Breaking the Code
“My set is changing into music. I have the power to do something different, a chance to let people know how it is—not to kill or beat people, but to do music. Fuck these streets.”
Cover Story
Last spring, Whitefolkz, a D.C.-based rapper, decided to add to his plentiful body art and get a fresh tattoo. It felt like a good day to have someone draw on his forearm in permanent ink.
He headed to the only place he trusted to do his work—Topp Dogg Art Studios, a tattoo shop in District Heights owned by his man Infa Redz, also a rapper. Upon pulling up to the tattoo parlor, Whitefolkz parked, walked to the storefront, and steeled himself for a couple of hours under the needle.
He opened the door and stepped inside, but before he could settle in, he noticed something strange hanging on a wall of the shop: a blue bandanna and a red bandanna intertwined—a symbol of unity and peace between long-warring Los Angelesnbased gangs the Crips and the Bloods.
Whitefolkz is a member of the Gangster Disciples, a gang with roots in the Midwest. Gangster Disciples don’t have much to do with the feud between Crips and Bloods—they’ve got their own battles to fight. But Whitefolkz has always been taught that Crips and Bloods were enemies, that blue and red don’t mix under any circumstances.
Even though his own gang’s symbol—a black bandanna, or “flag”—wasn’t a part of the display, seeing the fabrics of the Crips and the Bloods cuddled together made Whitefolkz cringe.
“They were wrapped up like snakes,” he says of the flags. “That’s a nasty image, right? My first thought was, Nasty. It was obscene to me—like pissin’ on a cross, like taking a shit on a cross.”
Whitefolkz says he felt sick to his stomach, as though he’d eaten some food with too much grease in it, and almost walked out of the shop.
... Continued 
Issue of Jan. 12, 2007
News and Features
- Breaking the Code
Cover Story - Apartment for Vent
The City - Conventional Wisdom
The City - Pleading the Filth
The City - Blogging to Differ
The Mail
Columns
- Post Position
Cheap Seats - The White Cuckold’s Burden
Savage Love - Channel Serf
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- Thickness Matters
Young & Hungry
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- Sound Affects
Film Review - Short Subjects
Film Reviews - Tahmineh Milani’s Cease Fire
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- One Track Mind
Music - Records we didn’t get around to reviewing in December
Music Reviews - Videohippos
Music - Flex Mathews
Music
Theater
- BosmaDance: Violet in My Winter
Theater - Color Between the Lines
Theater Review - Down on Her Cuck
Theater Review - Curtian Calls
Theater Reviews
Arts and Events
- Taking a Hit
Show & Tell - Jan. 11-18, 2007
City Lights - Ivor Hanson
Books - E.L. Doctorow
Books - Robert Koenig: The Fourth Horseman: One Man’s Secret Campaign to Fight the Great War in America
Books - David Lynch
Books - Katherine Roeder speaks on Little Nemo in Slumberland
Books
City Lights
This week's best in Arts and Entertainment.
- “There’s No Time for This” at Project 4 Gallery
Arts & Events - “Fresh Paint: Process and Possibility” at the Arlington Arts Center
Arts & Events - Panel discussion: Fashion and Intellectual Property
Arts & Events - Panel discussion: “New Culture: The Museum Renaissance”
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City Paper History
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Oct. 2 - 8, 1998 - Fare Elections
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