Hi this is a question mainly for Chase but anyone else is welcome too. Chase, I read your article titled “How to be Street Smart & Handle Life Threatening Situations”. I was in a little situation not long ago. I was walking through the part of my city which is the absolute worst. It’s like ground zero. When I go I’m the only white guy there and I’m not familiar with the way things go in that part of town. Well, the area is a pretty busy one, like a typical NYC main street, with a lot of stores but also a lot of dope pushers standing around on the sidewalks. I was doing pretty good until this little thug-looking drug dealer caught me off guard. Reading the article, I noticed a couple things I did wrong. I’d appreciate your feedback.
Ok so it was about 1:00 PM on a weekday. There’s a certain stretch of the street where it’s impossible to walk through without encountering like 15 pushers along the way, who are always gang members as well. There’s like 15 of them in the span of 75 feet or so. Some of them joke with you as you walk past, some don’t. Some are the unfriendly kind. I’m a fast walker in general, I never walk slow because my mind is the kind that likes to think fast and rapidly and thus my walk is a reflection of that. So I was walking fast, and I wasn’t dressed “white” but not particularly “thug” either. I'm not very intimidating, I'm 5'6 and 150, with no tattoos. I walked past a stretch of sidewalk and as I approached, a couple dealers saw me from about 30 feet away and joked about me to each other, which I could hear was about me but couldn’t make out exactly what they said. There was one of them, judging by his voice I think probably in his late teens, with a ninja mask on and was wearing a winter jacket in the summer (probably cause he had a fucking uzi underneath). He approached me and asked me “Do you smoke?” Not in a screaming voice but in a very commanding type of voice, like he’s the one in charge of the street. I was caught off guard and got a little frightened, so I didn’t say anything but just shook my head no and kept on walking, looking straight ahead & not at him. He was turned towards me, and then a couple seconds later he said “Support the business, man!” I said nothing in reply to that either. Then I kept walking and he said to me, also in a commanding sort of tone “This is ____ Street! This is ____Street!” . He took several steps towards me as he was saying that, which made me really think that he was about to start following me, but he didn’t. When I walked about 20 more feet, I looked over my shoulder and he wasn’t following me. He was just standing around the same spot he was in before, looking for customers. But I feel that I fucked up, because I didn’t say anything back to him. And I did feel fear so that’s not good. But I didn’t really know what the best response would have been. I didn’t want to be too aggressive or confrontational, which I figured would invite violence. What’s your suggestions? And do you think he had something harmful on his mind for me?
Ok so it was about 1:00 PM on a weekday. There’s a certain stretch of the street where it’s impossible to walk through without encountering like 15 pushers along the way, who are always gang members as well. There’s like 15 of them in the span of 75 feet or so. Some of them joke with you as you walk past, some don’t. Some are the unfriendly kind. I’m a fast walker in general, I never walk slow because my mind is the kind that likes to think fast and rapidly and thus my walk is a reflection of that. So I was walking fast, and I wasn’t dressed “white” but not particularly “thug” either. I'm not very intimidating, I'm 5'6 and 150, with no tattoos. I walked past a stretch of sidewalk and as I approached, a couple dealers saw me from about 30 feet away and joked about me to each other, which I could hear was about me but couldn’t make out exactly what they said. There was one of them, judging by his voice I think probably in his late teens, with a ninja mask on and was wearing a winter jacket in the summer (probably cause he had a fucking uzi underneath). He approached me and asked me “Do you smoke?” Not in a screaming voice but in a very commanding type of voice, like he’s the one in charge of the street. I was caught off guard and got a little frightened, so I didn’t say anything but just shook my head no and kept on walking, looking straight ahead & not at him. He was turned towards me, and then a couple seconds later he said “Support the business, man!” I said nothing in reply to that either. Then I kept walking and he said to me, also in a commanding sort of tone “This is ____ Street! This is ____Street!” . He took several steps towards me as he was saying that, which made me really think that he was about to start following me, but he didn’t. When I walked about 20 more feet, I looked over my shoulder and he wasn’t following me. He was just standing around the same spot he was in before, looking for customers. But I feel that I fucked up, because I didn’t say anything back to him. And I did feel fear so that’s not good. But I didn’t really know what the best response would have been. I didn’t want to be too aggressive or confrontational, which I figured would invite violence. What’s your suggestions? And do you think he had something harmful on his mind for me?