Everybody Get a Chech

At the corner of MacArthur and 73rd in Oakland is Millennium Tax Service. It used to be called Instant Tax Service. To the north resides MacArthur Nails and to the south is Ink N’ Thayngz (the “I” in Ink is a tattoo gun) which used to be Electric Rouge Tattoo. I can only imagine what Thayngz is. I assume it’s run of mill tattoo culture offerings: piercings, scarification and skull rings. However, the dream of sundries with a tattoo is always possible.

Anytime I’m stuck at the light at 73rd, I peer into the window of Millennium Tax Service and wonder what’s going on in there. When the light turns green, I leave the thoughts behind.

A few months ago – right around tax season – I was at the light and noticed two large posters taking up Millennium Tax Service’s front window. On the right, a young white woman in a black business suit offered “$15 In Your Pocket!” if you referred a friend and, on the left, a young African American woman boasted “Everybody Get A Chech.” Yes, “Everybody Get a Chech.” I doubled checked and confirmed that check was indeed misspelled.

This time, when the light turned green, Millennium Tax Service stayed with me. I pondered the meaning of the poster and came up with this: on the back wall of the business is a bench seat. The seat is a long piece of 2” by 12” wood, held up by cinder blocks, stacked two high. On the bench are 6 Chechnyan Russians, dubious of banks, a little overweight and, when asked How’s Life, they respond “long.”

When a customer is finished with their taxes, they’re lead to the back of the business and they pick a Chechynan as a parting gift. Everybody get a Chech. The customer leaves with the Chech and lives with the customer.

In the backroom, behind a black curtain, a storage room bustles with Chechynans. One passes through the curtain and takes a seat on the bench seat, constantly keeping the number of Chechynans at 6.

This is the only explanation for Everybody Get A Chech.

A few weeks after discovering the poster, I drove by Millennium Tax Service and noticed they switched the positions of the posters. Everybody Get A Chech was now on the right side – so far to the right that the “h” in Chech was obscured by the frame of the window. Some officious stooge had alerted them of the misspelling. Not cool.

Yesterday, while performing my duty of getting take-out, I drove down Macarthur, a stretch of Oakland that the locals used to call Little Beirut, and Millennium Tax Service was gone. So was Ink N’ Thayngz. And the check cashing place on the corner. All gutted by fire.

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As I waited for the light to turn green, I could only think of one thing: the poster…the poster’s gone.