BLACK FOLKS: A HISTORY OF RUINING TRAVEL SECRETS
Everyone Can’t Go Remix
When it comes to travel, specifically travel secrets, I’m in the camp that believes that everyone can’t go, nor should they. Gatekeep like a mother. Keep the cream—the good stuff—away from Black folk.
My people, the so-called Black folk, from America—we have a history of fucking up travel secrets and anything good related to the flight game.
I’ve tried telling y’all that we’re some of the worst travelers on the planet. When we have something good, we don’t hold onto it. Our culture of flexing doesn’t often work well with hush travel info, and as a result, we compromise shit and fuck things up for ourselves and other travelers.
It wasn’t always like this.
Black folks used to have a history of traveling for necessity and keeping our mouths shut. Those of us whose families can be traced back to American slavery knew that if we wanted freedom, we had to take flight. There was talk of a drum and an Underground Railroad.
Some Kuntas got north, and some Djangos below the border. The smart ones settled abroad, and as the sun set, they knew it was better than the horizon on the plantation.
The smart ones never looked back.
Years later, when everyone was “so-called free,” we shared a Green Book amongst us, dodged sundown towns because those not-so-good Christian White folks would hang us for traveling while Black.
My father’s father, back in the day, he went to the south for some reason. I never got the full story, but my father said those good Christian White folks convinced him to never come back. My father’s father understood that he was a Black traveler in America; that meant that he was free, but not free.
Years later, Black folk got tired of being meek; we grew out our afros and delivered Black power to the people—and to the world. Some of us were Panthers, and we shot first. We took flight, some to the Motherland, others to South America. We kept shit hush, cuz we understood that we were free, but not free.
We were living in the White man’s world, where they are the ones chosen, and they had every intention of making our freedom conditional.
We started losing ourselves in the 70s, after Bumpy and the older guard of hustlers left us. Pimps were way up, and so were the hoes, and we wanted everyone to know about our get down and how free we thought we were. Bossman Cutty came through every hood flexing on every square ass Anthony—cuz somebodies got to do it.
Not sure what happened, perhaps it was the H on the streets or the pimps on the corners, we wanted prestige. We wanted niggas to know that we were free. We collectively put up our arms to show our bling—perfect timing.
H turned to the white, and the blizzard flooded the streets; every hood from Compton to Harlem. During the snowfall, we drove around in circles, rims spinning and shining. Dope boy fresh and cee-lo kings on every corner. Four-finger LOVE and HATE; we ran the block.
While the people who ostensibly didn’t have any culture were developing and molding a genre that would impact the world, a small number of travelers were quietly heading out of the country to Southeast Asia, in search of a mystic beach.
Unfortunately, when it comes to travel, the lessons from the older gods, keeping quiet about travel, the Negro Motorist handbook lessons—all that got lost. Whispers about getting free, or hush stories from your Vietnam veteran uncle about the super-tight-pussy-fine-ass-bitches in Asia—all that science got lost too.
We were up, and we fronted on niggas. Floss was steady in us, but lucky me, I first got put on to travel by Asian friends and then a movie about a backpacker who understood that when it comes to life abroad, the good travelers kept their mouths shut.
On the real, there has always been tourist shit, but there was also the cream, the travel secrets, which wasn’t for everyone. The good travelers knew that everyone could not go, nor should they.
If everyone goes, then they bring all of the bullshit with them, and the special travel spot you had—it isn’t so special anymore.
When it comes to this travel game, you have to gatekeep. When there are too many of us, the Black people from America, it is usually a bad thing. Keeping it real, we’re trying to escape the hood, not bring it with us.
Fronting, flexing, and shining, it doesn’t work on the other side of the globe. The popping bottles mentality is often disastrous because it destroys any decent travel secret, anything that is pure out on the road.
Many of us don’t understand, we’re free, but not free.
There are a host of double standards for us, regardless of how much money we have and the color of our American passport. There are people in the world who want to make our freedom conditional.
For that very reason, we have a responsibility to hold shit down, just like when our ancestors took flight or when we quietly shared the handbook for safe travel. Unfortunately, we don’t.
So-called Black people from America, we have a history of blowing up shit abroad and ruining travel secrets.
THE NOT SO AMERICAN GANGSTER
For all of you who don’t read, Frank Lucas’s story became infamous when Denzel gave life to a fictitious version of his story in the 2007 film American Gangster. We wanted to see Mr. Training Day be the man in this larger-than-life travel hustler story.
Ostensibly, Frank Lucas, the Southern transplant who became a Harlemite, traveled to Southeast Asia and outsmarted the man by hustling H in dead veteran caskets.
According to the internet, Frank Lucas swagger jacked story elements from the guy who was quietly moving weight from Southeast Asia—Ike Atkinson.
In his memoir, Atkinson revealed, that after some time in prison, when reflecting on Frank Lucas—he realized that the so-called American Gangster was already working for the FEDs when he came out to see him in Thailand.
Lucas, the chinchilla coat-wearing, loudmouth snitch, blew up the spot in Southeast Asia and ruined the cheap connect and all the good pussy that came with it.
The not-so-American gangster was a bad traveler and an early example of Black folks compromising something sacred abroad.
FREAKNIK: A COLLEGE PICNIC TURNED NATIONAL SEX PARTY
The first time I heard about anyone going to Brazil for tail was in 1997. I was growing alongside the internet, working at a telecom company in Atlanta. A brother I went to trade school with, he would send photos to me and another homie who were NYC transplants, working in the Dirty South.
The photos from Rio didn’t get me open. I had my little female friend at Spelman and shorties I would meet on them 404 phone lines. Magic City and Jazzy T’s was in effect, and any sexual fantasy I had could be met by the fine ass females who converged on the ATL at the time.
Me and my friends, we didn’t make any websites; we didn’t tell everyone else either. The shorties in the Brazil photos were cool, but they weren’t better than any of the fine ass sisters on the Black women newsgroups.
Like I said, it wasn’t enough to make me get a passport when I had tail nearby. Atlanta in the late 90s was still America’s Black Mecca. The entire country converged on the city, and if you happened to make it there, there was a special annual event that added to the city’s international reputation.
The first time I heard about Freaknik, my brother and his Jehovah’s Witness friends started talking about it.
“Sister Carr was taking out her trash, and there was an orgy on her porch!”
The stories never stopped; they came from coworkers, security guards, a guy who worked at the record store in Decatur passed on tales about an epic public freak off in that gay ass park downtown.
Yeah, but whatever, the origins of Freaknik were shared by an older sister named Cheryl who worked with me at Turner Broadcasting.
Without any fanfare, she made the event plain. She was at one of the first Freakniks, and it was just a picnic for all of the kids who did not go home during spring break. Since there were more women than men, girls started showing out to get attention.
It was a college event that became a national Black party and then, it fell apart because too many ninjas decided to attend.
Since we Black, and we all family, Cousin Pete and everyone who never cracked open a textbook felt that it was their mission to crash the annual college picnic.
Too many folks started showing up and showing out, and it became a problem. Eventually, it got shut down, proving that not everyone who is skin folk is automatically invited to the cookout.
I saw one of the last real Freakniks in ’97. The following year, there were reports of sexual assault, and eventually, it was canceled.
What should have remained a party for college students, became a national invitation for sex, attracting everyone from hustlers, working girls, dope boys, porn stars, athletes and rappers.
Freaknik was an early Black travel lesson. Everyone can’t go.
If they do, they bring all the n-word shit, along with the hard “ER” behavior, and things get fucked up.
While Freaknik was on its last legs in the late 90s, Black American men had shifted their attention south of the border.
BLAME IT ON JELANI COBB, NOT RIO
I kicked and pushed and returned to NYC after three years in the south. The internet had spread its wings, and dot coms were all over the city. Investors were tossing money around at various startups, and I eventually got hold of some of that long green while employed at a company in Manhattan.
When I was near six digits, I got cool with some Asian guys at work. We were early twenty-somethings who thought we had the world in our digital palms.
Eventually, after getting to know me, they invited me out for beers, and when they really got to know me, they invited me to go with them on their next trip to Thailand. They shared images and stories about how they were young kings, in a place where anything goes.
Several invitations were made, and months later, the towers fell. I left the company, and while in between tech positions, I stumbled onto a travel film about a guy who heads to Southeast Asia and learns about a mysterious hidden beach.
I had no idea that the film was based on a bestselling novel at the time, but the message imparted in the film was that everyone could not go. The secrets of travel were to be left to the people who earned it, and everyone else, they deserved the touristy shit.
I filed Thailand and the secrets of THE BEACH in my mental. Held that shit down like it was some dope deal. The beach was a symbol. You weren’t supposed to tell everyone about travel secrets—the cream.
Two years later, I found myself in New Jersey, on some bullshit.
While still hustling 1s and 0s, I stumbled onto a film that would change my life. The year LeBron stepped into the league, I found myself chasing after a skinny brother named Rocket, desiring to be a photographer and live in the CITY OF GOD.
Less than a month after watching the film, my buddy Rick returned from Brazil. He had shared wild stories and images. He said the women in Pharrell and Snoop’s BEAUTIFUL video (shot in Rio) fell short of what you’d get when you touched down.
I filed it in my mental.
Neither Rick nor I made a website. We didn’t get shirts, and we didn’t feel the need to tell all the brothers online.
In fact, Rick suggested that we didn’t tell anyone about Rio.
I still wanted to make The City of God a reality for myself, but I didn’t know how.
Three years later, when I was making my way out of corporate America, a so-called Black man took the secret of Brazil from the Black male consciousness and handed it over to Black women.
Jelani Cobb went down to Brazil and snitched on all of the Black men who had visited Rio to pick up chicas on the low in the 2006 September Essence magazine article BLAME IT ON RIO. The article ostensibly discussed American Black men and their fascination with sex tourism in Brazil.
It was the issue that had Beyonce on the cover with her good hair.
What many peopled don’t realize is that it was the second, BLAME IT ON RIO article. The first was published in 2001, under the guise of Black women going to Rio for general tourism.
Black women were also going to Rio for sex, but Cobb’s article shifted culpability to Black men.
At the time, I was new to journalism, and several female friends who worked for hip-hop mags were surprised to learn about Black men and Brazil. The discussions were started. There was plenty of fake nigga outrage. In hindsight, I honestly believe that Mr. Cobb might have been a gay brother, sabotaging Black male spaces for the Beehive.
I still have the email I sent Cobb in 2006.
Ironically, Eugene Robinson, a Black American correspondent who worked in Brazil in the 90s, wrote a travel memoir, focusing on race relations and his experiences as a Black man in Brazil. He never said shit about the mama sans in Rio. Perhaps he knew it wasn’t necessary, or since he was an older god, he knew that not everyone should know.
I’d finally make it to the City of God in 2010. I was disappointed when I found out that Brazil was more racist than the United States or just as bad.
I played in the sun and got glimpses of Rio while living in the favela. It wasn’t a vacation, and eventually, the harsh poverty got to me. I also met a brother who I’d consider an early Passport Bro. His name was Shawn Don, and he collected receipts from Europe and other parts of South America. He had all kinds of pics with shorties from all over the world posted on his MySpace page.
For the record, that nigga didn’t pay for shit.
I got back and posted videos to YouTube, talking about race issues and how the city was actually overrated. Brothers reached out to me with emails and digital kites.
I didn’t make any videos about brothels, hotspots, or whatever, because I didn’t think it was necessary. That information was already online, and I also came to the realization about relationships there: the woman who became my girlfriend, she was the equivalent of what I had in the States. Nothing more.
Brazil wasn’t a fantasy land, and I knew it wasn’t anything to be sold.
I had no idea that a gang of Black men were also headed to Rio and they had every intention of inviting everyone to the cookout — even if they didn’t live there.
WHEN CHARLES TYLER LET BLACK WOMEN CRASH THE PARTY
I returned from Brazil in 2011, and that year, the FRUSTRATED documentary dropped, basically damage control for the brothers who traveled to Brazil for stank pussy hoes, and at the same time, opening the door to a whole gang of reckless ninjas.
Two years later, when I was headed to Asia, a brother from Philly, named Charles Tyler, who had a Facebook group called The Black Man’s Option, created YouTube vids heavily promoting Brazil, while hosting an annual beach party.
Rest in peace to the brother, but he did all of this without actually living there.
Your baby mommas heard about the annual cookout and decided to invite themselves with the intent of crashing out and making sure that Black men did not have any peace.
If I was still in Rio, I would have pulled the brother aside and made it very plain: Everyone can’t go.
Even if I don’t agree with the way he moved, Charles Tyler had a significant impact on American Black men, encouraging them to seek relationships with foreign women.
Buy yeah son, whatever.
On the other side of the planet, from the Asian motherland, I was part of the collective of YouTubers who spoke from their rooms, discussing highs and lows, race, and other types of shit.
I got a glimpse of the end of Blade Runner City, and I headed back to NYC after getting deported from Hong Kong in 2018.
I had no idea about the massive bullet I dodged in Asia, and what was getting ready to happen to the world.
HOW KRISTEN GRAY FUCKED UP PARADISE
In 2020, while Hong Kong was wrapped up in political protest, a mysterious virus from China put the world in a headlock.
Right around this time, when I was hunkered down in Brooklyn, when the bodies were dropping, when the masses were washing groceries and masked up, an American named Kristen Gray was living it up in Indonesia and flexing on Twitter.
Gray was chilling in Bali, paying almost nothing for rent. Instead of being content, getting while the getting was good, she posted photos of her inexpensive luxury apartment and thought the world was hers.
She didn’t realize that in this White man’s world, when it comes to travel, we’re not the ones chosen.
She got comfortable and decided to sell an ebook, a how-to guide on how to get into Indonesia, despite the COVID restrictions set in place. Those of us who had travel experience, we understood that we had to move with caution during the pandemic. It was a time of uncertainty. The world was on edge.
Gray also took it upon herself to promote the conservative religious country as being queer or gay friendly.
Bali Twitter came for her ass, and instead of playing it cool and laying low, she decided to argue. Her Twitter beef went viral. She lost, and eventually she was deported.
It was at this time that I realized there was a problem with younger Black travelers. They had a lack of street smarts and the inability to read the room.
Everyone can’t go.
Gray represented the new generation of Black folk abroad, young, without knowledge of self, and armed with social media. A dangerous combination.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the last.
WHEN THE PASSPORT BROS WERE INFILTRATED BY CONTENT CREATORS
I managed to dodge that horrible vaccine; shout out to all of you who managed to do the same. Shame on all of you who didn’t.
I bobbed and weaved that needle until I settled in the planet of Harlem. Right around this time, YouTuber Richie Mac and his series Zoom to Thailand had brothers salivating over a place that had been smutted out since the 90s.
The self-proclaimed Travel OG became the ambassador of The Passport Bros, a Black men’s travel movement that has been around for several years, named by YouTuber King Sigma, with energy from Charles Tyler’s Black Men’s Options Facebook group.
Subsequently, every decent travel spot, places that brothers could go to without much attention, like DR, Colombia, Thailand, they were all put on blast, and the block got hot for every Black man with a passport. Whether we wanted the label or not, we were all called Passport Bros, and by default, our journeys abroad were reduced to sex tourism.
I started off this build discussing veteran Ike Atkinson and him coming to the realization that Frank Lucas was already a fed when he visited him in Thailand. Similarly, I have the suspicion that the Passport Bros were infiltrated by government ops, so that Black American men and their relatively lowkey travel movement would be common knowledge, and their image tarnished—globally.
Keep in mind, for the most part, the Passport Bros operated on Facebook groups before COVID and remained below the radar.
The Passport Bro movement was hijacked by many of the faces you see on social media now.
As a result, your favorite spots have been overrun and damaged because of content creators, and as a result, the WorldStar Hip Hop crowd followed.
Build with brothers who have been traveling for a while; a decade ago, you’d rarely see any Black men in Medellín, or Pattaya. The content creators have fucked up the flow, and now, Black folks are mob deep in Thailand.
A gang of Black American women are in Colombia and every other space that Passport Bros congregate, simply to get attention from men they claim they don’t want.
Your favorite travel spots were compromised—for views.
For all of you so-called Black men who travel and have the desire to actually live abroad, you’re going to have to safeguard travel locations. YN content creators lacking knowledge of self, they are going to try and infiltrate anything that is sacred in travel and sell you out to go platinum.
Yeah, son whatever.
These are all just lessons. In this travel world, where we aren’t the ones chosen, you’ll do the knowledge and realize that niggas ain’t really free, and as soon as you get that in your mental, you’ll stop posting high and sharing everything on social media.
Yes, there has always been travel content, but the cream, the travel secrets, have always been offline. These are discussions on the other side of the map, shared between travelers who’ve earned it.
Moving forward, brothers, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to keep the cream to yourselves. If you have anything good related to travel, understand that it’s only for a limited time. There will be some ninja showing up to your spot with a camera, running his mouth, telling everyone how inexpensive his place is, how cheap his electricity bill is, and encouraging everyone to come down—then wondering why prices go up a few years later.
When it comes to travel, every Black person is not invited to the cookout. Meek told y’all there are levels. The Butcher flipped a great album and said that “everybody” wasn’t invited. On the real, that saying has been in the atmosphere for over a decade, and when it comes to this travel game, there are some things you should know: regardless of complexion, all Black travelers ain’t kinfolk, and everyone can’t go.