Survived Early 90s Drug Game in NYC AMA

[get these nets]

@Piri Tomas ,

1)East New York and Brownsville are and were some of the toughest sections of Brooklyn, but all the street figures out of BK in the 1980s were from other parts of Brooklyn. How is it that Fort Greene and Bed Stuy names ring louder than from those places that are actually worse areas?

2)I was in middle school the summer that crack took over everything. I remember dudes getting involved for sneaker money(in fact that was the sign that dudes were hustling.....fresh new kicks every week).I saw a generation of dudes sign up for the life , to me, because they wanted a shortcut to making money. As a result of witnessing this from the ground, I don't take a lot of the "mass incarceration" "new jim crow" talk seriously. Meaning, dudes chose to get involved in drug selling and when caught, should do the time. Yes, crack vs cocaine amounts and sentences don't add up......so, don't sell crack. Every person, who I've ever known who got locked up just accepted the time....knowing that they got away with much more than what they got sentenced for..and they kept it moving.
Your thoughts as person who was inside the game.

3)Without naming the person, which member of the community were you most surprised to see cop drugs. I worked summer youth one year and dude who worked with us was out there in the streets. He pointed out to us the people who were buying coke and crack......older people who we looked up to ..store owners, ministers,etc In so many words, he was telling us that public image was a facade to dudes who were out there clocking......dimes, respected people, leaders....just fiends to him.

 

[Piri Tomas]

@Piri Tomas ,

1)East New York and Brownsville are and were some of the toughest sections of Brooklyn, but all the street figures out of BK in the 1980s were from other parts of Brooklyn. How is it that Fort Greene and Bed Stuy names ring louder than from those places that are actually worse areas?

2)I was in middle school the summer that crack took over everything. I remember dudes getting involved for sneaker money(in fact that was the sign that dudes were hustling.....fresh new kicks every week).I saw a generation of dudes sign up for the life , to me, because they wanted a shortcut to making money. As a result of witnessing this from the ground, I don't take a lot of the "mass incarceration" "new jim crow" talk seriously. Meaning, dudes chose to get involved in drug selling and when caught, should do the time. Yes, crack vs cocaine amounts and sentences don't add up......so, don't sell crack. Every person, who I've ever known who got locked up just accepted the time....knowing that they got away with much more than what they got sentenced for..and they kept it moving.
Your thoughts as person who was inside the game.

3)Without naming the person, which member of the community were you most surprised to see cop drugs. I worked summer youth one year and dude who worked with us was out there in the streets. He pointed out to us the people who were buying coke and crack......older people who we looked up to ..store owners, ministers,etc In so many words, he was telling us that public image was a facade to dudes who were out there clocking......dimes, respected people, leaders....just fiends to him.

1) Every single hood had the same types of street figures... major killers, stickup kids, kingpins, etc. I knew of people back then who were making the papers from ENY/Brownsville before they even made the papers, and I never even went to Brooklyn for anything. Fort Greene projects has a special mystique because of Albee Square Mall and their connection to Eric B and Rakim. They turned downtown Brooklyn (a few blocks away) into a pickpockets'/stickup kids' paradise. And the fact that everyone on the Paid in Full album back cover was an official street dude from those projects solidified their place in history even though they weren't deadlier than dudes in other hoods necessarily.

2) Highly disagree with this. Most of us got involved very young. That was part of what revolutionized the drug game in that era. Before, the kingpins were all grown ass men with wives, children of their own, often an entire legit work/education history before getting involved in drug dealing. We were born into that first generation that was crucified by the post-Vietnam heroin epidemic (I was born in '75). Our parents were often junkies themselves.

So in the crack era you saw a lot of us get involved to survive (little kids with grown people responsibilities), eat, have somewhere to sleep, bare essentials. Crack came along and let us, the poorest of the poor, touch real fortunes. We swept up in this era and many of us didn't have much of a chance to go that other route, we were knee deep as minors (15 now is not 15 back then).

There are dudes who got sent up north or to the Feds in their late teens/early 20s for nonviolent offenses (drugs, but no murders) who are never coming home. If society failed them from the jump, society fails them now for giving up on their rehabilitation, especially at such a young age.

And a lot of dudes took plea bargains (sometimes for football numbers) because there was no beating the system, especially the way the Feds operate. The fear of blowing trial ended up overpowering the desire to set the record straight.

3) All of the above, basically. People from all walks of life would be on the cheese lines. One that really left an impact on me was this girl (few years older than me) that I always had thing for from my projects. Really pretty, wifey material, came from a decent family... Well you know how that goes, she was barely recognizable after picking up a habit. Dudes didn't even want her after a certain point.

 

[get these nets]

1) Every single hood had the same types of street figures... major killers, stickup kids, kingpins, etc. I knew of people back then who were making the papers from ENY/Brownsville before they even made the papers, and I never even went to Brooklyn for anything. Fort Greene projects has a special mystique because of Albee Square Mall and their connection to Eric B and Rakim. They turned downtown Brooklyn (a few blocks away) into a pickpockets'/stickup kids' paradise. And the fact that everyone on the Paid in Full album back cover was an official street dude from those projects solidified their place in history even though they weren't deadlier than dudes in other hoods necessarily.

2) Highly disagree with this. Most of us got involved very young. That was part of what revolutionized the drug game in that era. Before, the kingpins were all grown ass men with wives, children of their own, often an entire legit work/education history before getting involved in drug dealing. We were born into that first generation that was crucified by the post-Vietnam heroin epidemic (I was born in '75). Our parents were often junkies themselves.

So in the crack era you saw a lot of us get involved to survive (little kids with grown people responsibilities), eat, have somewhere to sleep, bare essentials. Crack came along and let us, the poorest of the poor, touch real fortunes. We swept up in this era and many of us didn't have much of a chance to go that other route, we were knee deep as minors (15 now is not 15 back then).

There are dudes who got sent up north or to the Feds in their late teens/early 20s for nonviolent offenses (drugs, but no murders) who are never coming home. If society failed them from the jump, society fails them now for giving up on their rehabilitation, especially at such a young age.

And a lot of dudes took plea bargains (sometimes for football numbers) because there was no beating the system, especially the way the Feds operate. The fear of blowing trial ended up overpowering the desire to set the record straight.

3) All of the above, basically. People from all walks of life would be on the cheese lines. One that really left an impact on me was this girl (few years older than me) that I always had thing for from my projects. Really pretty, wifey material, came from a decent family... Well you know how that goes, she was barely recognizable after picking up a habit. Dudes didn't even want her after a certain point.

thanks for candid responses

as far as #2..I'm one of those people you mentioned in post 401.....people who kept on the straight and narrow even though surrounded by chaos and destruction. We lived in a relatively decent section of Newark when crack took over, and it took over those young dudes the same way it took over dudes who were from Prince Street and from bad living situations. My first hand experience is seeing dudes making conscious decision to get involved..both parents, decent place to live....still selling drugs on the corner for sneakers, jewelry and cars. and neighborhood declines rapidly.

Again, thanks for your candid answers.

 

[get these nets]

bump

 

[Ol’Otis]

fukk outta here with the Snowfall shyt.

a good show but John(RIP) fukked up not consulting Freeway Rick and Harry O

 

[get these nets]

a good show but John(RIP) fukked up not consulting Freeway Rick and Harry O

I watched episodes of first season, until they sprinkled the weird stuff into the script.

 

[Ol’Otis]

until they sprinkled the weird stuff into the script.

exactly...i had/have to skip a lot of shyt

could've did without the mexican storyline

 

[Ol’Otis]

@Deacon Frye how dewww b-more natives feel about the wire?

i don't know why i never asked yeww this question?

 

[murksiderock]

Damn I gotta read this shyt, good thread...

I survived the 00s as a teen from Cali to the Carolinas and the 10s in different phases, from my jackboy phase to interstate trafficking...

Will be 10 years that I got outta prison on September 28 this year, and have not been back. Watched a gang of people around me, in different states, have the typical outcome, and I'm sitting here at 30 in two weeks one of the rare individuals I know who was in the shyt for real and walked away with no ties, hands clean...

 

[Mtt]

did you know your hustling that eventually invested low key and made it out the streets successfully and maintained their success out the streets?

 

[BmoreGorilla]

@Deacon Frye how dewww b-more natives feel about the wire?

i don't know why i never asked yeww this question?

Everybody here loved the Wire. And it wasn’t odd to see somebody you know playing an extra. People from out of town tho get it misconstrued and think the whole city is like that

 

[Booker T Garvey]

@Deacon Frye how dewww b-more natives feel about the wire?

i don't know why i never asked yeww this question?

Those b more accents

 

[Mtt]

@Piri Tomas bump

 

[murksiderock]

This was a dope thread, I love sitting down and talking with other guys who got away. It's amazing so many people live that life simultaneously but so few walk out of it...

Yesterday was chopping with a brother I've been working with for about 6 months. He a few years older than me (34) and was telling me that one of the guys he used to grind with back in the day just got bumped with a bunch of cocaine, like 16 keys...

Now that ain't the point, my impression of dude is that he was active when he was younger but I do think he embellishes a little to kind of impress me; this has happened to and with me for a long time, cats doing this. But he said his guy just got bumped with 16 last week, DEA, and he worried they gonna start looking backwards to see whoever affiliated with dude on that level. So he worried bout getting caught up in the sauce...

I told him not to worry about getting caught up if his hands are clean now, be more worried the guy who got bumped is gonna snitch. He said they aren't worried about that, homeboy is solid, so I said dont worry about anything else. If the Feds are coming they are coming regardless. If you're already clean and have been for awhile, as he's told me, then just keep living your life righteously....

The point of this though is that it got me to thinking about a relatable experience where I was worried the people could retroactively tie me into some shyt. To that extent I was never greatly worried, but I shared a relatable moment with him...

 

[murksiderock]

When I was about at the end of my time in, we're talking Fall 2016, I had a homeboy get arrested in Florida with another associate of ours. They got knocked with H (nothing major, just a few bundles) and had outstanding warrants on robberies in Alabama and a body and robberies in North Carolina. There were two other guys in NC implicated in the body with them, but I dont know those guys...

Anyway lot of talking in the street after they got arrested, eventually people (including his girl) telling me my homeboy was snitching on the other three dudes about the body. Where this ties me in is a few months prior I'd given homeboy a gun, and the potential homeboy had used the gun in any of the crimes he was accused of...

So everybody around me, my homegirl, pregnant girl at the time, other homeboys unrelated to these guys I knew, told me to dissociate myself completely from dude. Dont answer his calls or communicate with his girl about him, because if he was telling on the body he would tell about where he got a gun from or even lie about the shyt. Plus he'd been with me and around me on a number of trips transporting drugs between states, so people thought dude could flip on me about that...

This entered my mind too, but a couple other things did as well. First, the gun I gave him was at least two months before he got arrested, I hadn't seen dude in over two months. So when he got knocked, if the gun I gave him was recovered, it hadn't been in my possession in so long it would be impossible to say I ever had it...

So if it was used in any crime, it would be impossible to link me to any crime, mainly because I really had nothing to do with them to start with. Serial was scratched off the firearm anyway, so tracing its origins would be hard and if its origins were traced it STILL wouldn't trace back to me because it's not like I bought it legally or could go buy a gun anywhere legally...

I was on probation at this time for possession of a firearm and people coulda violated me for associating with dude, and getting a gun charge while on probation for a gun charge is what had all my people more afraid than anything. But again thinking it through about the only thing that coulda come from it was an empty investigation that went nowhere...

So I shared this story with my coworker yesterday, you have to look at things rationally. Just because someone you know gets bumped doesn't mean you're next, and at any rate they have to prove you were involved, starting with probable cause to have sufficient evidence to even charge you with. nikkas don't get charged just because someone says your name...

And at any rate he isnt worried about his guy telling, so there's nothing to worry about. If you fukked around half decade ago and been clean since, the only thing that could trip you is if you still associate with nikkas who are still active. That's willful association and can breed a conspiracy to some current shyt you may not ne part of, but they not coming to you for some shyt you've long distanced yourself from...