By Niko Klus
Staff Writer
Ingenuity or
IGNORANCE?
The following is not a dramatization. You are about to encounter the real people and events that happened at New York Fashions in
Sanford, North Carolina on March 9,1996. The perpetrator, you ask? You decide. . . r , .u
Three teenagers enter your business. Your store claims to cater to the Hip-Hop world, offering a wide va^ety of clothes that woul
isfy the wanna-be’s, the thugs, the preps, the lady-impressers, and the athletes. Yet, this time you feel different; a little queasy.
Twro?tS"L'fgers have on, what you think to be, the two fattest gold chains that you have ever seen. The other teenager, a girl.
looks section to look at your latest Nike models. You send your daughter over to help them, while you
TuVsTore the new white and blue patent-leather Air Jordans. One of the teenage
boys asks you to get a size eight for, what you believe to be, his girlfriend. (This group must have money you think; perhaps they are dealers.)
Your daughter emerges from the shoe store-room, and tells you that there are no more Air Jordans. You already knew that fact, however, as
that one Jordan on the shelf serves as a nice gimmick to get customers to buy. , .. „ t.. .
You tell the group the bad news. But wait. The girl teenager sees some other shoes she likes, white Air Pennys.
than the Air Jordans and you happily send your daughter to the store-room to retrieve a pair She comes back, and the girl tries the shoe on
for a fit. The boy, who looks like l^e could be Puerto Rican, tells the girl to go ahead and put both shoes on her feet.
These^teTna*^^^^^^ you. Thoughts swirl in a frenzy through your head, as you begin to be frightened. You go outside the
store and lock the doors, so that the three cannot leave the store. You run across the street, and you get two husky looking men. Five min
utes later, you come back in the store and point the three individuals out to the men who remain standing by the door '
The group of teenagers laugh at your paranoid acts and continue to walk around the store. The Puerto Rican-looking boy grabs two
pairs of jeans and heads into the dressing room. Your eyes and the “security guards” eyes all shift to the boy when he comes back in e
siore, to make sure he hasn’t pulled one of those “ghetto tricks” and stolen something. The three teenagers converse and you overhear their
names — Niko, Koko, and Logan (in case you need to file a police report). •
Niko, the Puerto-Rican looking teenager, comes to the counter and tells you he s ready to pay. The total comes to
over $200. He reaches his hand into his pocket.
You think this could be it — the end. His hand emerges from his coat and ... he gives you his Visa-
illustration by Michael Farmer