On Friday the 13th, I was involved in an unfortunate incident, where I was slashed across the face as you can see in the picture above, in my own area of the Lower East Side. I was walking down my block to go get some orange juice, and I saw a black car across the street from me. Two dudes were staring in my direction, but I was thrown off cause I thought they were detectives. In my hood, things are so crazy that the cops dress like us so I didn’t think of the car as a threat, but I was watching it from down the block.

The car started driving away in the other direction, and I turned my head towards the store with my headphones on blast. I got to the store, which is notoriously known by everyone on Bounce as the prepaid Philly cheese steak spot, and I turned around. One of the two guys who was in the black car approached me slowly, and I started to make a run for it when the guy said he was only going to get some cigarettes. So I stopped and tried to identify him because he looked like a familiar face from my area. I then said, “What’s good,” but as he came closer, I realized that I didn’t know him but thought he could be someone who either knows me from playing ball, Bounce or LMC etc… I get a lot of love in the streets of the Lower East Side so I’m used to seeing unfamiliar faces approach me just to say “what’s up,” and then I’ll remember where they’re from after thinking about it for a while.

I gave the man a pound and he grabbed me around my neck and slashed me across the face. At first, I didn’t know that he cut me but then I felt something drip from the side of my face and then looked at my hand and saw nothing but red. The guy started to run off but stopped when I guess he realized that the slash wasn’t enough to make me drop. He then started doing something in his jacket, and I hit the boat like Usain Bolt in the Olympics running in the direction of the hospital. I then stopped at police plaza and requested an ambulance, which took 10 minutes. I realized that at the rate I was losing blood, if I kept running, I would have probably collapsed, so I had no choice but to stop in front of the guard booth.

After the doctor stitched me up, he told me the person who slashed me was one centimeter away from ending my life. I don’t know if I was set up or if it was a random act of violence ’cause there are a lot of ongoing wars in the Lower East Side, and I live in the most hated part of it.

I would like to say thank you to everyone who showed me love on bounce & facebook. All the support was very uplifting, even from True Balla, who is my arch rival on the blog, which we can all agree. I spent my weekend with Casey Lee and got to clear my thoughts at his friend’s birthday party. Bob, Casey was break dancing, and I think he was preparing to audition for the Rock Steady Crew. We then shot some hoop at the playground that introduced A.O. to the AND 1 MIXTAPE, Casey was throwing wild oops, and I was trying to throw them down. We had fun, and it was a good way for me to get away. We even saw Smoke aka The Problem Child, who is cooler than the other side of the pillow.

On Saturday, it was brought to my attention that I need to address where I stand with K1X and what was provided to me by K1X, ’cause they said there is jealousy going around amongst some people.

K1X was my sponsor for LMC. You saw so many K1X posts from me this summer ’cause that was my uniform sponsor, and I’m a guy who is all about love, so I showed K1X love back for not one penny. I didn’t get anything from the brand, not even for the photo in its fall winter catalog. K1X provided me with 120 t-shirts, 10 sets of uniforms, a few of its clothes, and that’s it! The contract is up with K1X in LMC. It was a one-year deal, and I am still looking for uniform sponsorship for LMC. Not money, uniform sponsorship!

I’m all about the community, and I don’t care for money, even though I need it to survive. All I want to do is help the streetball community and make it better by bringing streetball together as one, while on the side, giving back to my community by giving the people of the Lower East Side something to do instead of resulting to the streets, where you can die any day just for walking down a block. I hope we all learn from what I experienced the other day. Live your life. Tomorrow is not promised today.