Rallying cry... I was never an hesher, in the boarding sense (nor the metal sense, but that is beside this), but as I rounded my teens & neared twenty, acquaintances, moreso acquaintances of acquaintances, were. They would take over a parking-lot, late, & "thrash". Then, they'd retire to their labyrinthine cocoons & listen to Snapcase & read Big Brother. & thru them, I was exposed to the latter, & for a coupla years thereafter would skim the various skateboarding mags on the rack at the local bookseller, for comedic value.

It was late '00 or early '01, then, when I was at Book World in Ripon, Wisc. -- my college town -- & saw the cover of an issue of TransWorld. It bore the tag "Black Dudes... In Sweden!". Apparently, some pro skaters had done a series of demos in the Northland, among them a coupla Afro-Americans. Now, of course, there are many "black dudes" in Sweden, typically of west or central African origin, & the writers at the magazine must have known this. They also knew, though, that the thought of non-Nordic looking Swedes was not what people think of when thinking of crawling Stockholm. So, in a contemporarily ironic style, they had a cover tag -- Black Dudes... In Sweden.

Black Dudes... In Sweden!

& since seeing this, I have taken to saying "black dudes in Sweden" whenever I see a person in a particular community that "looks ouf of place". A rainbow (gay pride) flag flying from a pole on South 68th in West Allis, for example -- black dudes in Sweden. & so it goes....

"Black dudes" -- they're everywhere.