I see young people with beepers working at the local food stores and at other lower-paying jobs, and they just seem to be a status symbol. Every "inner-city" school in Chicago is chock-full of beeper-carrying students. These are used for communication between friends, and also because many have to work while they go to high school, and this is the only way for people to get a hold of them. There is even candy that looks like a beeper for those kids who aren't old (wealthy?) enough to have real ones. I cannot imagine that police would look twice at them.
But the kids out bike-riding are very suspicious. They are the ones who take the orders and go get out the drugs to give to buyers. Then the guys in their late twenties or early thirties come by in cars (German ones seem to be the choice, particularly BMWs) to pick up all the cash once a day or so. I used to live on a busy corner, and I could look down and see the deals going down. The guys thought my husband and I were funny, because although we were white, our car was a wreck, and for a while we had to push it backwards to get it parked (admittedly, it was funny, but just showed their stereotypes about white people, who they thought had it made).
Now I live near a busy street (Fullerton Ave.) where kids on bikes go back and forth all day and night, trolling for customers. Once as I was going along the street, a teenager on a bike came careening around the corner after some guys on foot. As he was riding he was trying to aim his gun at them across traffic.
Trying to find some peaceful time so I can stop being a lurker,
Julie
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Frances wrote:
> I'm working on a paper exploring the various ways beepers work in
> US capitalist economies.