Michael A. Gonzales describes the moment the drug arrived in his New York neighborhood "as though someone dropped a lit match on a pile of old newspapers," and "the inferno blazed and burned steadily for more than a decade":
Of course, I knew people who smoked weed or angel dust, and had seen a few heroin nodders leaning on Amsterdam Avenue, but crack was another story, a sadder story, a wilder story as the brazen dealers stood on building stoops pretending to be Scarface while selling their product openly, as if the stuff were legal. Packaged in plastic vials with prices that ranged from five to fifty dollars, one puff of "the genie in the bottle" was enough to make you a junkie for life, a fiend forever trying to capture the euphoria of that first hit.
Within the year of seeing my first crack dealing corner boy, many close friends became addicted to the "rock." My friend Paula from the fourth floor, a smart Black girl who had gone to Catholic school and City College, began to lose weight rapidly and looked extremely paranoid. Two stories down, Stanley no longer drew comic book characters, but was often seen creeping in the shadows of the block, eyes wide and hair matted.
The Dish 