TURNING DOWN THE GRAFFITI GANGS- A Tale From the Vendome

As a kid growing up in Manhattan, I wrote graffiti. As a smart kid growing up in Manhattan, I quit writing on walls, after being busted on the subway. However, there was one night I was tempted to rejoin the "graffiti" gang community.

I was at a local church hall, that was rented as a place for the kids from the "projects" to gather. I had a social life in my own neighborhood, but was at war with Starsky, my best freind, at the time. This place was full of older kids, and they were selling joints out front, and inside. I was way out of my element, but struggled to "look cool." My classmate who brought me there led me over to a chalkboard, where people were writing their graffiti tags. If they sucked, they got erased immediately. The best ones were still up, and updated by their authors as challengers came along.

My buddy gave me a piece of chalk, and said "tag on the board, Chris-to-fuh." I tagged my bang 137, with the new style I had picked up from one of the guys at summer camp, who hung out with the REBELS, a local G-gang. I've posted previously about them jumping me, and stealing my spray snow on Christmas eve, the year before. As I said, I had quit writing on walls, but I was quite as happy to tag on the chalkboard.

Well, my style was considered good with the crowd, I think. Before long, a kid came up to me, offering membership in TMB, one of the local Amsterdam G-gangs. I forget what the initials stood for, but the last word was "Boys." I remember this because after I declined to join their group, a kid from TMW came up, and asked me to join his gang. I said "aren't you with that other guy?" He said no, the "W" was for "writers," but the other two words were the same. Apparently, they had been one gang once, and had some differences that split them in two.

Again, I declined to join this gang. I saw both of their gang names attached to tens of different individuals' tags, but I had quit writing, and really wasn't interested. I think the first two letters stood for "The Mad..."

Finally, a third kid comes up, and says "I'm not from one of these 'toy' groups. I'm asking you to join the Masters Of Graffiti."

MOG. They were almost as big as the Rebels, maybe bigger in other areas, or more widespread. Plus, this being the '70's, MOG sounded SO cool to my ears. I saw it attached to some of the BEST graffiti of that day, and I am qualified to judge. I pictured myself writing bang137...MOG. Then I remembered the Rebels, and what jerks they were. These kids may not have been the same color, or from the same background, but they were still criminals first, artists second. I sensed the predatory instinct, and politely declined again.

I bragged about this to Starsky, after we made up, and started hanging together again. Every time we saw a tag with MOG attached to it, I said, "I turned those a$$#0/es down!" I only write graffiti on the PC these days, though my last "tag" on a public space was on my 30th birthday. That's another story, from a later chapter.

This was a Tale From The Vendome.

MY FIRST BOUT WITH ANTI-SEMITISM: WHY I BEAT UP MY JEWISH FREIND

I went to a Catholic school, as did most of my freinds. We had a Jewish freind, who I'll call Lenny. Starsky and I got around to talking about religion with Lenny one day, on a rock in Central Park. He explained that the Jews didn't believe that Jesus was the messiah. We were really into the story about us worshiping the same God, and had him show us the Hebrew writing he was learning.

Well, he was writing Hebrew words in the dirt with a stick for us, when we asked him if he had a word for Jesus. He scrawled something in the dirt, and then spat on it, and said someting like "I spit on Jesus, he means nothing to Jews," before rubbing it out with his foot. Well, we proceeded to KICK HIS ASS, which was DEFINITELY NOT very Christian behavior. We stayed freinds, after the usual "cooling off" period, but I had my first personal taste of "Jew-hating." I am still shamed by this behavior, because I am sure that Jesus doesn't mind his name being spit on, especially by a Jewish 12 year-old. "Turn the other cheek" would be the right choice, but I was 12 as well.

Lenny was a good freind, and I learned much about Judaism from him, and other close freinds in later years. I embrace Judaism, as the roots of Christianity. This was just an incident where I showed a typical pre-teen aggression in the face of opposition to my beliefs.

Many Christians have gotten past this difference in belief; how long until the Muslims will? And what of the secular anti-semitism so prevalent in Europe these days? Why was I able to get beyond this difference, and so many others aren't? That's for another post.

PS: The friend I call "Lenny" in this story is actually Andy Kessler, who died on Mon. Aug. 11th, 2009, after an allergic reaction to a wasp sting. Though I haven't seen him in over 20 years, I'm deeply shocked and saddened. Read more about him in his New York Magazine obituary:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/08/legendary_skateboarder_andy_ke.html

This story takes place before he started skateboarding. In future Tales From the Vendome posts, I will name him accurately. After seeing how he lived his life, I don't think he'd mind me identifying him. My condolences go out to his sister Jodi, and all his friends and family. He'll be missed.

KOOL AND THE GANG!

My older brother Bill and I turned our Long Island freinds on to KOOL & THE GANG in the early-mid '70's. One of my favorite songs was from the album WILD & PEACEFUL. Here are some lyrics from this (unnamed) song...


Cryin' babies on the doorstep,
Helpless as can be,
Lady of the evening,
Set your mind free.
Grown up in the ghetto,
Never seen a tree, oh...


If you don't understand
The words to this song,
It's on you,
It's on me, yeah.


If you don't understand,
don't get me wrong,
It's on you,
It's on me, yeah.


You try to make it better,
You try to pull it in. (not sure of that line)
You take it from your pocket,
You take it from within.
You take it from your pride, y'all,
You're right back where you been, yeah.


If you don't understand
The words to this song,
It's on you,
It's on me, yeah.

If you don't understand,
don't get me wrong,
It's all about you,
It's all about me, yeah.

Is it any wonder that I was a liberal, growing up "Wild and Peaceful?"

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STATIC AND BANG137 IN FREEPORT: WERE WE A BAD INFLUENCE? YES!

I've mentioned the transition to living in Freeport in an earlier post, where I described it as culture shock. That was only the beginning of my Freeport experiences. I turned on to pot, and other drugs there, though I don't blame the village of Freeport for that. It would have been worse if I had stayed in NYC, I'm sure.

I actually may have had a bad influence on Freeport. I was on the cutting edge of NYC graffiti artists that were spreading into the suburbs at that time. When I arrived in Freeport, the tags on every wall were things like "Frank Loves Mary," written very plainly. All of my new freinds were fascinated by my graffiti writing style.

This led me back to "tagging" walls, which I had quit doing in NYC. It seemed like a new world, where the lessons learned in NYC didn't apply. My brother hated this, even throwing my expensive "midi-wide" markers down the sewer! -All to no avail.

Before long, I was doing the masterpieces that I never got the chance to do in NYC subways on the back wall of the A&P supermarket in Freeport. The suburban onslaught of graffiti would have happened without "bang 137," but I happened to be a graffiti artist at that time.

I teamed up with another ex-NYC graffiti artist, the late Danny Briscoe, to produce this awesome vandalism. I use his real name here, because he figures prominently in my Freeport experience, and to remember him as a good freind. He tagged "STATIC," and we shared "SHOCK!" -as a joint graffiti name.

Freeport was a treacherous ground for us outsiders, though I had the good fortune of my father teaching at Freeport high since 1962, the year I was born. I also had an older brother who immediately established himself as one of the "bad asses" in the school, which was both a boon and a handicap, for different reasons.

Anyway, more about my Freeport adventures in future posts. This is merely a teaser, meant to ease the transition from my unfinished Vendome tales to this next chapter. The second story is "FREEPORT WILD TIMES: VANDALIZING THE GROVE ST. THEATER." see it here (link).

I'll gather the Freeport stories into one page, but it may be more than I wanted to chew. For now, this will be the page I post new Freepoet links to.

LOSING MY VIRGINITY IN A PET SHOP ON COLUMBUS AVE: WE WERE THE ORIGINAL "PET SHOP BOYS"! THANK YOU AL GOLDSTIEN!

I was 14, and Starsky and our friendly neighborhood victim (Vic, for short) were 13. In short, we were adolescents who wanted to get laid. Well, vic worked in a pet store on Columbus Ave, between 71st and 72nd St. The pet store also had an apartment in the building above, where they used to keep dogs, like an illegal pet motel. Vic had the key to this apt.

We got ahold of a copy of AL GOLDSTIEN'S "SCREW" magazine, which wasn't too dificult, and found the ads for hookers. We arranged to meet the girl on the corner of 72nd and Columbus Ave. in a half-hour, and went upstairs. The apartment had various dogs in cages, but none that seemed mistreated. Vic's job was to take care of them, and he loved animals. After checking that the dogs all had food and water, we started jumping up and down on the bed (yes, it was supposed to be someone's apartment) screaming "we're going to get laid!"

Before long, and while Vic was out meeting the hooker, the Superintendant came and threw us out of the apartment for making noise. Now we had a hooker, and three horny adolescents, with nowhere to go. However, Vic also had the keys to the pet shop itself, which was closed on Sundays. Let's just say that it wasn't closed that Sunday. We had all been arguing about who would go first. Vic had the money; I was the oldest; Starsky just said "I'm badder than either of you."

So Vic shows up at the pet shop with the girl, who tells us she's 20 years old. She wants 90 dollars to do all three of us, and asks if it's all of us at once. We're like, "hell, no!" -at the same time, we realize that Vic only has 80 dollars. Starsky and I steal five dollars each out of the pet shop's cash register (but not a dollar more). As Vic walks by me to get the extra money "we" need, he whispers "you can go first."

We put down several huge bags of dog food as a mattress, and covered it with actual dog mattresses, still in the wrapping, in the back room of the pet shop.

The girl talked about how she'll never forget breaking three cherries in one hour. I'll save the explicit parts for my book, but will say that I have seniority over both Starsky and Vic by at least 20 minutes, in relation to losing one's virginity. She said that I was hogging their time (watching the clock), and I said "F#%* them!", as they laughed at my blue underwear (hey, it was the '70's, and my mom was "progressive"!-LOL!) through the diamond-shaped window to the back room.

Talk about a screwed-up introduction to sexual intercourse!

PS: The "PET SHOP BOYS" are also a new-wave band from the 1980's, for those who might not know. I am a big fan of theirs, even though they are totally GAY. I'm still an original "pet shop boy," but this, my first experience, was hetero. No hard feelings, to (or for) my homosexual freinds! LOL!

PPS: I ALSO WAS ABLE TO WATCH AL GOLSTIEN'S CABLE SHOW, CALLED "MIDNIGHT BLUE," WHERE HE FLIPPED OFF MAYOR KOCH, TELLING HIM THAT SCREW AND MIDNIGHT BLUE WOULD BE AROUND MUCH LONGER THAN ED WOULD BE MAYOR! HE WAS RIGHT.

ADOLESCENT PERVERTS! GRABBING ASSES ON THE STREET

Please bear with me when I reveal these anecdotes, because they are all building blocks of the overall story that I am telling here. This one sounds really bad.


I was hangin' with Starsky and another kid from the crowd. Our little hormones must have all been out of control at the same time, because we went on an ass-grabbing spree on W. 72nd St. Two memories stand out; one shameful, one funny. After doing the "goose-and-run" thing for a while, we saw a couple of gorgeous Japanese girls. They were at least several years older than us (I was 11 or 12), but still very young and vulnerable. After we goosed them and ran, we came back, and did it again. They were definitely putting up with this better than any other girls (or women) that we had done this to earlier, so we tried to talk to them, but I ended up goosing one of them from the front side. I couldn't help it, and she finally did take a swing at me after that. I think she ended up hitting Starsky, who was totally innocent, of course.


After laying low for a while after that, we talked our other freind into humping a woman's butt at a pay phone on 72nd and Central Park West. Well, this lady was not one to be screwed around with, in the early '70's. She cornered him in the subway station, by running across the street to the other exit when he tried to escape, and he didn't have the balls to jump the turnstile. She called the cops from the pay phone, while Starsky and I laughed at his misfortune! I think that we eventually gave him lookout assistance before the cops arrived, but this was the '70's, so we had alot of time to help her in that respect as well, prolonging the hilarity! Yes, we actually helped her to capture him, before helping him escape.


When I was a kid, we didn't think about victimization. We did what we thought we could get away with, as children always do.We were victimized as well, but we got over it. I eventually learned how to treat women properly, but it took some time. More on that in future chapters.

(This one was posted in reaction to the 10 year-old who rubbed his groin on a school staffer, and got handcuffed by the NYPD for an hour. His behavior, like mine, deserves the harshest punishment appropriate for his age. I think he deserves worse punishment for trying that kind of behavior in school. Remember, I didn't even get caught! I punished myself later in life.)

Christmas Graffiti 5

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This blog is graffiti.

GETTING ROBBED ON HALLOWEEN, AND CHASING THE CULPRITS TO A PROJECT ROOFTOP

I was in 6th grade, so I guess I was eleven when this happened. It was halloween, and I brought a couple of freinds over, to paint our faces for trick-or-treating. One freind unexpectedly "invited" two 14 year old girls, as well. I had no idea that I was being set up.

One of my two freinds kept me busy painting monster faces on each other in the bathroom, while the other helped these girls steal everything of value they could find in our apartment. When we got out of the bathroom with the monster makeup on, the girls were halfway out the door. I didn't notice the bulge in one of the girl's snorkel coat at all.

As we talked about where we were going to trick or treat, one of the guys asked me to play the radio. This was unusual in itself, because we didn't usually listen to the radio when we were hanging out. I said "OK," only to find the radio missing. I ran to the drawer that held my brother's cassette recorder. Gone! I started crying like a baby, thinking about how much trouble I was in. Everything was gone, even my brother's penny collection!

I almost came to blows with my freinds after realizing that they set this up. It ended up with us trailing the girls to McDonalds, where they spent the pennies, and further downtown to the Amsterdam projects, behind Lincoln Center, where most of my classmates lived (These two idiots among them!)

Somehow, we found which building they were in, and enlisted the help of the Toyloy family in that building. I name them because Ricky was in my older brother's class, and his sister Yvette went to the roof with me to get the goods back from the theiving girls. I had the pleasure of reminiscing about this incident with both of them last year at the one and only St. Paul the Apostle School reunion.

Unfortunately, the two "friends" who set me up back in the day weren't at the reunion, and I never knew what happened to the girls. We had them arrested, and their families kept coming to our house to plead with us not to press charges. I had a fantasy about getting sex from one of them to keep them out of jail, which was a pretty bad thing to think at such a young age. Of course, I was 12 years old by that time, so I had an excuse for thinking that way. We ended up not pressing charges, my childish fantasy remaining just that.

At the reunion, I heard that the old freind that showed the girls where all the valuables were in my family's apt. was now in jail. Big surprise. He, and the other kid had starting stealing cars by eighth grade, just two years later. I always hoped that my better nature would rub off on freinds like these. I should count myself lucky that more of their malicious nature didn't rub off on me.

JUST ANOTHER HALLOWEEN TALE FROM THE VENDOME! DON'T MISS MUG-OR-TREAT, from the next year!

GERALDO REPORTS ON A FIRE AT THE VENDOME

I was called down to the Principal's office again. What the hell did I do this time? I saw my brother was also summoned, so it wasn't likely anything we did. We didn't socialize at school. It turned out that there was a "little fire" at our building, as the Principal described it.

I remember worrying about Baggy, our cat, all afternoon. Mom was at work until 5 PM, just a few blocks away from my school, and Dad was in Freeport, teaching HS English.

As it turned out, there was a 4 alarm fire at the Vendome (48 W. 73rd St), started by a grease fire from the bar/restaurant on the ground floor. All but 5 apartments of the seven-floor building (6 apts. per floor.) were uninhabitable. All of the B apartments were spared, as in 3B (our apt.), 4B, etc. Baggy was fine, too.

When I finally got home, the walls of both adjoining apartments were totally ripped out, and you could see into the living rooms. Pink insulation littered the hallway. It was surreal. When we got to our apt, at the end of the hall, it was amazing to see so little smoke damage inside.

Around 4 or 5 PM, a channel 7 Eyewitless news crew came around to film a report. The guy they sent had long hair, and was a rising star of local news at the time, none other than GERALDO RIVERA! He made the report from our upstairs neighbor's apartment, 5 or 7B.

This is one of my earlier Vendome stories, so I was pretty young. GERALDO did his report, and when they put the camera on me and my brother, I was smiling and laughing, so I looked down. We saw it rebroadcasted on the late news, at 11. He didn't ask us any questions, someone just said "get a shot of the kids!"

I still laugh at that memory, but this was a great tragedy, though no lives were lost. At that age, I was just happy that my cat was OK, and that we still had a place to live.

REBUFFING ANOTHER GAY ADVANCE; WHAT, WAS THERE SOMETHING IN THE WATER?

I had an older friend, a kid who lived in the Mayfair towers, next to the Dakota. He was 14, I was 12. He was rich, I wasn't. He was pretty slick about things, too. First, he talked me into trusting him to carry me across a shallow part of the boat lake in Central Park, instead of getting muddy feet walking around it's edges. I was a naieve child, when it came to friendships. Of course I ended up swimming in the filthy water, and got beaten with the scrub-brush when I got home. Yes, beaten on the butt, and screaming on the floor.

This was Mom's message to me, telling me that something was wrong with this.

I was leery of hanging out with this kid again, but I went over to his apartment to play with GI Joes. Yeah, well it got kind of weird. He started undressing, saying we were going to play with GI Joes in the bathtub. Ever the diplomat, I said I didn't want to do that. He ended up rolling around on his thick shag carpet naked, as I hastily excused myself.

I took it in stride. I had other friends that I knew were gay, even before they admitted it, when I was 12 years old. We were still kids; I thought of this as an embarassing invitation that I rejected. Only today do I realize that this kid was probably molested at an early age, which made him so open about what he wanted to do at 14 years old.

I was lucky for my upbringing. I was exposed to NYC in the '70's, and it wasn't a pretty sight, except to me. I thought I lived in a great world, even with all of the crap my family went through. I am a product of my times, and I'm proud of it.

HOW I AVOIDED CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AT THE VENDOME: I WAS GIVEN A CHOICE

As a child, even before I moved into the Vendome, I had been photographed more times than I can remember, though there is that one with me lifting my shirt with no diaper on, at about 2, that I'll never forget... LOL! My father was an amateur photographer, and my mother had a freind who was a professional photographer. Between them, we had a ton of family photos by the time I was 8 years old.

Around this time, this friend of mom's asked her if I would pose for nude pictures, and she asked me if I wanted to pose nude for his "artistic" photography. I was pre-pubescent, but still realized the sexual aspect of this. I knew he was gay, wanting to look at me in a sexual way, not an "artistic" one. I liked girls, even before I reached puberty, and knew this wasn't for me.


I told mom that I wasn't comfortable posing nude, and that was the end of that story. As much as I might fault my mom for even asking me if I wanted to pose nude for a probable pedophile, I'm proud that she never let that happen against my wishes, and protected me from worse predators. She was a consummate liberal, open to all ideas. I was exposed to more in my childhood than many adults have seen in their whole life.


There's a flip side to this coin: I wanted to see one of my babysitters nude, and she never babysat me again. That's for another post, but she was also a freind of mom's; one with morals.

LEAV IN THE USMC: I WAS CALLED "LITTLE HITLER" IN THE NDRC

A teaser from a future chapter: LEAV IN THE USMC


Shortly after I was admitted to the Naval Drug Rehab Center (NDRC), I was made Unit Leader, under the premise of putting low-ranking (I was an E-3) people in charge of the rest of the druggies. I soon earned the nickname "Little Hitler," for enforcing the rules strictly. It was strictly for show: I used to let most of the people I assigned extra duty off, telling them to do some "light dusting" in the back of the squad bay (In other words, just disappear for an hour). I did make some senior people scrub shower drains with toothbrushes, though. This appeased the staff at the rehab, and helped me keep discipline as well. "Friends" who thought that they could flaunt the rules were occasionally made to pay with shit duty as well, keeping the worst people in line. Yes, we were a bunch of screw-ups, but they were MY screw-ups, and I marched them around with the pride that any leader would take in his people.

There is more to tell about my stay at NDRC Miramar, which also is the base where the movie "Top Gun" was filmed. This is just a teaser, of course.

Update: This one's funny, "MY FAVORITE GUNNY."

BRUCE'S PLEASURE CHEST: A VENDOME TALE

When I lived at the Vendome, a sex store opened up in the neighborhood, called Bruce's Pleasure Chest. We actually went into this store, and held the wax tit-candles and penis water guns. At that age, it wasn't long before we got banned from the store for our antics in that environment.


This made them our enemies. Bruce's became a target of ours, much like the old Irish bar, which we smokebombed just for kicks. With Bruce's, we threw a bunch of empty airline liquor bottles at his window. Whoever was working there threw a huge empty vodka bottle back at us, that night.


Another time - I can't remember exactly what we did, but we ended up on my friend Rich's fire escape, directly above the store, with the fag from the store yelling "if I ever catch you kids, I'm going to MOLEST you!" -as we taunted him back!


I often wonder if Bruce's PC was tied in with the gay drug dealing ring that took over the area, as cited in my other posts. I think that he owned one of the weed spots that I went to years later, a few blocks away, under the cover of a similar sex shop. It's pretty much a no-brainer,

--BECAUSE...

He remembered us as the kids who caused him so many problems at his first store, which I didn't know to be a weed spot, being too young. Years later, we ended up copping from his new store, as well as the bookstore, which I think was another of his front businesses. We never had a good relationship with any of these guys; they were always pushing the limits of acceptable behavior, even when we were buying pot from them.


I don't want to associate all sex shops with Bruce's, or slander all gays as drug dealers and/or child molesters. I do want to relate my past experiences, which happen to include all of these elements, to one degree or another. These events all happened from the mid - 1970's to early '80's, and are merely anecdotes from my days living at the Vendome.

Bush Fails To Prevent East Coast Blizzard

This was forwarded to me in an email from ÅG:


Bush Fails To Prevent East Coast Blizzard


Minorities Hit Hardest by Brian Williams NBC


As President Bush and his staff cowered in the White House, snow continued to pile up on the many poor and minority victims who could not afford to get out of town, or to safety in Florida. Crucial supplies of blankets, hot cocoa, popcorn and dark rum - so essential to surviving the stress of any major snowstorm - lay in stores undelivered.


"Where is the government? I need my sidewalk shoveled so I can get out to buy my damn lottery tickets!" said one D.C. resident from his living room. "Why are we wasting money in Iraq when we could be spending it here?"


Progressive blogs blasted the President for his inaction. "We find the timing terribly suspicious - just as the Domestic Spying hearings kick into high gear, what happens? A major northeast Blizzard. Why now?" wrote blogger FUAmericaNBush2.


Hearings into the Blizzards' effect on hearings are almost a certainty.


Howard Dean has suggested he will call for an investigation once his new medications kick in. John Kerry took a break from the sporting activities of the glamorous super-rich in some exotic locale (random choice: Ice Sailing in Finland) to call for new legislation outlawing snowstorms. "The Republican Congress has dropped the ball once again. I have always been a staunch supporter of anti-snow legislation, except for certain locations where I ski. Snow has no business on our roads and the President and Congress know that."


Calls for impeachment over "SnowGate", as some are calling it, already are mounting as deeply as the snow itself. What will be discovered underneath will prove to have a truly chilling effect on the Republicans, as the inevitable thaw proceeds.


More breaking news......


Al Sharpton demands an investigation as to why snow is ALWAYS white.


Cheney has stock in Tru-Value Hardware, which sold an unprecedented number of SNOW SHOVELS today. Calls for Cheney's impeachment are mounting.


The gracious junior senator from N.Y. has opened the doors of her home to all of the heatless poor of her neighborhood. She is busy baking cookies for them, while her husband applies body heat to the nearly frozen teen-aged girls.

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TALES FROM THE VENDOME: INCIDENT AT 72ND & COLUMBUS

It all started with Starsky. He had to throw the gum into this other guy's hair, as we were walking away. He ducked around the corner before the guy turned around, and I was standing there. This guy was a 17-year old who had been trying to find out if we were gay, which we weren't Anyway, he charged at me, and I charged right back at him. As we scuffled, Starsky came around the corner to assist me against this older, bigger opponent.

Walking down the block was the president of the 71st St. Block Association, and his boyfriend. As he broke up the fight, he held Starsky up against a wall by his throat. Starsky and I were scrawny kids of 13-14 at that time, and this seemed excessive force to me. The 17-year old and I had stopped fighting as soon as the adults intervened, and Starsky wasn't really doing that much, but told the guy "get away from me," or something. I can only guess what provoked this crazy bastard into this rage. I screamed "I'm calling the cops on you, man!"-to which he replied "go ahead, I'm the head of the Block Association!"

I ran over to the bodega on the SW corner of 71st and Columbus to call the cops. The men that hung out in front of the bodega asked us what was wrong. We told them what happened, and they tracked down the two guys at 72nd and Colunbus Ave. This one guy from the bodega came right up to the guy who choked Starsky and said "you hurt that kid," and punched him straight across the jaw!

Within minutes, a larger crowd had gathered. The police pulled up, and the block ass. president told the officers that "this guy hit me!" -The cops immediately handcuffed the guy from the bodega, as Starsky and I, along with the crowd, screamed out against this injustice. The cops wouldn't listen to us, two crying little boys in a sea of outraged people. We tried to show them the bruises on Starsky's neck, but this was the '70's, so we had to accept it.

Meanwhile, in the Vendome, my older brother noticed a commotion out the window; a huge crowd of people gathering around a police car, blocking the intersection of 72nd & Columbus. He got out the monocular (made by our grandfather - Robert K. Leavitt Sr.), and looked across the street. He called our mom to the window, and she saw the entire scene. Starsky and Hutch, in the middle of a big public fiasco again. At the center of the mob, there we were, crying our eyes out to the cops, to no avail.

The only moral I can find here is "don't throw gum in people's hair, and don't assault suspected criminals, unless you want to get screwed." -just another installment in my Tales from the Vendome.

"THE THEME" FROM LEAV! -YA DAMN RIGHT!

Who's the crazy bloggin' man
That's spreadin' sense across the land?
LEAV!
Ya damn right!

Who is the man that would risk his neck
For his brother man?
LEAV!
Can you dig it?

Who's the cat that won't cop out
When there's danger all about?
LEAV!
Right On!

They say this cat LEAV is a bad mother...
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
-But I'm talkin' 'bout LEAV!
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

He's a complicated man
And no one understands him but his woman
ANNA LEAV! she's a liberal...


An homage to one of my many inspirational influences, Mr. Isaac Hayes. For those who don't know, these lyrics are an altered version of the theme from SHAFT, a popular movie character in the 1970's. Yeah, Samuel Jackson updated the character in 2000, but he's not Richard Roundtree, the guy who I thought played the BIGGEST and BADDEST hero of that era.

Update 03/15/06: Isaac Hayes has quit south Park over a spoof of Scientology.

Gordon Parks, who created Shaft, has died.

Sad news all around.