Mack Sheldon

A 61-year-old Oakland ex-pimp who told Soft White Underbelly he "bowed out gracefully," then went to jail for narcotics, not pimping.

Mack Sheldon (sometimes misheard as Max or Mark Sheldon; he spells it M-A-C-K) is the subject of "Pimp interview-Mack Sheldon," a ten-minute Soft White Underbelly video released to streaming platforms on November 6, 2021. "Sheldon really my first name," he says, "but they call me Mack Sheldon," and he draws the trade's own distinction: "pimps have hos, macks have what they wanna have."

He gives his age as 61 and says he was born and raised in Oakland to a Chinese mother and a Black father, with a good childhood and "no abuse." He says players and pimps, not gangsters, were his role models, and that he waited until 18 to start, calling a woman he knew from a club and turning her out. He says he then pimped "coast to coast."

On the women: he says he ran "about four deep" at most, Black and white, and that the longest stayed four or five years. They gave him "every dime." In return he says he fed and clothed them and let them off for a concert now and then, agreeing that the relationship worked "like your her boyfriend." On violence he is candid: "back in the day I probably did. Not too much though," preferring, he says, to let the other women shame a woman into line. He says some women are "born to pay a pimp."

He says he left the game long ago, sold drugs, "went to jail for narcotics," and now owns two Jaguars and a BMW. He was married once and has a daughter.

ALSO KNOWN AS
Not established; says on camera that Sheldon is his given first name

STATUS
Living

ERA
2021 (public record); says he pimped from age 18, roughly the late 1970s and 1980s

ASSOCIATED WITH
Oakland; Bay Area; Soft White Underbelly

STANDING
Persona