by JIGGS » Sun May 06, 2018 3:54 pm
TommyNoto wrote: ↑Sun May 06, 2018 10:59 am
Not a lot of info on this area so great info Charlie and Jiggs and would love to hear more about Vinny heroin racket and the guys he sold too . Was Vinny hands off with those guys or did he help them solve some street problems ? You can get close to longtime big customers and sometimes you might have to kill em . Curious how Vinny handled his area.
Vinny and no made or 'connected guy' [ex. Meldisch] ever got involved with the street level politics. A fish Wholesaler doesn't give a shit if Whole Foods market fire bombs a Trader Joe's because it's offering lower prices to the consumer. "Blue Fish" only cares about filling those orders every month. No matter who is left standing. The drug business is every ONE for themselves. You have interference on your end? Don't cry for me Argentina. What was it that Ray Liotta said in "Goodfellas?"
'&%$# you. Pay me.'
I'll tell you another thing as someone who was on the ground and was dealing with addiction. A lot of that shit is a bit overblown. The heroin market. At least as far as NYC went. Although I have to believe every large metropolis with a ghetto runs the same course. They (Vinny) had it locked down because the kids in the ghetto selling the shit didn't have any 'international' connections. But just as big in my opinion, if not bigger, were the folks involved in the crack wars. It sounds crazy because of what TV shows the public. But all those guys associated with 'Pleasant Avenue' (not the street) who were doing wholesale from around '62-'73 (around when 'H' went 'down.' in nyc) were still living in city shitholes and driving around in automobiles older than them. A street guy dealing in "H" might have 40k stashed in a cupboard. But the kids working the crack angle in the '80s *looked* the kingpin part. The kids had millions. One of them, a P.R. named "K.C." , who was retailing Blue thunder early on, abandoned it altogether for Crack. In the 1980s Crack was 'King.' At least as far as the "market" went. The heroin market was and is still always 'there' but Crack spiked in '82 and by the time the Pizza connection trial came about, it had already supplanted "H" (which had made a brief 'comeback around '79-'80) on street demand. Smack had been around a whole lot longer and there were already medical or social programs set up for it since way back. (I went to my first program in '68). Crack was something 'new', it was cheaper and easier to last and sell. Programs got eliminated by the feds. You didn't have to deal with Cosa Nostra. You could get it direct from kids. That's how pervasive it was. Everyone was either using it, selling it or investing in a 'package' to multiply it 3-4 times over. Most of your night life in nyc was fueled by the coke/crack drug culture. It was raining money during the crack era. K.C. had his people selling $5 bottles for $3. Sometimes even $2. There were lines for it. Like those old depression-era photos of people waiting to get into a soup kitchen. Media never really zeroed in or connected the mob to it because of what crack was associated with. It didn't fit the stereotype. They had the mob as being against narcotics ha! But I was pretty sure they weren't ignoring it. Crack I mean. A few years ago I seen this this video on the youtube network that showed made guys were working the crack landscape as wholesalers AND on the street level retail. This kid "Froggy" from Staten Island [Galione]. Made tons of cash pushing crack. I can't prove it. But I KNOW there were a whole slew more. There HAD to be. They just got lucky and didn't get busted. Look at Vinny? All them years and he never went down for any significant amount of time pushing 'H.' They were locking up everybody else. Doctors, lawyers, the fuckin' mayor of D.C. for christ sakes. The Meldisch brothers should have done 25 years in prison just for all the junk they moved alone. Mike Meldisch might still be alive if the feds or dea been serious and gone straight to the movers and shakers providing it to the street. They went after gangs instead. Street punks. With no sources of their own. Lock em' up and a new crew filled the void. Guiliani becoming mayor ended all of that.
After the pizza connection fizzled out it seems Montreal picked up some of the leftovers in the US dope trade .
Then there's the Chinese. Colombians. Mexicans. I could tell you as a cold hard fact that, back in the day, the social clubs in NY (and I don't mean 'Mob', but after-hours places that were unlicensed, had music, dancing, drugs, booze, women) where you could score a bag was courtesy of the Cali Cartel. This was 1984. A few years prior to the city closing them all down.
That's just ONE experience and not THE experience across the country. I'm just sharing another angle that was as pervasive but inclusive to all criminal activists. Not just traditional organized crime, you know?
[The dope business has obviously slowed down for wise guys but there is certainly activity and I’ve always wondered who the supplier is today , Montreal , Calarbrians or Sicialians or a combo of all 3?
Do the Calabrians feel strong enough to enter the huge US market as they already have routes to Canada so the US must be very tempting , do the Sicialians need to enter to offset a bad island economy ? Wish we had that info
Beats me. Good luck figuring that one out. Pull my coat tail when you do.
JIGGS
[quote=TommyNoto post_id=76517 time=1525629552 user_id=5187]
Not a lot of info on this area so great info Charlie and Jiggs and would love to hear more about Vinny heroin racket and the guys he sold too . Was Vinny hands off with those guys or did he help them solve some street problems ? You can get close to longtime big customers and sometimes you might have to kill em . Curious how Vinny handled his area.[/quote]
Vinny and no made or 'connected guy' [ex. Meldisch] ever got involved with the street level politics. A fish Wholesaler doesn't give a shit if Whole Foods market fire bombs a Trader Joe's because it's offering lower prices to the consumer. "Blue Fish" only cares about filling those orders every month. No matter who is left standing. The drug business is every ONE for themselves. You have interference on your end? Don't cry for me Argentina. What was it that Ray Liotta said in "Goodfellas?"
'&%$# you. Pay me.'
I'll tell you another thing as someone who was on the ground and was dealing with addiction. A lot of that shit is a bit overblown. The heroin market. At least as far as NYC went. Although I have to believe every large metropolis with a ghetto runs the same course. They (Vinny) had it locked down because the kids in the ghetto selling the shit didn't have any 'international' connections. But just as big in my opinion, if not bigger, were the folks involved in the crack wars. It sounds crazy because of what TV shows the public. But all those guys associated with 'Pleasant Avenue' (not the street) who were doing wholesale from around '62-'73 (around when 'H' went 'down.' in nyc) were still living in city shitholes and driving around in automobiles older than them. A street guy dealing in "H" might have 40k stashed in a cupboard. But the kids working the crack angle in the '80s *looked* the kingpin part. The kids had millions. One of them, a P.R. named "K.C." , who was retailing Blue thunder early on, abandoned it altogether for Crack. In the 1980s Crack was 'King.' At least as far as the "market" went. The heroin market was and is still always 'there' but Crack spiked in '82 and by the time the Pizza connection trial came about, it had already supplanted "H" (which had made a brief 'comeback around '79-'80) on street demand. Smack had been around a whole lot longer and there were already medical or social programs set up for it since way back. (I went to my first program in '68). Crack was something 'new', it was cheaper and easier to last and sell. Programs got eliminated by the feds. You didn't have to deal with Cosa Nostra. You could get it direct from kids. That's how pervasive it was. Everyone was either using it, selling it or investing in a 'package' to multiply it 3-4 times over. Most of your night life in nyc was fueled by the coke/crack drug culture. It was raining money during the crack era. K.C. had his people selling $5 bottles for $3. Sometimes even $2. There were lines for it. Like those old depression-era photos of people waiting to get into a soup kitchen. Media never really zeroed in or connected the mob to it because of what crack was associated with. It didn't fit the stereotype. They had the mob as being against narcotics ha! But I was pretty sure they weren't ignoring it. Crack I mean. A few years ago I seen this this video on the youtube network that showed made guys were working the crack landscape as wholesalers AND on the street level retail. This kid "Froggy" from Staten Island [Galione]. Made tons of cash pushing crack. I can't prove it. But I KNOW there were a whole slew more. There HAD to be. They just got lucky and didn't get busted. Look at Vinny? All them years and he never went down for any significant amount of time pushing 'H.' They were locking up everybody else. Doctors, lawyers, the fuckin' mayor of D.C. for christ sakes. The Meldisch brothers should have done 25 years in prison just for all the junk they moved alone. Mike Meldisch might still be alive if the feds or dea been serious and gone straight to the movers and shakers providing it to the street. They went after gangs instead. Street punks. With no sources of their own. Lock em' up and a new crew filled the void. Guiliani becoming mayor ended all of that.
[quote]After the pizza connection fizzled out it seems Montreal picked up some of the leftovers in the US dope trade .[/quote]
Then there's the Chinese. Colombians. Mexicans. I could tell you as a cold hard fact that, back in the day, the social clubs in NY (and I don't mean 'Mob', but after-hours places that were unlicensed, had music, dancing, drugs, booze, women) where you could score a bag was courtesy of the Cali Cartel. This was 1984. A few years prior to the city closing them all down.
That's just ONE experience and not THE experience across the country. I'm just sharing another angle that was as pervasive but inclusive to all criminal activists. Not just traditional organized crime, you know?
[Quote][The dope business has obviously slowed down for wise guys but there is certainly activity and I’ve always wondered who the supplier is today , Montreal , Calarbrians or Sicialians or a combo of all 3?
Do the Calabrians feel strong enough to enter the huge US market as they already have routes to Canada so the US must be very tempting , do the Sicialians need to enter to offset a bad island economy ? Wish we had that info
[/quote]
Beats me. Good luck figuring that one out. Pull my coat tail when you do.
JIGGS