Monday, June 30, 2008

It Only Took One Week

I grew up in a house with a Northsider father and Southsider mother. In terms of baseball in Chicago you know what this means. Being a daddy's little girl I tended to gravitate towards the Cubs. My brother being a Mama's boy, a Sox fan. If I have to hear my brother talk about how they have 9 fingers left and we have 10 (in reference to championship rings) I will literally smack him! However, I choose not to lower myself to such childishness.

A few years ago during the Cross Town Classic I remember a friend commenting on the number of Southside fans with shirts insulting the Cubs. It makes me wonder, why are you spending money on shirts with "our" team name on it? Support your own team and move on. While I am not finger pointing, because I know it happens on our side too, it always seems whenever I talk to a Southside fan they comment on how bad my precious Cubs are. STOP! Worry about your own team and let me continue to be disappointed every October.

I mention all of this because today in grad school we had a guest speaker who made me think of this jaded relationship with North and Southsiders alike. He was a policeman from the town in which I teach giving us information on gangs. He went through Gangs 101, why they join...blah blah blah....In his presentation he had several photos of gang member memorabilia collected by the 5-O over the years. One in particular item caught my eye. It was a hoodie with several rival gang member symbols either turned down or cracked. To those of you not up on gang culture this is a way to "dis" the other gang. For example, let's say I am a member of the Hammerston Gang. Our logo is a Hammer, many of my hoodies would have hammers all it. Well, on the other side of the river is my rival, the Axe Gang whose logo is an axe. In an attempt to "dis" me they would have graffiti all over town with my Hammer logo pointing down. Yes, intimidating and reason to kill someone, I know.

Anyway, as I looked at this hoodie marked with "dissed" logos all over the place I leaned over to my classmate and said, "This gang is like the Chicago White Sox fan of gangs. They spend all their time making a hoodie in an attempt to talk smack about their rivals. Make a damn hoodie with your own logo and support your own gang!"

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