Ahh…the hillside favelas> In many ways, some of the best places to live-great views, free electricity and water (stolen).
But a heck of a climb with your groceries!
The kind of takeaway food shops where you don’t need to look at the menu- you just look at the street outside.
There’s a bunch of guys standing around, who watch you intently as you pass. You go past in the opposite direction 4 hours later, and they’re all still there to watch you go back.
Buildings with large, visible holes that aren’t ever repaired.
Retail “beauty supply” stores. (I’m sure there are stores that sell beauty supplies in all kinds of neighborhoods, they just don’t announce themselves as such.)
More than one tax preparation business in your line of sight.
Cars with temporary license plates (a printed piece of paper taped up in the rear window). Bonus points if it expired years ago. Extra bonus points if it looks like a photocopy of someone else’s temporary plate.
It’s illegal to work as a barber (or, for that matter, a beautician, hair braider, nail technician, etc.) without a license. Oh, you can cut your friends’ or kids’ hair yourself, that kind of thing, but as long as you don’t call yourself a barber, etc. My state’s licensing website has tons of people listed who got in trouble for this.
You know you’re in the ghetto when you’re driving behind a car that stops in the middle of the street after flagging down another car going in the opposite direction with a hand wave. The drivers of the two cars will then have a 3-5 minute conversation between themselves, all the while ignoring the incessant honking of the ever-growing backup of cars growing behind them for blocks. Well, they ignore it except for an occasional middle finger waved to the backed-up motorists behind them.
I’ve seen this happen on at least a dozen occasions, and don’t know if they are talking to their drug dealer, their pimp, their baby-momma, or what, but it’s something you will never see anywhere but the hood. However, it never happens in the Mexican/Hispanic hood, but only in the black hood.
It’s funny, how some of the things here are also signs of The Boonies. Drivers stopping in the road to chat with each other could also be a sign of being beyond the suburbs (you won’t have a huge backup of cars in that case, but there’s no hurry to move if it’s only one or two). As are abandoned gas stations, semi/non-functioning cars that don’t seem to ever move, unlicensed tire/auto repair out of a converted building, and occasional outbursts of trash.
Unfortunately, there was a “one-drop rule” that still has a cultural legacy today. Whether or not it’s just or rational, the default in the US is that if you visibly have African ancestry, it’s presumed that you are part of the African-American subculture; i.e., “black”. “Biracial” is usually reserved for very light-skinned people who would be called “creoles” in other cultures.
