Clydell Brock's now infamous 'Double Touch' finish
The mean streets of Baltimore are probably not first place in the world you would look for parking expertise. In the state of Maryland, parking anywhere without a clear foot and a half of clearance at either end is illegal. But here in this most maligned of America's troubled inner cities the people have found a new way to find release from the chaotic brutality of their daily lives.
Former car thief and small-time drug dealer, Clydell, has been shot three times, (although one of those was a hunting accident) and has a rap sheet as long as his wheel base and tow bar combined. In our short acquaintance together he was happy to tell me that he too had shot at people. I was unsure as to whether on not this was simply bravado. In the culture of the ghetto, to have never pulled a gun in anger marks you out as weak and even though Clydell is mostly free the dark web of the concrete killing fields, it's unforgiving tendrils still pull at the core of him. He hopes to help others still trapped in the spiral of poverty and violence so so nearly saw him, and his obvious parking talent, become just another figure in an increasingly troubling set of statistics. In order to do this, like the bodhisattva of the Buddhist tradition, he must keep his connection to the street alive. I look at him across the Formica table of a greasy spoon, the smell of coffee and eggs in the air. In front of the back-lit wall mounted menu, he looks ridiculously solid, like a man carved of wood, eminently respectable in any circle of society.
"It's a f**ked up situation in the city... we try'na change that the best way we know how... "
Clydell Brock takes troubled teens from the City's parole system and introduces them to the semi-legal but stabilising world of competitive parking. In his languid Baltimore drone, he waxes lyrical about "a world away from the world, "This roll bar and glass... this is a metal cage, not designed to keep you, the menace, away from the street but to keep the street and all it's corruptive power, away from you.
On the weekdays, that's about the only time when we head out separate... but on a Sunday we ride together, we everywhere together, we making gaps, building spaces on spaces man, four cars in for three. rolling tight. like a unit."
Brock has been accused of inspiring street gangs not involved with his organisation into stealing cars and then dumping them in impossibly tight spots. So tight that the police cannot get them out again without using cranes. It is often cheaper and faster to hire the same group of kids responsible for the theft to get the cars back into the open, and as such has become a lucrative source of ghetto income. Brock laughs when I put this to him.
"We ain't out here to hurt nobody... I mean we understand we breaking the law but. you know.. even the police break the law. And anyway man, parking cars be a hell of lot better than slinging rock right?"
With his infectious smile just a few feet away, I admit that I am forced to agree.
The famous Double Touch shot at the top of this article is probably the first time an image of tight parking has graced the sleeve of a hip hop album, or been featured on MTV. Brock tells me the story behind it.
"It ain't just the parking, fact is that it's out front a crack house. Add to that that two days earlier the police came by and put up that sign telling us to respect the gap limit, but didn't do nothing about house they put it next to. They wanna clamp down on us because we easy, We ain't out there packing guns and dropping bodies, it's crazy. That shot there ain't about recreation, it's a political statement, that's why it got the reach that it got."
Brock's world of police crackdowns is a million miles away from official competitions and gentlemanly camaraderie of the UK scene but there is hope that we can bring the two together. Before I leave I hand him four tickets to next years World Championships, I tell him that 100% awesome wants him and three of his best to be there.
Watch this space people, beacuse as Clydell Brock would put it,
'The whole damn games about to change.'
