From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: Get'Cho Gold Teeth Grillz, From Behind Bars

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Get'Cho Gold Teeth Grillz, From Behind Bars

December 12, 2005

A skanky clientele is a skanky clientele, no matter how much bling they bring. A Florida vendor of gold teeth grills is worried about robbery by his hoodlum customers, and makes them line up behind bars for service, like the prisoners some of them doubtless have been, or will become. Capiche. Gold teeth grills are for dumb-ass hoods with money to burn, and other dog-stupid, straight knucklehead losers grasping for outward signs of a real cool that only comes from within.

Grillz-meister Paul Faucette of Tampa, profiled today in the St. Petersburg Times, makes his customers stand on the other side of jail bars, worried he'll be robbed of the gold he custom-fits to make hood ornaments for their teeth. In the picture here from the newspaper's article today, you'll see a classy bunch of guys, including that white T-shirted youngblood waiting for his grillz, making a call on his cell, and grabbing his crotch, 'jes like a real playa.

Good work, St. Petersburg Times - Yassuh.....way to advance that multicultural agenda. Obviously your black readers have been clamoring to see a shot of a young black man in a fake jail cell, looking hard and grabbing his crotch, while waiting to get ornamental gold grill work applied to his teeth. Yes, truly: Anything is possible in America, for people of color.

You'll soon be up for an Editor and Publisher diversity award, I'm sure.

About Faucette's jail bars for grillz customers: I suppose it's a total coincidence, homes, but I've been in ever so many CD emporiums where only the rap CDs were pre-emptively removed from their cases by store personnel, and had to be claimed from behind the counter, after payment....all due to frequent, past shoplifting episodes.

Myself, I'd be goin' for one a them killer Cuban sandwiches if I were in town - but here's more on Faucette's Tampa operation.

Gleaming from the mouths of rappers, circa mid 1990s, gold grills meant money and success. Now they're worn by high-schoolers, self-described rednecks, 60-year-old grandmothers. To Faucette, it seems everyone wants them. Customers seek him out from as far away as Port Richey and Sarasota. He might make as many as 15 pairs in a week....Customers walking into Paul's Gold Grills on Causeway Boulevard find themselves in a cage. Floor-to-ceiling bars divide the shop. Faucette and the merchandise are on one side; customers stay on the other. Faucette does business through the bars. He's nervous about being robbed; he keeps a lot of gold in the store.
...You can get a grill with your name spelled in diamonds. You can get grills with fangs, with rubies or emeralds. Depending on how fancy it is, a grill could cost a few hundred dollars - or a few thousand. Sometimes, Faucette's customers don't have good teeth of their own. Behind the grills, some have chipped teeth, crooked teeth, no teeth. Gold can cover a multitude of flaws. Faucette has his limits. A guy called him once, asked him to make a gold grill for his pit bull. Sorry, Faucette said. No pets.

...By the mid '90s...caps evolved into grills. A grill typically covers a whole row of teeth, and it's custom-made to fit a specific person's mouth, like a retainer. Rappers and professional athletes started to wear them: another symbol of wealth and success, like the tricked-out car, the gold watch, the beautiful woman. But others say grills carry another meaning - that they are a defiant reminder of a time when people who couldn't afford dental care had their cavities capped in gold....Besides getting robbed, Faucette has one other worry. "Is it a fad?" he wonders. "Is it going to die? How long is this going to last?"

Smart guy, to ask that question. Here's my bet: a little bit longer than Tookie Williams. But not much.