Back in the mid-eighties, I used to hang out at Washington Square Park. New York University’s student housing overlooked the park. The park back then was unofficially split between race and style. Punks held their section. Grateful Dead Head hippie types had their little slice and if memory serves me correct…Rasta’s set up camp right between the two. Sort of peacekeepers. Of course college kids were free to roam all sides and score dope.
I’d like to forget about the Neo-Nazi Skinheads but they hung out too. The different factions would band together to challenge the goose-steppers in a “friendly” game of football.
Fuck the World Cup for intensity; I remember watching matches with the Rastafarians against the Neo-Nazi Skinheads. All the player’s faces looked like clenched fists. The game was played on concrete! Brutal.
I also remember sitting on the sidelines and a ball was kicked past my head. It was like bullet whizzing by. It would have taken my head clean off my shoulders. Everybody played the game powered by pure hate for each other. Nasty.
A lot of lines were blurred back then. One of the heaviest hardcore bands back then was the BAD BRAINS. They were African-American Punk Rock RASTAS who hailed originally from Washington D.C. They could go from blitzkrieg slam-dance to PRAISE JAH without blinking. Another hardcore punk band, REAGAN YOUTH, who looked and smelled like unwashed hippies on a yearlong road tour with the Dead! Their lead singer could constantly be seen engaged in a philosophical debate with the Neo-Buttheads. The boy had BALLS!
This New Year is off to one weird ass beginning. My big sis, I say that figuratively because my older sister stands four foot nine inches, became a victim of her own bad temper. In doing so she ran afoul to the law, and I have been engaged in meeting after meeting with the Blue Meanies trying to undo her erroneous felony charge.
Nowhere in the “Old Testament” does it say to pack unregistered heat.
I have big stuff planned.
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