ZVM’s Indian Undercurrent

Folks, if you ever got your car towed, you know what I’m talking about. We recently returned from our India vacation to find my old ‘91 Accord gone. Called the number on the signpost and found that it is in a tow yard in Pleasanton - First Street Tow. Here’s when the fun began:

Me: Hello, calling to check if you guys have a ‘91 honda accord with you, license plate ZYC233?

TowCo: Yes we do. You need to pay us $700 to get it out.

Me: That is not worth the price of the car… can you help me out here?

TowCo: Sure we can. Pay us our money or else we’ll sell the car in an auction.

Me: But cant you guys junk the car or sell it and get the value from that?

TowCo: Sure we can. Pay us our money, and we’ll sell it and keep all the money.

Me: Are you kidding me? Why should I pay at all? Didn’t you listen to what I just said?

TowCo: We’ll come after you with a collections company and ruin your credit history.

Me: And who authorized you to tow?

TowCo: Anyone call simply call us.. we make no verifications of any sort and are not liable for anything. We are GOD my friend, and screw you for not noticing. By the way, did I mention that you owe us money?

I can go on and on, but I think you get the drift. It ended with them threatening me, verbally abusing me when I found out that my car refused to shift gears in their Tow Yard and I demanded that they fix it. I called the cops.

Larry next door (a great mechanic in Pleasanton BTW) offered to reason with them and fix the car, which he hid eventually. He also managed to save them from Civil court which I was ready to do.

So folks - not sure what happens next, but one thing is for sure. Tow companies are the biggest racket in modern history and there’s NOTHING BEING DONE about it. I dont even know where to start!

If you’re still wearing your Britney Spears T-shirts, blasting bubble gum pop in your shiny Honda Civic, cruising down the freeway thinking you’re the epitome of coolness, I have a newsflash for ya. ‘Cool’ changed its definition and sadly didn’t inform you.  So here I am, enlightening you about the latest musical trends of the Bay Area, because gone are the days of the Backstreet Boys, and lip-syncing blondes. Heck, even 50 Cent got shuffled out the door. We have something far worse now, something that’ll give you another reason to frown upon my generation – The Hyphy movement. The original, made-in-the-Bay, hip-hop culture that takes Rap and hip-hop to a whole new level of obscenity. So of course, as teenagers, we just had to have the Hyphy, be the new ‘cool’ thing.

Now some of you might be familiar with the Hyphy movement. “ Ho-hum, Janu, that’s so yesterday.”  You’ll tell me. But this is for the others, the tie-wearing, office-going, morally upstanding people amongst us,  who are entirely clueless that the Bay Area has now been officially renamed  the Yay Area.

 

So what’s the Hyphy?

Its nothing new. It’s a longstanding, evolving culture of the Bay Area that wasn’t much in the limelight until early 2000. It began as a response from Bay Area rappers against commercial hip hop for not acknowledging the Bay for establishing trends in the hip hop industry. Much of the Hyphy slang was invented by MacDre, but the movement gained popularity because of  E-40 from our very own Danville.

So what getting Hyphy basically is, is dancing in a ridiculous and overstated manner, often after a lot of substance abuse, to put it mildly. The term was coined by the Bay Area Rapper ‘Keak da Sneak’ (yes, its an actual name). Other synonyms for Hyphy: acting “Retarded”, “Riding The Yellow Bus”, “Going Stupid” or “Going Dumb”.

This music endorses heavy usage of possibly every drug available on streets, alcohol, marijuana, dancing and wild partying, more so than Rap culture. And we all know how vile Rap culture is. Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does.

 

Here’s the general slang. The words you’re most likely to hear.

 

“18 Dummy” – popular song. It means getting dumb by drinking Jose Cuervo tequila. Its also known as Dummy Juice.

 

“Ghostride the whip” -  Ever heard of ghostridin’ the whip? So what it is, is that the driver walks along slow-rolling car with the door open, so it looks as though the car is driving itself. Sometimes just for the hell of it, the passengers leap out of the moving cars, and sit on the car hood.

 

“Going or getting dumb/stupid/ignorant/retarded/brain-dead/hyphy/yellow bus” – This is the meat. You must VOLUNTARILY degrade your mental capabilities to that of a hamster. THAT is cool. To be truly ‘cool’, you must have a good time ‘while ignoring society’s negative opinion of “uncivilized” behavior’

 

“Hyphy train” - A wild, mobile party with a long line of cars, everyone ghostridin’, dancing on the hood and roof, and otherwise getting hyphy.

“Crunk” – Crazy + Drunk = Crunk.

 

“Stunna shades” – My favorite. So what these are, are oversized dark glasses that are the ultimate bling. They aren’t just ANY shades, they are the ‘stunna’s. Its part of the get up: you wear humongous white T-shirts, jeans baggy enough to house a nuclear family, and then the Stunna shades.

 

Yadadameen/Yadadamsayin?” – You know what I’m saying?

 

That’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s more. Its shocking. Even I’m shocked.

 

 So now you’re wondering, why on earth would any self-respecting person ever even consider getting Hyphy, to becoming the intellectual equivalent of a doorknob.

I wish I could answer that. Even as an official badge-holding member of the Teenage Cult, I am as baffled as you are. I’d agree with you if you said that my generation is morally depraved. You’d be very well justified to frown reproachfully at the next suspicious looking teenager who passed you. We redefined coolness in the most hideous way. We’ve lowered the bar even more. We’re listening to music that most sane people would consider utter nonsense. And sadly, we are proud of this.

 

But now you know what to do, if your son or daughter suddenly turns up in gigantic glasses and tent-sized clothes, and  says, “ Hey Parental Units, I am notifying you thus that I will ghostridin’ the whip outside with my delightful companions.”

 

You ground them, till they reach a mature age of, say, 40.

Yadadameen?

Folks, we’re honored to introduce an upcoming writer of a phenomenal calibre, Sunaina K (Janu, as we affectionately call her). Welcome and happy posting!