Joshua Gallander is a character. Literally. You and millions of other people around the world have probably seen him somewhere on VH1's reality show lineup (I Love New York, or I Love Money) in his better known as persona "Whiteboy." But when he's not working on tv, he's working at the landmark Cutler Ridge pawnshop his family has owned for the past twenty one years on US1 and Caribbean Boulevard (SW 200 street). Click here for a 1990 New Times article on the subject.
Short Order took the turnpike south and asked Whiteboy "What's in your fridge?"
"The number one thing is we don't get lunchbreak, there's no half hour or hour where we don't work, so we're eating on site everyday" says Whiteboy.
His father Mr. Gallander adds "We bring our healthy stuff."
Whiteboy laughs. "Yeah he knows we're healthy, he saw our fridge. Two salads and bottles of hot sauce."
I lose 10 to 15 pounds everytime. The first few weeks is the worst, but once people start getting eliminated and there's more money in the budget for each person to eat they'll get you whatever you want."
Asked how he got in the reality tv game Whiteboy said "I never went to casting or audition or anything. Never. What happened is originally Trick Daddy called me up and said 'I'm doin a pilot for a tv show and I want you to be in it.' It was for a show called Thug My Guy, you know, like Pimp My Ride. They was gonna take dudes on the show and thug em out. I was in Trick's entourage. The show never got picked up, but the producers from I Love New York knew me from that, like knew me, like 'Oh, that's Whiteboy, we partied with him for a week in Miami,' so they called me up. Sometimes they be havin you do some fucked up shit for tv, but it's like you just gotta tuck your balls and man up and just do it."
NewTimes: How'd you know Trick from?
Whiteboy: He from round here....Goulds, Perrine, Richmond Heights.
Whiteboy's dad says of the pawn business "We're here 21 years. Right here. Started from scratch. It's been the dome since the 60's, came through Hurricane Andrew. Everything else got destroyed. They should build all the houses like this, but then the insurance companies would go out of business.
They been pawnin' shit, what's the story? The Queen of Spain financed, as the story goes, she pawned her jewels to fund the trip that discovered the New World.....and I was there, least I feel like I was.
Our symbol, the three balls, that's the international pawn shop symbol, that's everywhere in the world.
Cops used to come in, somebody'd point at a bracelet, they'd pick it up and hand it right over to them and it was like 'hey, we didn't do nothin' wrong.' Now we got associations, we got attorneys, now it's an industry."
Whiteboy says "Basically it's a collateral loan on anything of value. I been around here about 18 years. Really I been here longer, but what's a 7 year old know about a pawn shop? Once you're about 10 though you really start to get the concept."
