Last night I was walking through a posh upscale development that used to be a subsidized ghetto called The Village of Tall Trees; a ramshackle maze of wood-panel apartments, inhabited primarily by drug users and the black drug gangs that distributed city heroin and crack into Eastern Baltimore County through this hub.

In 1994 I saw a white man on his knees in the street as I cruised by on the #23 bus as three black men beat him with bats. A cop was also cruising by as the man was beaten down. Now the cop car was on the other side of the bus and could not see the head being smashed in the street, so we really can’t fault the cop. I was once nearly alone on this bus with a young woman, at about 7 p.m., when it was fired on and hit with a handgun that I did not see.

Last night, as I walked through this area, I walked with a man in his late 30s who would have been a teen back then. I soon discovered, by the time we were speaking at my job site, that he was a customer, and had been one of the white stoners that lived there with the blacks back in the day.

We are franchising out—New York and Boston imitating our violent citizens. It makes me feel alive, reminds me of the old days when I was a young dude living in Tall Trees. I wouldn’t want to live like that now. The stress would kill me. But I also would not take back the past. Those stories I collected to tell my children well illustrate why they need to listen up and not live like I did.

They called me Columbine Joe because I wore a trench coat, had long hair and piercings. I probably would have been dead without the Trench Coat Mafia mystique. It freaked the black dudes out. I had this one neighbor who was really cool—didn’t talk to him for a year. Then one day we have a conversation and he tells me about how they all associated me and my roommate with that tragedy out in Colorado. There was a lot more to surviving in Tall Trees than that.

My roommate and I were the only ones who worked in the community. I’ve been held up, shot at, and have seen two murders. Right off the bat we have three black dudes kick in the front door and one of them has a shotgun. They have the drop on us. We have knives and a thirty-eight special but were looking down the barrel of a shotgun. They’re taking our stuff: a VCR—which tells you how long ago it was—play station, some other stuff, and they want the CDs. The guy with the gun tells me to put all of my CDs in a bag.

That was just too much. I said, “Look brother, you have the shotgun, you have the power, so you take what you want. But the hell if I’m going to help you rob me and be an accomplice in my own robbery. Take what you’re going to take and walk on."

And they don’t take all the CDs! How lazy can you be! After they leave, I said to my roommate, “That’s a black powder shotgun. You know what that means—short range and one shot.”

My roommate grbbs his thirty-eight and pops off some rounds at them while they are crossing the street and they drop some of our stuff, so it wasn’t a total loss.

So now we are no longer a door kicking mark because they know about the gun. We hear from some others that they plan on breaking in while we are at work and taking my computer, which is worth like eighteen-hundred dollars. We had to think of something. They would all hang around outside in the common area—all the drug dealers, just like in The Wire. That and Homicide were the two most accurate crime shows ever, better than documentaries.

We go down to the butcher shop on Mace Avenue and ask the owner for a raw beef heart. He thinks were nuts, but he gives us one. We knew this was a dicey proposition. But when you’re dealing with these people you need an image they are going to respect. You also need to be cool, but that’s another story.

They pack guns. We primarily had blades. We knew that the guy that did this was in danger of just getting popped, so we drew ‘rock, paper, scissors’. As luck would have it I lost. I got all bloody, grabbed the heart in my left hand, grabbed a blade in my right and charged outside into the common area screaming, “Why’d you make me do it Joe, why? Why!”

They fucking boogied!

And they called the cops! Can you believe that shit, drug dealers calling the cops?

An hour later—which back then was a good response time—a cop knocks on the door. Of course we’re assholes for even living there. He says, “Look I don’t even believe the story I’ve been told. What’s going on?”

We let him inside and told him the whole plan. He said, “You guys are freagin’ brilliant! I can help you out.”

So he just walks out and tells them that he wasn’t going to pursue the complaint because he couldn’t find the murder weapon. After that, I’m fuckin’ Columbine. As long as I’m cool and don’t engage in any bullshit or snitchin’ I’m okay.

Those were the days man—world not trade those experience for the world. Like the guy that wrote Angela’s ashes said, “A painless childhood is worthless,” or something to that effect. From fifteen to twenty-four I lived a lifetime, and I’ll tell you all about it.