...New York City...

NYC is a tough town for freaks these days......Still easy to get popped just for smoking a joint.....no jamming tolerated in many outdoor places anymore....searches everywhere.....Feh!

Bring back the good days! Gatherings on Hippie Hill in Central Park! Jamming in Washington Square after picking up a couple of hits of blotter and a bag of Jamaican herb! Being able to smoke walking right down the street without fear of the bluecoats doing more than telling you to throw it in the gutter! Cheap housing! Squats! Not so many people wrapped up in insane career ambition!!

This wasn't ancient history.....it was like this right up until Giuliani.....I miss the real NYC......

 

Umm... I really don't think it's that bad. I guess it depends where in NYC you're hanging out. But I smoke joints in Washington Sq all the time and nothing has ever happened to me yet.

 

Glad to hear it.....but please be careful. Things have cooled down a little since Bloomie came in and if you're hip to your surroundings and put some shade on things it's still possible to smoke almost anywhere, but they ARE out to grab you now and there are still many many times more arrests made today for consumption/possession of herb in NYC than pre-Giuliani. There are teams that cruise the streets JUST looking for pot-smokers. I work in "drug treatment" and used to do court-ordered "diversion classes" for drug arrestees. My "clients" went from hardcore crackheads and dopefiends to young pot-smokers and sidewalk beer drinkers (used to be an unwritten law about drinking in public here....brown bag made it legal....no more!). Pot arrests went from something like a couple thousand annually pre-Giuliani (always people popped for something else who either had too much herb on them or annoyed the cops in some way...) to tens of thousands each year. Here are some scary graphs if you like that sort of thing: http://www.hereinstead.com/NYCity-Marijuana-Arrest-Graphs.htm). In the old days virtually all small drug possession cases (including dope and coke) would just be plead down to disorderly conduct unless it was someone's 20th case and people would walk, now people are getting short (and not so short) stretches on Riker's for VERY small offenses....

Before Rudy, people would just walk down the middle of 5th Avenue puffing big spliffs in American flag papers. It was rare for a cop to bother you, but if they did it was only to tell you to be more discreet or to make you throw the joint in the gutter. Washington Square was one of many places where like-minded people hung out without being harassed. The herb dealers were wide open then (admittedly a little annoying as there were so many of them) and you could buy acid all over the park. You'd buy fairly openly, roll up and smoke openly, drop a hit and jam or play frisbie all afternoon. Now everyone in the park is monitored by tv cameras fed into the permanent police trailer on the south end and the vibe is tight ass all around. A LOT of people have been busted in that park over the past ten years.....don't doubt it.

But it's not just this spot or that spot.....this whole city is completely different from what it was for pretty much the entire 20th century. There used to be large enough masses of poor and working people throughout the city that we controlled the streets. The cops were understaffed, cynical, and paid off (no change on the last two counts at least....) but the main thing was that NYC was alive with street action and hustling and unpredictability and ordinary people liked it that way. Now the only people who can afford to live in most parts of Manhattan (and increasing parts of Brooklyn!) are yuppies....and yuppies don't like come down to their stoops to find a hippy sharing a joint with a wino and a society party girl.....but that's exactly what the streets of NYC always were until recent years.

But I'm glad that things look better from your perspective......Just be careful and help turn this city back to what it was from the disneyland it's become......We really need a new generation to realize that NYC is NYC for a reason, and that reason isn't because it's like every other mall in America....

 

I'm out NYC is no fun anymore... Just madd expensive, dirty, and indutrialized.

Back to Melbourne, Florida see ya'll!

 

barcade is amazing. i love that place.

 

One thing you'll find a lot of in NYC is drug dealers up in Washington Heights and Inwood. I live in Washington Heights and sometimes people walk down the street and are offered marijuana. The thing is that you can't go up to them and ask them if they have any because they'll think you're a cop. But walk down the street by yourself and you might get offered some.

I know some people who smoke weed at a park. The all just hang out, drink and smoke and I don't think they have ever gotten caught. Best bet is that you find a park with no cameras and if it's dark, that's even better because like that the cops won't see you. Or just crash at someone's pad and you are guaranteed not to get caught there.

 

living in brooklyn, go to school in manhattan, work in queens..... I'm a travellin man

 

I'm here. Let's chill man, come back up to NY. Florida sucks ass.