“With the gentrification of Chelsea came trouble. Gay witchhunts abound. There have been un­provoked attacks on gay males by bands of white teenagers, with robbery almost an afterthought”

Father Gigante has rebuilt much of the South Bronx. But who has profited more, his parish­ioners or the mob family run by his own brother?

“At the end of the '80s, while America concerned itself with the consequences of crack, and crack dealers continued in that hyper trade, Boy George was running five heroin locations in the South Bronx”

“You’ve gotta understand, top skaters were like rock stars, traveling all over the world, living the life … and Gator was the wildest of them all”

“Oh yeah, he fed her to the homeless,” says Hank, who lives on East 5th Street. “A few days after it happened, before it hit the pa­pers, while the rumors started spreading around the Village, the homeless in the park were going, ‘Yeah, Dan did give us soup yesterday.’ They were goofing on it but they were pretty much grossed out.”

“The great library of New York dope has been going up in smoke this month. I want it all smoked up by September One, when I clear out for good. Here,” he said, tossing me a Baggie full of grass. “Try some 1967”

“Detroit is a city whose horror reaches cinematic proportions, like 'The Living Dead Wear Kangols and Filas.' However you like your chiller theater, Detroit is the worst because it’s real.”

“To the ruling class, Larry Davis is society's nightmare, a horror-film monster who keeps coming back every time you think you’ve put him away for good. But to the powerless, Davis is a resistance fighter ... ”

“The truth of a time and place is, of course, always illusive; but no historian can tell the story of Miami in the last decade without acknowledging one gigantic fact of municipal life: cocaine.”

“On December 22, 1984, at about 1:30 in the afternoon, Bernie Goetz boarded a southbound number 2 Seventh Avenue IRT train at 14th Street and his life changed forever. So did the lives of Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Barry Allen.”