here be monsters

sometimes i really love living in brooklyn.

yesterday i got to see the first stirrings of an endlessly perpetuating stereotype--i.e. "ghetto life." (a charming thing to see, considering we're about as far from the ghetto as you can get in my borough)

the scene: 6th ave and 15th street.

the cast: four kids who really couldn't have been any older than eleven.

the prop: a huge boombox stereo (what is frequently referred to as a "ghetto blaster," for reasons that now seem crashingly obvious to me).

i basically caught this gaggle of children, dressed to the nines in their finest baggy pants and skate shirts, strutting down the sidewalk like they owned the place, while their stereo (carried on one of the boys' shoulders) screamed and rocked the neighborhood with the latest groovin' installment from those heroes of the outer boroughs, *nsync.

okay, so they didn't quite get the formula right--their musical tastes are going to need to mature before they can do the proper white boy/girl interpretation of ghetto fabulous. it was still the best thing i've seen in weeks.