As soon as I entered the 145th street lay-up, I knew something wasn’t right. It was a Sunday afternoon in 1985 and there was always a lot of activity going on between West, Zear, Zame, Risk, Serve, Jon-One, Wane, Doc and Web, but in the distance I could make out that there were people who did not belong in the tunnels. I could only see their shadows, but they were playing and making lots of noise. 145th was a regular party during those days, eating pizza, Micky D’s or Chinese food while whole cars and burners were being exucuted, but it wasn’t that kind of an undisciplined party. One might have smelled spraypaint coming from the tunnel on the platform, but you didn’t hear a peep from within. I walked faster to investigate. I saw the kids that were violating. They were Dominican kids about my age that lived in the streets above the tunnels. This meant that they were potential trouble, which is why my F.C. brothers didn’t regulate in the first place. In fact, Risk warned me.
“Yo Psycho, those kids are Ball Busters and they live right upstairs.”
“So what does that mean? That they can come up in here and do anything they want?
“Yo, they can have this tunnel flooded with niggas in seconds.”
I shook my head no. “Fuck that.” I knew the drill. I came from F.K. and these kids had to be put in check...immediately.
The Ball Busters were Manhattan’s most notorius street gang in the early 80’s. There was hundreds of them, responsible for countless murders. The thing I knew was this, it was 1985 and their hey day was maybe 82-83. They barely existed at this point and most people who claimed to be a Ball Buster were wanna-bees that didn’t make the cut during their real era. This didn’t mean that a bunch of Dominican kids that had the convenience of living above the tunnel couldn’t make trouble for F.C. Still, I didn’t see that as reason not to protect my property. I stepped to who seemed to be the ringleader of the violators.
Yo, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The kid looked at me with exaggerated arrogance. I knew I had to make a drastic example out of him before the situation got worst. If I just let him walk out, he would bring ten more of his punk ass boys with him.
“Nigga pleez, who the fuck you talking to like that? My brother will fuck all you niggas up! Ball Busters in the house!”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah nigga. My brother’s Cuba-Rock, Ball Busters. He’ll run this whole shit. He don’t give a shit who you are.”
I grabbed the kid by the throat, with a clean grip on his Adam’s apple and squeezed it, taking care not to crush it too much.
“Guess what? Your brother’s not here and not only is he not here, I don’t give a fuck about your brother.”
One of my boys told me to chill in the background, which pissed me off, because it only served to validate this kid’s claim that he and his crew was indeed a threat.
Before I choked the boy to death, I let him go and pushed him back inbetween two subway cars. He had tears in his eyes and he was a combination of angry and embarassed.
“You’re going to get yours. You don’t know my brother. He’s crazy! He’ll kill your fucking ass!”
“No! You know who’s crazy? Really, really fucking crazy? Me?”
It was then that I took out my 007 hunting knife and poked the tip of it into the cheek of his face. He screamed at the top of his lungs.
“You see! I told you I was crazy!”
I punctured his face again and again and again and again and again until he had a face was full of holes. Laughing madly at each and every scream he produced.
“Now get the fuck out of here.”
I helped him leave with a kick in his ass. My boys complained to me that I just caused major beef. I knew the Ball Busters would be down here within half hour. That their initial emotional response would be to kill me. I was aware of this. I advised my boys to get out of Dodge and I did the same.
At home, I let a few hours pass and I decided to return to the lay-up armed with a double barrel sawed-off shotgun with plenty of shells. I don’t know why, I was just curious to see what was going down.
Once inside the tunnel, I heard activity going on within but couldn’t see anybody. I climbed into the first train and situated myself in the conductors booth of the frist car that overlooked the entrance of the lay-up. I spray painted the windows black, leaving only a small circle to spy. It wasn’t a half hour before of group of many twenty Dominican kids entered the yard with bats, sticks, knives and chains. I’m sure at least one or two were actually armed with guns.
I considered blasting them through the window when they got near enough. With a double barrel shot-gun, it would have been easy to pick off at least five of them and the rest would have ran like bitches. It was a fearsome weapon indeed. But that would have meant the end of graffiti at the 145th street yard and F.C. wouldn’t have became the legends they have, if I had made that choice. So instead, I chilled. My heart raced as I could hear the kids entering the train I was in to investigate. I could hear them talking shit from outside the conductor’s booth. I crouched low on the floor and aimed the shotgun at the door. One squeeze of the trigger would have blown the door off and break very rib on the right side of my torso at the same time. I waited it out. Sweating, feeling anxious. Telling myself not to freak and start blasting. Someone tried the door. I took a deep breathe. My finger was ready. The door didn’t give and the intruder didn’t have diligence in him and left it alone. It took a few minutes to realize that I was safe.
It was the middle of the school year and for the most part, F.C. didn’t frequent the 145th street tunnel much during the week. By the next weekend, my new enemies would certeinly be caught up in some new drama. This is just how it is in the streets.
During the week, F.C. and the writers of that time hung out at the 125th street train station, taking pictures of our whole cars and top to bottom pieces. I arrived later than usual. The reason being was that I was picking up an Uzi machine gun from a friend named Little Man One. It was best that I traveled armed to the teeth for a week or two. When I exited the 1 train, everybody told me that about thirty Ball Busters just left minutes ago on the last train uptown looking for me. I grinned, knowing that 30 heads were no match for my Uzi. I made it known that I didn’t leave my house with no less than a shot-gun or an Uzi at best and yes, I would think nothing of using it if I had to. This got to the Ball Busters and just as I thought, they made one more obligatory appearance for the sake of not appearing like cowards and disappeared. I never heard anything from them again. F.C., Jon-One and the rest were able to continue making graffiti history.
The streets are very much like world politricks. If I had let those kids invaded 145th street without repercussions, they would have continued and continued until it was a problem I wouldn’t have been able to solve with a few harmless stab wounds. Letting the enemy know that I was strapped with big things, encouraged them to move on to the next drama. As ill as my actions might have seemed, there was never a point when there wasn’t a method to my madness. But only I knew this until now.
Posted on November 01, 2007 at 08:17 AM | Comment (7 comments)
