Suck and Blow by John Popper Page A

doing—there’s that great scene in Buckaroo Banzai when he says, “Wait a minute, somebody’s not having a good time.” It would be great if I could stop and focus in on everybody’s problems, but over time you get good at reading the rumble of the room. We started as a family and we remained a family, and that was also an advantage—we truly could rely on each other in way that was instinctual. When youjoin a band with other people, they have to think about their interests and you have to think about yours, but we were literally living in the same house. That was a huge advantage when it came to decision making because our interests were aligned.
    The first apartment we moved into together as a band was 354 Bergen Street in Brooklyn. We lived there from the early summer of 1988 through 1989. It still says Blues Traveler on the sidewalk where Chan and Brendan wrote it in the cement. We were on the top floor and had a beautiful view—we could see the Twin Towers. We were just a train ride away from lower Manhattan, and the neighborhood wasn’t as dire as our next apartment, where people were smoking crack in the hallways and vestibule. This was an alcohol neighborhood turning into a heroin neighborhood, and the good thing about alcoholics and heroin addicts is that they’re slower and in many ways harmless, whereas the crack guys hit you and run before you even see them.
    In our crack neighborhood we would pack our van trailer after doing a gig, and if we didn’t park it in some place that was absolutely secure, people would come and unscrew all the sheet metal from the trailer. Then we’d come outside and find some wheels and screws on the ground. You know it’s a crazy neighborhood when they’re stealing the steel from your trailer.
    The other problem with living in a crack neighborhood was that the guys had to try the crack because they’d done all the drugs in Princeton. Crack had been demonized in our suburban mindset, but Chan and Bob seemed pretty fearless about jumping in and trying it. There was a brief point when I went right there with them.
    One of the four times I smoked crack led to an incident in which I almost got razored in a crack house in Brooklyn. Crack seems like a social drug, but everyone is actually sitting there silently waiting for their turn to smoke, listening to the clicking sound of the gas stove kicking over because you need that flame to heat up the stem of the crack.
    When you smoke crack it feels good, but just as cocaine seduces you into thinking that everything is a brilliant idea, crack makes you think you’re down for anything. I was leaving after our big crack session and wanted to grab a bag of weed for the next day. So I wentdown to Myrtle Avenue at two in the morning, which, when you’re on crack, seems like standard routine.
    Now the thing we all knew about Myrtle Avenue is that if you gave somebody your five bucks, they’d say, “Wait here,” and then you’d never see them again. So up comes this guy who looks like Mike Tyson and asks me what I want. I explain that I want a nickel bag and he says, “Give me the money. I’ll be right back.” I tell him, “I can’t leave the money with you. I’ll go with you.” That’s my solution: I’ll follow him.
    So he takes me into this very scary project, which starts looking worse and worse, but I’m not deviating from my plan. When you’re on crack, that’s all you have to worry about: don’t deviate from your plan. We go up to the second floor and he says, “Okay, now you’ve got to give me the money and I’ll get you the weed.” My response is, “No, I won’t part with the money.”
    This is how I learned a very valuable lesson. When you’re in a rundown project trying to score some weed from a Mike Tyson guy while you’re on crack, you shouldn’t say the word no. When I