Naperville wrote: ↑Mon Apr 11, 2022 3:36 pm
I've met some really crazy dangerous people 30 years ago, and all that I was doing at the time was riding around on a motorcycle. Gangs can be found riding around in groups of 3+ and they will try to pull you in. You think cool, somebody to ride with, and then instead of talking shop about motorcycles when they dismount, they are showing you their rifle racks and other weapons.
You have to be really careful. Real life is freakishly worse than a movie and bad people are everywhere. Some people are so corrupt and diabolical they belong in prison doing hard time. Some are drug runners. Other are molesters or murderers.
Chicago Police only solve 30% to 40% of the homicides! That is a ton of murderers running around on the loose, and most of them look like you and I.
Think about all of the people involved selling stolen goods or drugs and stolen guns.
It's really bad out there.
Thanks for sharing.
I've known a few actual psychopaths in my life, though I kept a distance from them in our social circle. These occurred during different periods of my life.
When I lived in Taiwan, one of my teacher's teachers had an association with one of Taiwan's Triad organized crime groups, which are similar to the Yakuza and the Mafia. There were a couple times I was compelled to dine at banquets held for these groups.
The first time was when some of my Kung Fu class members and I were invited by this grand teacher on a free trip from Taipei to Tainan; all we had to do was travel by bus with two separate groups to do some forms demonstrations at some temples, of which there are many in Tainan. Some were tiny little roadside temples to local deities, and some were huge complexes that looked like Shaolin Temples in the movies. The two groups we traveled with lit firecrackers, waved banners, did lion and dragon dances, and 'spiritual boxing'/Shen Da self-mutilation demonstrations (sticking steel rods through their cheeks and hanging weights from them, hitting themselves with spiked balls on ropes, etc.). They also performed some Kung Fu, but they weren't very good at it.
What I quickly became aware of was that this 'free trip' was an extortion racket. These two groups were rival Triad factions, who were temporarily cooperating to 'bless' these temples in exchange for money and goods. And the temples had no choice; payment was mandatory. The 'big boss' in a suit and dark glasses had traveled separately in a big black limo with his bodyguards, and as a show of power, stood impassively while the temple keepers scurried out to hand large sums of money and countless boxes of cigarettes to the bodyguards to check and put into the limo.
Once the big boss had left, everyone sat at a huge banquet that was laid out at one of the temple courtyards. We were dining and drinking and toasting in style with gangsters, some of whom had probably killed people before. The ones we were with were obviously lower-level members, not involved in the higher-level dealings that the suits were involved in. The highest-level gangsters were businessmen, not street thugs. We actually had a good time, but a part of me won't forget that my classmates and I had a hand, however minor our role was, in extorting money from numerous temples in Tainan, Taiwan. And a part of me feels bad about that. That happened in 1991 or so.
Jim