Gary Yukon and Prince Michael

Gary Yukon was a Kansas City dude who, along with his partner Carl, showed up on the Franklin Street scene in the very early 1970s. These guys started out driving bricks of Mexican smoke from KC to New York and Gary was a Machiavellian type of guy whose goal was to climb the ladder on Franklin Street. He began on the first floor with the Mexican pot and worked diligently at trying to get Kenny and Brandy into a financial situation where they had to let him move in with them. After a few runs, Gary was living on the first floor and was trying to jump everyone's connections in the city so he could become a New York middleman.

He did, in the end, make it happen. As things developed, the second floor wound up in the hands of a transvestite queen, Prince Michael (see the original list)... The second floor scene kind of morphed from hash to bash. Every Friday and Saturday, there was a crazy procession of crossdressers and flaming queens that assembled on the second floor for extended parties. I mean these events were like gala balls with live music and a seemingly endless supply of pharmaceutical-grade coke... As an example, there was one guy who was called the 'archbishop' and wore the costume to match, hat and long flowing robe... major catholic bling... breast plate included... While I never had the urge to participate in these things, they were, from all accounts, pretty spectacular events.

So one day, Gary meets Prince Michael and cuts a deal to buy his ride... which was an awesome two-toned blue 1954 R-Backed Bentley... complete with the mid-door turn-arms that lowered and extended while blinking. I mean this was an awesome chick-magnet of a car. So Gary grabs me and suggests that between a few of us, we can buy the car from him and share the use of it. I grab Tom (my Astoria roommate) and a Japanese dude from Philly named Lloyd... We pool our cash and do the deal. Now we're tooling around Manhattan in this thing on a regular basis... I cannot believe we didn't get popped because we actually made some deliveries with this car... Remember, though, that this was real early on in the story and it wasn't like we were doing major moves or anything... This was just a stoned-out adventure thing.

I remember cruising down 7th avenue one afternoon, seeing a hot babe waiting at the front of a crowd to cross the street and hitting the turn signal and laughing madly when the arm came down and hit her left tit... then offering to drive her wherever she was going... and, sick as it sounds, she just smiled and jumped in. The late 60s are hard to describe without feeling warm and fuzzy.

Anyway, a couple of months later, it's my turn to have the ride (which was all the rage when I parked it on the street outside my middle-class apartment house in Astoria). I ask Al Seigal who was the Foreign Copydesk Editor at the Time to come take a cruise downtown to grab a bite at an Italian joint. Al, although he was totally straight and an intellectual giant, was also a physical one at 350-400 pounds. He never refused a meal, free or otherwise. So we head downtown, enjoy a great meal... and come out to find that the car was towed away by the repo company. It turns out that Prince Michael never really owned it and once the payments lapsed, the truth came out. Unfortunately, Al had left his attache case in the back seat and it was filled with important New York Times stuff. After a tremendous three-day hassle, I managed to retrieve his stuff but the car was gone forever... and as it turned out, so was Prince Michael... who turned out to be a guy from Brooklyn named Michael Goldberg (no relation to Charlie).

Gary used this turn of events to try to take over the second floor loft. But in that crazy time, in that crazy place, Ken and Brandy had seniority so they got the second floor and Gary wound up on the first. In a funny kind of way, this made complete sense since Gary was a pot connection and Ken and Brandy were connected in the hashish circles.

Eventually, smooth-talking Gary talked to the wrong guy, got popped and ended up in jail in the mid-west.
Although this was the Gary Yukon post, I just realized I left out a serious piece of the Prince Michael story... When we went up to the second floor to find Prince Michael, the place looked like a serious violent crime scene. The furniture was all smashed and broken, artwork slashed, and the place looked like it had been the host to a fatal bloodbath. I mean there was blood everywhere... puddles on the floor, spatters on the walls and in the kitchen... no bodies... and this was the first of many ignored crimes that occurred through the years but couldn't be reported because of the obvious incriminating circumstances that were always happening. Who was going to even begin to try to explain this to the cops?

Underneath all these stories, there are a few unifying themes... drugs of course... and money... among others... I remember hanging out one night with Ken and Brandy doing some serious intake... and sitting around trying to predict the future... (which, considering the amount of acid everyone was doing, wasn't all that farfetched)... And somewhere late in the conversation, I remember Brandy looking around during a pause... and saying "I can see a future for the people in this room... Some of the people here, because of the time and place and luck, are going to become very rich." Although we just kind of laughed at the time, I can still hear her saying those words...

Charlie G

Charlie's role in my scene was more of a peripheral one as a driver and helper than as a main player. He was an over-sized guy who came from the alphabet city part of Manhattan where he grew up on Grand Street and was something of a gentle giant. He was into downers and booze and had a tendency to blow up to weights in excess of 300 pounds. These were fat pounds as opposed to the more popular weed pounds.

But, as was the case with most of those on the list, Charlie had presence. By presence, I mean he didn't panic in extremely tense situations. For example:

We owned a huge official-looking black Sedan DeVille Caddy that was one of the vehicles we used for the Florida-New York run. This one time, Charlie and a (very special) gal drove down, picked up a trunk full (350-400 lbs) of Columbian pot from the connection and set off on the drive north. This drive, if you went straight through normally took about 22-26 hours. One common decision was what to do with the spare tire... since usually, every part of the trunk was jammed with merch. Often, the tire would be moved into the back seat and covered with a blanket... and that was the case on this trip. So about 18 hours into the ride, Charlie decides he has to call his girlfriend to let her know he's safe... They pull into a rest stop on the road in Pennsylvania at like 4 in the morning and when they pull out, they get pulled over by a trooper. Now the gal was driving at this point and was breaking just about every rule there was. She's even driving without shoes... and when the cop pulls them over and asks for her license, they realize that her pocket book must have fallen out of the car at a stop in Georgia. The cop is not happy and heads back to his cruiser to check the plates. Charlie, in a moment of balls and brilliance, gets out, walks over to the trooper and shows him ID that identifies Charlie as a cop from Hunter, an upstate New York ski town. He tells the cop that the girl is the daughter of a US Senator and that he was hired to get her and the Senator's staff car back to NYC... and to please give them a pass because it was sure to cost him his job. Well... our hero, Charlie, pulled it off and they got back on the road and delivered the goods. The cop never asked about the tire in the back seat, never checked the trunk... and never even wrote up a ticket. P.S. This was the last time that (very special) gal ever drove for anyone.

As a sidenote, drivers usually got paid a grand each for a trip. It wasn't bad pay for 24 hours of driving... assuming your 24 hours didn't turn into time in jail.

I heard recently that Charlie has some kind of very serious liver problem and isn't going to last much longer.

Yeah, this stuff is hard to believe...

By the way... in case anybody is wondering, it's been 20+ years since I even thought about doing any funny business... and any thoughts I have these days are those of shock that I did any of these things. I must have been very very high for the whole time... Who in their right mind would do this stuff?

Lee L

One day, a couple of years after Bobby Mountain took off for points west, I get a call from him asking me if I want to meet a friend of his from Idaho. I say sure and about a week later, a guy pull in driving an old beat-up pick-up with a cap. The guy gets out and introduces himself as Lee. Now Lee stood about 5'6" with a mountaineer's face and an attitude to match. The guy had served the country in Vietnam driving supply trucks on the front lines, watched a lot of guys bite the bullet, and had an impossible time re-adjusting when he got back. He was a fly fisherman, deer hunter, back-woodsman type of guy and despite his hick town image, was a pretty savvy guy. Being recommended by Bobby was all I needed to have a level of trust that justified giving Lee whatever he wanted (within reason) and wait for however long it took him to move it and get back with the cash. Also, I was very aware that a pick-up truck had a much larger capacity than a car. Another motivating factor was that Lee could move most anything and I had found those types of distributors to be invaluable in securing the bigger loads.

Lee would show up about once every six weeks and you never knew what he was bringing with him. Once he showed up with a crazy beautiful German Shepherd puppy that he had brought as a gift for us. Another time he gifted a spectacular piece of scrimshaw that I still have today. Not only was he moving things back out west, but he had a solid circle down in Kentucky and another one in the Dakotas. This added another dimension to the possibilities since he'd show up from places that nobody had a clue about, take on major projects, and be gone until the deal was done.

On top of that, a few years into the relationship, I got connected out on the coast and was able to call on Lee to drive major weight coast to coast with the promise of him getting a decent chunk. He did it quite a few times and did it flawlessly. It was easy to see why too... After driving army trucks under fire, there wasn't much that would rattle Lee. He was as solid as they came.

Unfortunately, as was sometimes the case, he took on a big load that was just too lousy to get sold and we spent almost 18 months getting him enough decent shit to mix it with. In the end, I had to lower the price to just about anything the market would bear just to recoup anything at all. I think he actually buried some of it just to make it go away...

After a few years, Lee bought a convenience store in his small town and seemed to be on the road to a mellow retirement. That never happened because his Kentucky friends got in trouble, implicated him and he spent some time in a serious facility. When he got out, his business was shot and he didn't have many skills to do much else so he started all over again. This one time, he showed up unexpectedly during a drought and instead of wanting stuff, he's got a file drawer of Lebanese sacks. When I brought them around to my people, I was something of a hero since nobody had anything whatsoever and this stuff was both high-quality and priced low. The usual connections were all over me to find out where the shit had come from but I kept Lee as a secret and there was no way I was getting cut out.

Sadly, when I was beset by misfortune, Lee never paid me the hundred fifty grand that I'm figuring he owed me. On one hand, I was hot as a firecracker and on the other hand, Lee was probably driven by a combination of fear and greed when he didn't finish the deal. At least as sad was what happened to him back around 2002 when his whole scene collapsed and they found a million in cash buried on his Idaho property. He fought long and hard but ended up getting a stiff sentence under the guidelines. By the way, the sentencing guidelines changed the entire picture for those in the business... In November of 1987, sentencing flexibility was taken out of the hands of the judges and was reduced to a mathematical formula. Instead of serving 20% of the sentence, most convictions were mathematically stupidly stiff. Even with good behavior, there was no way around having to serve 85% of the sentence. And the sentence itself was predetermined by more mathematical formulas. Unfortunately, the formula meant that you could go away for life if you got nailed with enough weight. Up till then, nobody went away for 30 years for a load of pot. It was just unthinkable. Thank you Ronald Reagan.

http://www.famm.org/UnderstandSentencing/WhatAreMandatoryMinimums.aspx

http://www.famm.org/UnderstandSentencing/WhatAreMandatoryMinimums/HistoryofMandatoryMinimums/HistoryTimeline/The1986AntiDrugAbuseAct.aspx

I looked last night and it appears that Lee became pretty popular with the feds over the last few years...

http://www.justice.gov/usao/id/public_info/pr09/may/jones05152009.html

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/seattle091306.html

http://www.lakeoswegoreview.com/news/story.php?story_id=115818201930926500

Howie & Ronnie

One day early on, when I was hanging in the city and living in Astoria, I got into a taxi with a small box and gave the driver my address... We start talking and the next thing I know, he's passing a hash pipe back to me. He had some dynamite black kashmiri smoke and by the time we got to Astoria, we were best friends.... lol... I invited him up to my apartment and opened the box... next thing we got totally loaded between his hash and my jamaican pot. His name was Howie and he had a younger brother, Ronnie.

Howie was a bit too spaced out for the business I was growing but his brother, Ronnie, was modestly more focused... Ronnie had a really funny voice. When he spoke, he sounded a lot like the cartoon character Goofy. Anyway, we did a lot lot of moves and Ronnie was totally dependable when you absolutely had to have someone to depend on....

Example: We're in a rented house... One of many but this one in particular happened to have a drive-in garage... I mean you could drive right through the garage and into the basement... And, I always wondered about the guy who owned it... But before I get distracted, try to imagine this...

We had about a ton of weed in the basement and it was a mixed load... The thing about moving a whole load was that it often included a percentage of really excellent bud, a bunch of really good stuff, some bales that were picked late and had way too many seeds, some that had gotten wet off the boat, and some that was picked early and had a low bud count but lots of leaf. Also, fairly frequently, there were bales that had gone to dust. So when we weighed in a load, we'd classify it and if the percentages really sucked, we'd even things out to make it all salable. We had a cardboard and plastic connection and we'd be weighing and mixing and creating boxes and boxes... In the process, the dusty stuff got into the air and most of the time everything ended up with a coating of pot. This meant that we also had a cleaning crew to make sure we would be able to move out eventually without getting nailed.

So one afternoon, we had just finished weighing and mixing and bagging and boxing and we get a call from the real estate agent who says she's got a potential buyer in town for a few hours who knows that owner and that they are coming over in an hour so they can see the house. We tried every excuse in the book but to no avail. She is coming over in 90 minutes and that's that. Thrown into full fire-drill mode, we break out the full assortment of vacuums (we had every vacuum cleaner known to man... There was everything from wet-dry vacs to hoover uprights, Electrolux cannisters, a half-dozen dustbusters, etc)... We're into filling up trunks and moving boxes to another house as fast as possible but it's a losing battle. The next thing that happens is the power goes out and we're totally fucked. Now, although we have the benefit of pitch blackness, the place smells like a pothouse and there is pot dust coating everything in the basement.

I call Ronnie, who isn't far away and has a big old empty van... He shows up and we decide that the best we can do is save the load. This is important since, after all, we had the load on the arm and the fronters aren't going to care about the real estate problem. They are going to want to be paid. So the first priority is to get the shit out of there. Ronnie, who is, like me, either absolutely fearless or totally fucking stupid, rushes over with his van and we begin to load it up, end to end, floor to ceiling. Hearts are racing, backs are breaking, the house-sitters are totally freaked out... and we get virtually everything that was left into Ronnie's van. We lock it up and are debating where we can take it and whether it might actually be safer sitting on the driveway, ready to roll if the situation becomes dire.

Bottom line, the real estate lady calls about five minutes before post-time and says the buyer-friend decided to leave town early and they weren't coming.

Ronnie was another super stand-up dude who was always ready to jump in when asked. There are more Ronnie stories but I remember this one vividly because I was on the verge of a heart attack and he was totally cool through the whole drama. I am not sure where either Howie or Ronnie are today... It might be fun to look them up...

Update:  Ronnie is alive and well.  

Jesse Torres, Schmoo & Foot...

When Tom and I were living together, Tom had a wide circle of neighborhood buds... and as the older folks began moving out of our building, one by one, the apartments were taken by younger single-types... one of Tom's friends, Jimmy C took the apartment directly across the hall from us and was sharing it with another guy, and that was Jesse... More on Jesse when I have time... but Jesse was Cuban and provided the direct connection into that culture.

As for Schmoo and Foot, I became friendly with a dude, Paul, who worked in the New York Times Sports department and he was getting his smoke from Schmoo & Foot. I laid some really special stuff on Paul and before I turned around, he had turned them onto it and they wanted to meet me. Schmoo was a gambler-type, who was into the track and poker... Foot was more of a laid-back doper who was a basically just a real nice guy... But these guys became a connection with yet another circle of 'involved' people...

So... Without getting too deep into it, just take it from me, Jesse was a serious dude with a serious business model. He wasn't the usual hippie-type dealer but was more of a 'do what you say or i'll do what i say' type of guy. In other words, you did not fuck with Jesse. But, on the other hand, he was 100 percent dead-on honest. He always did what he said. He also was one of the most careful people I met in the biz... He was never easily found except when he called you and set up a meet. There was no easy way to reach him so everything was done on faith. And, like most of the characters in this story, he was both a connection and a customer depending on the deal and the situation. He also wasn't a stranger to weapons... I remember him going on trial for murder and getting convicted for some lesser crime. When he came out, about a year later, he had taken on some odd religion and wore only white clothing for the next few years. Did he do it? I never asked him but I never doubted it for a moment.

Schmoo was a big dude. He was probably 6'4" and weighed in around 275. He had a Jewish afro, meaning his hair was red, overgrown and frizzy. Over the years, we made a lot of moves. I remember flying up on National Airlines out of Miami into LaGuardia with Samsonites filled with Columbian Gold. I'd land, get picked up, get dropped off to his place, get paid on the spot and get driven back to LAG with empty suitcases for another run. Now, there was a serious risk involved in these moves and the profit was sort of justified by the risk. I'd be buying the stuff for like $250 a pound down south and getting $325 or $350 up in NY. A suitcase would comfortably hold about 60 pounds so each trip with two suitcases would jump up the cash stash by anywhere from 10-12 grand. When the loads were happening, I could make these trips a couple of times a week. Schmoo & Foot were a real easy exchange both financially and geographically. The place was 10 minutes from the airport. The math worked real well since suddenly, it seemed like the only limit was on the size of the cases.

This was nothing remotely like what happens in an airport today. Back then, you could show up at the airport like 5 minutes before a flight, literally run to the gate and they would practically hold the plane for you. There was no security whatsoever. You didn't even have to show ID. You could pay in cash... Hell... I remember actually not having time to check the bags a few times and the stewardess put them in the front closet of the plane. It was nuts. One time, we were doing something in a small town in Ohio... I put together a group of about 5... spent a grand on luggage, crashed the gate at JFK about 15 minutes before flight time... flew into Dayton, drove to the town which was halfway between Dayton and Columbus... found out the stuff had been sold before we got there... got back in our cars, drove to Columbus... crashed a gate there too... and got on another plane... this was a weird one that I remember because we were 5 people with a bunch of empty suitcases... The flight attendants were all smiles, and possibly knew what was going on... but the cases were empty... we were all flying with phony names... and they just stored them in the closet and off we went. I do remember this particular trip though because one of the stewardesses stopped at my seat about 20 minutes into the flight and seemed all confused... She was like "I could swear I've seen you on one of my flights today but it would have had to have been in Dayton... How could that be?" I just smiled and told her that stewardesses weren't the only people who got around.

Later on, before flying became undoable, but after they started using dogs, we had to be much more careful about how we packed the bags... using dozens of layers of plastic and talcum powder or corn starch... and roll on deodorants between each layer... But eventually, the limitations of suitcases forced the move to cars, trains... and eventually, trucks...

Schmoo had a long-time kidney problem and passed away one night when his only remaining one failed unexpectedly. It was a real lousy ending for a really gentle and beautiful guy. Foot, whose real name was Seth, wound up with MS and I don't know if he's still alive today. It's been 25 years since I heard from him.

Russ

Russ was a real close friend and driver for the rather successful set of F brothers. All went well until he was sent on a drive to pick up a load in upstate New York. Unfortunately, I broke a rule and allowed my people to take part in this project. At the end of the day, it was a very poor decision since the load was a sting by federal agents and the whole crew got busted. They were all 'stand-up' however and I managed to skate past this disaster. Skating, however, was relative. I did pay my guys their full due (and support their families) for the entire two years they were in the can. It was a really lousy situation but the vehicles were all untraceable and the problem was contained.

Charlie K

Jesus Christ lookalike Charlie K...

Charlie was one of those long haired hippie-types who really looked a lot like Jesus... As it turned out, that was where the resemblance ended... I met Charlie one day at the loft... and he invited me over to hang out as his spot on 1st Avenue and 16th Street. He had an 2nd floor apartment in a 4 story walk-up that was in an amazing location to sell pot and acid. There was a pharmacy below him and they had a vertical red neon sign that was directly outside his main window... and all night long, it flashed "DRUGS". Honest... I'm not making this up... It really happened.

Now this was around the time I started to get a little heavier into things... And Charlie, seeing that I knew all these connections, asked me to see if I couldn't get a better deal on this particular situation than he could. Well, I could and he asked me to get him a full suitcase and he'd pay for it. I took it on faith that if he was accepted at the loft, he had to be the real deal. So... I go and pick up the suitcase and I'm on my way over to his place to deliver it. I get to the corner of 1st & 16th and what I see is mind-blowing. The entire block outside his place is cordoned off... Cops everywhere... and my mind is blown when they begin leading about 15 people out of his building (Charlie included) in handcuffs. I'm like thinking holy shit... It must have been a set-up and here I am, 25 feet away carrying a fucking Samsonite suitcase filled with shit.

I squeeze into the phone booth on the corner (yeah, they had actual phone booths with doors that closed) and call the connection... tell him what I'm seeing and basically asking if I can bring it back. He gives me directions to a house in Staten Island and hangs up. I had a bunch of of C-notes in my pocket and the first thing I see is an empty taxi and I flash a bill to the driver and say 'Staten Island?"... and he smiles, nods, eyes the suitcase and says 'Sure... Where to?" I jump in and off we go...

Now, cut to Charlie K and what really happened at his place... It turns out that a cabbie dropped off a passenger in front of his place and the guy gets out without paying. He then runs into Charlie's building while the taxi driver corrals a cop and tells him what happened... So the cop runs into the building after the guy.. and as he's running up the stairs, he smells the pot being smoked at Charlie's... The next thing you know, the place is getting busted and the Narco Squad is out in force... And, not only did they bust everyone who was there but they also ripped off all of Charlie's cash stash, drug stash, and a half dozen third row tickets to the Grateful Dead who were playing that weekend at the Fillmore East. There's a second chapter to that story too... because everybody knew they had the tickets and knew where the seats were. That Saturday night, about a half hour into the show, I heard that someone (Maybe Charlie himself) blew a full gram of crystal acid into the row the cops were sitting in... and they all got seriously dosed... Charlie had walked because the cops stole the dope and there wasn't any evidence... Shit like that happened all the time back then...

Now cut back to the taxi... I'm in the cab with a suitcase filled with weed and I don't have a clue about what really happened... Just that I'm possibly in trouble and I have no idea what the fuck is happening...

So Archie, (I just remembered his name...) the connection, was renting this place in the sticks of Staten Island where he was sitting on a serious number of bricks... In those days, at that time, nearly everything was from Mexico... Jamaican was really unusual to find and Colombian wasn't yet on the distribution menu. Anyway, I don't much remember the cabby but he probably had an idea of what was going on... Nobody would pay a hundred bucks for a ride to SI. We head out over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and we're blundering around trying to find this place when I see the street sign for the place and tell him to pull over so I can go look for it. In reality, I didn't want him to see where I was going but I also didn't want to carry the suitcase while I was walking around looking for it. So I get out and walk about a block until I see the address and then turn around to head back for the stuff... Meantime, a police car that was cruising the neighborhood sees the cab parked on a quiet street at midnight and pulls over to ask the driver what he's doing there. The cabby tells them he's waiting for his passenger... and the next thing I know, the cop car is driving towards me. They must have seen me walking and I turn and walk in the other direction. They see this and I hear them jump on the gas. The next thing I do is run down the driveway of the stash house (stupid I know but it wasn't like I had much of a choice)... The cops turn into the driveway and are heading after me... my heart is thumping out of my chest and I'm sure this is the end for me. I'm in the back yard... One cop jumps out of the car with his gun drawn and yells for me to stop. I stop just as Archie comes out of his back door and yells to the cop "Hey! It's all right, I know him!!' I nearly faint as the cop looks at me again.. then at Archie and just nods, apologizes, holsters his piece and says "Why is that cab parked on the next block?" I am nearly fainting but I tell the cop that I was lost and had him pull over while I checked the addresses. It turns out they had had a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood and they thought I was the burglar. Once Archie said he knew me, they had no problem. I learned a valuable lesson that night... Don't panic... unless they actually know what you're about, you have a higher probability of getting yourself busted than you did of getting busted by accident. And the uniformed cops weren't looking for drugs. They were looking to protect the citizens. And, in a weird kind of way, Archie (and, as I found out later, the guy who owned the entire load) weren't uptight that I had this problem. They were more impressed that I wanted to bring the stuff back and was willing to take that risk. They saw it as an honest, stand up thing to do... And it wasn't all that long before I ran into the big guy again after Archie went into rehab. His name was Lucky and he was in a whole other circle that dealt on a whole other level.

So a few years later, I'm living in Bayside on a quiet street and I walk outside one day and see Charlie driving by. He sees me and we both flip out at the coincidence and low odds of running into each other like that. I mean that this is like a long way from Manhattan and we hadn't seen each other for a long time and who would expect it...

The 'scene' was kind of an amorphous blob of a thing. It was like you couldn't ever know who was in charge at any given time or predict what it would be like the next week or month. Imagine a corporate flow chart where the CEO becomes the office boy and the office boy becomes the CEO overnight. And then a few weeks later, both of them are office boys while the janitor becomes the CEO. That was the thing. The lines of power shifted from load to load depending entirely on the source. If the office boy or girl knew the source first hand, he was instantly promoted to CEO and the other active people lined up below him or her. And, since people were always disappearing (whether they retired, semi-retired, got busted, took a trip, or whatever), the scene was constantly changing. Sometimes someone would make a bundle and drop out until it got spent. Other times, someone would do the wrong thing and get blackballed. Charlie had kind of stoned himself out and fell into the background for a couple of years. He went from CEO to semi-retired while he recovered.

So we hug and spend a few minutes catching up and get around to how he happens to be there... and it turns out that there's a guy who lives around the block that is into things. He asks me to accept that he's the connection and offers to introduce me... and I don't give it much thought and say sure... And after that a lot of things changed again... because the 'guy' wasn't just any guy. The 'guy' was a mega-mover and mega-shaker who was mega-connected at all the edges of the amorphous blob. He was a lot younger (18 or 19) but was nothing like a kid. He was more of a nouveau hippie mafia dude who was into things on a whole different level. We go around to meet the guy and he isn't home... but I see the his ride is parked outside and its a deep blue Citroen sports car that looks like it cost a stupid amount of money. And, to cap things off, the guy's place is actually directly behind mine... I mean, we were on opposite sides of the same fence. And yeah, eventually we'd be out there passing bags, cases and other stuff over the fence.

Charlie, without knowing it, had promoted me way up the business ladder because the 'guy' hadn't gotten to his level by accident. He didn't believe in permanent connection payouts... He would just give Charlie a one-shot deal and then I had a new, incredibly diverse source/resource in my suddenly fast-growing business.

I have no idea where Charlie is today but he was a pretty cool dude. The 1st Avenue spot with the neon sign was off the chart in terms of amazing places.

Donna N

Well... Donna was the kind of girl that made your mouth water... and knew it... deep blue eyes... tall... model-thin... with a nice set... and in my mind i can literally see her right now in her lavender danskin body stocking... she wore that thing like a glove... and, for what it's worth, she wasn't dumb... more like ummm... errr... brilliantly confused?

So... when Brandy introduced me, I was something of a hot item down on Franklin Street... remember that I was still working at the paper at the time and everyone at the loft building was into the dealing scene... and they were all protecting their connections and customers from everyone else... except me... since I wasn't on anything resembling that level... I was more like the trophy newspaper guy... and nobody protected against me since there was nothing to protect against. As things turned out, Donna was looking to split a bad situation and I was living in Astoria with Tom O'M and we were basically both working stiffs... Tom was a Time Magazine researcher and I was doing my thing on the Foreign News Desk at the Times... When Donna asked me if she could spend some time at my place, I couldn't say yes fast enough... It probably came out as a lame attempt to be cool... But Donna, as I said, wasn't stupid... She knew that all she had to do was ask any guy for anything and it would be hers... This was no different... We slept in the same bed for about a month without doing anything... I was pretty slow sexually at that point but I wasn't non-functional... which is to say that I spent about 30 straight days and nights with a hard-on... lol

Tom, was something of a stereotypical Irishman... Serious drinker and just as serious with other stuff... And, as you probably guessed, fell in love with Donna about 5 seconds after he laid his eyes on her. It was ridiculous... Within a few days, the word was out that this goddess-like babe was living at our place and the party never stopped after that.

I remember taking Donna out to the boardwalk in Far Rockaway and watching as every cop on the beat stopped their patrols to just stand next to her... and taking her to Jamaica where she was mobbed like a movie star...

At the end of the day, however, she got involved with Don L who was the Franklin Street dealer du jour at the time. They ultimately got married and moved back to Jersey. Now, cut to a few years later when they split up (or were at least on the outs for a few months)... and I'm living in the city... and she stops by to see me and we made up for all those unfinished nights in Astoria...

A few years still later, I saw her and was shocked... the drugs and possibly some bad genes caught up with her... She was still tall and sweet... but physically, her face looked like a spider web at a real young age. It was really sad how all that hard living impacted her. Sorry to burst the bubble but Donna did not age gracefully... it was tough to take because of how impossibly perfect she had been a few years earlier...

I have no idea where she is today...

Mel

Some of this was posted previously but this is a good place for a refresher...

My relationship with Mel spanned a few decades longer than anyone else on the list... so this is a longish tale... with background...

Growing up with Mel, etc.

Our apartment house was one of a multitude of pre-war buildings that had been part of the construction boom that occurred in the early 1940s. Originally, it had been surrounded by a two foot deep row of hedges and had a long canopy which stretched from the courtyard to curbside, but by the time we moved in both of these were long gone. The hedgerow had been cemented over and the all that remained of the canopy were the metal rings on the sidewalk where the poles used to stand in support of it. The outside of the building was faced with the deep red bricks which were common to the period. The builder had apparently cut some costs in the construction since quite a few of the internal mechanisms, like the boiler and the elevator were having more than their fair share of breakdowns. But all in all, it was a pretty nice place to live. The hallways were floored with a polished granite-type surface. There was a fire door which separated the two ‘wings’ of each floor.

Our third floor apartment, adjacent to the incinerator chute, had a closet which shared a common wall with the chute and which we dubbed the ‘hot closet,’ since temperatures in this closet were always in the hundred degree range. As you entered the front door, you found yourself in a powder blue foyer which forked in two directions, one leading to the living room, and the other branching off towards the kitchen and my parents’ bedroom. In addition to the ‘hot’ closet, there were two other closets near the entry to the living room which were a his-and-hers arrangement for my folks. If you continued on through the living room, there was a second entrance to my parents’ bedroom through a set of French doors and a vestibule at the far end of the room which turned left into the bedroom shared my brother and myself, and turned right into the bathroom. The linen closet was straight ahead. With the exception of the living room, which was carpeted in a dark green, all the other rooms had a variety of linoleum floor coverings. All these rooms were fairly spacious by today’s standards. While far from luxurious, the furnishings were pretty comfortable.

A four-room flat, it was in the back corner of the building with windows which overlooked a long fifty foot wide courtyard that served as a common service area for three other buildings. In the center of the courtyard, surrounded by a cement sidewalk, was a little arboretum (actually an untended 20 by 30 foot stand of trees and hedges interspersed with numerous weeds). My grandfather also lived on the third floor but his apartment overlooked the avenue just up the hill from the store. It was a pretty convenient set-up for the family.

Now Mel lived in the same apartment row as I did but his bedroom was two floors above mine. We used to knock on the steam pipe and send messages back and forth. Eventually, we became technologically more advanced and used frozen juice cans. He would tie a string to a juice can, and lower it to my window and I would attach my can and bingo, we had a working intercom. This step forward into the scientific age was greatly appreciated by the old couple, Leo and Fay Rice, who lived on the fourth floor, between us, since it meant that they didn’t have to listen to the pipes clanging all day and night. Although Leon was quite hard of hearing, his bed was right next to the pipe and he had no trouble hearing our Morse coded messages. (Fortunately, he hadn’t been in the navy) The other four apartment dwellers in our row of pipes were also quite relieved when the primitive communications system was abandoned.

Leo, who owned the grocery store on the corner, moved to the suburbs after investing most of his money in Toyota stock, which cost next to nothing, on the first day of its issue. He told my father about this opportunity, but Dad couldn’t see any future in Japanese cars.

I met Mel, when we first moved to the building from the Bronx, in 1952. At first, our parents encouraged the friendship, since we were two of the three Jewish boys in the building. The third, Kenneth Weiner, was deaf and dumb and most of the kids were deathly afraid of him. Looking back, I guess we were all scared of his guttural utterings, which nobody could understand but which sounded pretty aggressive. At the age of 5, you enter into relationships without regard for intellectual capacity or good or evil. Such concepts don’t affect your behavior until later on and sometimes, they never do. Socially, we were acceptable to our parents and that’s what mattered above all else. However, ten years later, they discovered that we could cause far more trouble together than we ever had separately. I was basically a prisoner of the candy store. My father knew everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knew me. I couldn’t shoot a paper clip without him finding out. Mel, on the other hand, whose parents worked in the Manhattan all day, was free to do as he pleased. He could lie to his folks and they would think he was as truthful as George Washington. And lying, it would turn out, was the least of Mel’s transgressions. In the end, my relationship with Mel would have a very meaningful effect on my future. But who could know this at the age of five or even fifteen?

Mel was attending Long Island City High School while I was traveling each day to school in Manhattan. In the middle of our sophomore year, he was sneaking around in the basement of his school and discovered a box of keys in the janitor's office. Among these keys was a grandmaster key for Sargent locks... And as it turned out, these Sargent locks were the standard used thoughout the New York City School system. Armed with this key, Mel was able to penetrate various offices at his school and grab a whole bunch of other stuff that was used throughout the city school system. There were passes of all description... from elevator passes (which were used mainly for handicapped students and faculty) to guidance passes (which were sent by school monitor to classrooms as a summons from Deans and guidance counselors to appear in their offices forthwith).

My friend Chris B and I arranged a plan where he would show up at my classroom posing as a monitor, show the pass to my teacher who would then release me from class to answer the summons. Chris would then enter his class a little late, and after a few minutes I would perform the same charade for his teacher. This scheme led to a virulent class-cutting binge where we found ourselves doing a brisk business as the passes proved to be a valuable commodity. We had been rubber-stamping the passes with the signature of Dean McGowan, a tall, red-faced, rotund alcoholic who served as the Dean of Student Behavior. (Through connivery and by using duplicates of Mel’s invaluable grandmaster key, we had been able to steal one of Dean McGowan’s rubber stamps and have it duplicated.) Our success, however, soon turned to greed, as we found ourselves selling the passes to our friends and anyone else who would pay the fee. Ultimately, one of these customers had a problem which led to his appearance before Dean McGowan. He spilled the beans to the Dean who, in a fit of rage, went personally to my classroom only to discover from the teacher that a monitor had taken me to his office earlier. This confirmed the story he had been told leading to my immediate suspension and requiring my mother’s appearance for an audience with Dean McGowan. During this meeting, I was repeatedly asked to inform on my source for the illegal passes and key, but I just couldn’t bring myself to implicate Mel. After some well-deserved punishment, coupled with a multitude of promises of good behavior, I was reinstated and allowed to return to classes.

so... when i went off to college (CCNY up in Harlem), Mel didn't do the college thing and got a job in the garment center. He was a bright guy but not in the schooling kind of way... much like Bobby except he wasn't an original thinker... more of a slick mover and shaker type... and a few years went by as we kind of went off to do our own things. Next thing I know, it's 1971 and I'm out of school, working at the paper... and Mel has been out and on the garment scene for a few years. We get together one night and find out that we're both into the same stuff... errr... well not exactly the same stuff but we're both doing our share of all kinds of recreational drugs. Now my crowd is filled with nerdy college types... and Mel is running with a totally different crew... He turns me on to a totally awesome receptionist... It doesn't take long and I'm living with her... Meantime, he turns me on to Brandy and that sends me to Franklin Street...

And Brandy, well... although she was living with Plato (Kenny L), she matches me up with Donna N... and holy fuck... Donna was something else... Always wearing skintight, see-through body stockings... and with the body that you really wanted to see through... and full lips, long luscious blond hair, standing like 5'10"... and totally crazy... geez... she was a damned goddess and I hope someone asks me about her... The trip to Jamaica was worth telling... Is she on the list? I mean guys jaws would drop when she walked into view... It really wasn't fair that she had that effect on men... And, to add to the nuttiness, her father was a police chief in New Jersey...

Okay... back to Mel... so unfortunately, Mel got really heavy into nose candy and eventually ended up losing everything... He got married, moved to New Jersey and cleaned up his act... for a while... and then he fell back into the coke and lost it all... lost his job, lost his wife... and I think he did lose his life... I never heard from him again and his family wasn't looking for me to share the news... Bottom line, Mel launched me into a completely different scene with a whole other set of connections... And... at some point I'll explain the significance of 'other sets' in the subculture I was a part of...

Obviously, there was a lot more Mel but that will do for now...

Kenny L

Ken, as I mentioned earlier, lived on the first floor of the Franklin Street loft. He was a Princeton graduate and as soon as he opened his mouth, you just knew you were listening to something important. This was the time of Dr. Timothy Leary and Ken went in that direction. He burned himself out early, hit the skids, and I last heard that he was in a recovery program.

I do remember, however, the time he decided that he was going to test the rules and deal some hash out of the first floor. There was a rule that any hash had to be sold on two... lol... (I know... crazy shit...) So... when word leaked up to the second floor that there was a hash deal going down on one, he had to answer to the unofficial Franklin Street court. They actually had a hearing where he plead his case. It was pretty damned funny and he won the case because the second floor folks didn't have his eloquence. His Princeton education wasn't entirely wasted.  Bobby was a very fair judge and, as the king of the mountain on the third floor, was the final word on all conflicts. Meantime, it was a price-fixing scheme where they expected him to sell it to the second floor and then they would get their slice of the pie before it left the building. Bottom line, Ken was okay in my book... I remember smoking opium with him and getting the worst sore throat of my life. Brandy, Ken's lady, made this weirdo concoction that they took from some guru's recipe, and I swear, it cured my throat issue in about two hours... my drug intake went from zero to the roof in a few hours. I was, understandably very grateful. I was even more grateful when Brandy turned me on to her model girlfriend Donna... but that's a whole other story...

Update (December 2014): Ken and Brandy, it would seem, made a complete and rich recovery.  They are still together, living in the South.  They have five grandchildren from three daughters, and the short correspondence was not only coherent but intelligent, as always.  One thing, however, is interesting.  He doesn't remember me.  And, frankly, I'm not surprised.  There are a lot of gaps that remain from those days, some of which I'm sure are mine.

Rocky & Melvin

Rocky & Melvin.. almost sounds like a cartoon... But they were partners and part of the Florida to New York scene... Rocky was a semi-serious workout freak (I mean how serious could he have been with all that 'stuff' around)... Melvin was... well... he was a Melvin... not a Mel. Anyway, at the time, we were renting a really sweet, totally secluded stash house that sat at the top of a hill and had a long winding driveway. And these guys had a few cars coming up... and no place to land them. A mutual connection suggested that we get together and provide the spot. At the time, we weren't doing big numbers yet so this was a pretty nice opportunity. We met and the deal was that we'd land the cars, and they'd give us the first shot at moving the load. So the cars arrive (well, not directly but they get dropped off nearby and we take them up to the place without the original drivers for the sake of security), and the product is a full range from really really good to really really seedy and shaky. This was something of a turning point in the business model since up to that point we had been doing relatively small amounts... generally not more than a hundred... and usually 25-50... but these cars came and had 800 in the trunks... which was a major upward move for us. We handled the logistics without much difficulty, meaning we got everything weighed in, logged, categorized, priced and stored. But then the next step was to move the product out...

I do remember one afternoon, Rocky showed up with some girl that nobody knew... He apparently had just met her the night before at some club... Which really pissed me off since we went to serious extremes to keep new faces out of our scene. But this was a major shot and, after telling him he was fucking up, we let it slide. And that was cool until the afternoon... when Rocky comes back with her and a while later the phone rings, I go to answer it but there's nobody there. A minute later, she comes rushing into the room, all breathless, and says someone just hung up after saying "Porky Pig is doing the jig".... It took us all of about 10 seconds to decide that the cops were on their way and the next thing you know, everybody is bailing... myself included... leaving the entire load unattended... A half hour later, we're driving slowly around the area and nothing is happening... My partner and I look at each other, decide that the whole thing might be a scam to get us away from the stuff and we quickly go back to find everything intact and safe. It was something of an adrenaline rush in many respects... Anyway, the next day, Melvin shows up with a giant Carvel shake in his hand... while we're doing some homogenization (making sure no bag had too much shake or too many seeds)... He walks in and is looking at the open bags when his face turns red, he gasps and then pukes a giant strawberry Carvel shake all over the room... I mean he was like a fountain... or a shaken bottle of beer... It was an absolute nightmare... Fucking Melvin!!

So... I'm looking around for places to move a much larger volume than I normally could or had actually ever done before. One of my friends, Jack, tells me he's got a guy who does this kind of thing and pays cash on the spot... I mean this wasn't the norm in my circle... Generally, we relied on honesty in that we'd front the product and get paid when it was sold. In fact, most of the time, we were fronted it as well. So at around 7 pm, I give Jack about 50 units to go show his guy... and he's supposed to be back in two hours... He leaves and the clock begins ticking away... one hour gone... two hours gone... I start beeping him (pre-cellphone times)... nothing... 10 pm nothing... we start to get real nervous... 11... 12... 1... we're trying to decide where else we can put this stuff until we find out what happened to Jack... 2 in the morning... still nothing... we start loading up a car to get it out of there... Just as we're ready to move, Jack shows up... he's got a case with 70 Gs in it and says, 'He liked it and he wants it all. Here's a downstroke for the entire thing. He'll pay for it on the spot when you bring it."

I'll save Marvin for his own story but bottom line, Jack's guy was real... He bought the entire thing in one shot... And suddenly, through Rocky and Melvin, I was playing in a different league entirely.

Last I heard, Melvin was retired in Florida and Rocky was getting out of jail in the Carolinas somewhere...

Dennis B

Dennis B was more of a peripheral character... He lived in a loft on 19th street between 5th and 6th Avenue... In any other period, he would have likely been an outcast... he wore his hair to his waist, has a thing for big ugly angry dogs, came off as a junior high school dropout, and had zero social skills. On the other hand, in this period, he had what was necessary to make this list: He could count, had a loft, had a big O-Beam scale (not the gram size... the big one), had balls, and, above all, was an honest guy.

Not much more to say about Dennis per se... I hope he survived when the scene changed. I have no idea whatsoever what happened to him. He was part of the Max S circle and I don't know what became of them either.

Big Al

Big Al was one of those people who make stereotypes seem true. He was a 50 year old mafia wannabe but he came pretty damned close to being the real thing. (I was in my 30s at the time) He wasn't a 'made' guy but he had all the trappings. He was, of course, very Italian and he spoke Brooklynese like it was his first language. His conversations were always laced with 'youse guys' and 'dem guys' and 'dose guys'. He even looked the part and a few years back, I was shocked when I saw Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos series. Big Al looked a lot like Paulie. He had the salt and pepper hair, the 'don't fuck with me' look and when he spoke, you didn't doubt for a second that he was the real deal.

I met Big Al through one of those things that happened regularly in the business. We were connected through someone we mutually knew. Every so often, people would drop out of the scene due to a variety of circumstances. Sometimes a guy got a habit... sometimes they just split the scene... other times they got popped. Anyway, the mutual connection took a powder owing both of us some cash. We had met in passing a few times and when the middle guy took off, we got together and started doing things. Now, I have to say there is no way on earth that Al and I would have been connected in any other situation. Wannabe or not, he was a serious dude and had a crew.

Doing things with Big Al was double-edged. On one hand, you never felt quite comfortable with the guy... He could go from looking happy to looking deadly in an instant. But for some reason, we never got to that place. We showed each other respect and that held a lot of weight in the subcultures we were both moving in.

One time, during a drought, I remember getting a call from Big Al... "Hey... we gotta meet... I gotta some oranges...' And, since this was in the 1980s, and I was fairly well along in my 'career', I didn't give it much hesitation and just asked how much, how many and went to meet the guy with a bag of cash. At the meet, I get into his car and he starts telling me how he's nervous about the connection... It's 'dese spics who ain't got no rules'... and then he says there's nothing to worry about because his kids are backing him up. I don't have a real picture of what he's talking about but I realize immediately that I'm out of my comfort zone and can't wait to get done and leave. The next thing I know, we're in a huge warehouse down in Red Hook by the Marine Shipping Terminal and it feels like a big dark gymnasium with a surrounding catwalk. And in the middle of the place, in a circle of light, there's these three guys with a duffel bag and, as we got closer, I see that they are all holding pistols. I, on the other hand, am holding only a bag of cash. Anyway, we get there and after about 10 minutes of unintelligible haggling (the three guys could hardly speak English and were nervous as all hell waving their guns around) they open the duffel and the stuff is horrible. It's been wet, smells like old shoes, looks like alfalfa, and there's no way I would ever buy it or worse, sell it. But, the three guys are flashing their guns... Big Al, who had always been a customer and suddenly had a chance to be a supplier, and didn't give a crap about quality, just looks at me and says 'I cut a good deal for you, eh?' So here I am... three fucking lunatics with guns... a serious Italian who wouldn't know good pot from a bale of hay... and me... I start asking him about what happens if the stuff can't be sold... He looks at me... "Waddayamean? It's a drought... Anything'll move..." I go 'But what if?... and he looks at me again... then turns to the three guys and starts to bargain for a lower price... They start to get all crazy, talking a million words a second, waving the guns all around... I'm pretty much shitting my pants... But Big Al isn't nervous... He just takes my bag, holds it up to the guys and points to the catwalk where, when I look, there's a few guys holding what look like automatic weapons. I am almost in cardiac arrest so I tell Al to just do the fucking deal and let's get out of there. He says that they are his kids and not to worry. Worry? I'm pissing my pants and he's telling me not to worry. Anyway, in the end, he got the price down a little, I bought the stuff just to end the situation and get myself out of there... It turned out that the three guys had ripped off the stuff anyway and a few weeks later, trying to do it again, they got shot up. The stuff really sucked but it wasn't a huge bag and we managed to get the money back. But I'll never forget that scene in the warehouse...

So, despite all the weirdness, Big Al had one quality that made the connection work. He was 100% dead-on honest. You never had to run after him when he owed you and if he needed more time, which happened regularly in that business, he asked for it like a gentleman and didn't offer up lame excuses. He was a stand-up guy when it came to the business. Which is probably the reason why I found a new way to lose money. It's December 30, and Big Al owes me like 8 grand or so... I'm into my New Year's party mode so when he calls me to make the drop, I shine it on and tell him we'll get together after the weekend. The holiday happens and I give him a call afterwards... Mrs. Al answers the phone and tells me that Big Al died of a massive coronary on New Years Eve and he's being laid out at Finnegan's Funeral Parlor on Northern Boulevard. Now there's no way I'm going to his kids and asking them for the money. And there's no way I'm going to try to explain to Mrs. Al that Mr. Al owed me either. So the only thing I do is go to the wake to make sure the guy is dead and just write it off as 'one-a dem tings'. I had found a new way to lose money.

The last I heard, Big Al was still dead.

Kenny K

Kenny K... one of the City College crew... he played a really great bass... tall dude (6'3' or 6'4" at least) who, despite having a pretty deep voice, had the inflection of what later became known as the valley girl sound... the last syllables always trailed up an octave... everything came out sounding like a question... Hey Man... Gimme a joint? the last word turned it into a question... Anyway, Kenny was the first person who was heavy into Rod Stewart... back when the Faces just cut their first album... and Rod Stewart wasn't the only thing he had first... I remember Kenny and the duffel bag he got from Nam...

I remember the first time I drove home a pound. I went up to Kenny’s apartment in the Bronx. Walking in, I saw people hanging out in a smoky daze all over the place. Kenny brought out a duffel bag, dug in, and filled a bag with the stuff. He had an Ohaus Triple Beam Scale and when he hit 454 grams, he sealed it up and gave it to me. “Look around.” He said. “This stuff is much better than anything you’ve ever had.” And I looked around, and saw that everyone was dazed. “This stuff came back from Nam.” And “Don’t smoke too much at once.” And “It comes on long after you stop.” And “Don’t smoke it now because you have to drive home with it.”

So I paid Kenny, slipped out for the drive back to Astoria. I put the bag in my trunk and get into the car. The second I pull out of the spot, a police car comes down the block and is behind me. I’m freaking out. Oh my God… Oh my God… Please don’t bust me…

And, when I got to the corner, turned right, the cops kept on straight. Now all the way home, I’m thinking about this. If I don’t tell anyone that I have something in my car, what are the odds they could figure it out? Have I ever been stopped before? No. Why should I be stopped now? No real reason unless I screw up. In other words, I was in charge of what happened. It wasn’t about the cops, it was about me. Just be cool and this didn’t have to be dangerous…. After that, I stopped taking the stuff home on the subway.

I'm trying to remember... I think Kenny was the guy who got busted for stealing a loaf of bread out of a bag upstate somewhere... one of those hard to believe tales... Late at night (actually early in the morning) after a real bender... he's starved and nothing is open... cruising through an upstate hick town... sees a bakery truck drop off a huge bag of bread to a local deli spot... so he goes up and reaches into the bag for a roll... and had the misfortune to be eyeballed by a trooper... BAM... The guy's spends a day jail for stealing a fucking roll...

Anyhow, Kenny was a cool dude and the last I heard was at least 15 years ago... he was working at IBM...   

Update: Kenny is alive and well, playing bass in a couple of hot bands upstate and definitely in tune with the higher world.

Bobby Mountain

so... here i am... it's 1970 and i'm just finished with school... working weird hours at the newspaper... basically some nights I get out at 11pm and others at 1:30 in the morning... My days off are Thursday and Friday... so, essentially, Wednesday night is my Friday night... Thursday is my Saturday... and Friday is my Sunday... and, get this... because the Sunday paper is published early on Saturday night, i only worked from 4PM-8PM on Saturdays... Sunday was a light news day so there wasn't much to do on Sundays either. So what's a guy to do in Manhattan after midnight? This is about Bobby Mountain but bear with me while I explain what happened here...

My best friend growing up (you can find him on the list) was Mel M. Now Mel went into the garment industry and wound up hanging out with a whole other circle of friends and associates. But, as was the case so often in those days, we did have one thing in common.... We both enjoyed a good smoke... And, while I was moving in a college/intellectual mode, Mel was rolling with the down and dirty. So one day, Mel and I met up and sat down to toke a bit, comparing who had the better what... Anyhow, in the course of the conversation, Mel is talking about the garment industry and how everybody is getting totally wasted. I'm talking about my roommate (who worked for Time Magazine) and his crowd getting just as wasted... Eventually, I tell Mel that I have only half a life because of my work hours... So he tells me to go meet this chick Brandy who is hanging out down in Soho at a Franklin Street loft scene. And I, still accumulating connections and customers, am more than happy to go see who Brandy is and what this scene is about...

And then I wind up calling her and getting invited downtown to the loft... When I tell a few 'connected' friends that I got an invite to a Franklin Street loft scene, they're like all 'wow!' and start telling me about rumors going around that half the best smoking dope in town is moving through a loft building on Franklin Street. So a few days go by and I head down to meet Brandy... She tells me to meet her after midnight the next day when I get out of work... and we can head down so I can meet her guy, who, it turns out, is a perversely brilliant guy that took a few dozen too many acid trips and is into believing that he's not only seen god but that god is speaking through his mouth. I end up in this loft building with three floors... and I'm only allowed onto the first floor since there is kind of a pecking order as to who makes it to the next level... something like one of today's video games... It turns out that they deal grass on the first floor, hash on two and the heavier stuff is apparently moving only on three.

Since this is about Bobby, I'll leave out the months of challenges and tests and happenings and skip on up to the third floor... and who lived there...

The first time I met Bobby, he was coming off a two week coke binge... which is what happened about every second week. and we got real close as the weeks and months went by. Bobby was an original thinker. He didn't have the major educational creds that were moving on the first floor, but he had the ability to see through everybody's bullshit. And he wound up at the top of the Franklin Street Mountain, moving pounds of coke and harder stuff... I remember one time we were cooking up some acid... Bobby went and got a little mold that was used for pills... and started fabricating his own pharmaceuticals... the ultimate generic drugs... lol

So he makes up the base... and sets out the molds... and actually manufactures the pills... and then, while they were still in the mold, he cooks up a batch of acid, and, with an eye dropper, begins dosing out the pills... one by one... and, in my best imitation of Tom Sawyer, I jump in and start squeezing out the drops... we're getting blitzed as the stuff is pretty much everywhere... it's in the air we're breathing... and I remember we're counting together... one... two... three... four... five... etc etc until we've let drops into each pill of each row... and how, occasionally, the phone would ring... and we'd look at each other... one... one... one... one... and then two... two... two... and then break up because we had just ODed some poor fucker on LSD... which was pretty fucking funny since we firmly believed there was no such thing with acid.

Bobby played a dynamite soprano saxophone that you could hear most any night... and the longer the coke binge went on, the crazier the jazz sound became... and in those days, in that place, every loft building had a coked up musician playing straight ahead until the drugs ran out...

He also had a really amazing lady... who became quite famous later on... Bobby ultimately got popped for dealing coke to a fed... did his time... came out and moved out to God's Country in the great northwest.... where he lives today...

Scott G

Scottie... I went to school with this really sultry babe named Marta. And we ran in the same circles... which means we were usually at the same parties... it wasn't anything serious... more like we were close acquaintances through a mutual friend, Caroline (who I'm in touch with to this day). So, one day, Marta is looking around for something to smoke... (it wasn't like I was seriously into it yet but I was definitely putting my scene together) and I happened to have a few really high-quality Thai doobies to share with her... and somehow, she told her brother about it (Joey R who is also on this list) and her brother was very much into dealing. He had a partner (enter Scottie) and it didn't take long before they were asking me to get them stuff.

Joey was a story unto himself... He wound up turning to real junk and was dealing pot to pay for it. I remember one time he fell asleep on the subway and lost a bagful of cash. A few years later, he cleaned up his act, got a job driving a truck and managed to hit an overpass crossing Central Park in New York City with a truck filled with a few tons of pistachios... Crunch!!

Anyway, back to Scottie... He was a kind, gentle kid who was totally honest and wound up moving to Costa Rica to open a tourist spot. I'm wanting to believe he's still there and living the life he dreamed of.

Update:  Caroline RIP...

Beanie (Bernard Frank)

Okay… so one day in 1969, flush with money and likely stoned (still working at the New York Times), I decided to take a week’s vacation to Florida. I was engaged at the time but that’s a whole other digression and Cheri didn’t come with me so I’ll just say Cheri ended up becoming collateral damage from this trip. I stayed at the Doral Beach Hotel and the first day there, I wound up at the pool, sitting next to this freak from Philadelphia named Beanie who had hair to his waist and a guru-type grin that he perpetually wore on his face. In the course of the week, I spent a lot of time with Beanie, discussing so many things in so many obtuse ways that my head was spinning at ridiculous speeds. Between sharing joints and opinions, Beanie ripped away any remaining objections I had to leaving my life and starting again. We talked about everything from the war to the cost of pot. He also happened to have a fifth booze bottle that was filled with coconut oil that he had brought back from Jamaica (along with a whole bunch of other ‘stuff’). Beanie showed me the virtues of coconut oil as a sun-tanning device and how to roll a huge spliff and by the time the week ended, I knew I wasn’t long for the New York Times. I wanted to ‘Be What I Could’ and not ‘Be What I Was’. And thus began a long journey that was unimaginable at the time but, looking back, was probably inevitable.

Max S

Max himself wasn't all that interesting... pretty much of a small-time selfish big dope who sold bales of Jamaican weed and some Lebanese hashish for a while... was partners with Jerry S and JB. Together, they were decent connections but didn't really get the big picture of things. My sense of the business was that fairness was an essential part of the picture. Just because you had a product that people wanted wasn't a reason to take advantage of them. The business wasn't about a single transaction but was an ongoing relationship that could be profitable for all sides. Jerry got the picture but Max was too full of himself to see anything beyond his own self.

So I remember Max as someone who always tried to milk every bit of product for every possible buck. His ego was huge... and if he had something that he knew you wanted, he played on it until you pretty much paid whatever he wanted and said thank you. After several years, the tables were turned and he was real surprised when I had what he wanted and I told him to go fuck himself.

He did, however, have a sweet-looking live-in who was fun to be with. That relationship lasted until Max became physically abusive. The last time I saw her, her face was bruised purple and my eyes rolled as she tried to tell me how it was her fault. I left and didn't go back. I heard later on that he got busted trying to sell some lousy product to an agent. I suspect he was asking for a price that only a cop would pay.