Roth puts my streetness to the test

So I visited the Ghetto this weekend. Yea…so not as fun as rap videos make it look. Shocking, I know.

Here’s what happened Party People.

I was supposed to be getting together with Roth (hooray!) for dinner and a movie on Saturday. But then I remembered that I had a shift to work for crappy job until 9. Boo. But ever awesome Roth was flexible, and we decided to go to this place near his house to see an awesome 80s cover band. Dancing, micro-brewery beer, overall joviality … good times.

Since I was coming from work in downtown Cleveland and going to Roth’s end of town, I asked him for directions. I mean yes, he’d gotten me incredibly lost one time before (I got halfway to Pennsylvania before I realized I was way lost), but this was his turf – surely he would get me there safe and quickly. Right?

Ummm…no.

He had me take a turn that led me in the wrong direction. And he told me that I would be on that road for “a while”. I assumed that meant a few minutes…turned out it only meant a mile. But I didn’t know that at the time, so I unknowingly went for around 15 minutes into a bad part of town.

Eventually I began to notice some worrying things. Like, “Hey..sure are a lot of abandoned building around here.” “Hmm…that looks like a hooker buying drugs from someone on a well lit corner.” And then I had the best realization. “Umm…that mass of young dudes with their shirts off are yelling at each other pretty hard core. Lots of violent pointing and … oh shit! That’s a gun! He just pulled a gun and I’m driving by! Holy shit balls!”

It was round about this time it hit me that I was, in fact, in the ghetto. And despite my vast amounts of streetness, I think my nearly-albino whiteness and new car was just not gonna scare aware these people. So I made a panicked call to Roth who very calmly got me back to the right end of town safely. He stayed on the phone with me nearly the entire time and gave me a huge hug when I finally saw him. I was still shaking and apparently very pale from being so freaked. He bought me a couple beers to both calm me down and make up for nearly getting me killed. Kinda made up for it. Kinda.

We had a great time and I met a few more of Roth’s friends (who are awesome and really super funny) which was sweet. It wound up being more-or-less a win.

But dudes…Google Maps or GPS. For now on.