Wrestling Blogs - Mike Tamillow

My hotel is straight up next to the ghetto. I walked across the street to check out some shops the other day. The first one I looked in was a bike shop. Nice stuff, I considered buying one except I would hardly use it. Then I walked into the next shop and turned out it was a sex shop. In both shops the guys were sleeping in a bed in the back. Which helped me to realize, this is their house. The dude lives in a sex shop! what a sweet life.. not. And if you think this is not appropriate for your kids to read remember there are little kids living with this life. But at the same time this is the life these people are used to and there is nothing to be ashamed of about it, for them or for us on their part. I need a local phone so I go into the first shop I can see and ask for a phone in the casing. It's about 40 bucks. I've already spent about 150 on international calls probably, so I'm going to save a bunch. However, dealing with these people is tough because I don't speak chinese and they don't speak english. So I point and tried to explain that I want to make sure it works. It does. Then I took a trip down the rest of the ally. The ally starts off straight but then the road becomes more narrow, less of a road and really questionable. The shops go from decent to crappier and crappier. The resturants would never pass health code standards. I head down and get a handful of goods. First I stop at a bookstore that I see. It's old and all the books are in chinese. I ask the store owner for a dictionary and buy a chinese - english dictionary from a long time ago. I later find out that the dictionary was filled with old ceskoslovackian and russian stamps. I headed down to a few other stores. In the grocery store the guy was sleeping on a cardboard box on the ground. As I was walking out the guy woke up and said 'Hello' to which I laughed. I got a nice zippo, a great bottle of wine, and a shirt and underwear that both were far too small. The windows on most of the buildings were broken. The buildings were run down and looked like abandoned buildings in chicago, minus the wooden boards. The guys walk around with shirts off most of the time. the stores are reminiscent of my crawl space, things disorganized and piled up being sold for whatever someone could get. It's the hood and I can tell there is a huge sense of community here.