“I shut ’em down, shut ’em, shut ’em down”
The counterfeiting community in NYC shudddered last week when Mayor MIKE BLOOMBERG trained his bootlegging bloodhounds on a specific location in Chinatown. This building has been targeted previously by the authorities that regulate the counterfeit trading here in the city. Chinatown as a whole, or particularly Canal Street is regarded as the place where you can come up so some of the most well made non-licensed goods that a little money can afford.
There are several diifferent levels that counterfeit, or non-licensed goods can take depending on the factory that the products originate from. Some non-licensed products are actually created at the very factories where the flagship items are made, but they haven’t passed the requisite quality control processes enabling it to be offered in the flagship retail location. These products wind up following another distribution channel.
At the end of the day there are millions of items flowing through these channels. I’m not talking about poorly constructed knockoff pieces either. I’m talking about shit that us middle-class aspiring working class people love to consume. I have a LV duffel bag that is as sharp as a harp. I’ve had it for seven years already and the bag’s exterior hasn’t cracked nor have the zipper closures broken or jammed. The bag cost me $40 bucks in a warehouse on Elizabeth Street off Canal. This bag was the only way that someone like me could afford to look as classy and stylish as someone who has an actual bank account. When I rocked that travel bag with my minks at the All-Star Weekend events in Philly I was a Team Chickenhead All-Star.
True story is that was important to me too. Consuming these products are important to lots of working class and even lower class people who aspire to one day make the transfer to upward class mobility. It’s a lot easier to own a non-licensed designer suitcase than it is to actually achieve the move upwards. As a matter of fact, having the bag allows me to delude myself about my true impoverished status. The mayor is really targeting the designer dreams of poor people when he claims he has an ongoing war on counterfeiters.
There is always this movement to target the point of sale for materials that are considered illicit instead of focusing on the manufacturing, distribution and delivery systems that make these things available. Ultimately, the small sunshine on the quality of life that poor people enjoy is replaced with the dark clouds of interdiction and law enforcement. No matter how the NYTimes spins shit I recognize that the one battle we will always fight will be the war against the poor.
