Good Kid Bad City

"Are there any Black people in Colorado?" That is probably the #1 question that I heard when I moved to Oklahoma. The funny thing is that when I told me friends in Colorado that I would be moving here, they all said, "Are there any Black people in Oklahoma?" How ironic. True be told, there are indeed Black people in every metropolitan area in the United States but I digress. I want to talk to you about life and the demographics of a small mountain city named Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs is where I spent a majority of my High School years. My Pops was in the United States Air Force and ended up retiring in "The Springs". The Springs has a total of 5 military installations all located in different parts of the city. Peterson AFB, Falcon Air Station, Fort Carson, and Norad which is a top secret military command that is located inside of a mountain. (Ask me to tell you my Norad story if you ever see me in public) Lets not forget The Airforce Academy that is located on the far north side of the city. All of these military installations has created a somewhat diverse social scene in Colorado Springs. Unfortunately, it has also created a gang scene that is comparable to a majority of the major cities across America.

Imagine "Pookie" on the South side of Chicago. He is a Gangsta Disciple. (GD) He feels that he is without any other options and he finds security in his neighborhood gang. He ends up getting a good break and ends up joining the military. He completes basic training and is assigned to his new duty station. He has learned some discipline and most of his life is different except for one thing. His gang mentality. For some reason, he never let that part of him go. Now as a young Airforce "Airmen" or Army "Private", he is recruiting people to roll with him on the weekends. In no time, he has created his own "set" or extension of his Chicago based neighborhood. In no time, I gang that could only be found in Chicago is now located in the heart of the mountains. The same can be said for the many families that move to The Springs from places like Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Riverside. Many of the parents of the children in these cities see violence outside of their door step every day. The parents grew up in the same nonsense so they decide to choose a different lifestyle for their kids. They move to places like Colorado to "get away" from the stress and violence of LA. The only problem is that when they move to The Springs, their gang banging offspring are enrolled in the school district and BAM... The birth of gangs like Bloods and Crips are formed. It is interesting because people on the outside refer to them as fake gangsta's simply because they are in Colorado... but until you get your house shot up by one of them, you will never believe it is real. (Yes that really happened...)

I remember my first day of school in 9th grade like it was yesterday. I had on my black Grambling State University starter hoodie with the double hood. The outside hood was red. From there I was rockin my red silver tab Levi jeans that were super fresh. I finished off the look with my black and red Fila sneakers. You couldn't tell me ANYTHING on my first day of high school at Harrison located on the south side of The Springs. I walked into one of my classes and "Quik", a Crip from Riverside California, approached me and asked me what set I was bangin'. I had no idea what he was talking about considering that I spent my 8th grade year in Aviano Italy where there was ZERO gang activity. I was clueless and it took a conversation from my eventual best friends Will, Jerome, and Tam for me to understand what the hell he was talking about. Every day like clock work, Quik would tell me how fresh my gear was but would remind me how I was wearing a whole bunch of "Dead" (Another word for red to imply that people that wore that color would eventually die) and that I was "Flamed Up". I thought it was funny especially when I found out the reason why Quik spelled his name wrong. lol... Of course the "C" was omitted because the letters C and K together was a derogatory term towards the Crips. Quik's parents probably had no idea that their son was bangin'. After all, they moved him to Colorado to escape the violence of Riverside. Little did they know, their son was one of the leaders of one the biggest Crip sets on the South side of The Springs. Quik was cool but the other Crips weren't as understanding.

My favorite color my whole life has been the color red. There is something about a cherry red and jet black combination that is super dope. Although Quik was cool and realized that I didn't understand the gang culture, there were other other "blue people" that didn't understand and wanted to punish me for my wardrobe selections. There wasn't a day that went by that I almost didn't get into a fight. The only thing preventing me from getting into a fight was my new homie Will and all of his boys that had beef with the Crips. Hanging with them gave me security. They weren't bloods but they were affiliated. We were all affiliated somehow. You see, we were all good kids that were affected by the gang violence that enveloped us growing up in the Pikes Peak Park (The Park) section of the south side. We were surrounded by racist mexican gangs as well as the GD's and Crips. I realized early on that we were better off sticking together although we never had any aspirations to join a gang. We rocked red clothing every day... We cocked our hats to the right with one pant leg up cause that was the cool thing to do on our block. The year was 1993 and we were stuck in the middle of the Death Row G Funk era.

Did I mention that we were all GOOD KIDS? I know I did but I had to reiterate that point again. Do you know how many GOOD KIDS get sucked into this senseless gang life and violence. There are THOUSANDS of kids like myself that found solace in a group simply to prevent some type of group ass whoopin' from happening. I was a little dude, that was borderline scary, with a short fuze... That means that I wasn't about to wait for someone to hit me for me retaliate like my parents had taught me to do my whole life. If I felt threatened, I was cocking back as far as I could and hitting you as hard as humanly possible. I was a GOOD KID though so I tried to avoid fighting at all cost. There are so many young people in this country that get sucked into the life every day. That is why mentoring our young youth and being a role model is very important to young man. That is why playing sports and doing other things to keep busy are very important.  I was one of the lucky ones. I made it out of The Park and I will tell you how I did it when I write the next blog "Good Kid Bad City Part 2"

- J. Wiggins

Music is a HUGE influence for me. I listen to it whenever I edit images and when I write. Here are a few of the songs that I listened to during the creation of this blog. Thank you for reading !!

Fall-N-Love - Slum Village
Brand New Funk - DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
A Million - Jay Z (Ugh... Nice Watch)
Life Colors Mixtape - Jazzy Jeff
Sherane - Kendrick Lamar
B*tch Don't Kill My Vibe - Kendrick Lamar
Bathtub Intro - Snoop Doggy Dogg