Gangbangers on Alcatraz
I used to live on Alcatraz.
I mean, of course, that I used to live not on the island but in a rented, second-floor flat of a large, three-story house at the border between Berkeley and Oakland on the avenue of that name, Alcatraz, from where the island could be viewed clearly.
The island, in fact, would have been safer. Every time that I stepped outside, I felt that I was putting my life in someone's rifle sights, which was absurd, I know, because the favored gun for drug dealers was not a rifle but an Uzi, and gangbangers are notoriously poor shots.
I did, however, have genuine reason for concern. Alcatraz Avenue not only separated Berkeley from Oakland, it also set the border between at least two druglords, neither of whom accepted the status quo and each of whom wanted hegemony. The crack wars were thus fought out in the streets around our neighborhood and even in front of our house.
One Friday evening, as I was sitting at the kitchen table studying Coptic grammar, I heard the pow-pow-pow-pow-pow of ... fireworks? One of my housemates, Scott Corey, emerged from his room, as did another, Charles Weathers.
"Was that fireworks?" I asked them.
"It didn't sound like firecrackers," Charles replied.
"It sounded like gunfire," Scott told us, and we believed him because he had served in the Marines and in our opinion ought to know.
The three of us went outside and found, across the street from our house, two young men shot and bleeding on a lawn that they had been cutting across in an attempt to escape a fate that they knew was coming. They weren't dead ... yet ... and maybe didn't die, for we called an ambulance.
But if they weren't going to die that time, they probably would the next time, or the time after that in their drug-dealing game of an Americanized Russian roulette. It was a Hobbesian world with lots of minor leviathans warring murderously for a hegemony that none could manage to achieve in a kingdom where none would wish to live.
Labels: Random Violence
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:18 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Your latest series of posts is reminding me of all the stupid things I did when I was young that could (should?) have killed myslef/others. Not that it was criminal, just dangerous and stupid.
Writing a blog has jolted my memory repeatedly, and I recall lots of stupid, dangerous situations that I let myself get into when I was young.
I'd as soon that they'd never happened, and I'd prefer to forget them, but wisdom often grows in the trashy, abandoned lot of neglected memories and should perhaps be better cultivated.
Anyway, I revisited these memories because I didn't want to leave the impression that I consider drugs amusing.
Jeffery Hodges
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Jeffery,
As you may or may not be aware, it's considered bad form in most circles to hotlink images off of other peoples' servers. It's especially bad form when said servers are already under tremendous strain and operating off of donor capital. Please don't hotlink images off of wikipedia.
Vengeful Cynic, I had been told about the problems caused by "hot linking" and was also told that the way to link was by "right clicking."
Frankly, I didn't notice any difference between the two ways, but I followed the advice that I had been given (and it had been given by someone whose website I had requested to link an image from).
From your remark, I gather that there really isn't any difference.
Could you tell me how to post images and make links without using the "right click" method that apparently is no different than "hot linking"?
Or if anyone out there can tell me how, I'd be grateful.
Jeffery Hodges
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I think he wants you to actually copy the image, and if you associate a link with the image, it should be the link of the whole article. But I'm just guessing. I love the images you use, but I never bothered to learn how to do it myself.
If I knew how to copy images, I'd gladly do so. I worry that all of my 'linked-to' images will fade away, like the famous "old soldiers" of yore and of Douglas MacArthur's epigrams, but if I could copy the images, they'd stay fresh forever...
Jeffery Hodges
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Jeffery,
One copies images by saving them to one's hard drive and then uploading them to one's own webspace so that one is linking them from one's own webspace. That said, I'm not entirely sure how to upload images to blogger as the feature wasn't available when I used it to blog. Any helpers.
That was supposed to end in an "?" not a "."
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