hip hop traffic guide from beyond the grave?

i think it was 1991 or 1992 when i read it…

…my first interview with tupac shakur.

it might have been in rolling stone magazine, but i’m 99% sure it was in “the source”, as i was subscribed to both at the time.

(for all my younger readers, college kids used to get insane deals on “magazines”, and magazines were like websites, but an actual tangible good made of paper with pics and everything…and for my even younger readers, “websites” were like apps you accessed through something called a “browser”.)

before the interview even started the reporter talked about a dream he had whereby he was riding through LA with tupac in the the middle of the night and got lambasted and berated for stopping at a red light when there was no traffic coming…

go…man, go…seriously? are you that much of a bitch? the man can just flash a color in front of you and you’ll stop your night, stop your plans, and just sit and wait for him to flash another color so you can go on with your night? are you that much of a bitch ass? man, fuck this shit…

*and pac exits my car*

he never actually says it. but you can hear it in his voice if you knew his reaction to things at the time. the anger. the strife. the struggle. it’s not like i did the interview. it’s not like i had the dream. but i hear it…that voice. that anger. every time i catch a red light in the middle of nowhere, with no traffic, in the dark. and typically, i treat em like a four way…stop, look, leave. if there’s a cop lurking in the shadows that wants to ticket me for that, it’s his call. i’ll point blank let him (or her) know that i know what i did, and i’ll even explain why (minus the tupac referral, of course) and if they want to ticket from there, its their prerogative.

three times a week i leave where the van is stored for work and face this with a red u-turn light. this light WILL NOT CHANGE at night unless traffic comes up on the side street. otherwise it remains green for the major artery it’s on, and that makes sense. what DOESN’T make sense is why this lane isn’t a blinking yellow in that scenario, but it’s not. so i just treat it like by the “left on red” rules. from that lane you can ONLY u-turn, and cross traffic only comes from one way, so it figure it’s kosher. shit, i’ve even done it in front of LWPD and not been pulled over.

but last night i got behind a truck that literally waited (and subsequently blocked me) for over five minutes while nothing happened. did he finally run it? nope. he put on his right turn signal to get in the left lane and go up to the next turn around, which is about two or three miles up the road. why? just run the damn u-turn light!

just another story of the man keeping us down. keep up the struggle!