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.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
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.
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...
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...
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...
Thursday, May 21, 2009
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...
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...
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...
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