When legal weed dispensaries first opened in the Village, I wondered how this competition would affect the old-school pot dealers. I had been buying weed from various East Village dealers since I moved to New York City in 1975. If a dealer quit the business or moved from the city, he or she referred me to a colleague. It was an unbroken line, a smoky trail of referrals, but one dealer stood out. Steve. who always took good care of me.
Steve lived on the third floor of a walk-up. He’d come to the fire escape and toss over the keys. His tenement had no intercom, so he’d throw a mini-football with the keys stuffed inside a carved-out slot. I’d look up and focus on catching it. I hated when I missed and the ball bounced onto busy Second Avenue.
Sometimes the two locks were tricky—outside door, then another door—but I eventually got it down, looking over my shoulder at the same time. I was in and climbing the rickety staircase with the wobbly bannister.
Steve was around in the late afternoons from about 4 to 6, weekdays only. He went to Florida in the winter. He got the after-work crowd, making a pit stop before going back to Astoria or Park Slope, and locals with flexible schedules. I’d meet actors, martial artists, secretaries, social workers, teachers, therapists.
I’d troop into the main room to join whoever else was there sitting on mismatched chairs. Invariably a joint was going around. Everyone nodded hello. I’d seen the same faces over the years; had trouble with names. I was known as “that writer.”
Steve lived and sold pot from the same apartment. It was a dump. The cat litter box always stunk and the only sink required a wrench to turn it on, which I discovered the one time I used the toilet and had to wash my hands. I made sure to bring bottled water. The kitchen had no appliances. I gathered Steve lived on takeouts and showered elsewhere. It was freezing in the winter unless I sat next to the space heaters. I worried the tenement would burn down.
Despite the decrepit setup, I liked scoring there. The weed was always good quality and I felt safe. It was not lost on me when an upscale dealer and her customers got killed above the Carnegie Hall Deli; she buzzed the wrong guys upstairs. I trusted Steve and his judgment. You could not just refer a new customer; you had to bring them in person.
Steve had a shaved head and was about 30 when we first met. I did not know Steve well at first but discovered we were both vegetarians and talked about restaurants and music.
“Got any of the pressed?” I asked hopefully.
The pressed was a house specialty, grown in Jamaica. It was extraordinary, so resinous and pungent that you could get high sniffing the buds. It had a rich, flavorful taste, a smooth burn, and the best high. The name came from the fact the marijuana was compressed, so it looked like a chunk or a brick. The resin acted like glue. It was not loose pot. Smokers had to pry apart this Super-Grade A weed. I missed it, especially the taste.
“Dream on,” said Steve. “That hasn’t been around since 9/11, too much airport security. But I got some other weed you will like—this hydroponic from Upstate, you had that before. And I got nice hash, you like hash?”
“Can I get a mixture, half and half of the two kinds, like 150 bucks worth total, in separate baggies, please?”
“Sure, but for 200 I can throw in a few mushrooms. Great fucking ’shrooms.”
“No thanks. I haven’t tripped in years. What about that incredible Amsterdam you had? Is that still around?”
“Nah,” Steve shook his head. “That was a fluke.”
Steve walked behind a curtained-off space, where he weighed out the drugs, and emerged 10 minutes later. He crouched next to me and slid two plastic baggies into my lap. I slipped them into my jeans pocket, palmed him a wad of crisp folded new bills.
“The Upstate stuff has the reddish color and it’s fluffier,” he explained as he turned his back to the window and counted the money.
“Thanks Steve, I remember it now, it was good.”
A wintry excursion
One freezing January night I visited the squat. Steve wore a sweater, down vest and wool hat. I didn’t stay more than 10 minutes and only had three puffs but it was super shit. I had trouble finding my pocket when I tried putting the weed away. By the time I hit the street it was getting dark.
It was difficult to see the ice patches on the sidewalk. I walked slowly, even though the wind was biting into my face. I worried about falling and breaking a bone or slipping and getting hit by a car. Suddenly, I felt like an old person. I feared going to a hospital unconscious and medics rummaging through my pockets for ID and finding the pot instead. Why couldn’t Steve deliver?
Carefully, I walked to Ninth Street and hailed a cab home.
With new leadership in City Hall, people smoked weed all over the city with abandon. The smell was ubiquitous. No one cared, especially if you were white. Getting busted with a small amount resulted in a ticket, not an arrest. I wondered what would happen to dealers like Steve when all this became legal.
I was never sure who actually owned the building I’d dubbed the squat but I guess it was the city. The tenants had leases, so when the city decided to sell the building to a developer to raze and rebuild, they couldn’t evict anyone. The residents were temporarily relocated to other buildings, and eventually they returned to a brand-new building, paying the same rent, an incredible real estate deal.
I now I visited him in a modern building with a doorman and an elevator and rooftop deck. His neighbors were NYU students and yuppies. I wondered what the doorman made of the fact Steve had so many “guests.”
The new apartment was a dramatic improvement: living room, bedroom, modern cooking area, nice bathroom. I thought this would inspire Steve to fix it up but he just moved in a lot of DJ equipment, some guitars, a record player and a cot-like bed just big enough for one person. One chair. No sofa and no dining table.
In the other room, he stored weed and weighed out product. At first we went into that room and he showed me the products. Then the routine changed. He described what he had, which varied each visit: “Sour Diesel, OG Kush, Girl Scout Cookies.” I waited in the main room on the one chair until he returned with the goods.
The whole scene with the doorman and the elevators was so unlike Steve. I no longer had to trek up creaky steps. Business continued in the gentrified building for years as Steve expanded his wares to include weed oil with complimentary vape pens.
On a hot summer day in 2019, I texted Steve to see if I could come over.He answered that he was in California and would call me. He eventually called to tell me he had stage four pancreatic cancer.
I was shocked. He was in his early 50s. I thought he led a healthy lifestyle. He didn’t smoke cigarettes. He had a vegetarian diet and exercised.
I told Steve I did not know his beliefs but would pray for him. He was accepting prayers and whatever healing thoughts and vibrations people were sending. He said he did not think he was going to die.
Before he hung up, Steve reminded me I could see Paul. Even though Steve was dying, he wanted to make sure I had a connection.
Steve was an accomplished martial artist who studied with masters in China and New York. Other than brief stints as a disc jockey, Steve never had a conventional job during the two decades I knew him.
Paul seemed more mainstream—he had a real part-time job. But he lived in a walk-up. And here I thought I was done with the stairs.
About two months later, Steve’s best friend called to tell me Steve had passed away that morning. He would have turned 53 in two days.
Now, whenever I walk past Steve’s building, I flashback to him on the fire escape throwing down the keys. I miss him and the funky old tenement that symbolized the East Village before gentrification. The neighborhood I settled into in 1975 and lived in for 22 years is long gone. So is my youth.
Out of curiosity, and convenience, I started buying legal weed from dispensaries in the Village. It was not as good as what I was used to buying from my old-school connections and I had to pay tax. I swore I would not go back to the dispensaries, but the convenience was irresistible. And I didn’t have to walk up several flights of stairs.
