A crazy story

[scorpio01169]

....but true

for divorce, my old landlord decided he needed his house back. well i had to find a place big enough for my studio and it had to be a house, not an apartment. but anyway i i found a house on the you gotta have some kinda money side of town (JBroll knows this area...by Churchill high school) any ways the landlord a white guy was really really nice to me, i am a black guy. everything is going good we get the the rent price squared away and im thinking yes it's nice it's got a garage converted to a den i can use as a studio...then he ask me what do i do....

me: " i am a musician "

him: (with that look) " well let me check your credit and we'll see how it goes"


why in the hell did i tell him i was a musician....i never heard from him again

 

[Ben Johnson]

So do you have good credit or is there some other reason he hasn't contacted you? Yeah, most people assume musicians are starving artists...and I wouldn't expect the average white guy in the South not to have some kind of prejudice, even if they denied it. Sad but true.

 

[scorpio01169]

my credit is fine....i know he wasnt racist....everything was great until i told him i was a musician...but i thought it was funny cause you know how alota black peeps say he didnt give me the job cause im a black man....well now i can say he didnt give the house cause im a musician

 

[JBroll]

Yeah, San Antonio isn't really the place where people go to get rich off of music.

For those who haven't been around San Antonio much, Churchill HS is basically the 'fuck you' part of the rich part of town - think rich-bitch-spoiled-brat teen movie 'rich' mixed with Coming To America 'fuck you' - and honestly I'd never tell a person there that I'm a musician if money or property were involved. Hell, if you told him you were an audio engineer he'd have heard 'engineer' and equated that with 'smart and loaded', but some people are just annoying.

You might want to actually look around Babcock for housing - a lot of it is rented out to little UTSA brats who are too cool to live in dorms, but there are a lot of places that can be had for well less than a grand a month, and surprisingly enough sale prices can actually stay in five figures quite comfortably. Have fun.

Jeff

 

[Ben Johnson]

my credit is fine....i know he wasnt racist....everything was great until i told him i was a musician...but i thought it was funny cause you know how alota black peeps say he didnt give me the job cause im a black man....well now i can say he didnt give the house cause im a musician

Huh. Well I guess I kind of know what you mean. I'm going to college for audio engineering right now, and after so many times of telling people what my plans were and seeing them look at me like I'm from another planet, lately I've just been telling people I'm going to be an "engineer". Take the audio part out, and they're fine with it.

To take what I said further about the "starving artist" thing, the average person considers the music business to be very shaky and risky. Because of that, he probably thinks he's putting himself at risk (of getting a consistent rent check). But then you just get evicted if you can't make rent....so I don't know what the guy's problem is.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I used to live in a city like that.

It was like night and day difference. North side was poor south side was rich out the ass.

I wonder if its a southern thing .

Also I second the racist thing, it seems to be alot more predominent down south. I heard alot of jokes out of buisness people, alot of disrespect etc...

Thank god I was raised like that.

 

[JBroll]

Honestly, in places as big as SA racism isn't as much of an issue with white people - there's more inherent 'racism' among the 'gangsta' types than around the people I know on the 'rich' side of town. Hell, I'd go to convenience stores downtown near where I went to high school and people wouldn't stop staring at whitey - on one occasion someone thought that because I was in a suit and tie, clean shaven, and holding a large notebook I was going to either sue him or report him for health code violations. Same thing happens in college - every racial group but 'lookie, I burn on contact with sunlight and my ancestors wore tight trousers and played polka' is represented, and wants to push their cultural bullshit down people's throats, and while merit-based scholarships are all but absent every fucking 'ethnic group' organization gets to profile for people to hand money to, the minute you complain that people are holding double standards and making a big deal out of something that in the long run should mean nothing, guess what? You're a racist! Yay!

Jeff

 

[Gnash]

Also I second the racist thing, it seems to be alot more predominent down south. I heard alot of jokes out of buisness people, alot of disrespect etc...

Thank god I was raised like that.

Uh, I don't think that came out right, dude.

Yeah, NEVER tell a landlord or a potential father in law, your a musician.

Unless your in U2 or some shit.

 

[JBroll]

Then I'd be embarrassed to tell them what I do, and hard pressed to call myself a musician.

By the way, Ben, I'm surprised you called yourself an AE when you could have just said 'engineer' and had instant nerd street cred - on that note, how's the home stereo business going?

Jeff

 

[Ben Johnson]

Then I'd be embarrassed to tell them what I do, and hard pressed to call myself a musician.

By the way, Ben, I'm surprised you called yourself an AE when you could have just said 'engineer' and had instant nerd street cred - on that note, how's the home stereo business going?

Jeff

Believe it or not, that lady has since asked me to hook her VCR up to her stereo, you know, because we audio engineers study up on all that stuff.

Ordinarily I'd say this could be an opportunity to take advantage of, but this lady is well into her 50s.

 

[JBroll]

I'd pass on that then, but you never know - nice daughter, niece, something like that... hell, at least if she pays cash you've gotten some spare coin to spend on the tail you do find.

I have no luxuries of that kind, as I'm currently in math and physics - it's really pretty nice having no practical household applications to your degree. Only jobs I'd get now would be putting up cloud chambers as decorative items or explaining a three-semester calculus background in five minutes with bunny rabbit examples.

Jeff

 

[Nitronium Blood]

....but true

for divorce, my old landlord decided he needed his house back. well i had to find a place big enough for my studio and it had to be a house, not an apartment. but anyway i i found a house on the you gotta have some kinda money side of town (JBroll knows this area...by Churchill high school) any ways the landlord a white guy was really really nice to me, i am a black guy. everything is going good we get the the rent price squared away and im thinking yes it's nice it's got a garage converted to a den i can use as a studio...then he ask me what do i do....

me: " i am a musician "

him: (with that look) " well let me check your credit and we'll see how it goes"


why in the hell did i tell him i was a musician....i never heard from him again

Fuckin' asshole landlord

 

[smy1]

One of my best friends had just written a #2 hit on the German charts and made a fortune out of the ringtones (approx. 125k Euro) but most banks would NOT even give him an account, atm card or credit card because he wrote "Musician" or "Music Producer" on his application sheets ... his bank account was loaded and they were still afraid of him going bankrupt ...

He then started to write "Music Salesman" and never had any problems ...

 

[metalkingdom]

Yeah, NEVER tell a landlord or a potential father in law, your a musician. Unless your in U2 or some shit.

Shit, most people don't care who you are. Case in point - my former boss (who is a MEGA-star and has MEGA-cash...and no it's not MEGA-Dave) and I went looking around L.A. for a new studio while a second floor was being added to the house where our original studio was. At each location (business parks mostly) that we arranged to inspect, as soon as the property manager/landlord saw us pull up they'd start figuring out excuses as to why we can't rent from them. After feeling a little offended by this happening several times, one property manager actually explained to us that the noise and traffic created by musicians turns off the other renters in the area. Then he asked my boss for an autograph...

We eventually found a house in a residential neighborhood that was owned by an Arab guy. If you have ever done business with those guys, you know that they don't give a rat's ass about anything other than the $$$. I wasn't too happy about building a studio in the master bedroom, but we made it work. The irony is that my former boss eventually got booted from the house because the neighbors didn't appreciate the gunfire.

 

[scorpio01169]

^ thats funny

well i am still looking for a place to set-up shop. i am at my moms house till i can find a place. i really want a house with a converted garage but so does everyone else in San Antonio.

 

[Matt Crooks]

The irony is that my former boss eventually got booted from the house because the neighbors didn't appreciate the gunfire.

Not Snoop was it?

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Also I second the racist thing.

Wow that does sound bad. Sorry bout that.

 

[scorpio01169]

absent every fucking 'ethnic group' organization gets to profile for people to hand money to, the minute you complain that people are holding double standards and making a big deal out of something that in the long run should mean nothing, guess what? You're a racist! Yay!

Jeff

well the thing is JBroll you are right they shouldnt label you a racist but i dont think some white people understand that...we dont want buisnesses to stop giving you what they've been giving you for hundreds of years, we just want to be on an equal playing field. now i feel that we as black peeps are dropping the ball and not taking advantage of the opportunity that affermative action has given us. yes there are some. but as a whole we are not there yet....we have to stop blaming white peeps today what they did to us back then...personally JBroll i know you werent there 50 years ago so why would i blame you. but i think some white peeps are thinking that racism is over, it's not and i really dont think it well ever be the only thing i do is judge a person by them as they are by themselves....lets face it...an asshole is an asshole no matter what color they are.

 

[JBroll]

I'm not saying that racism is over, by any stretch - I'm saying that racism plus equal and opposite racism is just twice as much racism and nothing new has been brought to the table.

I refuse to answer questions on race in paperwork, refuse to associate with any sort of race or culture oriented group, turn down any financial aid from the few organizations that would give me some (tempting as that $500 from the Polish American Association looked) on the grounds of race, and generally just ignore the issue in its entirety until it's shoved up in my face. I wouldn't have a thing to say about this if I weren't expected to bow down and kiss ass every time something involving race came up. I just think it's stupid that people tend to try to respond to issues of skin color causing different treatment by... treating people differently because of skin color.

Jeff