armer’s Market.
We venture outside of South Central for this story.
A puff of smoke — swirling into nothing.
Sitting here on the curb, watching the blur of headlights pass.
Everything is nothing sometimes.
This story takes place at the farmer’s market in Northridge.
Plastic Man moveth through the crowds, trying to sell cases of plastic bags to any merchant that would buy—some who always buy.
Around him, the drags of people: old, young, every shade of skin, lining up for churros, pupusas, vegetables from a farm in the middle of nowhere, even damn pancakes—while a local band plays Unchained Melody from Ghost.
“Do you need any plastic bags?” sayeth the Plastic Man.
Some respond yes, others no. Maybe next time.
But tonight someone didn’t just say no.
He looked at Plastic Man with fiery eyes of anger:
“I am buying from someone else now. I no longer want to buy from you because you are racist. You discriminated against me, decided to sell to others. My money ain’t good enough for you?”
Funny how people perceive you. Judgment everywhere.
They say it’s the white man who puts you down—that’s the story TV sells.
But sometimes the ones who cut you deepest are your own.
Plastic Man is not the white man. He is Mexican-American, out here selling plastic bags across L.A., trying to make a dollar, trying to survive.
Mexican dude. Same blood. And I’m like—what the fuck.
If the man had only asked, he would’ve heard the truth:
Last week, Plastic Man ran out of cases and didn’t know how to tell him.
Usually Plastic Man comes with his mom. She always gets free vegetables from a vendor because she’s so likable. But today, he came alone.
Here’s the twist: earlier that day, Plastic Man had a moment with a fruit vendor in Whittier.
The man stands in the sun ten hours a day, heat beating him down,
and every time Plastic Man buys, he overpays.
They laugh, they nod, and that’s it.
Somehow that man knows Plastic Man better than anyone else in his life—
and barely a word is spoken.
Later, Plastic Man driveth home. Hot day behind him, cool night wrapping around.
He gets off the freeway, annoyed, weaving through the streets back to South Central.
Red light at Victoria Boulevard, headlights slicing left and right.
In front of him, a green Toyota Tacoma, blinker flickering.
And he thinks: What’s the victory tonight?
The victory is this—
as pissed off as he was earlier, he didn’t feed the bad with the bad.
He fed the good.
He ended his day with respect, with the memory of the fruit vendor from Whittier.
Puff.
🥷 You don’t have to believe. You can ignore it. But if you knew… would you believe it happens?
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