"The Wire" on HBO

yeah i dunno maybe go out and slang for a couple years then come back when youre 16 *shrug*

I don't think he makes more $$ at foot locker than he did as a drug dealer.

ya - i never got the impression he was bad at slinging. i assumed he wanted a job that wouldn't get him killed.

^^ my thought, too.

this was the guy whose top priority was getting laid.

pretty sure it was kenard that was dressed up like omar.

― The Devil's Avocado (Gukbe), Wednesday, November 18, 2009 11:44 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah that was whatshisname, the kid with the little brother who worked for marlo

i dont think working @ foot locker really counts as "getting out" -- wage slavery is wage slavery

its very likely he was making about the same at foot locker as he was in a drug gang

Lower mortality rate at foot locker - though a kid was caught shoplifting at my local, jumped out the first-floor window to escape, and died when he hit the ground.

lol

i don't know what foot lockers you've been to but i don't think payless is sending hit squads over to pull drivebys

deej u crazee

Shoe Pavilion on the other hand has some fierce muscle

drug gangs don't give you awesome referee shirts

yes, i agree that foot locker is a safer job.

i've taken to reading every post here by prefacing it with "in this fictional dramatic program,"
fortune cookie wisdom

attracts a better class of customer, too

though i would like to hear a point by point analysis of corner hopper/foot locker job benefits

h8 to be the dude all "you should read freakanomics" but sudhir vankatesh wrote a chapter in that called "why do drug dealers still live with their moms" about the wage pyramid of the drug dealer & how it comes down to around minimum wage for folks just starting out

Barbara Ehrenreich should have done a chapter of her book as a hopper.

or as an iguana wrangler

LOL i refuse to change my display name until i see the movie!

i yield the rest of my iguana time to a roundabout and bad warhol reference

into the second season now, it's improving. god Ziggy reminds me so much of my little league coach's spoiled son, and so many other spoiled twiggy brats I've known. kinda lol'd at the seven samurai beginning, there's kinda a disconnect for me between the show's realism and its reliance on stock narrative tropes. also had no idea that Dominic West is british!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg_3ZSeHL4g

lol

In re Omar not being realistic: This summer I met a federal prosecutor who worked in a drug crimes division -- I don't know if he was a Wire fan or not (it didn't come up) but he did tell me that a lot of their prosecutions are people who rob drug dealers, and that, in his opinion, they tended to be the absolute worst criminals. Robbing drug dealers is extremely lucrative and carries low risk of getting caught, because what drug dealer will call the police on you?

He said that such robbers often harm not only the drug dealers but their families, and that they tend to use torture to get information about where money/drugs are kept. I.e. they don't tend to "live by a code."

I'm just about to finish the 2nd season which I've enjoyed thoroughly. However - (I think it's already been mentioned up-thread) the Brother Mouzone character is fairly ridiculous - especially by Wire standards. Far too cartoonish to take seriously. Otherwise, looking forward to Season 3.

OK I still haven't watched The Wire yet and I have an idea where I can do this and make it count as a work activity at the same time. I need to know from you seasoned Wire fans whether this is a good idea.

I recently started a job where I am working with drug, street, gang and court involved young people who are mainly between the ages of 18-21. Those that haven't been locked up before have friends that have and many are very entrenched in street life. I am in the beginning stages of forming relationships with them and have to come up with ideas for acitivites. I was thinking of maybe doing a weekly "movie" night type thing but with The Wire where we'd watch episodes and then follow them up with discussion. I would have a co-worker who is a fomrer gang memeber who did five years facilitate this with me. I think that they'd be really into it and that it could spark some really good and hopefully productive discussions about things thye're often reluctant to address.

I feel like this is either a really great idea or a really shitty one. What say you?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/what-do-real-thugs-think-of-the-wire/

It could be a terrific idea. One reservation I have is that it can be really hard to follow. Not the language, but the complexity of the social world, meaning the connections between the characters - I felt like I was out beyond my limits sometimes and needed Mrs K to explain bits to me. It's a great show, though, if you have a bunch of brightish, socially adept kids it could be fun.

at the very least, YOU'LL learn a lot.

My concern would be the length of the show. Do you have enough time? To get to the meat of the show and it's "message" (such as there is one), you perhaps need to watch the whole of season 1, if not right up to the end of season 3.

Others may disagree?

No so concerned about length - it's well-written enough that there are short and long games going on all the time. I don't think getting to the end of season 1 would be a drag at all, though season 2 is a pretty abrupt change and I wonder how that'd play out with your audience?

More basic concern: they might already have seen it?

I mentioned it to a group of about five kids yesterday and they had never even heard of it!

As far as whether or not I have enough time, I see most of these kids nearly every day so I think that we could definitely work through at least season one and they could always watch the rest on their own if they're interested.

I think I'm going to run it by my boss and co-worker and see what they think. While I know that I will learn a lot, my major concern is that they learn something as well. I want this to be a productive thing of everyone and not just me. I also need to figure out how to frame it so that it doesn't come off as presumptuous of me to think this is something that they'll identify with. Well, I guess it is presumptuous but that doesn't make it wrong. I worry that they might construe the idea as offensive somehow but that's probably more indicative of self-consciousness than anything else at this point.

I'm still sort of navigating how to interact with these dudes since my life experiences have been so wildly differently from theirs. We are bonding though so that's something. This week ended with me being teased in a boys pulling the girls' pigtails sorta way and then getting a huge bear hug from one of my participants and being told by another that I was his new favorite person at the org so I'm off to a pretty good start.

it has some n00dz in it though :)

Hmmmmmm. I don't think that would be an issue. There really isn't much that doesn't get seen or discussed around the center. They'd all be at least 18 and at least 3/4 of them already have kids so hopefully they'll be able to handle a little n00dity.

I also think that having my co-worker who has known a lot of these kids since they were born and who lived the life himself present during the discussion etc. is key if I'm going to pull this off.

haha yeah i figured xp

if it helps then maybe me and shakey mo could come by and talk to them about the show and living in tough neighborhoods.

lollll

ask them if the corner pays better than the foot locker

i can tell them about what's in the game. sometimes you want a galaxy to be one way, but it's the other way.

ha. Had p interesting convo with one of my guys the other day about why he should stay in a transistional work program we run in which he makes $8 an hour rather than return to dealing where he was making hundreds a night so yeah, I think I know what they'd say to that one.

my major concern is that they learn something as well

They will learn how to play chess, and if they're sharp, that you can reduce corner life to chess analogies.

Bit more seriously, I wonder if the repercussions that we see in the show aren't too back-loaded to the later seasons (I'm avoiding specifics to try to avoid spoiling) -- it kind of takes a while for the overriding thesis to really come through, IMO.

That aside, whether or not the corner scenes grab them, I think that seeing all the details of police work would be fascinating, if somewhat overwhelming (which was my reaction to the show the first time I watched it).

Lol @ forks' post.

if you do this ENBB you should totally start a thread about how it goes!

Oh that's a good idea. I definitely will.

yeah - I'd be really curious to hear about how it goes, if you choose to do it.