(¼) “My parents were big in the hustling game. It...

(¼) “My parents were big in the hustling game. It wasn’t like it is now. Now it’s a bunch of kids on the corner trying to get sneakers. In the early eighties it was a group of older dudes— just some local cats who got together and decided: ‘This is how we’re going to eat.’ Nobody was coming to our house to buy a dime bag. Everyone who came over was buying weight. Those were the people who we’d see all the time as kids. They were like our family. They’d give us a hundred bucks to go to the store and tell us to keep the change. It was all very friendly and civil. There were even three police officers that would always come over and smoke– two white guys and a Spanish guy. They’d sit down in our living room at a big glass table, and my dad would come out from the back and hit them up with envelopes. Pops looked out for the whole block. He’d throw block parties. He’d organize bus trips for all the neighborhood kids. He’d take everyone to Great Adventures and pay for the whole thing. And at Christmastime, our doors would stay open. There would be a huge pile of presents and kids from the block would come inside and take whatever they wanted. It used to make me jealous because it seemed like they got more than we did.”