Beats From The Street

When I was 16 or 17 and still living in Cumbernauld, Scotland, I used to listen to a lot of the early hip-hop bands like Public Enemy, Eric B &Rakim, and NWA. Myself, my mate Thomas, and another greasy wee shite named Laird were probably the only 3 guys who listened to music that spoke aboutBlack empowerment and police brutality in far away places like Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (the next neighborhood over from where I now live).

I remember all manner of stuff like the Sean Stussy pants, the Nike Air Jordan's and the leather Africa medallions. I even watched “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” every week in case Will Smith decided to do a rap and I thought it was a good thing when Black people rioted over the Rodney King trial and started burning down L.A. Unfortunately they burned down theor own 'hoods and not Bel-Air.

Not bad for 3 pimply white guys from Vietnauld!

I also remember that every time I picked up a hip-hop magazine the phrase"The Rhythm of the Streets" would jump off the page at me. "Beats From theStreet". "Stories from the Concrete Jungle". It made perfect sense to meat the time, after all, wasn't I living in the concrete jungle as well?

Eh... no... not really!

The other day I heard the phrase "The Rhythm of the streets" again and thecontext could not have been any more different! I now live in Brooklyn andhip-hop blares out of every passing SUV but that was not the context for m yrhythm of the streets. No, I was at cane-training for the blind and my instructor was trying to impress on me the different rhythms in traffic at a red light as opposed to just a stop-sign. It's a hard thing to do as traffic lights in NYC do not have any audio clues to say what color they are. In Britain and Ireland they beep or talk, hereI've discovered that if you put your hand on the "Press to cross" button you can feel it clicking each time the light changes red - orange - green. No-one told me this I just kinda worked it out like everything else up to this point, even my cane instructor had no idea the lights did this, I may have added another clue to her teaching arsenal so for that I am happy.

The rhythm of the streets is a hard thing to pick up. Basically, at a traffic light you can hear a bunch of cars stopping and taking off at thesame time with a fairly regular time-interval between lasts of noise. At stop signs it is usually just one or two cars and the time between stopping and starting is not regular.It's weird to be learning this stuff though I see it as necessary if I am to maintain some sort of independence throughout my life and have an active existence. Who in their lives expects to ever have to deal with the fact that one day you might not be able to walk to the end of the street without someone to help you? It's a fairly big mind-fucker of a thought if you dwell on it too long.