Sunday, June 13, 2004

BACK FROM THE ROAD
No, I haven't been abducted by aliens. Thanks for all the concerned emails from regular readers. I'm fine and back in LA after almost two weeks of traveling around the Southwest. I've been working on non-gang related projects and I can see by the emails that I've got a lot of catching up to do. I especially appreciate the kind words from my European readers. And I don't mean just you Brits. I thank the European educational system for creating multi-lingual, interested readers from Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Romania. Oddly, I've yet to hear from a French or German reader.

From the emails, I gather that while every Euro knows about the Bloods and Crips, there's very little coverage of Hispanic street gangs and prison gangs like the EME, NUESTRA FAMILIA, FRESNO BULLDOGS and white prison gangs like the NAZI LOW RIDERS and ARYAN BROTHERHOOD. I suspect the popularity of black gangster rap is probably the main reason for the high level of awareness of black gangs. As I mentioned in the past, Hispanic gangster rap has yet to make it into the public consciousness here in the U.S. so it stands to reason it hasn't made it to Europe. Maybe KNIGHTOWL and LIL CUETE should organize a European tour and put SURENO RAP on the European cultural landscape.

Stay tuned. As soon as I get a chance to go through some of the electronic and paper mail, I'll be back shortly with some fresh posts.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there, I'm mailing you from the Netherlands and I think you're blogsite is great. You're right the Hispanic gangs are not really known around here. I don't really read much about them on In the hat either, I guess they're not really what they used to be. I've met Art Blajos while he was here in Rotterdam though. Hope you start putting material back out there soon!

Anonymous said...

Correction, I meant I don't read much about black gangs on In the Hat and I guess they're not what they used to be.
Here in Holland we don't really have gangs ("American-style") yet, and the city officials are on them already trying to nip it in the bud, before it evolves and gets its own culture.

Anonymous said...

Correction, I meant I don't read much about black gangs on In the Hat and I guess they're not what they used to be.
Here in Holland we don't really have gangs ("American-style") yet, and the city officials are on them already trying to nip it in the bud, before it evolves and gets its own culture.