adventures at the laundromat

I usually do laundry on a Monday. I don't work on Mondays, so I take my clothes to the laundromat just a few blocks away. This week, though, laundry day was New Year's Day. I failed to plan ahead and do my laundry early, unfortunately.  I assumed the laundromat was closed for the holiday, so I didn't bother leaving the house yesterday in the far-below-freezing weather. Instead, I took my laundry tonight after work.

There is often drama there. Like the guy (related to someone who works there) around my age who fried so many brain cells that he can barely speak coherently. Or the drug dealers outside and the sexual assault talk inside. Or the shooting (2 kids died) at a nearby intersection (not while I was at the laundromat). Tonight was different, though. Some adult guys were either practicing an existing local rap, or they were trying to create a new one themselves. I could distinguish only some of the words:

• gang bang
• south side
• gang land
• north side
• white
• black
• cut you up

After some of that wannabe word violence, I started recording from where I sat. I didn't expect it to be any more intelligible in mp4 format, but here it is anyway. I can't make out the words over the noise of the washers and dryers.

I stood right next to them later when I collected my clothes from the dryer. One of them commented about "like the time I beat that white guy". I don't even know if it occurred to them that I was standing right there. If it was intended to intimidate me, it completely missed. Instead, I got the sense that I was my usual invisible self, and these black males were just as quick to blather abusive racial threats as white males.

I wish I knew how to immediately change culture, but I don't even know what the slow solution is.