Chicken Wings, Black-on-Black Crime and Freedom Rides: Finger Lickin' Good in BRA!!

It is a well-known fact that chicken is the number one choice of meat in the Black community. Fried, baked, grilled, crispy, preferably free, with or without bones, in a bucket, in the form of a nugget, stolen by Precious, purchased while hurdling dying people at the Chicken Hut or worse, sold-out because Popeye's and KFC were in a )rut, Black people can go only so many meals without a supplement of chicken.

This past weekend saw chicken wings (no one ran out of them) provide two instances of unnecessary drama and hurt feelings, though in both cases the offending party were merely placating a certain demographic with a public acknowledgment of their love for soul food.

One of the cases involving offensive chicken wing usage was the inappropriate naming of a certain variety of wing - the Black on Black crime wing flavor:

What's in a name? At Big Shot Bob's House of Wings in Avalon, apparently it's everything. Channel 11 News featured the restaurant in the Pittsburgh “Best Wing” contest, but it’s a name of one of the flavors that caught the attention of many WPXI viewers and Facebook followers.

"If I had any idea this would happen, it wouldn't have gotten on our menu," said Big Shot Bob's owner Matt Cercone. "We've been getting threatening phone calls here, and there are people saying we're going to go out of business."Big Shot Bob's is more popularly known for its 100 different flavors of wings, but it was the "black on black crime" wing flavor that generated the negative publicity.Channel 11 first learned about the controversy through our WPXI-TV Facebook page. A viewer wrote, "How about this for a story. There's a place called Big Shot Bob's house of wings and they have a featured wing called black on black crime.

"Cercone said after he started receiving complaints about the wings name, he changed it. Cercone said he meant no harm and that the wing's inventor, a loyal customer who happens to be African-American, came up with the name."Offense was never part of anything," said Cercone.

Big Shot Bob's changed the name of the wings to "Big Fine Woman 2000." Cercone said they allowed the woman who first brought the controversy to light to name them.

So a Black person named the wing in the first place after a problem that plagues the Black community quite frequently. Black on Black crime is not a mild problem; it is not even a medium problem. Calling it a hot problem would be a crime, so one can surmise that the Black on Black crime flavored wing was most certainly nuclear hot flavored.

If not, this story out of Shreveport fits that description perfectly. A white mayoral candidate in that Black city had the misfortune of promoting a campaign appearance that included free chicken and limo rides to the polls. Rumors that the wings were named Black on Black crime have yet to be confirmed:

Two Shreveport mayoral candidates say a fellow contender's flyer offering free chicken and limo rides to the polls is patently offensive and racist.

At issue is a "Freedom Rally" event purportedly sponsored by mayoral candidate Bryan Wooley. The rally, which appears to have happened on Wednesday and Thursday, featured free chicken and limo rides to early voting polls to residents of Shreveport's Cooper Road area also known at the Martin Luther King neighborhood.
Copies of a flyer advertising the event were posted on Facebook and have generated considerable comment from the social network's Shreveport users.

Calls to Wooley's campaign spokesperson to verify the authenticity of the flyer and event were not immediately returned this morning.

"Words can’t express my anger over this racist move," mayoral candidate Parker Ward wrote in a Friday e-mail sent to The Times. "I am calling on Bryan Wooley to send a public apology to the African American Community."

Fellow candidate David Cox also addressed the issue on his Facebook page. Cox posted a scanned copy of a orange and black flyer depicting Wooley and promising free chicken and limo rides.

"This is a sad day in Shreveport when we have a city council member seeking our highest office ... his office was passing out a distasteful flyer to target a certain part of town," Cox posted to his Facebook page. "This flyer was passed out in the Cooper Road area and it sends the wrong message to Shreveport."

It is impolite to promote a campaign by offering food and merriment that Black people find mirthful and fun, for this form of Realpolitik is a ghastly display of insensitivity at its worst. Though Black people love chicken, this culinary predilection is not available for open source sharing. Riding in limos is a treat that Black people normally are allotted if they are in the driver's seat. To offer two extravagances in turn for a simple vote is what truly upset the white mayoral candidates Black opponents.

Why didn't the opponents think of this ingenious idea first?

One idea that must be retired is cheap wing night in areas where life is regarded cheaply. Though this story is a nearly a year old, the weekend of chicken wing added excitement seems to necessitate its resurrection:

Buffalo Wild Wings has plucked the feathers off its weekly cheap wings promotion after hordes of rowdy students descended on the sports bar, resulting in two separate shooting incidents on Tuesday night.

The three teens caught in the crossfire were not seriously injured, but that did not stop some local leaders from calling for a crackdown on the spicy appetizer emporium inside the Atlantic Terminal Mall.


Councilwoman Letitia James (D–Fort Greene) pointed the finger at the management of the sports bar for recklessly promoting its 50-cent “Wing Tuesdays” to students.
“I want this Tuesday restaurant promotion stopped, or the lease of this business revoked,” James said.

Within hours, the wingery responded by announcing the indefinite suspension of the promotion, which was long popular with students and even the ever-economical sluggers from the Brooklyn Cyclones.
As such, the joint was packed on Tuesday evening with students — many from outside Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, police said — swarmed the mall.

Most of the students did not actually make it into the packed restaurant, and instead congregated at the mall, where things quickly became out of hand. The restaurant closed its doors early, and the cops were called to restore order.

Outside the mall, gunfire erupted, though details are sketchy. One shooting was at Hanson Place and Flatbush Avenue, and the other was near the bow-tie intersection of Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue.

“Although there was a huge police presence at the mall to address the condition and turn the thousands of students away and send them back home, apparently a few rogue groups managed to cause trouble while heading home,” Capt. Anthony Tasso of the 88th Precinct said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the sports bar, which has 635 locations nationwide, said that the “Wing Tuesdays” promotion was not directed solely at students.

More likely, the crowds were driven by circumstance: this week’s 50-cent wing night fell on the day before Veteran’s Day — when schools were closed.
“It’s an unfortunate situation, but we weren’t enticing kids to come,” Liz Brady, the spokeswoman said.

Then again, it’s not the first time a buffalo wing binge has gone haywire at that location. James said that other promotions at the eatery have required police intervention.

She added that cops had approached her after the incident and said, “We got to do something about Wild Wings.” Of course, crime at the Atlantic Terminal Mall doesn’t only occur at the wing joint. Just last week, a man entered a candy store, brandished a gun and made off with the cash in the register — and the money in the tip jar, too.

Yes, Black people love chicken, though it is unwise to point this fact out, name a wing after a common incidence in the Black community, or to premise a political campaign nf giving Black people a ride in a limo and a bucket of chicken in exchange for a vote.

Life in the waning days of Black Run America (BRA) is going to provide a whole slew of gaffes and belly laughs and it is wise to understand the truly revolutionary power of jokes. Nothing de-stabilizes and de-legitimizes a power structure like heaping plates of scorn, ridicule and laughter.

And a side order of chicken wings, flavored Black on Black crime.

Video for Big Shot Bob's story can be found here.

The story on chicken and limo's can be found here.