CHAPTER 46

Noam: This might have been the last straw, when we stopped bringing money home. He was walking around the corner with money and there was a guy waiting in the garage, and they held him up at gunpoint, took the money. Ava would remember even better than I do. And that was scary because of the gun. And then Ava was also robbed making a bank deposit. That was the worst one of all because she was actually assaulted.

Author: When your dad was held up at gunpoint was that in the Eighties or Nineties?

Noam: It had to be in the Nineties I think. New York was like a jungle in the Nineties. People have no idea and no recollection of how bad it was. It was ridiculous.

Author: That’s why these stories are interesting, because as much as I’m trying to do other stuff with the book, it’s nice to show the way New York used to be.

Noam: It was just crack addicts all over the place and it was scary as hell. And it’s one of, this is probably not for your book, but it’s faded in everybody’s memories such that people make a lot of the fact that they punished crack much differently than cocaine. You’ve heard these arguments, right?

Author: Yeah.

Noam: That it’s supposed to be racist and all that?

Author: Yeah.

Noam: It couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s such an inaccurate take on reality. The fact was that crack was a daily threat to people’s lives. People just walking down the street and crack addicts were a source of violence. Cocaine was something rich people were doing, you know, in their homes and it wasn’t a threat to society. In other words, the crackdown on crack wasn’t because they didn’t want people taking drugs, although I’m sure that’s part of it, it was that it was such a menace to society. It was making the city unliveable.