This all happened in 1988, and
before I get
downvoted on this topic let me point
that
nobody was hurt. I even think some
good came out of it.
At that time I lived in
Manhattan's
Lower East Side (aka "The East Village" in
real estate speak)
This was shortly before the
neighborhood became
trendy and
expensive.
The
block, as we residents referred to it, was mostly
Latino (really great people
to live amongst by the way), with a smattering of struggling
artists and
musicians.
The neighborhood was pretty
run down back then; most of the
tenements were owned
by
absentee landlords who didn't
give a shit about the people who lived in their
property;
they just wanted to
maximize their
return on investment.
About one third of the available
buildings were
warehoused - that is,
the
doors and
windows were sealed up with bricks and the apartments were unoccupied.
This was - and still is - a pretty common practice despite the
urgent need for
affordable housing in
New York. Many
landlords choose, for a variety
of reasons, to keep their properties
unoccupied. Some
speculate this is done to keep
rents high by limiting supply, but I suspect the real reasons are more complex and varied.
Lots of
funky shit happened on the block, since
cops would only venture into that
part of Manhattan in a
police van - some six
officers at a time. The entire time I lived
there I
never saw a cop walking down the street.
For the Latinos however, it was home and they made the best of it. Every
summer evening
they would sit on their
stoops, getting out of their small, cramped and not to mention
hot apartments.
They'd take in the
night air,
gossip, shout greetings to each other across the street,
share drinks
and
cigarettes and generally enjoy life. Their
children would play in the streets, interrupting
their games when the occasional vehicle drove by.
By 10PM however, the
party was over since most of them worked
blue collar jobs, and
were up at at the
crack of dawn.
In the
winter the block was pretty quiet regardless of the time, since nobody was
hanging out.
It was in the
autumn that we noticed that one of the warehoused buildings had been
opened.
Squatters did this all of the time, so none of us ever
dreamt
of calling the
police
or worse, HPD - New York's "Housing Preservation and Development"
(many called it Housing Prevention due to their all around bungling) department.
It was a few weeks after this that we began to
notice all sorts of
lowlifes types hanging
around the block. They were clearly
strung out crackheads and it seems like a
good idea
at this point to mention
Fernando and Eddie, the "good"
drug dealers.
Fern and Eddie, as we called them, were neighborhood kids made good. They bought
a needed
commodity -
heroin at a low price, and sold it at a
mark up for
profit.
They added value by
repackaging the commodity, operating a
distribution channel and running a
protection group.
Fern and Eddie never let anything funky happen with their
business. They were interested
in moving their commodity quickly, quietly and without
official attention of any kind. And they would take drastic action if anyone interfered with any of these goals.
One time a
customer of theirs needed money and
stole a piece of
art from a
gallery I
owned at the time. I didn't
complain to anyone since the
theft was done so quickly. I reimbursed the
artist for the
stolen work out of my own pocket.
But the artist told Fern, and the
next day his crew grabbed the
scum bag
and brought
him into my gallery. They asked me if this was they guy that had stolen the art, and when
I said yes, quickly smashed his left
hand several times with
baseball bat, telling him to
never even
look at my gallery again.
Fern and Eddie
gave back to the neighborhood in many ways; every summer they
organised and funded a huge
block party, complete with
bands,
free food,
booze
and
fireworks.
They'd take the kids from the block
camping in the
Adirondacks a couple times a year, and
were known to buy food for families if the
breadwinner was
locked down or otherwise
unable to work. They
were products of, and took care of
their community.
And surprisingly, Fern and Eddie
were very
anti drug, at least in their own personal space. Perhaps because they saw first
hand the effects of
addiction, they never touched the stuff themselves, or allowed anyone
from their families to touch it either.
The point is that Fern and Eddie sold drugs but they were
socially responsible. The people that
had opened up the warehoused building were different. They were the worst kind of
drug dealer imaginable - they sold but sold to finance
their own habit.
They didn't give a shit what happened around them, as long as they could get their stuff
free.
Their
customers just wanted to get
fucked up, and didn't care what they had to do to get
the money necessary. There were lots of little and not so little
thefts in the neighborhood.
Lots of people were getting
mugged by one of these
scum bags and of course the
police wouldn't do shit.
Fern and Eddie wouldn't intervene either - the low lifes had enough sense not to mess
with these guys, their operation or family members. There was nothing in it for them
to go after the crack heads so the situation
deteriorated rapidly.
It was in
December when I was coming home from an evening of fun at
CBGBs that it
happened. I was too
poor to afford a
telephone in my apartment, and had to use a
pay phone on
the
corner. I was calling the
voice mailbox for my gallery when a scum bag passed me,
turned around and came back to ask if I had any
spare change.
I told him I didn't have any, and turned back to the phone. He then pushed me from behind, not hard but
still pushed me, and asked
"why do you have money for the phone then?".
I could see what was coming. I told him to
fuck off and he shouted
Empty your pockets!.
Dropping the handset, I moved away from the phone and put on my
war face.
Fuck you! I yelled. He pulled out this
huge knife
and moved towards me.
I kicked at him with me left foot, screaming
Fucker! I had to keep him at a distance, where his weapon was ineffective.
His eyes popped wide open and he stopped coming at me.
Then he turned tail and ran back towards the
crack house.
I didn't notice that he was looking
past me, and so for a few
brief seconds I felt very macho! But let me explain.
One of my friends -
Whiteboy! - had this huge
pit bull. It wasn't particularly
nasty as these
dogs go,
but it would do whatever he told it to. He used to get drunk in his
crib and would take it out late at night and watch it root around
garbage cans, killing the
rats that would rush out.
(A cheap thrill!)
I heard a sound of nails on pavement as the dog charged past me, after the
crackhead.
Woof! The dog assured me as he rushed past
(I'll take care of everything boss don't worry!)
The low life moved like an
Olympic class sprinter though, and made it to the building.
My buddy called the
excited,
barking and
aggressive dog off, and we talked a little about what had happened.
Apparently this wasn't the first time someone from
the block had been accosted in such a manner. He told me that the old
latina across the street
had been beaten just last week. We talked for a while more about how much these
assholes
sucked, and then we parted.
I went home and thought about it. I was
pissed! The old woman was quite nice and in fact
had given me rice and beans several times when I was out of work. And what if one of
these low lifes went after my
girlfriend as she came home from her job as an
exotic dancer late at night?
I didn't know why, but this entire thing upset me greatly.
Something had to be done.
So for about a week I'd walk past the crack house several times a day.
I watched as low lifes would enter through a large
hole that had been broken
in the
cinder blocks. It was large enough to walk through with little trouble.
I noticed that people would enter and walk directly to the rear of the
front room. I heard from
other
concerned residents on the block that all drug-related activity took place in a single room at the
back of the building, farthest from the street. The
crack house was most active in the early hours
of the morning.
I extended my information gathering to approaching the crack house in the daylight.
Several times I entered the front room and noted that I heard no voices during the day.
Now that I had adequate information, I made my plans. I filled several large
plastic trash bags
with
toilet paper.
Over the course of several days I took the plastic bags and dumped them into the front
room. This wasn't a
big deal since lots of people were dumping their trash there. The
residents, of course, didn't mind much at all since they were fucked up most of the time.
I saved one plastic bag for the last trip.
I waited for a particularly cold and rainy night. I knew that way
street traffic would be
minimal. I put on a black
sweatshirt and
blonde wig a girl had left at my flat. Over
the black sweatshirt I put on a
white one.
In my remaining plastic bag I also put a small milk carton containing
gasoline. I took the
bag and entered the crack house. I dropped my last bag on top of the others I'd left there
and doused all of them with the gas. I lit the
mess up and ran like hell around the corner.
Once around the corner I ducked into a dark doorway and removed my blonde wig and white
sweatshirt. I stuffed them into a trash bag and dropped it into a nearby garbage
container. I darted across the street to a
pay phone and called
911 telling them about the fire.
The City may not have cared about lots of things that happened down there, but they
did care about fire. In the densely packed tenements entire blocks could catch fire and burn
out of control.
Property would be destroyed. I knew they'd react quickly.
I strolled back to watch the action. Even though it was only three minutes later, the
fire department was already there, and quickly
extinguished the blaze. They must have encountered the residents during their search for possible victims, since shortly afterward the
police arrived. They entered the building and came out with several crack heads in custody.
The next day the
city came and
sealed the building back up.
So why am I writing this? I don't really know. I've never told anyone - with the exception
of my
girlfriend about it. I could have gotten a lot of
mileage out of it back then with the residents on
the block, but it's not particularly
smart to do something like this and then
brag about it.
I was
younger and much
crazier and more
volatile then.
I'm
older now. I work as an
investment banker. I've since moved to
London
and I go to
business school.
I don't have as much time to
make art as I would like
(although I make it a point to write down an idea in my notebooks every day).
I have a lot more to lose by doing something
like that now.
But I like to think that even now I would do it again if necessary.
Because it was the
right thing to do at the time.