Slow Adam Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 (edited) And then in lake havasu it was freaking like 125 degrees out...that was harsh. The desert across the lake, I swear looked like Mars. Ha, ya, we were making up stories all day about what went on over on the other side of that lake. It was kind of creepy. Edit: I was the guy warming up the battery - we were playing games with your pit in Lake Havasu, since we were all trying to get under that one big tree beside the track for morning sectionals. :P Edited October 4, 2007 by Slow Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jared_mello Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 No corps stayed in Compton. Spirit stayed in Hawthorne, CA. Near, but not in Compton. If you have ever been to Metro LA, you would know that it is a sprawl of suburbs. In this sprawl, you can have a upscale community right next to a not so upscale one. Housing for Nats is an issue. Even in the 2nd largest metro area in the US, finding housing for everyone is a major undertaking. You must also keep in mind that many of the middle class kids in Drum Corps do not really understand what a Inner-City Ghetto really is. A good example could be my own experience with my own corps this summer: We stayed at Arroyo HS in EL Monte. By all accounts El Monte is a diverse, working class LA suburb. It is not primarily caucasian (it is mostly asian and hispanic), it has a variance of small homes and busineses, and is tucked in right next to Arcadia (wich is more affluent, as far as I could tell.) Many of the kids were saying "we are in the Ghetto" I could only shake my head. Most of the kids in the corps, being grom the southeast, and middle class, had never been in an area like LA. I had to explain to them: Helos patrolling the skys are routine. Because of the nature of the LA suburbs, and the sprawl, it is necessary to use choppers quite a bit in everyday Law Enforcement. Choppers are also used to monitor the traffic on the mass of freeways in the metro LA region. A fence around a school is routine in LA County. Every school in the area was the same. A majority of the people in the LA region are not caucasian..this does not meant that they are criminals or thugs. Not all of Los Angeles is Boys in the Hood.. You want a Ghetto..go to USC and walk a few blocks from the campus.. Sadly, it was ignorance and falling for sterotypes. I'm sure that there was some culture shock this summer in many corps. i was told that spirit was around a 2 minute walk or so from compton, sorry. it was a group of 3 or 4 people and the furthest they walked was around 45 seconds from their housing site. i guess by 'culture shock' though, when we were rehearsing in utah, we annoyed some people in a neighborhood because we were playing music (specificlaly amplified music, which i guess there was a law against?) on the mormon day of rest. funny that there weren't any more problems once we turned the amps in the pit off, but the hornline could still continue rehearsing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slow Adam Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 we annoyed some people in a neighborhood because we were playing music (specificlaly amplified music, which i guess there was a law against?) on the mormon day of rest. funny that there weren't any more problems once we turned the amps in the pit off, but the hornline could still continue rehearsing. Heh, it's not just the mormons that feel that way :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marimbaman89 Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 Ha, ya, we were making up stories all day about what went on over on the other side of that lake. It was kind of creepy.Edit: I was the guy warming up the battery - we were playing games with your pit in Lake Havasu, since we were all trying to get under that one big tree beside the track for morning sectionals. :P Yeah I remember that. My memory is a little fuzzy but I think I was trying to figure out if that was you lol, since I knew you posted on DCP. Those days in Lake Havasu were not the best days of tour, tensions were a little high, but we actually got to swim in the lake the second day we were there, which was a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever stood on hotter sand. And the water was probably in the 80's at least lol. I remember me and my girlfriend got lost trying to find a place to eat there, I almost passed out because I didn't have any water lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notelvis Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 Heh, it's not just the mormons that feel that way :P Back in the day there were some guys from Utah who marched with me in th Blue Knights. They were Mormon and didn't seem to have a problem with the majority of what we did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexL Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 (edited) We had a dog that rather resembled a polar bear plop itself down on the field during full ensemble. I remember someone saying "Give it a flag... it'll fit right in!" :P Could be worse, coulda been during a show. I think it was somewhere in michigan, late june, a dog ran onto the field for the last minute or two of the show while blue stars were on. Edited October 4, 2007 by alarson83 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
84skyrydr Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 Personal perceptions of people don't make a ghetto, the people that live there and rob and kill each other over colors and drugs, that is who makes a ghetto a ghetto. I lived in a small town and we had a lot of VERY POOR people, but NO CRIME. I also nmarched and was housed in areas that we were scared to death of being in. Not because of peoles colors or nationalities, but because of the HIGH crime rates for those areas. Any place I have ever stayed in New Jersey seemed to be a bit of a scare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marimbaman89 Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 Any place I have ever stayed in New Jersey seemed to be a bit of a scare. Just FYI, not every place in NJ is like that. Mostly northern NJ. I live in Monroe Township, which is either the safest town in the county, or one of them...and the county was ranked the second safest place to live in the nation (Middlesex County). I don't know how true that ranking is, but put it this way...I think Monroe has had like one violent crime in the last 3 years or something lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mellodcd Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 Utah. . . i dont' remember the name of the town. . .but here's how it went from a field liners perspective. . . We got to this housing site early in the morning (like usual). I slept for like 30 min. then got up to line fields. So we start out without knowing what fields we're supposed to line, but we figure we'll line the football field, which is like 100 ft from the gym (makes sense right?). Wrong. So our vis. caption head tells us to line the soccer field behind the football field so we start to line that, and guess what happens. The sprinklers come on. So we get started painting while dodging the sprinklers. Then the soccer coach (over-sized guy with a fohawk) comes and says that we can't paint the soccer field (that we had almost finished), because it would confuse his soccer players to have those lines on the field. So our last resort was a soft ball field with shin high grass (literally shin high. . .not even kidding), but to add another problem we couldn't practice on there until afternoon, because the football team had camp. So in the meantime we went across the street to a park where there were all these different kinds of birds (ducks, geese and swans) which was just kind of weird, and we just practiced music and a few basics in sections. We did that until lunch and then at lunch field liners had to go paint the softball field with the vis. staff (which was kind of fun, because it went so fast). And to top it off we had to practice in 100+ heat (which is never fun). . . .many other bad things happened at this housing site but i've already typed enough for you to get the point. . .sorry about the length. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slow Adam Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 Just FYI, not every place in NJ is like that. Mostly northern NJ. I live in Monroe Township, which is either the safest town in the county, or one of them...and the county was ranked the second safest place to live in the nation (Middlesex County). I don't know how true that ranking is, but put it this way...I think Monroe has had like one violent crime in the last 3 years or something lol. My home town (Port Perry, Ontario) hasn't had a violent crime since I was in grade 7. The bank was robbed. 13 years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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