All right my chicano hermanos: I know you dominate a certain amount of the plaid shirt, straight-billed Dodger hat, acid washed skinny jean, Creative Recreation sneaker market. I know this! I know you’ve lived up on Micheltorena with your Moms and your abuelita since forever. Ya lo sabía! You were there before the undercover aristocrats came with their canvas tote bags and masters degrees. You were living there way before all the Farmer’s Markets, gastropubs, boutiques specializing in vintage eyewear and wine bars. Christ, you took your first steps in the parking lot of the 99 Cent Store on Sunset. You’re totally on point.
So you wear that hardcore messenger bag on the train. It’s water-resistant, cost more than a month’s car payment on a Ford Focus and it’s ugly as hell. Sure, it was designed for PBR drinking Lance Armstrongs who make their living weaving through buses, beemers and tourists from the Financial District to the Sunset. So no, that messenger bag with your textbooks from LACC isn’t really for you. But do I care? Hell no! You’ve earned that sleek pink sleet-resistant sack. And you’ve earned that freshly painted fixed-gear that’s been sitting in your abuelas garage since spring 2005. By the way, your homeboy Nairobi really did hook it up with that all white everything except the pink taped handlebars paint job.
What I don’t get—what I’ll never understand, whether it’s a twelve year old Korean girl with it at the mall or some fiero with a Paper Magazine under one arm and Delorean blasting from his oversized headphones—is the raccoon tail. The foot long ball of fur that frankly looks like part of a mauled cat hanging from your pocket—serio guey? A big, ole bushy raccoon tail? There are no raccoons in Silver Lake. In the hills, you say? Nope. Not even in your abuelitas lifetime.
Now this is just my opinion. Don’t take it personally. Don’t lose sleep over it and certainly don’t try and put yourself out of your misery by jumping off the Sunset overpass at Glendale Boulevard because that shit isn’t high enough to accomplish anything, but a month catching up on reality tv and a rash under your arms from the crutches they’ll give you on your way out. (If you happen to have any vicodin left over (assuming you do jump) email me at exchangingpleasantries@gmail.com and I’ll tell you about a safe place where it can be disposed).
All I’m saying is you’re better than the raccoon tail, guey. Take that filthy, beady eyed, trash eating, furry extremity out of your pocket and throw it in the lake at MacArthur Park because that’s where all things not worth burying or reporting to the LAPD go to die.
–The Neapolitan Mastiff
Exchanging Pleasantries 