Louis Gray says he was racially profiled after trying to buy spray paint to make over his son’s bicycle helmet
Sounds like they shouldn’t sell spray paint at all if they’re so concerned about graffiti. How many other products of theirs could be used for vandalism? Maybe the safest option is to go out of business entirely.
i feel like people will spray paint all over the store now…
As long as we are doing this we really should ban white people from buying or selling mortgage backed securities. We have a dataset and 100% of the time mortgage backed securities and whites cause crime.
Inb4 JP Morgan Chase buys the Lakota tribe
Spray-paint tends to be solvent-based, and spraying it onto a helmet can fundamentally compromise its structure/strength.
Please don’t ever use solvent-based stuff on multi-layer plastic helmets, for sake of your brain, who needs that helmet to work properly, when one gets slammed into the asphalt/concrete.
Please.
That seems a bit unlikely. The solvents quickly evaporate off. Unless you are soaking it in solvents, there won’t be enough to cause any relevant effect. Meanwhile the helmet is exposed to UV light on a daily basis, which will also degrade it over time.
You are also not going to burn from briefly touching laundry detergent, but keeping lots of it on your skin would be a problem.
Helmets are usually polycarbonate and the common solvent in spray paint is xylene. Xylene causes extreme degradation in polycarbonate. If you don’t know if the helmet and the paint are compatible, it’s not safe to paint it.
That’s not how helmets work. The outer shell certainly helps mitigate bumps and bangs, but what really protects your head is the styrofoam inner that compresses like an airbag upon impact.
No it’s both. The outer shell deforms before breaking and then the foam absorbs the rest of the impact.
What’s the point in burying the fact that he didn’t have ID. You could argue they carded you because you were black but not refused service.
You need Id to buy spray? What kind of stupid shit is that? How would they know it was you even if they have your id? It seems like they’d just go after all the black people who bought spray when something gets vandalized.
What a stupid country you live in, I can’t imagine getting carded for buying art supplies. If you’re worried it’s gonna be used for crime, don’t sell it.
Its been like that for a while. Anything that you can huff basically.
I’ve bought plenty of these type of products (paints, glues, varnishes) and I don’t recall ever being carded. Maybe once for spray paint?
The only time I can actually think of being carded (outside of alcohol) was for real pseudoephedrine.
Those motherfuckers made his four-year-old cry.
I hope corporate throws the book at them.
Nope.
In an email later sent to Gray, Hobbycraft said they were continuing to investigate. “We would one again like to apologise for your recent experience in our store,” the email said. “We hae a zero tolerance approach to racism … and this is not how we want any of our customers to feel."
“Your situation involved the purchase of age restricted product which requires age verification, meaning all colleagues are trained to ask for ID should they believe the customer is under the age of 25. As you were unable to share ID with our colleagues, they were unfortunately unable to authorise the sale.”
Always believe corporations.
Corporations aren’t people. But they are fucking liars.
25? what an arbitrarily high age limit. It’s probably law, not company policy but even then.
this seems to be on point. https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/underage-sales/aerosol-spray-paints even recommends challenge 25.
This is the UK if yall were wondering. Still super strange, youd think theyd have had a black customer before.
