The Gumball Gang
Homies Migrate to Seattle After Being Kicked Out of L.A.
Tools
They cost two quarters and are delivered in plastic bubbles. The Homies are not black (though one looks like Al Sharpton), nor Asian (though a few sport ancient-wisdom mustaches), nor Italian (though many look like Mafia hit men), but Mexican American, in different urban moments and attitudes, and each one is only 1 3/4" tall. Some appear to be walking down a street; others stand on street corners ostensibly waiting for another Homie. Their moods range from delirious joy to contemplative sorrow. A few of the tougher-looking Homies express no emotion at all.
My favorite Homie is rapping into a black microphone. His name is Ice, and he looks a bit like Kid Frost, whose hit song "La Raza" introduced Mexican American pride to the hiphop world in the early '90s. Ice likes to let his pants sag, so that the top part of his boxer shorts is visible, and he has a pager just above the right butt pocket. The next Homie I adore is the blind Homie--or at least I think he is blind. He wears dark sunglasses that hide his eyes, and a white, long-sleeved shirt that's buttoned all the way up to his neck and runs down to his knees. The blind Homie holds a brown cane with ringless fingers, and has a mustache that looks like two leeches sucking the life out of his nostrils.
Stranger Personals
There are more. Some are women with big breasts, big brown hair, and baggy pants. Others are bulky men with black bandannas that cover most of their eyes. Another Homie--the most sinister in my personal collection of 15--wears murderous black gloves and has the neck of a vulture. Though these Homies are mass-produced in China for Homies®, each is intricately detailed. Indeed, every time I pick up a Homie I already own, a new detail I failed to notice before suddenly appears: The belt holding up the baggy pants of a tough-looking Homie has a silver buckle, or the gold ring that sustains a street dandy's dangling pants chain is attached to a belt loop.
The Homies are not from Seattle but Los Angeles, where they were created by a Chicano graphic artist named David Gonzales. They existed in the Mexican American community for several years with very little notice, and only came into general visibility when Gonzales decided to expand his business into the vending machine market in 1999. Homies became an instant success, moving over a million figures in just four months.
But the success of Homies was also the death of Homies. Two social forces worked hard to successfully ban them from supermarkets in the Los Angeles County area. One, a few members of the Mexican American community, considered the miniature representations of "low-rider Chicano kids" offensive, and wanted to see more positive images of Mexican Americans (lawyers, professors, CEOs) in gumball machines. Second, and more importantly, the Los Angeles Police Department wanted them out, as the Los Angeles Times reported in May 1999, "[because they] look like gang members, and glamorize gang life." Clearly, the LAPD was unhappy that kids across the city were collecting figures of lawbreakers who threw up malevolent finger signs at each other, instead of cop figures bringing in prostitutes, searching for drugs, or writing speeding tickets.
Though banned in L.A., Homies have found a relatively quiet home here in South Seattle. The police don't seem to mind them. In fact, the police don't seem to know much about them. Pam McCammon, media relations spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department, hadn't heard of Homies. When asked if the SPD's lack of interest in the toys had anything to do with the fact that Mexican American gangs are not so prevalent in our city, McCammon said she couldn't answer that question. But apparently Mexican American gangs are taking root in Seattle. "We are seeing an increase in Hispanic gangs," says Sergeant Diane Newsome, a detective in the SPD's gang unit, "and with this increase [has come] some violence."
Nevertheless, Homies are bestsellers in Seattle, according to Pam Fravel, who with her husband runs most of the vending machines in our state. "We were just back East trying to get more [Homies], they sell so well," says Fravel. "But its hard to get ahold of them. They are rare these days." Fravel has been in the vending business all her life. Her father started the company before she was born, and now she runs the family business with a mixture of exhaustion and pride. "It's not what it used to be," she says somewhat nostalgically. "We used to make more money, but these days with taxes and expenses, it's hard to make any money. Ultimately, we're dealing with quarters. That's all. Quarters."
Though Fravel enjoys the success of the Homies toys, and is pleased that a new series of Homies will soon be available for distribution, she is nevertheless ambivalent about them. Fravel worries about the kids buying Homies. "I would prefer Mickey Mouse or something like that," she says. "You know, something Disneyish. But kids like the Homies, and they are cute."
Oliver Lockwood (14) and Garett Andren (15) bought some Homies out of curiosity, they told me, standing in the Red Apple, staring at their new dolls with wonder. But neither thought anyone their age would actually collect Homies. "They don't look like the sort of cool things kids buy," Andren said. "I mean imagine saying, 'Hey, man, here is my Homie doll.'"
"I bought [a Homie] because I thought it would promote gang violence," added Lockwood sarcastically.
As far as Pam Fravel knows, Homies are not sold anywhere in Seattle except at one grocery store patronized by blacks, which plays, for the customers' sake, real soul music (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Green). The very locus of Homies reveals the truth about the toys: They are an inner-city pleasure. You will not find them at Larry's Market on Queen Anne or the QFC in the University Village. In such spaces, Homies represent the enemy, the other. To the skinny blond Barbie who represents the north, Homies respond with raven-haired Maria, with full lips, black eyes, and huge breasts representing the fertile south. She is the ghetto (or barrio); her lover is not Ken but Kid Loco, who has done some time but is now trying to increase the peace between warring gangs. Only here in the south side of Seattle do these figures on the margin of society have a home--but not for long.
"How much do you think those condos cost?" one young black woman asks another black woman waiting for a bus. They're sitting on bench a block away from the Red Apple, current home of Homies. They are looking at the brand-new condo building across the street from us on 23rd. "Too much," her friend replies soberly. And herein lies the coming death of Seattle's Homies. As blacks and other minorities move out of the neighborhood, Homies will come to represent the local population less and less, and will soon become a symbol of the enemy. But before this happens, before Homies are forced to migrate farther south or disappear from Seattle altogether as they did in L.A., we are free to collect all the Homies we can.
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