Part 6 : We win the war/move to Ellerslie/Grey Lynn
The Hawkes Bay punks we lived with were into drugs bigtime. So our intake of weed, pills, and alcohol rose accordingly. (I’ve always treated drugs more as a hobby than a lifestyle, having seen the effects on career drug-users). The HB punks introduced us to the ‘Aro Street Anarchos’ who became great mates of ours and a place of calm in a stormy sea (there is a piccie of them on the back of ‘Capitol Chaos‘ some of them had been in Compos Mentis). One night we went to a party in Mt.Eden and the HB crew got in a fight with some old school skins. Bron and I had been for a walk so missed all the action. A few days later however there was a knock on our door late at night. We opened the door to see 6 guys standing round tooled up with bats. They’d found out where the HB crew lived and were here for payback. There were only 4 of us. The usual verbal went down and after an interminable age of threat-counter-threat, Lizard (HB punk) was to fight one of their guys. Well, Lizard peeled the guy out in like 10 seconds! He could brawl! As they were leaving however, This dumbass acid-head who hung round with one of our other flatties started throwing stones at them and they turned round. We bailed inside and the fuckers took out every window in the house.
The next night they showed up again (this continued for a week or so…all our ‘mates’ avoided coming round at night) and hung around outside yelling “come play with some Nazi Skins!” etc…I was busy making Molotovs out of kero/ turps and polystyrene/ sugar while the other guys were barricading the doors. We were outnumbered and small and pooing ourselves! LOL! The HBers had split on holiday so we had to deal with their shit. In the end we got kicked out by the landlord but our connections with the skins from the Big House came thru and got the Nazi skins off our backs…Tho, for awhile there I thought we were fucked (I never got to use my Molotovs…)! Around this time I met THE OVERLORD! when we caught the same ferry to a mutual friends party on the Shore.
We pulled a hit on the Street kids. Woodpecker and his wrecking crew continued hassling punkers so one night after an alcoholic binge we jumped in a van (hmmm a White van too…) and cruised to ‘the hole in the wall’ on High street (this was a well-known SK crash zone). Lucky us! Woodpecker was there with a couple of girls. Our ‘recon team’ (hehehe) pulled me into the hole and I cornered the lil runt fueled by rage and beer (:oops:). While my metro mates flicked their lighters on for light I laid into him. He threw a couple of punches but this just fucked me off more. I shoved him up against the wall and beat the fuck out of him (a couple of the metros tried to get in on it but I told them to ‘fuck off or they’d be next’….I was pissed off). So I left him there on the ground. Someone went to boot him but I said ‘Nah, leave him alone’. The two SK girls were freaking, they must have thought they were next but I knew one of them and told them we were here just for him. We bailed…The Metros were on a high but all I felt was remorse for it all having to come to this.
We cruised back to our place and I fell into Brons arms and shattered out. I thought I had gone against my Crass punk ideals, but now…well it had to be done. He had made himself our enemy and attacked my friends/ threatened people I loved. At least I gave him the honour of a one-on -one fight which was more than he had given to others.
But still the war went on. So one night myself, Lizard, Slug and a couple of others caught them just off Queen street. Lizard staunched out the biggest streetkid there and we ended up by them blowing us out and calling off hostilities (very smokum peace joint shit). Plus the fact the Skins were after them too sorta convinced the SK to pull their heads in (Woodpecker had pulled a knife on me outside of Kerry’s shop, a skin girl I knew slapped him round the ears and told him “I’ll kill you if you fuck with my mate”. She was big and harder than most guys!).
Still, there were other battles. I saved a mate from a beating by a horde of Tongan Mafia by sticking my hand behind my back (pretending I had something hidden…). They were trying to scope what I had but I had my back to the wall. In the end they said “We’ll get you later” to my buddy and bailed. A couple stuck around and asked me what I had. I pulled out my empty hand and said ‘Nothing man!”, for some reason they didn’t believe me (I did, in fact, have nothing…LOL…don’t play Poker with me).
They did get him later tho, oh well…
We moved to Ellerslie and it sucked, raided by cops, too many of Bron’s brother’s dumbass skin mates. The place we were living in was a gang house and they didn’t like punks living there. They turned up one night tooled up with shooters but one of the flatties did jobs for them. He saved our asses with some quick talking and a deal. We moved back to the city. Much safer than the burbs.
Grey Lynn is nice. I liked it there. Our house was Bron and I, Emma and Mark (an AK skin and his gf who was a mate of ours), Ricketts (a mate from the big house) and Tia. Unfortunately, Mark’s mates would come round and act all tough. They stole Tias’ cat and dumped it down the road (toughies) but our reward posters did get me a lil black street kitten I later called ‘Nightmare’. He was so sick and mange-ridden, I just couldn’t send him back out to die. A friend of mine who worked at a vet done me a deal and Nightmare became my familiar! Fuck, he was cool!