For years there have been rival groups fighting for the streets. Now a new pair of teenaged groups are fighting for supremecy. Like Sharks and Jets of the modern day¹, doing for British town centres what the Crips and Bloods did to downtown LA, ² and what the Montagues and Capulets did to the city of Verona³.

You may have noticed gangs of these misfit teenagers wandering your town centres, if you haven't, trust me they will be there soon. As a fellow teen, who fails to see the appeal of either groups, perhaps I can provide an insight into their habits and rituals...or perhap's I'll just mock the childish fools. That's what I normally do at school anyway. I consider myself an impartial bystander in the ongoing conflict (well, it's more an occasional stare out..but that's beside the more) with little respect for either group⁴.

Townies - Scourge of the High Street

This group goes by many names, the prefered euphemism in my area is 'Rudeboys'⁵, and they may like to call themselves 'Playas'. Either way they are recognisable by the distinctive attire, generally head to toe in one or other brand of sports clothin, preferably in luminescent orange or some similar vomit inducing colour. Those people higher up the 'Rudeboy' hierarchy will generally feature large amounts of Gold jewellery, as they search to demonstrate that they have the mystical essence known only as 'bling bling'. The prefered habitat of these people seems to be outside 'McDonalds' or 'Burger King' on a Saturday afternoon, where they can fulfil there own objective of complete fulfilment, this seems to be (although I'm not entirely sure) to, in most cases at least, appear as black as possible⁶. This is done by limping in a manner that is known as 'bowling' and snapping fingers excessively the second that anything...and I mean anything happens. These are the sort of teens never seen without a mobile phone, preferring in fact to talk through this medium at all times, even when sitting at a table facing each other. The other day I noticed one of them phoning his compatriot at the other end of the restaurant...to make sure he got some ketchup with his chicken nuggets. The language of this somewhat unique section of society is unique to them, and I can only hope to give a vague idea of some of the grammatic rules of this group. A good rule of thumb is to replace all full stops with 'Innit' and all commas with 'you see', and a basic knowledge of other slang terms will soon have you conversing with them on a level playing field⁷. A fine example of this skill of translation is demonstrated in the following phrase: 'I'm going up town to see my girlfriend, talk to my friends and maybe get some lunch' becomes 'I'm headin' out to see my trim beani and maybe chill wi' my bred for a while, you see, I might even get me some munch Innit.'
The final, and in my eyes (or should that be ears) the most excruciating aspect of Townie 'culture'⁸ the music. Townies, in my experience, all love Garage, so called R'n'B, and other so called 'bangin choons'. Essentially music so devoid of any knowledge of basic musical theory. ('What's melody when it's at home? Innit' I can almost here them whining now).

Goths - Children of the Night

The other gang you may spot roving the streets generally prefer to come out at night, and wear similarly distinctive clothes, although perhaps the exact polar opposite of the 'Rudeboys'. The black make up, possibly satanic quoting T-shirts large leather trenchcoats, excessive body peircing, nothing is too much for the Goth around town. I know a few gothic people, and they generally seem like quite nice people overall, although, some of them do revel a bit too much in the fear they arouse in children. The music of these people is of a slightly better quality, although it tends to revolve around themes of killing people, hating parents or performing Satanic Rituals. This gives this group a generally bad press, especially as groups like this are blamed for the American High school killings⁹. Generally however this group of black clad people are as tame as can be. The general hangout for this group is, unsurprisingly, graveyards, and we've all heard stories of gangs of them going out in the middle of the night to sacrifice animals to Satan ('err..dave, we couldn't get a goat...will my sisters Gerbil do'..you can almost picture it can't you). This little gang of people tend to listen to bands with nice healthy names like 'Slayer' and 'Cradle of Filth', but at least these groups have mastered the art of picking up instruments and doing something constructive (and occasionally destructive) with them. Perhaps the most worrying habit of this group is the distinct sub-group known as cutters, who tend to go in for self mutilation, and the slashing of arms with razor blade...very nasty business if you ask me...but they rarely hurt anybody...except maybe their sisters Gerbils.

For a much more detailed and accurate look at the Gothic lifestyle, please try here. This provides a much more respectful look at the real Gothic culture, which I actually found a fasicinating insight into the whole Gothic attitude (I read this after writing the above article, and it may well have been different had I read this first, who knows).