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Ethnography
A building, residence, or storefront where crack is sold and used. Bourgois lives near and studies two that Ray owns: the Game Room, on his block, and the nearby La Farmacia.
Crackhouse Quotes in In Search of Respect
The In Search of Respect quotes below are all either spoken by Crackhouse or refer to Crackhouse. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Introduction
Quotes
Cocaine and crack, in particular during the mid-1980s and through the early 1990s, followed by heroin in the mid-1990s, have been the fastest growing—if not the only—equal opportunity employers of men in Harlem. Retail drug sales easily outcompete other income-generating opportunities, whether legal or illegal.
The street in front of my tenement was not atypical, and within a two block radius I could—and still can, as of this final draft—obtain heroin, crack, powder cocaine, hypodermic needles, methadone, Valium, angel dust, marijuana, mescaline, bootleg alcohol, and tobacco. Within one hundred yards of my stoop there were three competing crackhouses selling vials at two, three, and five dollars.
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Chapter 3
Quotes
In the five years that I knew Primo he must have made tens of thousands of hand-to-hand crack sales; more than a million dollars probably passed through his fingers. Despite this intense activity, however, he was only arrested twice, and only two other sellers at the Game Room were arrested during this same period. No dealer was ever caught at Ray’s other crackhouses, not even at the Social Club on La Farmacia’s corner, even though its business was brisker.
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Chapter 4
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Contrary to my expectations, most of the dealers had not completely withdrawn from the legal economy. On the contrary—as I have shown in Chapter 3, in discussing the jobs that Willie and Benzie left to become crack dealers and addicts—they are precariously perched on the edge of the legal economy. Their poverty remains their only constant as they alternate between street-level crack dealing and just-above-minimum wage legal employment. The working-class jobs they manage to find are objectively recognized to be among the least desirable in U.S. society; hence the following list of just a few of the jobs held by some of the Game Room regulars during the years I knew them: unlicensed asbestos remover, home attendant, street-corner flyer distributor, deep-fat fry cook, and night-shift security guard on the violent ward at the municipal hospital for the criminally insane.
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Crackhouse Term Timeline in In Search of Respect
The timeline below shows where the term Crackhouse appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Violating Apartheid In the United States
...“a disastrous end” when he “inadvertently ‘disrespect[s]’ Ray,” the owner of a number of local crackhouses, including one nicknamed “La Farmacia” in the now-burned out building where he grew up.
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...“Learning Street Smarts,” Bourgois explains that Ray both lets him conduct his research in his crackhouses and physically protects him. Ray is friendly and generous that night, in contrast to “his...
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...gangs, takes Bourgois aside and tells him to stay away from the Game Room (the crackhouse Primo runs for Ray). Primo admits that he is afraid of Ray, who used to...
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Under “Accessing the Game Room Crackhouse,” Bourgois explains that his first goal upon arriving in El Barrio is convincing Primo he...
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Chapter 2: A Street History of El Barrio
Under “From Speakeasy to Crackhouse,” Bourgois explicitly turns back to the problem of substance abuse and crime in East Harlem,...
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Chapter 3: Crackhouse Management: Addiction, Discipline, and Dignity
...or from a knife Candy throws at him. He enlists Primo to help manage the crackhouse, and ironically working there is what gets Primo to quit crack. Some time later, Candy...
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...“Restructuring Management at the Game Room,” Bourgois explains what happens after Ray takes over the crackhouse and imposes his stricter rules, but leaves Primo in charge. “A brilliant labor relations manager,”...
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Under “Management-Labor Conflict at the Game Room,” Bourgois notes that Primo’s status as the crackhouse boss makes his own lack of legal opportunities less obvious to those working under and...
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Under the heading “The Crackhouse Clique: Dealing with Security,” Bourgois explains that, despite his difficulties, Primo still appears to run...
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Chapter 7: Families and Children in Pain
...themselves for their parents’ addictions and romantic troubles, and often find themselves hanging out in crackhouses and on the street from a young age.
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