Thursday, November 16, 2006

Kensington's lost lives:

There's K-Rock. He's black, 42, and has lived in Cuba and South America, has had two wives and millions of dollars, pesos and francs. He sells cocaine here every day and when his day is done, he returns to his apartment up in the Annex. He's saving up money to go to Colombia, to get things "set up again."

There's Little Lou, 30, Chinese. He's ended up here because he used to be a gambling man. Making runs to the casino, loansharking large amounts, was married once, now has run through all that, the money and the people, that life. Lately he's been selling $20 packages of heroin and spending what he makes on crack. He spends a lot of time smoking crack, finding the alleyways. Lou has no real home, but tells me he has "lots of places to stay." He gets his drugs from that Jamaican lady or the Asian kids who skulk around the public housing project, the hopeless brown boxes that pass for a place to live, handily just a hop over the streetcar tracks. Often some black kids gather in packs, huddled together on the steps selling drugs, pretty openly. You wonder why this is apparently "allowed" to go on here.

Then there's the guy who I've never seen off his bike, always a hat, always with the Grizzly Adams beard; he runs dope around the market.


4:53 PM