In 1965, the year that I was born in, the state of New York had a population roughly around 18 million plus and it's overall number of murders for the state of New York was about 836. By the summer of 1983, with a population a little more than 17 million, the state of New York's murder rate had surged to about 1,958. Well over three times the number of murders from the the day I was born. Ironically this high number was actually lower than the previous four years ('79 - '82) in which the murder rate average was well over 2,000 a year. It was not too hard to guess that the overwhelming majority of those murders were committed in New York City area.
Today we commonly refer to unrelated weather conditions occurring at the same time to form the "perfect storm" that might cause much more significant and life changing damage if those conditions had not occurred at the same time. Well in the early 1980's, New York City was experiencing a perfect storm of a different kind. It was a storm of money making hustles. From Wall Street to 125 street, everyone was doing the "hustle" and these hustles had nothing to do with dancing. They had everything to do with making money. Lots of it.
In the early '80's, Wall Street saw the birth and boom of corruption filled leverage buyouts, junk bond and insider trading scandals secretly taking lives of their own. Hundreds of millions of dollars exchanged the hands of people who already had made a lot of money. Wall Street's "Masters of the Universe" who had names like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken had their financial schemes in full swing. By the close of the decade, Boesky and Milken had become the poster boys for financial greed on Wall Street. Two convicted criminals who could afford to pay their respective fines of $100 and $500 million dollar fines, and do little to no jail time. This was in spite of the monumental collateral damage that they caused on Wall Street and for tens of thousands of investors. But they were only a few of the top heads in a tall totem pole, and there were quite a few totem poles. This greed wasn't good. It was down right criminal.
Meanwhile on the average street corner, drug sales were becoming common place from the poorest to even the best of neighborhoods. For years cocaine had been considered a rich man's drug sold in bad neighborhoods. But now everyone wanted in on the game. You could now buy it in Greenwich Village, Park Avenue or Houston street. Cocaine had always had a status symbol attached to it. It wasn't considered addictive or all consuming drug like heroine and other drugs. So more and more casual users openly took to snorting cocaine in the bathrooms of clubs, their workplace or homes as a "pick me ups" to clear their heads and stimulate them.
To make matters even worse, the early '80's, saw a supply glut in the major cocaine producing countries such as the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Columbia. This caused a sudden drop in the price of cocaine and increased violence in the competition to make sales. Drug gangs fought openly to maintain, establish or procure new territory. Once the drug dealers decided to convert that cocaine to a smokeable form of rock or crystals or "crack" to help increase users addictive "highs" (and dealers profits), the formation of the "perfect storm" was complete. Soon casual cocaine users became the highly addicted crack users. They were guaranteed to come back for another purchases...not within days - but within hours. "Creakheads" as these newer addicts were now called, increased like zombies on the streets. All bets for peaceful territory settlements between rival drug gangs were now off. There was too much money to be made.
In the '80's it had become chic to show off how much money you made even though you lived in a city that was suffering urban blight and recovering from its financial bankruptcy of the mid '70's. To add to that America was recovering from inflation and a national jobless rate that had reached all time highs. The city had literally been ripped into two different worlds, separated by only a few streets and avenues. It was a world of the haves and the have nots. The only common ground for bank robbers, drug dealers, nurses, ordinary people and people who made fortunes were the dance clubs. Everyone wanted to go to a club and just disappear into the moment of having fun and letting go of whatever tensions or taboos they had built up inside themselves. On the dance floor everyone was one mind and one voice. There was no black or white, or rich or poor. No one better, no one worse. You just got on the floor for a few hours and let yourself go.
I remember watching President Carter on TV when he visited the then dilapidated South Bronx in 1977 and declared that he was going to initiate programs to end urban blight. Then in 1980 I watched, President Reagan visit the same area of the South Bronx and pour some salt into wounds by pointing out how President Carter and the Democrats had failed to improve anything in three years. Reagan believed in the trickle down theory where financial success in the private sector would help spur secondary economies and jobs throughout the city and the country. Unfortunately over the next decade, the only trickle down monies that the South Bronx or the Lower Eastside was seeing was when middle class and wealthy people drove in from the Upper Eastside, New Jersey or Connecticut to buy drugs. For us, the only job growth we saw was the drug dealers. Now the neighborhood drug dealers had become Masters of the Universe by virtue of their constant "tax free" cash flow.
The living to drug and alcohol excess played out in most of the club scenes. But, Gus Johnson wouldn't allow such open use of cocaine or any drugs at E Speakeasy. We made our money by being the low key social, dance club that had a nice bar and sometimes featured a live band. When you grew weary of all the pizazz and glitter of the others, and wanted to get involved with real connections with everyone from celebrities to ordinary people, you came to E Speakeasy. But if you wanted the flash and glitter, you went to the other clubs. And there was plenty of other clubs...
Drugs and alcohol use was only the beginning of the excesses in some of the other clubs. Studio 54 founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were found guilty of skimming money from their own club for tax evasion reasons, as well as funding and "party favors" (drugs). In 1980 the club was shutdown. This may have signified the end of the classic discotheque era, but it was only the beginning of the dance club craze of the 1980's. There were of course the older ones, "The Copacabana", "Paradise Garage", "Danceteria", and "The Limelight". Then there were the newer clubs that attracted the younger, hip hop, break dancing crowd. To name a few, "The Funhouse", "The Roxy", and "Dance Fever", aka "The Fever" up in the Bronx.
Newer dance clubs kept popping up all over the place, that they began outpacing alternative clubs like "Max's Kansas City" and "CB GB's" - clubs that had ushered in punk rock artists during the mid 70's. Surviving punk rock artists had now morphed into "new wave" music, a more commercial and "pop" musical rift, rather than their original loud, energized and distinctive sound from just a few years ago. Disco may have been dead, but everyone still wanted to dance the night away.
The money to be made in the dance club business was so enticing that even after serving time for tax evasion, Rubell and Schrager returned to the club scene as advisers and helped reopen Studio 54 under a new name "The Ritz" and then later, "The 'New' Studio 54" by the early 80's. The new club lacked the magic that it had captured in the mid '70's during the height of the discotheque era. Still, the original Studio 54 had established the modern formula on how to successfully market a "hot" dance club in New York City, albeit a short lived life span. First, you create a celebrity clientele. Second, you allow twice the amount of women inside to men. Third, you have live upcoming performers, lots of lights, glitz, food, alcohol and access to drugs...their own...or...subsidized. Lastly...you keep your club exclusive. Only a select few can get in.
My friends Crush Washington and Junito Rivera weren't allowed to visit me when I worked at E Speakeasy anymore. In addition, Gus and Mr. Cooper would throw me in a suit to work promotions with the sales rep for E Speakeasy along the midtown hotel circuit to keep me busy on the weekends. My friends reputations for dealing drugs had began to proceed them. Gus and Mr. Cooper only allowed Tony Conti to visit me that since he wasn't officially in or even known for being in a gang of any type. Even my family was trying to keep me from hanging out with them. My father offered me to live with him and his girlfriend on the Upper Westside where he worked as the building's maintenance foreman.
I didn't appreciate their concerted efforts that whole year, that was until August '83. That was the night that I promised to get together with Crush, Junito and Tony over at The Funhouse as a sort of reunion. We had not all been together for many months. We were going to have a boys night out, even left our girlfriends behind that night. The plan was to meet at the Funhouse at a certain time. Tony played as the go between me and Crush and Junito. Tony himself had been shuffling between down town at Maserik Towers on the Lower East side, where his mother lived with his grandmother for a few years and their new place in Bayside, Queens, where he was making plans to attend Queens College after we graduated next June.
When me and the gang started out in 7th grade together in Fall 1977, there was about 25 of us who were all good friends. By the middle of Spring '83 there were only about 10 of us still walking around and not in jail. Of that 10 now I was only hanging mostly with just one of them. A block party near Masaryk towers set off a chain reaction of events that seemed to get sucked up in the vacuum of violence, greed and machismo that was prevailing in the streets. Crush Johnson and Junito crew were feeling the pinch of increasing Dominican gangs taking over their corners. At a block party hosted by the then FM 92, WKTU a street fight erupted just as the party was coming to an end. The party was thrown to ease tensions among the rival gangs, instead some chose to use this moment of people's guards being dropped to stab a members of Crush's crew. Two days later, one members of the Dominican gang was shot in the leg as a warning.
There were no reprisals for a little while after that. But that wouldn't last too long. Crush, Junito, Tony and myself met a few weeks later at The Funhouse. My decision that night would haunt me the next 12 months. Tony and I weren't even inside The Funhouse 5 minutes before we heard that four lead members of the rival Dominican drug gang had somehow been allowed inside the club. Once the Dominican crew ran into Crush and his crew, the people in the club began clearing out of the way like towns people scattering at the OK Corral. Crush was surrounded by the four Dominicans, and the rest of his crew was surrounding the four Dominicans. Guns were not supposed to be allowed inside the club. Unfortunately...when security is on the take...shit happens. And this shit was seconds away from being blown all around the club once it hit the fan.
Most guys in Crush's situation, would have just been shot on the spot, even if his shooters were surrounded by rivals. But it was then that I realized how big Crush had gotten in the drug world. The four Dominicans were less afraid of retaliation by Crush's crew, and more concerned about him killing them first. All four Dominicans were wearing big gold crucifix chains around their necks. Without mincing many words, Crush told them that when they were ready to draw, he too was ready to draw too - there at the club or any street corner. They spoke to him about his disrespect of them and that his gang was weak and would be moved off the streets like garbage. Crush steeled his faced and looked into the eyes of the leader of the four Dominicans and told them to move him now if they wanted to. Or to go have a dance and enjoy the club. They wouldn't budge either way. He then looked down at their crosses and said to them in Spanish,
"Las balas no creen en Dios. Ellos le ayudan a encontrarse con El." [Bullets do not believe in God. They help you meet him.]
The four Dominicans eventually did back down, but then they continued to stalk us from the perimeter of the club. Unfortunately, what we didn't immediately realize was that they had one of their guys put a mark on me and Tony. Yep. Even though Tony and I weren't even in the drug gang business, we were being singled out as targets to be shot, before the end of the night, as a retaliation to Crush. For the next hour, we observed how certain faces in the club were watching us and stayed close to members of Crush's crew, guys who were actually carrying guns. We figured it out and knew this wasn't a good thing. Crush wanted Tony and I out of the mess. He told us that when the coast was clear to exit the club via a certain emergency exit door, manned by a bouncer who was on his payroll. He had two girls in his crew start a fake, but loud, girl on girl screaming fight near the bar, to cause a distraction. While all the macho guys watched, Tony and I slipped out the specified emergency door.
I would never seen Crush alive again. The Dominicans put out a contract on him and he was shot and killed the first week of September, my senior year in high school. Junito ran the gang for a little while longer that year and exercised retaliation on two of the four Dominicans from the club. Now the bodies in the streets began to pile up from both drug use and from gun and knife assaults. Even though I wasn't even in any gang...for the next 12 months, I was still a marked man by the Dominicans...
It got so bad for me, I had to transfer to the high school up by my father on the Upper Westside. That made me ineligible to play my senior year in high school, which then caused Syracuse to drop me from their scholarship interests and made me a virtual leper to all other interested colleges. I had been black listed as a drug dealing street thug.
So there I was, stuck in the middle of nowhere. There were hustles at every corner of the city, from Wall Street to the Mean Streets, and I couldn't capitalize on any one of them. Yet I could see all of them. It was all unfair. I blamed everyone and everything, including God. There was no God out here I said to Him. There is no church or love and respect of your fellow man in people's hearts out here anymore. This was just every man for himself. Now I too had to look out for number one.
Took me a while to realize that surviving that gun toting confrontation at the Funhouse wasn't the end of my life, but the beginning process of God resurrecting my life from my own 17 1/2 years of stupidity.
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