A few months ago, I saw a special on TV about gangs and how gangs would "tag" areas as their own "turf" with "graffiti". Last month, I decided to ride my bike to the bank instead of driving to get some exercise and spare the air. On the way to the bank, I kept noticing what looked like gang signs painted all over the place on street curbs. Because I normally drove, I didn't notice that stuff, but biking put me in a position to view evidence of what looked like tons of gang activity.

I was bewildered; my Sunnyvale neighborhood seemed so quiet and peaceful, yet there was what looked like 10 different rival gangs living within blocks of each other. I gazed down at one piece of graffiti, trying to remember if I had heard of the XIII's or not. Weren't they gangs from LA? Had they made it this far north? The XXXI's sounded particularly rough; I made a mental note not to try and cross those guys anytime soon. Part of this didn't make sense to me, and I should have realized that I wasn't "reading the street" correctly. For one thing, where were the gang members? Maybe they only came out really late at night. What about shoot-outs, drive-bys, and screaming pimps laying the smack down on their women? Maybe they only fought with knives, ala West Side Story, minus the dancing. Or maybe with. I wasn't sure.

A week later, I showed these mysterious, onimous markings to my room-mate, letting him know my concerns. "We're living in the middle of Gangland, USA!" I told him, pointing to the telltale signs.

It turns out, I was soooo wrong. In 5 seconds, he had guessed what the marks were really for...

Yup, nothing more than
markers for water mains!

All of the little scrawls of graffiti had arrows pointing to these little metal disks in the road! I always knew I wasn't book smart, but I thought maybe, that's ok; I'm street smart. Now I know I'm neither! I must be some other kinda smart.