Drugs and murder

I wrote a little thing about encountering drugs behind the mini school where I grew up back in the 80’s which triggered some long forgotten memories of the neighborhood and what it was like. 

I grew up on the block of the mini school and we’d find some vials behind it when going after a foul ball or if the football took a weird bounce after an incomplete pass.  Vials and used condoms weren’t exactly prevalent but they were definitely there.  The elementary school that the mini school was a part of was one block away and significantly bigger.  It took up a small city block with the right half more as park space and the left half as the actual school building.  The right half had a full basketball court with what we called the pyramid behind the furthest hoop.  The pyramid was a cylindrical concrete structure that had steps cut into it every 18” or so.   It could have been more than 6’ tall at its flat peak.  Behind the pyramid was a handball wall, which has nothing do with anything relating to the story but more for you to get a sense of space.  A good 20’ before the hoop closest to the street was the chicken pit.  The chicken pit was strange even to us kids back then.  It felt out of the gladiator days.  A three or four foot drop into sand with concrete walls all around.  It was what you’d expect to find in camps where the kids fight each other to the death.  It was strange because if you were small enough to be intrigued by playing in the sand there was no way for you to get in or out.  Unlike today the playground equipment of the olden days NYC factored more with what could be done affordably and less with safety in mind.  So there was no ladder or any other way in or out of the chicken pit outside of jumping in and climbing out.   What I would imagine was installed for safety was some railing outside of the chicken pit so no one would walk right into the hole. 

Keep in mind that this elementary school only went up to 3^rd or 4^th grade so we are dealing with kids ranging from 5 to 8 or 9.  We’d hardly use the chicken pit as kids.  The sand was dirty and really after your initial use the novelty would wear off and it would be largely ignored outside of a marker for foot races which was tantamount in the hierarchy of 7 and 8 year olds jockeying for status.  Anyway, I remember one morning making my way to the main school building and seeing a small crowd of kids by the pit and seeing the yellow and black police tape all around the railing.  There were a couple of syringes down in the sand and come to think of it something worse must have gone down since the caution tape was put up but the evidence was still there.  I remember thinking that it was a cool thing, mainly because it was out of the ordinary but it didn’t have any impact on our days outside of the chicken pit being shut down either by an order or de facto since no one wanted to go down there. 

The scarier thing that had happened one morning on my way to the main building so I couldn’t have been more than 8 involved the pyramid.  I don’t remember if I saw it or if my brain put together a mental picture.  School started around 8 so we would have to get there by 7:45 to line up and get ready to go into the building.  Getting to school early was another weird source of cache between the kids.  On some level it had to do with hanging out and being kids, meaning busting on each other, saying things we believed were true but with only the limited understanding that kids have.  I would always try to get to school as early as possible in an effort to be cool but living a block away and having responsible adults around me wouldn’t really let that happen.  On this one day we were walking to the main building and see a large amount of people, police cars and tape all by the pyramid.  Apparently only an hour or so before hand someone was shot, (if memory serves over a drug deal gone bad but I’m not sure) and spread out crucifix style with their head on the top of the pyramid and their arms and legs on the steps.  Looking back on it with adult perspective, I don’t remember the teachers mentioning it or being visibly shaken by it.  I definitely remember that school wasn’t cancelled or any other deviation from the norm. 

I’m trying to reconcile whether it was because New York was tougher back in the day or if we’ve become more understanding of how trauma effects people these days.  It’s strange to think about either incident, the syringes or the body, causing a massive uproar by everyone these days.  Maybe it had to do with more of an immigrant population, maybe because so many people were doing drugs and getting killed in new york back then that it wasn’t seen as such a big deal.  I don’t know but do I know we’ve most certainly changed as a society. 

Work and shit

Being unemployed has caused a lot of my conversations and thoughts lately to be about work and working.   Whether or not work is inherent to being human or if it’s been an advent of society in an effort for people with the means to not have to work.  On a far more base level, I got into a conversation about when we each started working and my knee jerk answer has always been that I started working at 16 setting up an archive file room for an environmental company.  That’s not completely accurate though.  Thinking back on it a little bit more I remembered that I had done some entry-level office work for a few days at 13 or 14 but even before that I was a super of sorts. At 12 or so the building we were living in was sold and the new owner didn’t feel like making the trip over twice a week to pick up the garbage cans so he offered me something like $20 a week.   On top of picking up garbage cans I had sweep out the four floors and keep the front of the connected building swept and clean. The building also had a backyard, which wasn’t so much a back yard as it was concrete blocks and a wild overgrown assortment of weeds.  They might not have all been weeds but being a city kid I have no idea what the difference is between weeds and non-weeds.  Now what’s relevant to the story isn’t the back yard but rather how you got to the back yard. 

I’ll do my best to describe the building.  If you were facing the entrance-way you’d see two stone steps which led to a double door to a foyer where the mail boxes were. To the left of the entrance way was an iron gate that rounded to the doorway.  To the right there were the same iron gates except that at the end there was a swinging gate, which lead down to a tunnel, which brought you to a shared space with the connected building next door and then up five or six steps which then led to the backyard. 

To go off topic for a minute, we lived on the first floor and right by those 5 or 6 steps, which led to the backyard was the small window of our bathroom.  The apartment was a two bedroom laid out in a straight line.  As you walked in you’d be in a hallway with the bathroom greeting you.  If you headed left you’d hit the kitchen and then my room, which faced the backyard.  If you headed right you’d hit the living room and then through a set of French doors my mom’s room, which faced the street.  The bathroom had only a small window and up until this one night we would keep it open to vent out the steam that would build up after using the shower.  The shower wasn’t very big and my mom would put the hair products on the shelf directly in front of the window.  From the ground the window had to be a good 6 feet high.  Well, one night we were all woken up to a series of tapping.  Tap, tap.  Tap, tap.  Tap, tap. I don’t remember if I woke up from the tapping or from my mom screaming but in either case the situation became clear.  Someone had jumped and hung off the ledge of the bathroom window and while holding themselves up they started to move the various shampoo and conditions bottles away from the 24” window in an effort to climb in.  Thankfully mom’s screaming scared or startled them enough to jump down and run away. 

I think you get a sense of how secluded the area back there was.  To get back to the work part of the story, I’m sweeping up outside and making my way to the tunnel to finish up and earn that sweet $20 and then I smell it and see it.  I don’t remember if there was a no pets policy in the building or if people just didn’t have pets and at the same time the neighborhood didn’t really have dogs around.  I make my way down the stairs and there it is, shit.  Human shit.  How my 12 year old mind was so convinced that it was human I’m not sure.  Maybe because of the lack of dogs, maybe the size, I’m not sure.  I am sure that I was horrified and disgusted that someone could do that.  I might have stopped being the super in training after that incident because I was so horrified.  Now this memory came flooding back during this conversation and my adult brain definitely saw it very differently than my kid brain.  I relived a small portion of the disgust but then my thoughts were of what kind o situation that person must have been in.  Were they homeless?  Were they on drugs?  Was this alley a godsend?  A place of hidden from the street where they could have some privacy as they tended to a base need in a time of need. 

Drugs were around the neighborhood.  We used to play in a parking lot, which was in front of a small annex of classrooms for the elementary school a block away.  The school and the lot was called “the mini-school.”  The back of the mini-school was a little scarier since it was darker and there was significantly less space than there was in the front area.  I remember finding small vials and condoms when a ball would inevitably make its way around to the back and the older kids would make me go and get it.  I like to think I was a street savvy kid but I’m pretty sure I was still fairly ignorant about these things.  Even if I had a base level understanding that they fell into the categories of drugs and sex, I definitely didn’t have a handle on the logistics or details of them.  On some level all of these things probably factored into my knee jerk reaction of thinking the shit was a person’s, but now I’m thinking of the neighborhood as a whole and how during the 80’s and early 90’s where else would do you do things but not out in the streets in the most secluded of areas. 

Hotel Astoria- The Bathroom

Shortly after college I moved into a three bedroom apartment with one of my closest friends.  We had been in bands together for years and having done some touring and having friends who toured in their bands, it was really important to me to have the space for friends to crash with us.  Early on with decked out the spare bedroom with a futon and made it into a bedroom/recording studio covered in music and movie posters. 

Besides our mutual love of music we had bonded in our formative years over Star Wars.  Over the years we each individually amassed a bunch of Star Wars merchandise from figures to posters to magazines to plates.  It still pains me that I didn’t come up with the idea first but the conversation went something like this”

“Yo, we should theme one of the rooms.  A Star Wars theme.” He said.

“Umm.” I said.

“Let’s make the bathroom the Star Wars Bathroom. Think about it, after this apartment we’ll either be living on our own or with girlfriends and at that point your not going to have a Star Wars themed room.  This is probably our only chance to do it, and wouldn’t life feel less complete without a Star Wars themed room?” he said.

I couldn’t argue with the logic.  It was flawless and rock solid.  Another thing about the bathroom was that all the tile, the tub and the toilet where this worn out 1960’s pink, so covering it up as much as possible would be a happy byproduct of this stupid endeavor.  We began dressing up the bathroom by putting some figures around the sink and some movie posters.  I scoured ebay for some towels and a shower curtain, both Episode 1 related but what could you do, beggars and choosers.  After a few hours of two people working in a cramped 30 square foot space we considered the job completed for now.  There were still stacks of magazines and other things we could do but our energy level was spent.

Over the next year we had quite a few people stay with us, most for a day or two and others for months.  Towards the beginning of 2005 or the end of 2004 a friend of ours who had become quite popular because of a Star Wars themed song had moved back to New York and needed a place to stay for a bit.  We happily obliged.  Because of his rising fame, open love of Star Wars and the impending release of Star Wars Episode III in May, oh and his even more famous friends, he was to be their guest at a special advance screening of Episode III at Skywalker Ranch.  I don’t think I’ve ever been as jealous of anything quite as much as I was of that.  Both my roommate and I secretly & desperately hoped that by some divine intervention they would call him and say that he could bring a friend or two.  Heartbreakingly, that didn’t happen. 

Our temporary roommate left early Friday morning and gave us a call around 11pm our time after he had a private tour of the grounds and had been checked into his bungalow.  He regaled us with the greatness/ unbelievableness of it all and we took our jealous energy and put it to work.  We worked for the next four hours throwing the Star Wars Bathroom into hyperdrive.  We plastered the walls with pictures and posters.  We taped figures to walls in elaborate space battles using the vertical walls as their horizontal floors so they would fill the space.  The Pièce de résistance came when I noticed that the bathroom had two light switches.  The one operated the lights and the second operated the fan and the electrical outlet above the medicine chest.   The box we had on the floor of the stuff to be added to the bathroom I noticed a tape copy of the Empire Strikes Back soundtrack.  In the recording studio I had a pair of junky computer speakers and I knew I had seen an old Walkman somewhere in the apartment.  After tracking down the Walkman and making sure it worked, I got to wiring and taping.  By plugging in the speakers into the outlet and hiding them in the medicine chest along with the Walkman, which was set to constantly loop, the moment you flipped both light switches you would be bombarded by light and the sound of the soundtrack.  Hiding the speakers and the Walkman really took the bathroom to the next level.  I’d bet the Skywalker Ranch didn’t have such high-tech bathrooms.

The unexpected upside of having the soundtrack playing in the bathroom was that it made mundane tasks feel monumental.  Showering to the Imperial March woke you up more so than any cup of coffee ever could.  The uncertainty of what song would be on next when you entered could determine your day, would it be something uplifting or since Empire is the darkest of the original three, would it bring you down. 

Our temporary roommate came back having stolen tampons from Skywalker Ranch to add a feminine needs section to the bathroom.  Shortly after he returned he was interviewed by Time Out New York who came to our place and naturally because of his association with his Star Wars song, they did their photo shoot in the bathroom.  We mounted the picture over where he was sitting (the toilet obviously) to create a super meta visual of you looking at the space you were currently peeing, at least for the gentlemen who frequented the bathroom. 

I moved out of that apartment in the summer of 2009 and the new roommates insisted that the run of the bathroom come to an end, mainly because it was filthy.  It most certainly was filthy.  Taking down or moving board games, action figures, playsets and whatever else to clean was a daunting and time consuming task that no one volunteered for.  So the memorabilia came down revealing the faded pink tiles once again. 

Sneakers

Lately, I’ve been on a big sneaker kick, big enough to corrupt and/or taint my morals.  My newfound interest in footwear has sparked a lot of questions from friends and loved ones.   How much did this pair cost?  Did you really wait in line for those?  Why?   The first two answers are a lot and yes respectively but the third is more complicated and I’ve been giving it plenty of thought. 

A few years back after I quit my full time job to start my own company I was working from home most days and with that I needed background noise while I was working.  I plowed through the sitcoms and comedies in my collection until I hit upon on the few Pixar movies I had.  I watched all of them in succession, all the special features, and the commentaries.  During the early run of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, I was at the theater opening day and buying the DVDs the first day of release but at some point before Monsters Inc. I either lost interest or something changed.  This thing that I was truly passionate about fell by the waste side.  Which got me thinking about things that defined us as individuals and how &why those things change or disappear from our lives. 

Growing up in Astoria, on the weekends and most certainly during the summers we’d walk up to Steinway Street starting from 30^th Avenue we’d hit ever sneaker store until Broadway.  There were five or six different shops, some were Army & Navy stores, other dedicated shoe stores.  Looking back on it now, they were all mom & pop shops.  In this weekly pilgrimage we’d ogle ever pair of new Nikes and Reeboks.  Keep in mind this was in the late 80’s to ear 90’s; and with no way of getting any information about release dates or even models, you had to continually go to each and every shop to see what was out.  Sneakers were making huge strides (sorry for the terrible pun) at that point with Michael Jordan and even Run DMC drawing fans to brands. 

Nike was definitely the true brand of choice for our neighborhood.  I can’t pin point the day but I can definitely pin point the year and more importantly the shoe that started me on this path.  It was 1988 and it was the first pair of Air Max 1s in red.  Others share my belief in the wow factor of this particular show, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1111890347/max100-the-book-project I don’t know if it was the shape, the use of red and grey or a combination of everything but I was floored.  If I remember correctly a pair cost between $80-$90, which given the time was a significant amount of money, somewhere around $170 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation.  I think our monthly rent on a two bedroom apartment in Astoria was about $500-$600 a month for some better perspective on how expensive they were.  I begged and begged for a pair and ended up getting a pair for my birthday.  I distinctly remember my mom’s unhappiness about the price when she gave them to me and recited an anecdote about overhearing another mother telling a son that the $35 pair was too expensive and to put them back.  The thing that both of these moms didn’t get was that sneakers weren’t just shoes.  They were everything.  Everything!  Sneakers were to the street as suits were to Wall Street.  With the burgeoning ad dollars and cultural significance, what you were wearing had a direct correlation with your coolness.  The latest pair of sneakers garnered immediate attention from friends and even strangers.  The peer pressure and jealously lead to the “game” of stepping on someone’s new shoes in an effort to dirty them up.  Given the low to middle class neighborhood that we grew up in, that pair had to last you a year, so getting the latest and greatest was imperative or you’d left behind.  Another aspect of it was that certain shoes’ desirability were enhanced not by those who were marketing them but the people who would wear them around the neighborhood. 

I think when we all reach a certain point, we spend our disposable income on the things that we wanted so desperately as kids but couldn’t afford at the time.  Reliving our childhoods one pair at a time, least in my case.