Marc MacYoung - Safe in the City: A streetwise guide to avoid being robbed, ripped off, or run over

Reading Cheap Shots is like pulling up a chair and drinking beer
with an old friend. A very twisted and dangerous old friend.
Chris Pfouts

Chris Pfouts sister called me in 2013 to tell me he had died. I never really had a chance to eulogize him so now let me tell you about him.

Chris and I had an interesting history. Back in the day he had been an editor for Iron Horse Magazine . Iron Horse could politely be called a Biker Rag. Even back then, Easy Rider was much more for the RUBs (rich urban bikers). Iron Horse was the magazine for outlaws, low-lifes, rat bikers, and one percenters. (Not to mention they had tits and ass instead of bikinis). Hed read my book and done a review. Between that and my street name Animal, he decided I was a match for Iron Horse s readership. He contacted me about writing an article on drum roll improvised weapons. (Hint: That hammer hanging on a bikers belt is for more than roadside repairs.)

He was in New York City (NYC); I lived in Los Angeles. This was before the Internet had taken off so we became pen pals. Turns out he was just as warped and funny as I was. He also lived a real interesting life. So getting a letter from him was always like settling down to watch your favorite TV showit could have been titled, The Adventures of Chris Pfouts.

During the back and forth, we discovered things about each other. He was originally from Los Angeles and due to certain indiscretions been asked to leave by the sheriffs department. (Yeah, thats an euphemism for being run out town.) Hed found employment as a writer and editor after moving to NYC.

He also got shot there.

Like so many people who work in New York, he couldnt afford to live there. Back in the days when BedfordStuyvesant (in Brooklyn) was transitioning out of being a complete shithole, it was a weird blend between pending gentrification and cheap rents. Well guess what kind of rent a rat bike magazine editor could afford?

One night Chris had a lady friend coming over. (Yeah, thats another euphemism.) Having some time before she got there, he decided to take out the trash and run across the street and get beer from the bodega. It tells you the caliber of the neighborhood that:

A - The city rubbish bin was where he put the trash.

B - The store had a bulletproof window and drawer where money and beer were pushed through to customers.

Walking past the local drug dealers loitering in front of the building, he dumped the trash and crossed the street. As he was buying beer, he heard a voice challenge him about his putting his garbage in my trash can. Chris turned around and saw a guy standing with his hands in his jacket pockets. Chris responded with the typical NYC friendliness of the time something having to do with the guys mothers sexual habits. He would later tell me he expected to have to fight the guy. (Chris was a big boy, by the way.) What he didnt anticipate was the guy to shoot through his jacket and with the bullet hitting Chris in the lower leg. (It missed his shinbone, but chewed up his calf muscle.) Despite his background, Chris really wasnt a violent man. Unlike me, he wasnt used to having people try to stab or shoot and kill him. Thats both why he was caught unaware and later traumatized about being shot.

Chris collapsed. Instead of finishing him off, the shooter turned and walked away. And in the New York style of the time, the guy behind the bodega window disappeared. Losing blood badly and going into shock, Chris crawled across the street, into the building, up the stairs, and into his apartment to call 911. (This was before cell phones.) His date arrived and well ... the evening didnt go as planned.

There were many more disturbing and harrowing parts to this story, but one of them would result in Chris writing his first book Lead Poisoning . It centered on the complete and total lack of effective trauma help for people who had been shot. Pain management specialists tried guide him through, but their advice didnt work for what he was going through. It would eventually boil down to, Have you ever been shot? No? Then we have nothing to talk about. This made the trauma of being shot even worse. Chris would later write what would have helped him the mostas he lay in the hospital bed and, wondered if he would ever walk againwould have been if one of the people hed interview later (whod been shot up worse than he) would have walked into his hospital room and done a couple of jumping jacks and said, You can get through this, kid. That was the message he needed to hear most.

Chris found the most cathartic and healing thing he could do was talk to people who also had been shot. They understood. They had insights pain management specialists didnt. Being a writer, he started collecting these stories. And thats when he asked if I knew anybody who had ever been shot. Oh and did I think my publisher Paladin Press would be interested in publishing such a book? I told him I think I can help you, Buckaroo.

Thats how Chris and I ended up running around Los Angeles for most of a week, talking to people I knew who had been shot. Hed come out for a tattoo convention (hed changed from Iron Horse to a tattoo magazine). A little over a year later, Lead Poisoning: 25 True Tales From The Wrong End of a Gun was published by Paladin Press.

To this day I am convinced that Paladin screwed the pooch on marketing that book. It was an opportunity to expand their market into pain and trauma counselling as well as prepare people to go into dangerous situations. Instead they tried to pander to violence geeks, who are the last people who want to hear about how their fantasies about violence might turn out. To this day I am a firm believer that this book is helpful for everyday people who have been shot to find a way back from the pain and trauma.

Paladin then approached us with the idea of co-writing a book about the differences between crime and violence on the East and West coasts. And thats how Safe In The City came to be.

Straight up a lot of the city specific information in this book is dated. Areas we talked about back then have been gentrified, others have decayed. What hasnt changedand why this book is still relevantis I introduced many of the concepts here that would later grow into what they are today. Including the court-recognized Five Stages of Violent Crime (a threat assessment model that can keep you out of prison for defending yourself) and the idea how different areas have different rules (which would come to full bloom in my later works).

For now, thank you for letting me tell you about a good man.

M
December 2018