Transit Trend Alert: Silent Teen Gangs?

If nothing terrifies metro riders more than a robust display of teenage rage, nothing confuses them more than a silent one.

Last Friday, I joined a handful of heavy-eyed, khaki-clad Hill interns bearing witness to the sort of racially charged absurdity the District can sometimes afford. The Shady Grove-bound evening commute on the Red Line from Union Station was interrupted by jeering throng of black girls in their early teens. For two stations, the girls kept to themselves, but rattled their skittish co-passengers through a sustained round of loud screams and playful shoving.

The girls’ attempt to exit en masse at the Gallery Place-Chinatown stop was frustrated, however, by an adrenaline-fueled gaggle of white teens with shaved heads and skater-chic piercings. The doorway to the train car was blocked as the white teens attempted to pour in as the girls were leaving, an event to which all of the passengers were alerted by coloratura screams of “STEP OFF BITCH!” Punches ensued as the teens threw panicked hits at each other’s faces. Then, the black gang got out, the white gang stayed in, and the doors closed.

To the riders’ shock, they didn’t hear one more word. Instead, the, remaining teens bounced up and down and communicated in animated sign language. No less physically raucous than their preceding riders, the mute gang-bangers roughhoused for one metro stop and then made a quick exit. The commuters were left with dropped jaws, as speechless as the kids that were fighting.