Steemit's Guide to "How to Survive the HooD": Part 3 The Vibes
When I was 16 i started clubbing. In the 90's they really didn't I.D, so if you had money and looked somewhat aged you got in. I started going to Reggae clubs, The Biltmore ballroom to be exact and this is where i found SOUND CLASH! 
But it was a old Ballroom on Church Ave in Brooklyn that had the biggest reggae clashes and party in history. This is like when B-Boys Battle with break dancing but instead of dance they use Dubplates. A dubplate is when a famous person sings or talks about the DJ that paid them to do the song or message. For example King Addies has a dub with toni braxton signing about how great addies is.
Now they have alot more Foundation sound dubs which means more original old school signers like daddy u-roy,danny dread,CoCo Tea,Ken Boothe,Leroy Smarts,Garnet Silk,Shabba Ranks,Buju Banton etc. But no one has a Bob Marley dub, It's the dub that would destroy and DJ in a clash. The whole dub thing relies on exclusiveness amd how rare the person is singing or speaking. So if you could get a jesus dub you would rule the Dancehall. Sound clashes are extremely high energy and some may think dangerous but i always felt safe cause i understood the culture.
Gunshots are very common in the club. It's like a salute to whatever song is playing,so if the selector says" Legal!!!" it means someone shot a gun in the club in the air and wants him to start the song over. Lol i know that sounds crazy but it's awesome!!! i've seen the roof of Biltmore Ballroom and other clubs and they are littered with bullet holes because of a rewind request:) This and the sexy attire the women are wearing dancing in a sexy winding/grinding motion made me love the dancehall. I grew up learning to love reggae and when i heard a song that was WICKED i wanted to shoot a gun in the air as a sign of appreciation for the DJ playing it!! 
The Music was loud as Thunder! I mean they literally had a wall of 18 inch speakers and tweeters blasting for power all night! I used to leave with slight tenidous lol. Now i know how Black sabbath fans feel after a concert. So we'd go every time a big clash was happening and get to the front of a packed club and just drink guinness and heineken and yell"yeahhhhhhhhhhh!" till we were hoarse at the great music being played till 4am. The greatest clash i ever went to was King Addies Vs Earthruler 1993,the dance was ram(meaning full of people)and addies was playing some wicked $hit like bounty killah,beres hammond,super cat and dubs that got everybody HYPE!!! Earthruler held they're own but addies had more special dubs that they couldn't compete with.
After the club we would go outside drunk/high and hungry and as soon as you got outside you would smell the Jerk Chicken cooking!!! 
Vendors would cook the chicken in half cut open shipping barrels converted into grills and that chicken was Heaven!!! Also the Rastas would sell Corn on the cob and festival bread(a fried dough that was sweet) that corn was soooooooo good!!! They cook it in salt water and butter and man dat ish was good!!! Sometimes we'd go to Ihop or a diner because those were the only food places open at 5am. I still have the bass rumbling in my head after all these years...
Goto youtube and search for King Addies,Killamanjaro,Bass Odyssey,Earth ruler,Stone love,etc
the best clash i have ever seen but wish i went to was in england. it was the world clash....Kinda like the Reggae Olympics ....
This was a great experience to my life that i miss and wish it still went on the same way but clashes are not the same just as rap shows are not the same. I miss the good ole' days.
Part 4 coming soon!!
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brings me back to the Reggae clubs/Reggae nights in New Orleans a decade ago. Sometimes the place would get raided and they'd find more guns than people. Sometimes people would be rolling spliffs up on top of the bar all night with no interruption. Sometimes there would be a shooting, sometimes it would be great vibes all night and every little thing would be irie. Eventually one of our favorite joints got shut down; if memory serves me right (it doesn't always with the memories from those days) "Butlers" in the 17th ward was one of those places.
Sounds like u had a wicked time king. I never knew N.O. had a reggae scene.
It's down on the gulf, and the gulf is full of those islands, like Jamaica. I even saw Steel Pulse and Toots and the Maytals down there before I left.
oh toots is ROOTS!!!
Yeah, I did a lot of that old school reggae and I'm glad that a few are still around to see in person. I had made some T shirts for STEEL PULSE (just a homemade gift of some original artwork) and they actually came off their tour bus looking for me after the concert. I remember how wild the clubs would get down in NOLA for songs like "Uptown Top Ranking" by Althea & Donna, "Stepping Razor" by Peter Tosh, "Police in Helicopter" by John Holt, and "Broader than Broadway (Here I Come)" by Barrington Levy.
I know there were lots of others too, but some places would go crazy wild over the ones I mentioned. With 24 hour bars & clubs down there, some parties never really seemed to end. You'd head out after work to relax and realize a half day later that it was time to go back to work...