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...
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...