'Shaolin' is also
ghetto-hip
slang for
Staten Island, the least populous, most suburbanized, and all around trashiest
borough of
New York City.
The nickname came about several years ago because of the popularity of the Wu-Tang Clan, a generic Asian/kung fu themed rap group that considers the bleak housing projects of Staten Island as its home (although at least one member of the 'Clan,' one 'Ghostface Killa', is really from Steubenville, Ohio). In the course of associating themselves with things vaguely mystical and far eastern, Wu Tang invoked the word/concept 'Shaolin' with sufficient regularity that the name became associated with their home.
"Shaolin" provided a needed short hand for the aspiring young hoodlums and gangstas of Staten Island. Their borough was long associated with white-bred suburbia, even though it is in reality mostly a working class land of white ethnics, and the emergence of a slang term and the Wu Tang ethos to accompany it put them on a par with the other areas of NYC which already had nicknames and reputations: 'Tha Boogie Down' for the Bronx, 'Crooklyn' for Brooklyn, 'The Bridge' or 'Killa Queens' for Queens, and so forth.
Of course slang can only be cutting edge for so long, and now "Shaolin" is also used by sophisticated irony laden NYC hipster urbanites such as myself to mock Staten Island and its lil' gumba gangstas and hair-spray wielding women who insist on roaring their techno-blaring SUVs through our neighborhoods on their way to a night of testing out fake IDs at Manhattan dance clubs.
See also Slang names for places in the New York metro area.