Demorris A. Lee, St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, October 11, 2007
If a fight breaks out in the North Greenwood area, Allan Burney is usually there, video camera in hand.
Burney and childhood friend Cortez Hearns, both 19, chronicle street life in their neighborhood: fights in the middle of Martin Luther King Avenue, gyrating girls in G-strings and police trying to control the pandemonium. After two years, they had so much footage they decided to make a DVD.
{snip}
Their video, Da Hood Gone Wild, is a nocturnal montage of street brawls, drug deals, naked girls and cars cruising in North Greenwood, where a 23-year-old man died Monday after someone shot into the car he was riding in, causing it to crash.
The violence is nothing new for the neighborhood, which has long struggled with high crime and poverty. Burney and Hearns said they just show the reality of North Greenwood, especially when the sun goes down.
“This is a documentary,” said Hearns, who now attends Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo.
“We never paid anybody,” he said. “We never asked anybody to do anything. It just happens. Fights just happen. Stuff just happens. This is what happens every day in the world that some of us live.”
{snip}
Commercials for the video can be seen late at night on Black Entertainment Television. Several aired Monday night during VH-1’s Hip Hop Honors show.
{snip}
While the images are extreme, they show only the most ragged parts of the community fabric in North Greenwood. On Wednesday night, family and friends of Michael Scott, the man who died Monday, came together for a peaceful vigil in his memory.
The DVD does not include sexual acts, but it shows plenty of violence.
Two pit bulls lock during a fight, separated only after a stick is used to pry their jaws apart. A woman tries to hit another woman with a baseball bat during a fight. A man is stomped repeatedly by a group of about five men.
It’s easy to tell that most of the video was filmed in Clearwater. The city’s officers are clearly recognizable as they try to break up the fights, often while taking verbal abuse from people on the sidelines.
In one scene, a man coming to the community to buy drugs is chased out by a chorus of laughter from several youths. Another would-be drug buyer is pursued and his bicycle stolen. All of it is caught on tape.
{snip}
Burney and Hearns said they expect to produce two more volumes of Da Hood Gone Wild. The second is scheduled to be released by year’s end.
“Everybody likes fights,” Burney said. “You need four things for these to sell: fights, girls, police and cars. And it’s not against the law to carry a video camera. They are public streets that we are filming.”
Mildred Burney, Burney’s mother, said the movie exposes how people really live in the neighborhood. She just wishes her son would show some of the good that’s going on as well.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Demorris A. Lee
at demoalee@sptimes.com.
(Posted on October 11, 2007)
Comments
And people actually wonder why white people don’t want to live around Blacks. Blacks don’t want to live around other Blacks.
Posted by Irish Son at 6:26 PM on October 11
Just ordered the DVD. Looks like a true slice of life account of everything that’s aspired to and upper echelon in the black community.
Posted by PMN at 6:47 PM on October 11
Mildred Burney, Burney’s mother, said the movie exposes how people really live in the neighborhood. She just wishes her son would show some of the good that’s going on as well.
That’s like saying “the cancer has eaten most of her face but she still has those beautiful eyes!”
Posted by Dave at 7:28 PM on October 11
“…I know it’s reality, but reality needs to calm down.” (from original article).
What a great quote! Hey, we white folks are already calm. As an illegal Hispanic said to me, in her perplexity at the aggression of blacks, “Los blancos son tranquillos.”
Posted by H. Dumpty at 7:32 PM on October 11
This kinda pours cold water on the notion that this reality in certain communities is just media-driven sensationalism.
Posted by St. Louis CofCC Blogmeister at 7:32 PM on October 11
I couldn’t have filmed any of this in a lifetime of living in the white neighborhood I grew up in…
Posted by at 7:39 PM on October 11
“Mildred Burney, Burney’s mother, said the movie exposes how people really live in the neighborhood. She just wishes her son would show some of the good that’s going on as well.”
Perhaps Burney would have had anything “good” really been going on.
Posted by at 8:26 PM on October 11
“Mildred Burney, Burney’s mother, said the movie exposes how people really live in the neighborhood. She just wishes her son would show some of the good that’s going on as well.”
I doubt there’s enough footage of “good” to fill a minute’s worth of time.
Posted by pgh at 8:35 PM on October 11
Oh hell, where I lived on the Southside of Chicago, one could just post a camera on a tripod and record without going out if one wanted this “black culture.”
Posted by at 9:52 PM on October 11
BLACK PEOPLE WILL BE BLACK, WHITE PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER. THE MOST DISGUSTING THING IS SEEING WHITES IMMITATING THIS DARKNESS.
Posted by REALITY at 1:34 AM on October 12
This is the real Black America, and make no mistake about it - most Blacks are proud of it. They aren’t fond of “keepin’ it real” for nothing.
One wonders, if the parents of all these suburban White kids who adore all this hip-hop/Ghetto culture, are aware this is what is being peddled during a hip-hop awards program. Then again, one also wonders if those parents even care anymore. This is the new America…
Posted by HH at 2:30 AM on October 12
Any MLK avenue in America would be a great place to film a reality show, A Day In Tha Hood, everyone in America needs to see it.
Posted by abc at 4:36 AM on October 12
You can take the bunny out of the jungle but you can’t take the jungle out of the bunny.
Posted by Tim Kennerly at 5:41 AM on October 12
It’s been my experience that the arguments and the fights, often really get going just as the police arrive. The odds of death or a serious injury occurring being reduced dramatically with police being present. I wonder if this is true in Clearwater?
Isn’t Clearwater a relatively upscale part of the St. Petersburg area?
Posted by Dinosaur Hatchling at 8:25 AM on October 12
I went to college at Columbia in NY City. A few days after arriving there, my girlfriend and I took the wrong uptown subway coming home from a date. We had to go out of the subway in a black area of the city and cross the street to get to the downtown line. Just crossing the street and waiting for the subway in that place was a harrowing and bizarre experience I’ll never forget.
It was well past midnight, yet there were people everywhere, with bottles of liquor dangling at their sides, hanging out of windows, laughing, screeching, singing, leering. It was like a jungle filled with eerie sounds and menacing creatures. When we got back in the subway, the token collector was asleep and difficult to wake, probably drugged. Everyone was jumping the turnstiles. A black youth on the other side of the tracks dropped his pants and serenaded my girlfriend with a vulgar improvised song as he masturbated.
I have wondered my whole life about that bizarre place. I never knew how many people were aware such places exist in this country. Perhaps this video will let people understand.
Posted by Tesseract at 2:39 PM on October 12
Does anyone appreciate the benchmark cultural irony here? Making a successful action film - just by going outside and turning a camera on?
Posted by Gary at 4:36 PM on October 12
Blacks deserve blacks…we whites did NOT ask to be pushed to going to school and colleges with them…our stupid government did that for us….now we are being forced to live in our country with illegal mexicans and muslims…I say send them back to the countries they belong to….I for one…did NOT invite them here….or better yet…let them go live with G W Bush and family!!
Posted by lydia at 4:48 PM on October 12
DIversity is our strength. Say it with me, children, “diversity is our strenght”. Good, little brainwashed white children, good.
Folks, we all know this can not last. It will not last.
Posted by LOGIC at 5:41 PM on October 12
During the past several years, I’ve read at least a dozen articles critical of the human beings in Clearwater, Fl. I especially enjoyed one about the white women in their thirties and forties who’ve never married, and show off their current boyfriend of the week or month with pride! It lasts until he or she gets bored of each other and the cycle begins again.
And, why shouldn’t these bar sitters not tired of each, they are as shallow as a wet plate!
Posted by The allegator Man at 7:41 PM on October 13
The actions in this documentary are the results of generations of these people being rewarded by our gov. for bad behviour. In their society these activities are representative of everyday life.
Posted by Tall One at 6:29 AM on October 14
“She just wishes her son would show some of the good that’s going on as well.”
You mean like this?
“On Wednesday night, family and friends of Michael Scott, the man who died Monday, came together for a peaceful vigil in his memory.”
Posted by Voir Dire at 2:09 PM on October 14
