Survived Early 90s Drug Game in NYC AMA

[silk scarfs]

you ever go back to your old hood and places you use to hustle at and see the same faces?

how you feel about all the young nikkas fukking with the credit card scams instead of hustling like how u use too?

if there was one thing you can bring back from the era what would it be?

if you had kids and they started to hustle like you did how would it make you feel?

 

[Piri Tomas]

Seriously...it was.
I could have taken him on...one on one...but weak ass gang members don't move like that.
Once he let his crew in on his plans I had random people approaching me at places all over the NYC area.
It was gettin hard to breathe at one point...couldn't fight em all and I wasn't tryna intentionally kill anyone...so I had to jet.
Plus my family was actin stupid too...
No better option at the time than to leave the state.

Best decision I ever made.
NYC woulda ate me...literally....and I had plans and goals.

What did you do? I never knew of a situation of anyone putting his whole team on the hunt if there wasn't lost $ (usually a lot) involved or they thought the person was a cooperator.

 

[Piri Tomas]

@Piri Tomas great thread

"Cops on payroll, every block got blow/we fight every night, reunite and pop mo'"

What kind of business relationship did y'all have with dirty cops?

Most large scale organizations had cops on the payroll, including the people I hustled for. That meant that they would let you know what was happening in terms of surveillance if they were privy to it, give you a warning about sweeps. This was at the precinct level. They may or may not know what the precinct DT squad had going... but in terms of homicide investigations (BX homicide squad) or DA level (narcotics division), anything taking place above the precinct level they weren't of much help. There were cases of cops actually robbing rival drug dealers to help the organization they worked for but that was a lot of risk and most cops weren't willing to go that far. Most of what you paid for was information.

I didn't directly handle payoffs or anything like that... They tended to deal directly with the lieutenants/boss. The trick was for them to not be known widely in the hood as a cop doing business with dealers. Discretion was key because there were enough cases in the media of dirty cops getting busted to make them take that cautious approach.

 

[Behind-the-wheel]

What did you do? I never knew of a situation of anyone putting his whole team on the hunt if there wasn't lost $ (usually a lot) involved or they thought the person was a cooperator.

See...back in the day my thing was shaped and targeted explosives and incendiaries.
For gettin in doors, punchin precise holes in walls for quick in and out...that area.
Well...one day a job went sideways when I wasn't paying attention to who was around the targeted building.
Things went left when one of his boys got hit with debris and got cut up.
So I went to settle things with homeboy...no problems, we threw down, he got his licks in...I got mine. We shook and parted ways.
This idiot was the only one tryna make a mark outta me saying that his boy was good with it but he didn't think it was enough and I needed to pay him.

I laughed it off and told him to get out my face or he might be the next exploded target. (Bluff...I wasn't tryna kill anyone...)
He took that as a challenge instead of warning and called my bluff and got his crew after me.
Since I wasn't willing to go all the way...no choice but to dip.
Wasn't tryna kill OR be killed....

 

[lib123]

What do you think about the (racist IMO) theory that legalized abortion reduced inner city crime?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Also, what do you think about the theory that modern distractions (smartphones, social media, etc.) have kept many youth preoccupied and off the streets?

We always have intellectuals/nerds give their opinions on this, but never people who've lived that life.

 

[Piri Tomas]

you ever go back to your old hood and places you use to hustle at and see the same faces?

You see a few old faces here and there, especially when I go back to Wagner projects, it seems like a lot of the old timers are still kicking around up there. But I'd say the vast majority are either dead, still bidding, or moved away. The era really tore through my generation like a plague.

how you feel about all the young nikkas fukking with the credit card scams instead of hustling like how u use too?

It's a lot more intelligent in terms of the fact that they're insulating themselves from the risk of violence, and if they know how to do it with skill probably a lot less of a chance of getting arrested than what we used to do. I don't know enough about that stuff to comment/why or how people are getting into it these days.

if there was one thing you can bring back from the era what would it be?

That's a tough question because there wasn't much that was nice about that era. We weren't a functioning community in the hood. Society had really broken down in most ways. I find myself sad/wistful about gentrification and all the white people everywhere but when I think about what that means, it's just saying addition by subtraction... It's trading them for abandoned buildings and mountains of garbage/rats everywhere... Either way our community loses.

I guess I miss the old Puerto Rican day parade. It was very crazy in terms of the fights/violence, but it was the biggest party I had ever seen and it went on for days back then not just the day of the parade. NYPD basically gave up on policing it. To be 14 in June 1989, a fly young Rican dude, endless opportunities for sex, drinking, whatever you wanted to get into. It's the best party I've been to and I have gone to Rio Carnaval/Semana Santa in the DR/Trini carnival

if you had kids and they started to hustle like you did how would it make you feel?

I have daughters so I feel like that would be less of an issue (certain gender roles persist overall). I have lived my entire adult life to make that something they don't ever have to be around/feel the need to aspire to. I'm not the man in his 40s talking about his glory days in the streets. I show them all the great things that are possible when you don't hit the block and you go through the formal economy, take your education seriously, aim higher. That's what I try to show (not just preach) to any young brothers and sisters I come across who look for guidance/an example.

 

[Man]

Oh wow

Wow

 

[ChuckTaylor84]

Did you ever come across Big L and The NFL Crew?

 

[Frump]

Not in New York LOL. That wouldn't have gone well... In the wild out era a skinhead wouldn't have made it one block without getting that bald dome cracked open.

I remember when the KKK came to town in '99 or 2000, they were in lower Manhattan and needed a presidential police escort, riot police, tactical teams to keep them from getting touched. It was super ugly. NYC doesn't put up with that type of shyt.

Speaking of racism the Howard Beach and Bensonhurst stuff happened then did you see stuff or ever hear about them young Italians beefing with blacks and Latinos a lot at that time or was that two incidents that the media blew up as some regular occurrence?

 

[Piri Tomas]

Did you ever come across Big L and The NFL Crew?

Never. The West side was a completely different ball game. Never had a reason to go over there.

 

[Piri Tomas]

Speaking of racism the Howard Beach and Bensonhurst stuff happened then did you see stuff or ever hear about them young Italians beefing with blacks and Latinos a lot at that time or was that two incidents that the media blew up as some regular occurrence?

I never went out there, for obvious reasons, I'm black lol.

I'm from Spanish Harlem though so there were guineas in the vicinity (East side was majority Italian at one point). I know back in the day before my era they had blacks and Ricans on the East side in a position of inferiority. They were the dope suppliers and had the $ to make their presence felt in the streets. By the time I was in the game that shyt was over, blacks and Ricans were going right to foreign suppliers no middleman. By the crack era Italians were scared of us. They didn't want those problems.

Those infamous attacks were mob violence against unarmed black youths just passing through, completely innocent. Those guineas were cowards, they needed 20 men to stomp out one of us.

 

[Piri Tomas]

What do you think about the (racist IMO) theory that legalized abortion reduced inner city crime?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Also, what do you think about the theory that modern distractions (smartphones, social media, etc.) have kept many youth preoccupied and off the streets?

We always have intellectuals/nerds give their opinions on this, but never people who've lived that life.

I don't really buy that argument about legalized abortion cutting down on the youth population thus leading to a decrease in crime. You would have to track the specific correlation between demography in areas where crime decreased/stayed the same/increased. It always seemed like a reach.

Obviously something happened in America where violence went from 25-30K homicides a year in the 80s-early 90s to a third or quarter of that, so something needs to be explained.

I think it's really just a bunch of factors combined. Just looking at the New York I came of age in, it seemed like there were no resources for anything. I went to schools that were falling apart, when I disappeared and was sleeping in abandoned buildings at 12/13 caseworkers weren't able to reach me/put me in the foster system. I remember going hungry as a kid because welfare wasn't close to being enough to feed an apartment filled with children. When our parents became addicts there were no beds for them in rehab, no programs to integrate them back into the job market.

It's like society collapsed and we were on our own. Add that to the explosion of crack where all you needed was a little coke, a kitchen, and a few friends and you were a drug dealer. So basically everyone tried their hand at that shyt. So we're all broke, have no opportunities in formal society, and now we're obsessed with feeding ourselves or even getting our hands on real riches. So yeah, that's when the body count exploded.

As I was discussing with the brother from Baltimore, his city is getting worse than it was in the 80s/90s in terms of murder and mayhem. And those kids have smartphones/social media. I think the difference is Baltimore is still a city without enough resources and an economy that can't sustain all those poor black people who get excluded/discriminated against and trapped in a cycle. So selling drugs/protecting your hustle is all that's left. I think it's all about opportunity/levels of exclusion. To a lesser extent it's about policing. They only start policing when there is a dynamic economy/its participants to protect. I'm willing to bet that in cities like Baltimore whites with good jobs are very well protected by LE.

 

[Mr.Big Meat McGee]

Did you watch Juice when it came out? What are your thoughts on it?

 

[Piri Tomas]

Did you watch Juice when it came out? What are your thoughts on it?

Yeah, I went to see it when it came out, I was 16 or 17 years old at the time. At the time I thought it was corny. My perspective was that of someone already in the streets, so it seemed melodramatic like it didn't have much to do with what we were living. We were seeing crazier shyt on a daily basis. And the Bishop character was corny as hell to me. Basically just a psycho with no good qualities, couldn't even understand how the dude even had friends.

As a young person I didn't like hood movies because I was living that life already. It wasn't interesting and most of the movies got it wrong. I like mafia movies though like the Godfather, Goodfellas... shyt that was beyond my own personal experiences.

My opinion as an adult is that Juice is a bad movie. It might be interesting from a throwback perspective for you young guys to see some of the fashion/the way Harlem looked at the time. But to me it's just a bad movie. It oversimplifies the crime problem at the time, creating this "super predator" caricature in the form of Bishop.

Acting is also shytty. Tupac was a talented poet (not in my favorite emcee category) but his acting was overwrought and not impressive to me. I don't really know why Juice is such a loved flick, never saw the appeal personally.

 

[lib123]

What was your closest call getting busted by police? or getting clipped by others in the game?

Is it true that many get busted/snitched on last deal before they planned to get out of the game?