Don't call me crazy but….

There's all these corner stores around where I live. It is the Mission, after all. Most of the stores are either owned by Hispanics or by Arab-Americans. The thing is, that in a lot of cases I'm not sure what the owners' ethnic group is. Not that I can't tell the difference between ethnic groups, but because I'm fairly convinced that a lot of the stores are owned and run by Arab-Americans, but because it's not such a good time to be an Arab-American, they're pretending to be Hispanic.

Take the store around the corner from me. They look Arab-American, but they sells tons of Hispanic stuff. The deli sells chorzio and all sorts of other Mexican type meats as well as all other Mexican type. And they also sell gaudy, Mother Mary candles (the kind only Catholics will buy) as well as all sorts of other religious paraphenlia. And when there's tons of people in there, they crank the salsa.

When I'm in there when there's not a lot of people, though, all of a sudden, the Middle Eastern dance music gets cranked. And while I hear them talking Spanish every once in awhile, I swear, when nobody's around, they'll break into Arabic.

what's up with that?