More Than Just a Game
A good friend and also a regular part of Love LA- "OG".
by Ryan Vaillancourt
Published: Friday, October 9, 2009 4:21 PM PDT
Downtown LA News
Manuel Benito Compito is something between a grassroots community hero and a neighborhood father figure. He’s known as OG Man, or just OG, short for “Original Gangster.” It’s a term of endearment for elders, a synonym for “sir” in the hip-hop meets Skid Row vernacular.
Other men might get called “OG” from time to time by younger men, just for being middle aged. But in Skid Row, Compito is the OG.
Born to a black mother and a Filipino father, he has a dark caramel complexion. The brown inner circles of his slightly squinty eyes are encircled by a cloudy blue ring before fading to white. A salt and pepper moustache curls around his upper lip. For a 60-year-old, his shoulders and torso are broad and strong, but at about 5-foot-7 he’s not a big guy. He favors a backwards cap on his bald head. A laminated card emblazoned with the Skid Row 3-on-3 Streetball League logo usually dangles from his neck on a lanyard, like a badge.
It’s been a long road from his youth in South Los Angeles to Skid Row. Along the way, he earned the literal “gangster” part of his nickname. As a teenager, he traveled up and down the Hollywood Freeway with nothing but a pistol and a lust for taking.
“I robbed everything and everyone,” he recalls in his gravelly smoker’s voice. “The milkman, the Hostess cupcake truck, the bank. Everyone. I just wanted to get money. Don’t know why. Just did.”
Raised in Compton and other parts of South L.A., he got caught up in gangs and drugs and cycled in and out of jail. After multiple stints in juvenile hall, his first trip to the state penitentiary came at the age of 20, in 1969, for armed robbery. He already had two children.
He did five years, three of them in solitary confinement, punishment for fighting with corrections officers. He got released on out-of-state parole and, in pursuit of a woman, moved to Buffalo.
He bounced between honest jobs and crime. A community organizer or employment recruiter for one stretch, a pimp and drug dealer the next. Five hundred dollars invested in cocaine in Los Angeles turned into $1,500 in Buffalo, so for a while he shuttled between the cities. The profits went mostly to child support, but neither that nor the passage of years stopped him from falling into the arms and beds of different women, his Achilles heel. At 54, he had his sixth child.
He’s not shy about his mistakes. They’re not secrets. They’re lessons.
Read more about the Skid Row 3-on-3 Streetball League over here.
by Ryan Vaillancourt
Published: Friday, October 9, 2009 4:21 PM PDT
Downtown LA News
Manuel Benito Compito is something between a grassroots community hero and a neighborhood father figure. He’s known as OG Man, or just OG, short for “Original Gangster.” It’s a term of endearment for elders, a synonym for “sir” in the hip-hop meets Skid Row vernacular.
Other men might get called “OG” from time to time by younger men, just for being middle aged. But in Skid Row, Compito is the OG.
Born to a black mother and a Filipino father, he has a dark caramel complexion. The brown inner circles of his slightly squinty eyes are encircled by a cloudy blue ring before fading to white. A salt and pepper moustache curls around his upper lip. For a 60-year-old, his shoulders and torso are broad and strong, but at about 5-foot-7 he’s not a big guy. He favors a backwards cap on his bald head. A laminated card emblazoned with the Skid Row 3-on-3 Streetball League logo usually dangles from his neck on a lanyard, like a badge.
It’s been a long road from his youth in South Los Angeles to Skid Row. Along the way, he earned the literal “gangster” part of his nickname. As a teenager, he traveled up and down the Hollywood Freeway with nothing but a pistol and a lust for taking.
“I robbed everything and everyone,” he recalls in his gravelly smoker’s voice. “The milkman, the Hostess cupcake truck, the bank. Everyone. I just wanted to get money. Don’t know why. Just did.”
Raised in Compton and other parts of South L.A., he got caught up in gangs and drugs and cycled in and out of jail. After multiple stints in juvenile hall, his first trip to the state penitentiary came at the age of 20, in 1969, for armed robbery. He already had two children.
He did five years, three of them in solitary confinement, punishment for fighting with corrections officers. He got released on out-of-state parole and, in pursuit of a woman, moved to Buffalo.
He bounced between honest jobs and crime. A community organizer or employment recruiter for one stretch, a pimp and drug dealer the next. Five hundred dollars invested in cocaine in Los Angeles turned into $1,500 in Buffalo, so for a while he shuttled between the cities. The profits went mostly to child support, but neither that nor the passage of years stopped him from falling into the arms and beds of different women, his Achilles heel. At 54, he had his sixth child.
He’s not shy about his mistakes. They’re not secrets. They’re lessons.
Read more about the Skid Row 3-on-3 Streetball League over here.
posted by bowen at 12:07 PM
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