I’m in the ‘hood like them li’l motorcycles.

-Jadakiss

This photo is close to a year old (and taken in Florida), but I did see one of those mini bikes today as I cruised through the neighborhood.

The very first song I heard at the very first party I attended on an Ivy-League campus twelve years ago had the following chorus: “Niggas! Grab your dicks if you love hip-hop! Bitches! Rub your titties if you love Big Pop!” I heard that song today too at some sort of block party. Two years later, the author of that song, Notorious B.I.G., would record the song Brooklyn’s Finest with fellow borough native Jay-Z. The ouvre of both men can be heard as if in a continuous loop banging from car stereos throughout mine and many other neighborhoods in Brooklyn throughout the summer. In fact, Brooklyn’s Finest was banging from an old-school Mercedes that swooped past me today too.

All of these things I witnessed while riding a skateboard — something I had stopped doing around the time I entered high-school fifteen years ago and resumed in the last three years.