I love the G-H-E-T-T-O

Man I miss my ghetto people sometimes, but lately its been increasing. I mean I live in northern VA which is totally devoid of Urban blight and ghetto-ness. They have this place called Woodbridge, that people call “Hoodbridge”, to this day I don’t know why, folks here don’t get it that you cannot be in a “ghetto” or “hood”, if the average price of homes is 400k. Or if you’re parents are still together and they are both working professionals you may live in an bad area but you are not in the hood. For those of you who have not had the privilege YES dammit privilege to live in the Ghetto let me hip you all to it up to it.

If you are driving through a neighborhood, and you see the following you are in the hood or ghetto:

Sneakers on telephone lines (which means that drugs are sold there)

A lot of empty lots with no construction

People sitting on their front porch, step, etc, in the middle of week during the day

Liquor stores, corner stores, check cashing places, and laundry mats are more prevelant than churches

Or better yet if you are driving and you experience the following you are in the hood:

You are driving then all of a sudden there is a traffic jam, why, b/c someone saw someone while they are driving and decide to hold up traffic and have a conversation and stop their car mid traffic, when the light is green.

You’re in your car then all of a sudden you feel, not hear, but feel the booming bass of someone else car as they ride by you. Your windows shakes, you get an irregular heartbeat, and all you here is the bass and not even the song.

Now onto what you see, when you’re in the hood, you will see things that are indigenous only to those surroundings.

Depending on how young the girls are you’ll see girls with the Peacock. The Peacock is a hairstyle akin to the ponytail and its when you don’t have enough hair to put in a ponytail you put the hair up in rubber band and then fan it out like a peacock’s feather to give the allusion of more hair, than what’s there. Sometimes you’ll see variations of it, with the hair being put in a white sock ball and a scrunchie.

Girls with baby powder on the neck, chest, and behind the ears, never rubbed in, so all you see is this white chalky powder on the girls necks and behind they ears.

Now this is something that both men and women have are gold teeth, not fronts, gold teeth in they mouth.

Then comes the fashion, hood folks have some of the most creative fashion aesthetic in the world. Most of the time they can’t afford the high end fashion, and more times than not the fashions are not available to them in the area near them . So they come up with their own, fashion sense. If you think hood fashions are not creative look at what is in style now, you’ll even see Haute Couture (if you don’t’ know what it is look it up), being inspired by what ghetto folks wear, and more importantly how they wear it.

But there are some experiences that are just so hood its hard to describe, like the Candy Lady. That big black lady that all the kids in the neighborhood know she has candy, everyone knows when she’s open for business, but the thing is, don’t’ no one EVER see her leave her house, and ironically she suffers from the “Suga”, which in layman’s terms means heart disease or diabetes.

Or even the ghetto games kids play, like standing on the corner looking at cars saying “That’s my car”. Little Mama’s playing those hand games like “Down, down, baby, down down the rollercoaster, sweet sweet baby mama’s gonna let you go, shimmy shimmy coco pop, shimmy shimmy bang, I like coffee, I like tea….” Real ghetto girls will be able to do the hand game, and know how to finish the rest of that. Shoot in the hood you liable to see a little boy or little girl dancing’ to the raunchiest song, knowing all the dirty lyrics, and can do it better than ANYONE else you will ever see on TV.

Shoot, I love the hood, I can’t help it, its not the idyllic place that some people want to make you think it is. Its not, its hard living there, real hard, its even harder to leave. But if you can make it there you can make it anyplace.

I see black men who are around my age and act just as shook around ghetto people and white people do around black people, guys who led a very…sheltered life and look down upon ghetto people like they are somehow inferior. All I can do is shake my head and laugh to myself, because what they don’t realize is how they feel about ghetto blacks that’s how some white people feel about blacks all together. I mean how can you want to lead the people, and think you are leader of the people when you disdain, and look down upon people you are allegedly trying to help….

Just my thoughts