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Do you have any recollections or experiences from the crack epidemic of the 80s and early 90s? What did you witness? What social effects did you see a change in NYC prior to when crack hit the NYC region?
Me, my mother, and my siblings moved into an apartment on W 183rd street in the Bronx back in 1993. My mom tells me that for weeks we had random and frequent knocks on the door from crackheads, who would literally line up in the hall just outside our 2nd fl apartment, looking to buy drugs. My mom quickly realized that the apartment was previously home to a Dominican drug leader who left to the Dominican, in order to avoid getting caught by the cops. She did not know any english at the time, but she quickly learned how to say "no drugs here". There was a shooting literally every day on my block. My sister remembers picking up a crack vile on W 182nd in her elementary school, asking my mom what was it, and quickly receiving a slap to the face for it.
Of course, we did not know it at the time but a little to the east, the same street that we called home, was the busiest drug corridor in the entire Bronx.
Washington Heights, West Bronx and South Bronx plus Williamsburg and Bushwick Brooklyn were all big in the Crack Cocaine epedimic in NYC. I suggest you should look up Williamsburg and Crack in the 1980s and early 90s. Down here in Mott Haven my staircase in my building was litered with crack vials of all different colors.
mid 80s I was in elementary school. We all knew who Fat Cat was even though we were from Far Rockaway and he was from South Jamaica.
Crack vials littered on the floor every day walking home from school. We used to make a game out of it and count them walking home.
Google Police Officer Scott A. Gadell. Killed in the line of duty in the 101st precinct. Tried to reload his revolver and got shot and killed by a crackhead sneaking up on him. The reason why the NYPD uses automatic weapons now, is because of what happened in Far Rock back in the '80s.
They used to walk around the streets like zombies.
Huge gold nugget chains the durg dealers had on. A lot of anti-drug commercials on TV.
It was a wild time in the city's history.
Funny thing is the projects had way more graffiti in them then they do now.
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
mid 80s I was in elementary school. We all knew who Fat Cat was even though we were from Far Rockaway and he was from South Jamaica.
Crack vials littered on the floor every day walking home from school. We used to make a game out of it and count them walking home.
Google Police Officer Scott A. Gadell. Killed in the line of duty in the 101st precinct. Tried to reload his revolver and got shot and killed by a crackhead sneaking up on him. The reason why the NYPD uses automatic weapons now, is because of what happened in Far Rock back in the '80s.
They used to walk around the streets like zombies.
Huge gold nugget chains the durg dealers had on. A lot of anti-drug commercials on TV.
It was a wild time in the city's history.
Funny thing is the projects had way more graffiti in them then they do now.
The reason graffiti is less now could be due to a chemistry teacher I had in Brooklyn Tech. His name was Professor Black and he invented a chemical spray that made it easy to wipe grafitti off walls.
Definitely mid- to late-80's. My father was a rookie police officer when crack really hit, and he talks about those crazy times to this day. Murder numbers were up over 2000 almost every year back then. I went with him to pick up his check around '87-'88 once and picked up a crack vial on the front steps of his Pct. Forget the beaches, they were littered with them.
I remember the vials littering the area by a park in Gravesend where I lived at the time. There was a group of users who hung out together, panhandling and doing other things like breaking into the laundry machines to get cash to fund the habit. I remember one day they were in the early evening breaking into a car to steal the radio, And the owner came down from the building with a bat. One of them got kneecapped and held for the cops.
It was a scary time,I was young, and these folks looked like extras from the walking dead TV show. Unreal what this drug does to people.
I recall in the mid 80's living in nyc upper east side E. 95th and guys would come around near the pubs and tell us the red was out. I think that color name had someting to do with the type or purity of the crack.
Same in Hells Kitchen....I would hear that when I go viist a Westie friend of mine at a bar this is before they took down the westies and the italian mob.
Hmm..late 80s, early 90s I remember walking to school stepping on crack viles, past blocks of empty lots, with "strange" (aka drugged out) people roaming around. I remember driving in a car and stopping at lights and having women dragging kids with them begging for money, obviously strung out. Everybody had everything for sale..if you walked down the street, or stopped at a light, random people were selling their personal belongings, or stolen items....knife sets, blenders, VCRs, jewelry, anything and everything for drugs.
And I thought this was all normal.
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Bad old days..
