Criminal Slang

Let me tell you about Dave…

To this day, I’m not 100% sure if the door to my first-dorm-room-ever was open or not (after eight years, I just found out that it was), but I’ll never forget turning around and meeting Dave, who was super stoked on the Souls of Mischief record that I had just put on. It turns out that he was from the Bay, skated & listened to Hip-Hop. Needless to say, it was really easy to make friends with Dave -the bonds between fellow skaters and music junkies really make a strong case for the existence of a collective consciousness.

So, as promised, I’m passing The Dock of the Bay series over to his very capable hands. This is his story…

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My duct taped cassettes ranged from Foreign Legion to Success is Destiny. Hat tilted sideways only for easy access to wipe the sweat from my brow. My backpack weighed down with sketchbooks and the best you never heard of. My skateboards were religiously Anti Hero. The pavement- my playground. There’s something about the monstrous bay bridge stretching out over the frigid waters adjacent Alcatraz bringing together the East Bay with SF, some kind of misinterpreted bond that is only told when a new verse is really pumping, a bass really plucking, a beat truly bumping, an audience in tune. The feeling of “we really have something here.” I saw it before most knew who they were, and a lot of people that did know would say “you listen to that shit? They suck.” But the truth is they all came around, cause like rising rent in the bay these new found secrets of mine were bound to blow up. See, there was no bandwagon yet, hardly any tours going any where, just raw sound coming out of PA’s penetrating your ears with too much strained juice flowing through them. Now I had a chance to see it for myself, and I wasn’t going to pass it up.

1998, My mom didn’t want me going over to Bezerkley without her or my father, but shit, I was 16, no one was going to fuck with me. It’s not until getting off at a BART stop when you realize how far you are from your warm little home. But as all skaters do I hopped on using speed as my shield and let my wheels do the talking. I passed by young groups of thugs hoping to grab at a piece of the dream like the rest of us, even if it meant to steal it. Homeless women rant at the sky waiting for it to fall on the desecrated land below. My ears and nose stung with excitement and the numbing cold the bay blows freely into its water hugging cities. Finally, I made it to the venue.

I had Heiro B’Sides in my Walkman, hitting my eardrums ever so sweetly as I walked into the Berkeley Community Center. I had snuck out other times before for various activities, bombing, skateboarding, drinking forties in the park, but none had felt so justifiable.

Blunt smoke blows in your face as you walk in, a man gives you a raffle ticket and you join the clump by the stage.

There I was standing with only 50 other people as the acts started. First, a young scrappy man with a mighty Napoleon complex and knotty head full of dreads tearing through verses telling of the day’s struggles. Second, a ghostly taller white guy complaining about his car troubles. Here it was, pure, raw, emotion. It was a personal effect, something still sacred in the American landscape covered in bling bling and hot boy rants.

My arms loose like an Orangutan, flopping around in the air as directed by the emcee. My head bobbed relentlessly, flowing with every part of every word that touched the blues of life and uplifted my lost spirit. I bought two tapes that night, one titled Gypsy’s Luck, the other - Fuck The Dumb. The cold night in Berkeley wore on, inside myself I found hope, something to be proud of. Those guys making songs in their basements were doing it for us. Not just to take advantage and sell an expensive ticket (I got into that Broke Ass Summer Jam with a packet of Ramen and five bucks!) but to really weave tales that comfort the leathery soul.

I left that night with a new found boldness, I felt stronger, more in tune with who I was in society. It was then I realized that this art form was for the outcast, for the misinterpreted ones who didn’t just walk with the norm but decided to stand to the side and study this mass of chaos for what it really was. To break it all down into a simple form letting the other outcasts of society feel it, whatever it was, as well.

I tried to tell some of the kids at school about it. My friends already knew but most of them were kicked out to secondary schools. The rich kids just didn’t get it. And my mom for the time being didn’t either. She might as well of thought I was going to Gangsta rap shows in the middle of East Oakland for all she cared. And here was my new dilemma-to be a white boy in the suburbs with a growing passion for a misunderstood subculture.

And I wasn’t stopping there….