how do you deal with the inevitable hecklings?

[Count Alexander]

Don't take my translation too literally, the cultural baggage is different.  A native Brit could give illustrating details far better than I, but that translation is good enough to make sense of comments folks make about chavs, in a short-hand kind of way.

Your pretty much on the spot, except from what I hear, wiggers don't get in trouble and can get picked on easily...except Eminem...hes cool =D...

[Prof Marvel]

no one is immune to what others are thinking of them and saying behind their back, especially in a road side diner or a small town cafe, those places breed that pulse swallowing disapproval feeling...

the only way to be immune to it is to be ignorant of it...

badassery wont save you from whispering old women...

Ah My Dear tophatdan -
the thinking and the whispers may be inevitable, but immunity from it can be achieved.

Whilst out walking in a crowd of folks along the Piers of San Francisco with my Lovely Spousal Unit, having almost 2 meters of elevation I was able to spy a small "parting" in the crowd heading towards us. There was no ruccus, nobody in the crowd displayed any odd behaviour, there was just a nice "space" headed our way. As we came abreast of the "space" I witnessed a short (perhaps 4' 10") elderly Chinese gentleman, in traditional clothing,  walking with a classic ragmop (no rag or mop, just stick and wire) rather like a hiking staff. Nobody else seemed to look at him nor pay any attention, but he was in the middle of a nice 3 foot diameter circle completely empty of people as he walked along. I caught his eye, and we smiled at each other.

I saw and heard no evidence of "whispers". In fact I saw little evidence that anyone noticed him at all .

The Art of Not Being Seen. The next step past the Art of Not Getting Hit.

yhs
prof marvel

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Ha ha!
Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, once returned to his dojo to find some of his students excitedly discussing a movie they had just seen, the subject of which was "Ninjas." Ueshiba inquired if his students would like to see some "real Ninjitsu." They enthusiastically agreed. He had them surround him, the object being to seize him at a given signal. They closed, only to find that he had disappeared...then hailed them from halfway up a staircase on the other side of the room! They clamored to see this trick again, to which the Master replied, "What are you trying to do, kill me? Don't you know it takes years off your life every time you do that?"

 

I invite the readers to draw their own conclusions.

~Thistlewaite

[Mr. Boltneck]

Funny, it sounds like the Professor met a Taoist immortal or similar. Right down to the peculiar and doubtless significant object, straight out of an old tale. Or perhaps it was just Mr. Jimbo Li, practical joker and performance artist from the Mission District. Given the location, either possibility is believable, as are both simultaneously.
Of course, it never hurts to treat old and frail-seeming gents like that with great politeness, both for the sake of good manners and good health. A man I used to spar with (foil and epee), who was studying to become an instructor in kung-fu related a story which had gone around concerning his first sifu: not long before he retired into private life somewhere in Hawaii, he was taking his usual evening stroll, when a fair-sized group of young men surrounded him, and demanded his wallet. When they failed to take "no" for an answer, he apparently walked away leaving a tidy sort of flower-petal formation of unconscious ruffians.

[Prof Marvel]

Funny, it sounds like the Professor met a Taoist immortal or similar. Right down to the peculiar and doubtless significant object, straight out of an old tale. Or perhaps it was just Mr. Jimbo Li, practical joker and performance artist from the Mission District. Given the location, either possibility is believable, as are both simultaneously.

Ah My Good Boltneck, it seems that is the story of my life; I pass from here to there apparently oblivious to my encounters with Immortals, Kami, and etc. However I suppose I should consider myself blessed that e'en tho they see me notice them, they allow me free passage.   

Yet another odd example - After obtaining a particularly intriguing tome regarding QiGung I discovered that years prior while I was at University as an engineering student, unbeknownst to me, the Author was a Professor there in another Engineering Department, and teaching the University GungFu Club as well! Synchronicity, and this time, paths that missed crossing ...
 
yhs
prof marvel

[Mr. Boltneck]

Was that Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming?

[Burr]

Funny, it sounds like the Professor met a Taoist immortal or similar. Right down to the peculiar and doubtless significant object, straight out of an old tale. Or perhaps it was just Mr. Jimbo Li, practical joker and performance artist from the Mission District. Given the location, either possibility is believable, as are both simultaneously.

Ah My Good Boltneck, it seems that is the story of my life; I pass from here to there apparently oblivious to my encounters with Immortals, Kami, and etc. However I suppose I should consider myself blessed that e'en tho they see me notice them, they allow me free passage.   

Yet another odd example - After obtaining a particularly intriguing tome regarding QiGung I discovered that years prior while I was at University as an engineering student, unbeknownst to me, the Author was a Professor there in another Engineering Department, and teaching the University GungFu Club as well! Synchronicity, and this time, paths that missed crossing ...
 
yhs
prof marvel

Sounds like the fates will have an interesting life in store for you. All these mysterious sages and greats hovering around the edges...I can see this as an introduction to a film or book.

[Vagabond GentleMan]

I once saw a Kami demon's head spin!  Like, right off his neck!  You wanna know why?  'Cause I PUNCHED him!

[Vagabond GentleMan]

Oh, and about chavs...I reckon there would be fewer chavs in Britain if there were more Bloods and Crips there.  In urban America, the real gangstas keep the 'wigger' (apologies) populations culled.  Perhaps our respective nations could trade?  Some chavs for some Crips or something?

[Prof Marvel]

Was that Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming?

By gum, that is the good Doctor himself. He has published quite a few interesting texts. My main interests these days is in the study of Chi with regards to health & etc. It is always an eye opener to the student when they realize that the same forces that allow incapacitation of an opponent are used in healing :-)

Sounds like the fates will have an interesting life in store for you. All these mysterious sages and greats hovering around the edges...I can see this as an introduction to a film or book.

Or, perhaps they are amongst us all on a daily basis... ala the anime "Spirited Away?
or maybe it's the allergy medication :-)

I once saw a Kami demon's head spin!

 

back on topic, 
I bring up these Great Individuals  such as Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming, The afformentioned Chinese gentleman, and others I am sure we have all experienced, in order to illustrate that the Manner in which they carry themselves with grace and stature puts them above heckling in their own minds and thus in others.

Much like the Great Person who dominates a room immediately upon entering, (or the opposite, the Great Person who enters a room unseen and unnoticed) this quality and talent, if you will, is the quality I am promoting for us all to emulate .

If you achieve the ability to rise above such a thing, while it may occur, does it really matter?

yhs
Prof Marvel 

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Exactly my point, as stated earlier. I genuinely never experience any negative emotions associated with being scrutinized. It just doesn't bother me, if, indeed, it ever takes place at all.
My ability to "flow" through a crowd has been remarked upon many times. They can be jammed shoulder to shoulder, and yet I simply move through at a walking pace, like the cleaver of Wen Hui's cook in Chuang-Tzu's tale of "Cutting Up An Ox".....finding the space between. I don't really even know how I do it, I just do. Likewise, when I do not wish to be noticed, then someone can apparently look directly at me and yet not see me. Why? I don't really know...I just "consider myself invisible," and others somehow seem to agree. Very odd. Once, I walked a couple of blocks to a friend's house with rain pouring down, and arrived dry. When he asked how I did that, I explained that I "walked between the raindrops." I am unaffected by heat or cold, regularly play barefoot in the snow with my dogs without ill effect, and have been known to rearrange burning sticks in a campfire bare-handed, also without ill effect. How? I cannot explain..most of this has been this way since I was a child, and I just take it for granted that I can. When I was twelve, at a Boy Scout Camporee, we had a visiting US Army Special Forces soldier who was going to demonstrate self-defense techniques. I was small even for a twelve year old, and why he chose me as his 'dummy' I do not know. I had no training whatsoever at this point, but when he touched me from behind on my shoulder, I instantly, instinctively, and without effort threw this full grown 180 pound man completely over my head, in the air, and he hit the ground six feet in front of me. He got up rubbing his behind, and insisted that I wear his green beret for the remainder of the weekend. He chose another Scout as his "demonstrator." The funny thing is, if I consciously 'think' about any of these things, then I can't do it! Only when I 'accept' it without concentrating, mindlessly I suppose one could say, then it works. I have a feeling that Professor Marvel knows exactly what I'm talking about. "Cowboy Bodhisattva." Heh.

Yours,
Thistlewaite

[Llrael]

Oh, and about chavs...I reckon there would be fewer chavs in Britain if there were more Bloods and Crips there.  In urban America, the real gangstas keep the 'wigger' (apologies) populations culled.  Perhaps our respective nations could trade?  Some chavs for some Crips or something?

Egads, no thank you! Your gang culture terrifies and baffles me (Srsly, fighting over territory? How childish!). Besides, chavs aren't that bad. Haven't had a nasty run-in with one for some years now.

[T.Taylor the Third]

Exactly my point, as stated earlier. I genuinely never experience any negative emotions associated with being scrutinized. It just doesn't bother me, if, indeed, it ever takes place at all.
My ability to "flow" through a crowd has been remarked upon many times. They can be jammed shoulder to shoulder, and yet I simply move through at a walking pace, like the cleaver of Wen Hui's cook in Chuang-Tzu's tale of "Cutting Up An Ox".....finding the space between. I don't really even know how I do it, I just do. Likewise, when I do not wish to be noticed, then someone can apparently look directly at me and yet not see me. Why? I don't really know...I just "consider myself invisible," and others somehow seem to agree. Very odd. Once, I walked a couple of blocks to a friend's house with rain pouring down, and arrived dry. When he asked how I did that, I explained that I "walked between the raindrops." I am unaffected by heat or cold, regularly play barefoot in the snow with my dogs without ill effect, and have been known to rearrange burning sticks in a campfire bare-handed, also without ill effect. How? I cannot explain..most of this has been this way since I was a child, and I just take it for granted that I can. When I was twelve, at a Boy Scout Camporee, we had a visiting US Army Special Forces soldier who was going to demonstrate self-defense techniques. I was small even for a twelve year old, and why he chose me as his 'dummy' I do not know. I had no training whatsoever at this point, but when he touched me from behind on my shoulder, I instantly, instinctively, and without effort threw this full grown 180 pound man completely over my head, in the air, and he hit the ground six feet in front of me. He got up rubbing his behind, and insisted that I wear his green beret for the remainder of the weekend. He chose another Scout as his "demonstrator." The funny thing is, if I consciously 'think' about any of these things, then I can't do it! Only when I 'accept' it without concentrating, mindlessly I suppose one could say, then it works. I have a feeling that Professor Marvel knows exactly what I'm talking about. "Cowboy Bodhisattva." Heh.

Yours,
Thistlewaite

wow your a superhero!

[Utini420]

Oh, and about chavs...I reckon there would be fewer chavs in Britain if there were more Bloods and Crips there.  In urban America, the real gangstas keep the 'wigger' (apologies) populations culled.  Perhaps our respective nations could trade?  Some chavs for some Crips or something?

You can take this as a positive or a negative, depending on your point of view, but I think Chavs are only the beginning of things that would sound like Serious Crime to a Brit that barely show up on American radars as a threat.  Probably because the American expectations of lawlessness as natural are friggin insane!  The flip side of that is that it appears Brits accept social controls (legal, social, cultural, all mechanisms of societal self-regulation) that most Americans would have a hard time with.

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

wow your a superhero!

Far from it...these things are unusual, but not unheard of. G'tummo meditation explains the cold resistance, people regular walk over glowing coals, and, believing as I do in reincarnation, the martial skills could have been gained in a previous lifetime, or in several, as with musical prodigies. Besides, what superhero would have had all his natural teeth removed (years ago) and accidentally almost cut off his own left foot with a samurai sword? No, I'm depressingly human...just a little different. Much of my effort in this lifetime has been directed towards identifying the why of this...it has been an interesting journey of discovery, or re-discovery, as the case may be. Reincarnation could also account for my life-long preference for Victorian style. Who knows? Guess I'll figure it out when I die....

~T

[Llrael]

The flip side of that is that it appears Brits accept social controls (legal, social, cultural, all mechanisms of societal self-regulation) that most Americans would have a hard time with.

Are you sure? I must admit, when I was in the States, one of the things my family and I noticed was the tendency of Americans to obey rules that most Brits see as largely redundant. Crossing roads, for instance. Here it's not uncommon to cross pelican crossings (or whatever they call those crossings with the button you push to change the lights) if there are no cars coming, even if the light for pedestrians is red, while the people we saw in the States would wait for the light to change even if there wasn't a car for miles around. It was rather strange.

[Utini420]

Oh, that's just around cars.  Americans are trained from birth to act like children around pavement.

I'm not thinking of any specific example though, but from the general tone of posts on here it seems like British folks are more prone to obey customs and traditions, maybe a tad more on peer pressure. 

I guess what I was going for -- and this is totally anecdotal based on my own percepts and biases, millage will surely vary for the individual -- is that if a punk is being loud and roudy the stereotypical British response is to call for an authority figure to make him stop and the stereotypical American response is to get up in his face about it.

I may have been generalizing too much, but I stand by the root notion behind this:  the typical British Chav would be eaten alive in a full-on American ghetto, and outside them would be intimidated out of his chavishness, if given enough time and exposure.  I don't mean he'd go to school and get a job, just that he'd stop acting like, well, a chav.  And probably go back to acting like he did before y'all called 'em chavs.

I am totally not trying to bait any one on either side of the island by bringing this up.

[Vagabond GentleMan]

The flip side of that is that it appears Brits accept social controls (legal, social, cultural, all mechanisms of societal self-regulation) that most Americans would have a hard time with.

Are you sure? I must admit, when I was in the States, one of the things my family and I noticed was the tendency of Americans to obey rules that most Brits see as largely redundant. Crossing roads, for instance. Here it's not uncommon to cross pelican crossings (or whatever they call those crossings with the button you push to change the lights) if there are no cars coming, even if the light for pedestrians is red, while the people we saw in the States would wait for the light to change even if there wasn't a car for miles around. It was rather strange.

Well, you have to remember that America is quite large, and there are cultural differences from region to region as well as from city to city.  Where I'm from in Oregon, people wait for 'pelican' crossings and drive the speed limit and so forth.  Here in Washington DC, the pedestrians have death wishes and cross whenever and wherever they want, and if you drive the speed limit, you look guilty to police officers, so everyone speeds, usually five to ten miles over.

I guess what I'm saying is that generally I agree with Utini...we Americans view you Brits as being particularly polite, for instance, because, well, we're rude...because our culture doesn't have the same social expectations/restrictions.  And you know, half of us praise y'all for being so civilized, and half of us roll our eyes in feeling that y'all are 'uptight'. The Englishmen I've spoken to on holiday here in the US also have generally agreed that dressing the way I do would regularly get me into bar fights in most parts of Great Britain.  When I was on vacation in Britain, I never got into bar fights, so perhaps they were wrong or perhaps I was in the right places, but I did get the profound impression that IN GENERAL, we have culturally fewer social constrictions, both to our benefit and detriment.

Oh, and gangs fight over territory not for the territory itself, but for the rights to ply their organized crime IN the territory...every block a gang controls is another block to sell drugs, organize prostitution, etc.  Territory represents money-making capacity.  No more or less childish than a wall-mart moving into a neighborhood to put mom-and-pops joints under.  It's business, and gang-lords aren't dummies about business.

[Mr. Boltneck]

It is interesting, though, how essentially gang-based cultural signals from the US get taken out of context as style cues elsewhere. Long before chavs reared their empty heads, in the late 1980's, I started seeing young adults from Japan showing up here in hip-hop-influenced clothes which doubtless cost a bomb in some boutique back home, displaying a fairly scary naivete about the messages they might be sending. Walking down city streets in an outfit that might seriously, if accidentally, offend actual gangbangers is just hair-raising, in about the same way as wearing all-meat trousers in a pitbull run. Not the first time it's happened, either. In the mid-20th Century, a number of youth subcultures in the UK adopted looks based on American "hoodlum" clothes as a way of being rebellious. What actual pachucos, hoods, etc. would have done to these kids doesn't bear thinking about.

[Vagabond GentleMan]

It is interesting, though, how essentially gang-based cultural signals from the US get taken out of context as style cues elsewhere. Long before chavs reared their empty heads, in the late 1980's, I started seeing young adults from Japan showing up here in hip-hop-influenced clothes which doubtless cost a bomb in some boutique back home, displaying a fairly scary naivete about the messages they might be sending. Walking down city streets in an outfit that might seriously, if accidentally, offend actual gangbangers is just hair-raising, in about the same way as wearing all-meat trousers in a pitbull run. Not the first time it's happened, either. In the mid-20th Century, a number of youth subcultures in the UK adopted looks based on American "hoodlum" clothes as a way of being rebellious. What actual pachucos, hoods, etc. would have done to these kids doesn't bear thinking about.

True that.
In a similar vein, there's been a sort of fad recently for Americans of Russian decent to get tattoos inspired by Russian Prison Tattoos, which, like gang apparel and adornment anywhere, is an intricate coded language of criminal hierarchy, affiliation, and accomplishment.  And if what my Russian immigrant friends say is true, it might as well be a death wish to be an American with Russian Prison Tattoos on vacation in Russia.

[mr_Apricot]

Strangely enough at my conservative boarding school the other students really enjoy my attire, i rarely get flak from them. The administration, however, sees my style as a mockery of the dress code, even though it fits the letter of the law and most agree that i look far better than those with half tied ties or cargo pants with their blazers. My adviser actually told me that every time i wear my top hat he gets an email from the headmaster. i find the whole thing a bit ridiculous.

[Utini420]

Jeeze, because if was mockery telling you that is totally going to make the problem go away...

[Jemima Annabelle Clough]

I guess what I was going for -- and this is totally anecdotal based on my own percepts and biases, millage will surely vary for the individual -- is that if a punk is being loud and roudy the stereotypical British response is to call for an authority figure to make him stop and the stereotypical American response is to get up in his face about it.

Nah - the stereotypical English response would be to ignore them completely, or at the very most tut quietly at them

[Flynn MacCallister]

I guess what I was going for -- and this is totally anecdotal based on my own percepts and biases, millage will surely vary for the individual -- is that if a punk is being loud and roudy the stereotypical British response is to call for an authority figure to make him stop and the stereotypical American response is to get up in his face about it.

Nah - the stereotypical English response would be to ignore them completely, or at the very most tut quietly at them

This. Someone Else will sort it out, it's best to just keep quiet and ignore it. *Laughs*

Wheras in this strange, schizophrenic country, you'll find a mixture of all the above, and then some.

[tophatdan]

has anyone noticed that this thread always turns into the proverbial pissing contest... very few stories of actual use are told and it always turns into 'so i punched him in his fat nose' like a bunch of guys telling fish stories...

just an observation

*pisses the farthest*