John the Beak

So it's the 1970s and pot is everywhere.  Unlike the 1960s, there is no transition from alcohol.  Pot is the drug of choice and the baby boomers are pretty much all smoking it.  And...  as it turns out, any time the baby boomers do anything en masse, the world changes.    Some facts:

When World War II ended, and soldiers returned home to the US, there was a huge increase in conceptions.
There are 78 million Americans who are classified as baby boomers.
In the 1950s, when they were in primary school, more schools were built in a five year period than in any ten year period before or since.
In 1964, baby boomers represented 40% of the overall US population.
In 1965, 36% of the population was under the age of 18.
Today, only 18% of the population is under 18.
Today the boomers make up 28% of the population.

Regardless of what the boomers did, the impact was huge.  Education, music, housing, investments, travel, workout regimens, medicine...  huge fortunes were made catering to the boomers.  And this was no less true on the underbelly of society as it was out in the open.  Back in the 60s (and for quite a while before), the Italians pretty much cornered the market on organized crime in the US.  They were known as 'crime families'...  And, like any family, they had children...  and those children were just as likely to be baby boomers as the rest of the generation.  So now, unlike my growing up in a middle class law-abiding culture, these kids grew up in something that was quite a bit different.  When my train rolled off the tracks and into the world of dope-dealing, these kids weren't far behind in recognizing the opportunities they had.  Where my college buddies and I had to build a network, these guys (and girls) were exposed to networking in illegal activities from day one. 

Now as things began to get more serious for me, I was getting introduced to more and more dealers and wholesalers.  (The way the scene worked, the dealer today could be a wholesaler tomorrow and vice versa.)  And it was kind of inevitable that eventually, I'd get introduced to a few serious baby boomers who were mobbed up.  This is a bit different from Big Al (who I wrote about early on in this thread) since Al was quite a bit older. 

Anyway, this all comes to mind because John the Beak was a mobbed up baby boomer.  When I started out trying to grow a business with this stuff, it was all about finding customers and connections...  I think I explained a lot of that dynamic earlier in the thread.  Well, there comes a point in the process when they are trying to find you and you're trying to only be found by the right people.  I've always had a weakness in over-intellectualizing things that I shouldn't.  It's probably why I didn't get laid until I was 20 or so.  Well now...  where was I? ummm...  

So one of the other guys in the story was connected to John and was sort of pushed away by John and his crew so they could deal directly with me.  And this kind of thing doesn't happen in one moment.  It kind of develops into a situation.  Like I moved weight to the guy between us...  who moved it either directly to John's crew or indirectly through someone else.  Meanwhile some principals in each deal are trying to keep their distance...  while others are trying to cut out the middle guys.  I usually felt it was worth having the middle guy there.  (a tactic that was double-edged but effective...  until I got truly nailed)... 

If this story doesn't seem truly coherent, I might be out of practice...  but another element of John the Beak was the difference in how the players saw the business.  Some of them were into quality at any price and didn't care about much else.  Others didn't care at all about quality but wanted cheap stuff.  And others (like me) cared about both and could move both high and low quality material in different directions.  Last time I wrote about this, I think I mentioned Steve in Buffalo and Lee in Idaho as guys who were spectacularly efficient in moving lousy stuff.  Well, John the Beak was pretty good at it too but for different reasons.  If John gave you something, you were simply scared shitless to tell him it wasn't any good.  The flip side of that was that you could sell anything to John as long as it was cheap.  Only rarely, probably by accident, did John come into anything of true quality.

Visiting John's spot was memorable for a few reasons.  First, it was in a quiet residential area of Lindenwood Brooklyn.  What I didn't know at the time was that John (or his family) had the whole area sewn up.  As time went on, though, I got the picture.  We'd be hanging out and guys would show up with reports about what was happening in the neighborhood...  who got his face broken...  was it okay to go after someone...  who had the tape players...  the speaker systems...  etc etc...  it was about much much more than pot.

On arriving at the Beak's spot, the first thing you heard were the Dobermans...  There were a couple right there and you basically prayed that they were tied up.  To get to his joint, you had to walk down a long driveway between two houses...  then knock on a door that was like something out of Being John Malkovich...  It was like 4 feet high, thick heavy wood and bolted tight as any door you've ever seen.  You could hear the growling and barking way before you got to knocking...  And once you knocked the dogs went bananas...  clawing at the door...  louder... deeper...  real scary shit...  But if you wanted to get paid, or if you wanted to deliver the goods, you had to deal with it.

It's not like John the Beak was a super key player in the overall scene...  but his world was different enough from anything I was used to that it makes for some great material. 

Like the time he sold me a bunch of bales that came straight from Florida.  They got weighed...  I paid...  And John and his guys left to go back South.  It was only a couple of days later, when we were breaking down the bales that I came across a few things that really pissed me off.  The stuff wasn't great but it wasn't horrible either.  But one bale had an 8 pound fucking rock in the middle of it.  This rock cost me over 2 grand.  So I went about trying to get my money back...  which was never going to happen because John the Beak wasn't the kind of guy you told what to do.  Weeks went by and his crew is still in Florida (supposedly waiting for a boat that never came)...  He says he'll return the rock to the Columbians but it's not going to be easy...  I pack up the rock and head over to National Airlines cargo, sending off my 'mineral sample'...  Bottom line, the rock never gets picked up in Florida...  I never see a dime...  And I'm too chicken-shit to start making demands of these guys.  If John's guys don't get pissed at me, the Columbians, who are totally and outrageously insane, might take offense and wipe out my entire family over a $2,000 rock.

There are a lot more John-type stories...  He was actually a pretty cool dude when you ignored all the rest of this stuff...  which I can say about most everyone in the saga...  Lots of laughs...  lot of absurdities...  but it was impossible to forget that he was as connected as anyone in the Sopranos.  I never found out exactly which family he was with but I know he and his cousin (John the Dope) were both heavyweights.  and John the Dope was no dope.  Feel free to speculate about John's Beak...