Mom, consider not reading this one

You can visit a place and take in the sights. You can live in a place and absorb some of the culture. Sometimes however, you find yourself discovering an aspect of the culture that, although immensely powerful, you had previously missed, or at least misunderstood.

Dundee is an interesting place-- it has a few modest castles, on its worst day is greener than oklahoma has ever been, and sits along the edge of the water where the Tay meets the sea. I love living here, but it's not without its problems. For one, I've heard Dundee called the teen pregnancy capital of the world. Not that unreasonable of a claim, as europe supposedly has the highest of the continents, the UK the highest in europe, and Dundee the highest in the UK. Impressive, ehh? But I didn't need the statistics to believe it.

Yesterday while walking from Kevin's flat to pick up some groceries, Hayley and I were forced to detour around a police barricade just in front of the store we were bound for. As we made our way around, a cop informed us of the problem- a man beaten to death the night before- and took our names and addresses before letting us in to get our vegetables and chocolate. Inappropriate as always, we got some pretty good jokes out of the incident, but watching them comb the streets did stir my mind.

The previous day we had watched a movie that had put a name to some of the things that I sensed here, but couldn't quite put my finger on. Called Green Street, it documents one of the many firms that terrorize each other under the guise of football support. (I have no idea if it's come out in the states, though I have a feeling it wouldn't have been well received there.) I had heard stories about the casuals, but assumed that they were pretty rare and not as much of a problem as in the last couple of decades. Apparently, this is not the case. After mentioning that we saw it and how unbelievably nasty it was, my housemate told me a bit about the firms in Scotland and that, sadly, the portrayal is not far from the truth.

Now, the night before watching all that, a few of us went to the park to play around. Eventually some of the drunken mobs wandered by on the other side of the fence, talking big, and apparently cornering a kid from another crew. He got bottled over the head and slashed up a bit before making it back to his pals. Some more boys came along and were speaking with us- actually pretty friendly, just sloshed- but as the group grew and started to become agitated, we took our leave. This was more of an annoyance than anything else, though if these events had occurred in the order I've written them, it might have been a bit more disturbing to me.

As far as I can tell, Dundee doesn't have an organized firm- just the ordinary type of gangish troublemakers found in any city of reasonable size. So maybe the scarier gangs that carry axes and chains are in other cities (much to my mother's relief). Does that make the violence here less sad? No.
I'm thankful that my life was so very sheltered from that as I grew up. I'm awed by the few I've met here who were deeply involved with that life and were able to get away. And I pray for those who are still in it.