It's been a while since the Biggie/Tupac-era, but just when you thought it couldn't get any softer than Brooklyn's newest "Babyccino" trend, Los Angeles has to go and out-do us with their latest social epidemic: black market tubas.Sadly, "tubas" aren't some cool new street drugs that make everything around you sound like the drop in some horrible dubstep "banger." NPR reports "at least 23 tubas have been stolen from eight different high schools in and around L.A. in less than a year," and while it's possible that the brass is being sold for scrap metal, evidence points to a correlation between the spike in tuba theft and the rising popularity of banda, a "tuba-heavy" iteration of Mexican polka music. Seems like banda buffs are so tweaked out on the instrument that a substantial tuba trade ring has cropped up. According to Los Angeles school police officer Omar Sanchez:"If I just said, 'Hey, I got a friend who knows a friend who knows a friend who has a tuba,' you can easily sell it from word of mouth and the black market. It's big money."Well, it's good to know that I have something to fall back on if this blogging thing doesn't work out. Bands with tubas in their ensemble are allegedly able to charge twice as much per song as bands without, and it's not entirely uncommon for people to stuff $100 bills into the tuba's bell like a big, brass stripper.Although tuba trafficking falls on the more "whimsical" side of things you can peddle on the black market, this isn't a victimless crime: already struggling to keep up with cut-backs in public arts programs, South Gate High School, victims of a recent theft, will have to fork up more than $35,000 to replace the stolen instruments. Crack is whack, crack is cheap. Tubas, on the other hand…@sashahecht