Shoefiti Strikes The OC?
This is not FOX’s "The
OC."
A story in the OC
Weekly (Orange County, duh! ) about
punk rocker Duane
Peters includes a mention of shoefiti. Peters states that gangs are responsible
for the shoes hung from the power lines in front on his house, but comes up
with a truly unique reason for why they’re there: "because I was doing
shit like walking to the store in my underwear, pissed and drunk on Captain
Morgan, yelling at everybody and making a scene."
Personally, I don’t think gangs are in the business of marking territories
of weirdos. However, they may be interested in marking the locations of their
drug addicted customer base. Peters admits to being addicted to heroin at the
time he lived in this, "not a good part" of Long Beach.
That’s a good, solid 15-year-run of substance abuse, one that stretched
into his mid-30s. Trisha helped Duane kick his bad habits. "I was living
in Long Beach for a while, and not in a good part. I figured if I lived in
the ghetto, I could write more shit. But every day, the gangs were hanging
shoes above my power line, marking my house because I was doing shit like
walking to the store in my underwear, pissed and drunk on Captain Morgan,
yelling at everybody and making a scene. I was at a gas station, and a lot
of gangbangers were there, so I started giving them shit. They were gonna
take me out, but Trisha jumped in front of them, crying, begging for my life.
And I noticed that somebody loved me—my chick. I just kind of fucking
woke up one morning and said, ‘I gotta get off this shit.’ Now
I’ve been with her for over four years."
Congratulations to Mr. Peters for kicking the habit. It sounds like he’s a
real legend on the West Coast, and living legends beat dead-too-early-legends
any day of the week.
What do you think? If gangs were indeed marking Mr. Peters’
territory, why were they doing so?
A few theories:
1. Marking a customer’s residence?
2. Marking a place to sell drugs? Chances are pretty good that a drug addict
wouldn’t care of drugs were sold from his property.
3. Totally unrelated?
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