What we really need is better strip clubs

Mofos are all pissed today because it was announced that the cops who shot Sean Bell have been found not guilty. But I wonder if their beef is really with the cops who shot Sean Bell, or with the system that would force a black man to have his bachelor party at a strip club in Queens, of all places.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that it's the latter.

As I was remarking to one of the young kids I mentor the other day, one of the best things about going to some of the strip clubs I go to is that they're located in towns where there's basically no law.

Sauget, IL, for example, one of the towns where I'll go every now and again to get a little glitter on my face, could very well be the only city in this country whose Wikipedia entry makes it a point to note that you can pretty much do whatever you want there, as long as you don't fuck up in one of the strip clubs.

In which case, some Italian guy will break both of your legs.

I remember one time I had been kicking it over in Sauget and I got a little bit lit. On my way home, as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I drove into some traffic and damn near caused a huge accident. Some cops were sitting right there at the end of a parking lot, but they didn't seem to give a shit one way or another.

They probably figured I was a little bit lit, but that I'd be fine once I made it to the highway, and no harm no foul. Or maybe they were too busy copping a blowski from a stripper, and they weren't about to subject themselves to a monumental case of blue balls (which really does exist, I'll have you know) just to enforce some bullshit drunk driving law.

Either way, of course I was glad they didn't press the issue. Lord knows, being down with the winning team here at Harris, the last thing I need is the utter financial devastation of having a DUI on my record - not to mention the embarrassment to my parents, if that shit somehow ended up in the paper.

And I'm sure the town benefited as well, economically, in the sense that, if I had gotten busted that night, I probably wouldn't have been able to go back over there again if I wanted to. In fact, you have to wonder to what extent a town like Sauget, IL benefits economically from having such lax law enforcement.

I'm not saying drunk driving is a good idea or anything. I'm just saying. It's always nice when you have these situations where the law manages to work out in everyone's favor.

If only Sean Bell had been as fortunate. He went to go get some glitter on his face one night a year or so ago and ended up getting lit the fuck up with bullets by the infamous NYPD, and I'm not even sure if he was in any violation of the law.

The difference, of course, is that I went to a strip club in a town where the police don't have to sweat getting shot as much. Worse case scenario, maybe some drunken Japanese businessman tries to shove his fingers in a broad, and he has to get taken out back and beaten within an inch of his life.

I'm assuming that Sean Bell, on the other hand, went to a club in one of these areas where you hear about mofos turning up dead in the parking lot on pretty much a weekly basis - not unlike some of the clubs over in the rather appropriately named Brooklyn, IL.

Without knowing too much about this case, and without bothering to do much in the way of research this late on a Friday afternoon, I'm assuming the cops in the Sean Bell case let loose because they were fucking scared as shit.

Which is not to say that they were right for what they did. I'm just saying. It's easy to sit there and get all high and mighty about the police being racist, but who knows what you might you might do in that situation?

As many have pointed out, some of the cops who shot Sean Bell were black. And as I'll point out, the cops who've given me a break on many an occasion (and God bless them for it) were white.

So I wonder if this is really a race issue so much as a class issue. In other words, I wonder if the issue was that Sean Bell was black, or that the strip club he went to - either because he was broke, or maybe he liked 'em thick like that - was in such a crime-infested shit hole of an area.

What do you fruits think? If Sean Bell had spent the night before his wedding at Rick's Cabaret with my idol Ronnie Mund, would he still be alive today? And if so, was the issue really that he was black, or that he either didn't know or couldn't afford any better?