14-17

Growing up in Brooklyn pre-Giulianai was fun and dangerous. Those were the days that NYC lived up to its stereotypes. The Violence, the rape, the murderers and thieves, nothing scared me more when I was 14-17 than getting my face slashed by some black dude trying to get into the bloods. Once a month it would happen to someone at my high school. Remember American History X? The curbing, that was actually a preferred tactic here for years by local crews. My father was (still is) a Jewelery photographer who together with his family immigrated to Israel before turning one after being born in Poland. He travelled to NY a few times as a young man for art exhibits and some exhibitions of his own. My mom too immigrated to Israel around the age of 1 and was raised in a moshav or farmland most of her life before meeting my dad. By the time they'd met my pops made a name for himself as a hotshot artist/photographer and I guess my mom was kinda awestruck being an art lover. They once came to NY for an exhibition and stayed. It was terribly hard for my mother and she says she cried a lot during those days, while they were integrating. I can definitely say that I lacked nothing growing up and went on vacations regularly a few times a year, lived in a very nice house and had not one complaint. The minute I hit high school and was out of the same shit hole yeshiva that I was in since 2nd grade like many, I was a new man. Reborn. Began to enjoy life. I was DJing parties a lot as that was what I chose to do buy with my bar mitzvah money and I thought it made for a good business decision. It did, and it also made me instantly cool. I was loving it and I think High School was my favorite and most exciting part of life thus far. More so than college. We were frikin crazy youths and we did during high school what frat boys wouldn,t have the nuts to do 4-7 years older than us. So this is the part where I throw in wild stories of complete shitfaceury but since my memory is complete shit I'll leave that to our guest posters.