What the "Urban Tough Guy" Act is About

I have been that douche

The tweet at the top of this post generated a lot of discussion. And of course it did — “Fuck you and your infant, my vision of urbanism is a Darwinian gauntlet of lawlessness in which only the strong survive” is certainly an interesting take. Sadly, it’s not an uncommon one; you encounter the urban tough guy act all the time.

Friend of the blog Cartoons Hate Her wrote a post responding to the above tweet and explaining how the “shut the fuck up and deal with it” argument sounds from her perspective. She also expressed dismay at the urban tough guy routine, and here’s where I might be able to add to the conversation, because I know where that routine is coming from. I never quite was Mr. Urban Badass — chalk that up to my inability to pick a persona and stick with it — but I understand the mindset. I felt the impulses that Ian MacAllen — a.k.a. SoHo The Urban Highlander — is expressing. And I know why some people, especially guys, walk around the city imagining that they’re a character in an early-period Scorsese movie.

The starting point for this attitude is usually to grow up in a place that’s decidedly not-badass. Such places include Lexington, Kentucky, Vancouver, Washington, and Great Bridge, Virginia, the three main places I grew up. None of those towns ever featured in a Spike Lee movie or an episode of “No Reservations”, but they’re perfectly fine, full of chain restaurants and mini golf and a 4th of July parade so fucking boring you half wish the British had won. They’re also quite safe: If you steer clear of trampolining while drunk and the deadly soda-plus-Pop-Rocks combination, you’ll probably be fine. You’ll live the comfortable life that your ancestors imagined for you when they left Plaguesburg bei Wolfattack.

But at some point in your early adolescence, you’ll realize that your town isn’t cool. If any rappers are from your town, they’re keeping that factoid to themselves — it won’t help their credibility to start a verse: “COMIN’ DIRECT FROM THE PRE-PLANNED COMMUNITY NEAR THE ARBORETUM!!!” No TV shows are set in your town, ever; even Lanford, Illinois — the setting for Roseanne — is fictional, probably to reduce pressure to film on location in some one whore town where most Hollywood people wouldn’t be caught dead. There’s just nothing cool about your hometown: You’ll have to build an identity based on your personality, which is a social death sentence if you happen to also have the Vancouver, Washington of personalities, like me.