks I’d taken to avoid the most dangerous choke-points, it took me almost 3 hours. No idea how long they’d spent looking for me, or had been waiting there after my wordless departure from Toe Jam, but even 31 years later I can still see the icy look she wore when she laid eyes on me. By then I was sober as a judge and gave her a ride home, slowly realizing that I only thought I’d had girl problems before. I never even got the chance to tell her how the rest of my evening went. Hell, I might have stood a better chance with my homies in the Rollin' 20s.

In retracing my steps that night—based on some landmarks I still remember from that drunken haze—I laid my Google Maps route over an available map of Long Beach gang territories. It turns out that I strolled 38 blocks through some of the most dangerous parts of the city, right in the midst of no fewer than 8 different gangs. Besides my besties in the Rollin’ 20s, there were also the East Side Longos, Sons of Samoa, the Asian Boys, and perhaps the most apropos of all… Suicide Town. And I serenaded every last one of those motherfuckers along the way. 

What can I say? God loves fools and drunks, and He got a 2 for 1 deal out of me that night.

Each blue pin represents a known gang and their territory

Of Dragons and Dumbasses

 

Monroe, Oregon is an odd little burgh. It sits in the middle of nowhere, population 651. The closest town of any significance is 8 miles distant, with just under 5,500 living in it. Stringing them together is Highway 99W, cutting through unimaginably verdant grasslands and orchards as far as the eye can see. Upon exiting a thick copse of trees, Monroe suddenly appears from around a bend in the Long Tom River, looking like God planted some magic beans and it just grew out of the rich, alluvial soil of the Willamette Valley. It’s a total of 3,503 feet long, and 2,542 feet wide. Not even one mile in any direction, though they still have that one traffic light for some reason. After that, the highway goes back to grasslands and farms for 15 miles before you reach the outskirts of Corvallis, home of Oregon State University.

These are the kind of places you drive through on your way to somewhere else, perhaps taking a moment to marvel that people choose to live there, or that the places exist at all. I spent about six years driving through Monroe twice a day on my way to and from work in the north valley or out on the coast. Anywhere the itinerant winds of insurance restoration took me, as fires and floods have no predictable season or locale. The bigger construction-restoration companies like Belfor had the metropolitan areas all but sewn up, so the smaller outfits like the ones I worked for had to hunt and peck in the tiny communities that dotted the landscape up and down the parallel circuits of Highway 99 and I-5, or out in the coastal villages.

As such, Monroe became an occasional waystation for coffee, biscuits & gravy, or a quick pee break if one of the crew hadn’t managed their bladder properly for the drive in front of us. But most days, it was just a landmark to be checked off on a long drive to and from work. Monroe, check. Twenty five minutes to Corvallis. Long, boring drives repeated incessantly are filled with those kind of markers, passing like ticks on a metronome. In that sparse neck of the woods, Monroe is actually one of the more significant ticks. Otherwise, the county is the literal Grass-seed Capitol of the World, so it’s nothing but oceans of grass so green you can’t even imagine it if you get less than 80-inches of rain per year, broken up by the occasional farmhouse, pole-barn, or stand of trees.

Guys that get into construction generally fall into three categories. Crooks who should be in jail, but are working in your house instead. Dumbasses who can’t actually do the work, but are otherwise earnest enough people who mean you no harm. And finally, actual craftsmen. This last category is the rarest, and it’s typically made up of those born to the work and those that found it while waiting for something better to come along. As a foreman in the company, on any given day I was as likely as not to have one of the crooks or dumbasses working for me, depending on who was available and what I needed them for.

Turnover in the crook and dumbass categories was always pretty high, with guys coming and going every few weeks (or even days), depending on whether or not their baby-mama’s cousin could get them a spot on a fishing boat, road crew, or union job. So I never knew from day to day who’d be riding with me in the van. One day it might be the owner’s idiot son, who I was always trying to get fired only to find myself stymied by the firewall his mom put around him to shield him from the consequences of his incompetence. Another day it might be any one of the depressing array of his douche-y buddies who always had to be picked up from some gas station, or bus stop because their car wasn’t working. Occasionally, I’d catch a break and one of the former Marines would be on the team that day and we’d actually get some work done.

On the day in question, however—Wednesday, December 10^th, 2008—the guy riding with me was of the dumbass variety, although I was soon to learn that it wouldn’t take much to push him over into the criminal category. Maybe just one terrible idea. And God knows I’m just chock full of those. It’s been a while, and I only remember the date because it wound up on the news the next day, but I don’t really remember the dumbass’s name at all. In my defense, it was an impressive cavalcade of douchedom that sat in that passenger seat over the years. Let’s just call this guy Joe, shall we?

I’d been off the Highway 99W route for the better part of 18 months by that point because I’d been running a 90-unit apartment-to-condo conversion in town. Returning to the run had been bittersweet. It was good to see a long project put to bed, but it meant heading back out on the road and the next job was in the middle of nowhere, even for us. The first couple of days I was on my own, headed out to Alsea to prep the job-site and order lumber drops. On my way through Monroe, I happened to notice that one thing in the 1950’s-frieze town had changed. Monroe High School.

The school was a stout brick building, small but tidy and well maintained over the years. It looked no-nonsense, with the exception of a giant boulder that sat out at the edge of the drive. The boulder was always covered in graffiti, clearly a designated outlet to drain off some of the PSI from the students’ more puerile instincts. The messages were constantly changing, but the street-facing side always said something about how the senior class rulz. Nonsense, obviously. Since everyone knows that ’89 rulz. But that boulder had been an unchanging landmark for all the years I’d been coming through. No, the thing that had changed was that high atop the cupola on the steep roof of the 2-story building sat a dragon.

The dragon was awesome. Sincerely, Daenerys would have been proud of this gothic-iron beastie perched menacingly atop the school, peering down on all who dared approach. It was the kind of thing that Stephen King would have coming to life at night to terrorize the town. I thought for sure I would have noticed it after driving through town twice a day for six years, so I wondered if it was new. You never know, though. Sometimes you look right past the same things over and over on autopilot and never see them. So on the morning of December 10^th, I asked Joe about it.

“Joe, you grew up in Junction City, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, born and raised.”

“So you probably hung out in Monroe sometimes, maybe your football team played against their school?”

“Yeah.”

Pointing out the window I asked, “Has that thing always been up there?”

He got a good gander at it, mouth agog, marveling at it as I had.

“Hell no, it hasn’t always been there! That thing is awesome! What in the world is it doing in Monroe?”

“I knew it,” I said. “Glad to see I’m not crazy. It’s definitely a cool sculpture, but I don’t really get the significance of the dragon. Seems kind of random.”

“That’s their school mascot. The Monroe Dragons,” Joe said, staring at it intently as we drove slowly by. “That thing is way too good for this town. It should be in my living room holding my next beer for me,” shaking his head.

“That does sound like a better use for it,” I replied. “You should hop up there and grab it. Be a great conversation starter for the skanks you bring back from the bar.”

“By the time we’re at my place, there’s no more need for conversation.”

“Natch.”

Looking back at it as we sped up to leave town, he said, “I bet it wouldn’t be that hard.”

I didn’t even let him finish the thought. “Dude, that’s a 10/12 pitched roof. I can barely get you out on a 6/12 pitch without you crying about it being too steep. Plus, it’s two stories up and you’re a smoker. For both those reasons, you would absolutely die before you even made it to the top.”

“I could totally do it,” he replied, defiantly.

Shaking my head. “Dude, last week you called me from a Denny’s to tell me you tripped in the parking lot and hit your head and couldn’t make it back from lunch. And seeing’s as you can’t find your ass with both hands and a flashlight, there’s no way you could detach that thing in the first place, even if you made it all the way up to the top. Which you wouldn’t.”

“Whatever, man.” And we drove on.

Imagine my surprise when, the following morning as I was getting ready to leave at O’Dark:30, Kelli Warner of KMTR News informed me that the Monroe Dragon had been stolen from the roof of the school. Their theory of the crime, after speaking to the Principal of the school, was an Ocean’s 11-level heist involving a scaffold and a crack team of master thieves. After all the statue was mounted 55 feet in the air, weighed between 200-300 pounds, and was done in the dead of night. My theory of the crime was one dumbass who had some s’plainin’ to do.

Imagine my total lack of surprise when said dumbass called in sick that morning.

The next time I ran into Joe was a couple of weeks later at the contractor desk at the Home Depot. He’d been working for another foreman in the company, so I hadn’t had a chance to grill him about the amazing coincidence of the missing Dragon.

“Hey, Joe. Whaddaya hear, whaddaya know?” I asked.

“Nuthin’, man. Just workin’.”

“I sincerely doubt that, but whatever. I hear on the news you’ve been busy redecorating your apartment.”

He couldn’t help but crack a grin at that. “Told you it wouldn’t be that hard,” he gloated.

“How in the world did you get it down?” I asked. “They said it weighs a couple hundred pounds.”

“Naw, that’s BS. Might have weighed 75 pounds. Shit, I was drunk when I did it and all I needed was my Leatherman. There were, like, four bolts holding down.”

“You just got drunk on school night, when you had work the next day, and then drove all the way out to Monroe, scrambled up the roof and took a Dragon. All by your lonesome?”

“My buddy’s girlfriend drove us, he boosted me up and I did the rest. I rolled the thing down the roof and he got it at the bottom,” he answered. “Now we’re kinda beefin’ over who gets to keep it.”

“Well, it should really come to my house, don’t you think?”

“Dude, seriously?” he asked.

“Hell no, dumbass! It’s valued at almost three grand, and you did another twelve-hundred in damage to the roof. You’re in felony territory now. At least one of you is going to big-boy jail.”

“What, you’re gonna narc me out?” he asked, suddenly aware that we were in a very public store at a crowded sales counter.

“Shit, son, I won’t have to. Any time you set out to commit a crime, there’s fifty ways you can fuck it up. If you can think of twenty-five of them, you're a genius. Are you a genius, Joe?”

“Well if you’re not gonna, then who’ll know?”

“Any of the skanks that have the poor judgment to go with you to a second location. You think they won’t see that thing and put two and two together?”

“Shit…”

“How many have you had back to the ol’ bachelor pad by now? Or what about the two rocket surgeons you had helping you out? You’re already in a beef with them, right? How long will they stay quiet? What if, God forbid, they break up?” I couldn’t help but laugh. I mean, I must have been this young and stupid once, right? Must've been.

“Hmmm… Maybe I oughta just let them have it,” Joe said.

“Well whoever has it when the music stops is gonna be the one left holding the bag, that’s for sure. You just better hope they don’t roll over on you.”

It wasn’t long before there was a modest reward for any information leading to the return of the statue, and from that day to the hour Joe’s place got searched was measured in a flurry of texts. Not finding it there, they just used Joe’s Fb friend’s list to narrow it down to the next-most-likely dumbass’s house. Meanwhile the dumbass network fire-lined the Dragon from place to place, staying just ahead of the Man, until the music stopped and an arrest was made at the home of John Lawrence Crymes, 41 days after the initial theft. By then, Joe had long since been replaced in the passenger seat by some other dumbass even more forgettable than him.

Crymes returned the Dragon in good condition and plead out to criminal mischief, never rolling over on anyone else. It took him six years to finish making restitution to Monroe High School. Joe went off to become a pilot but wound up driving long-haul truck. Meanwhile, I kept on rollin’ up and down Highway 99W for years more, just-a-keepin' them terrible ideas to myself.

Sorry about that, Monroe. My bad.