Dicks, balls and a-holes, oi!

Leftöver Crack’s frontman, Stza Crack, hates cops. In fact, he dreams of one day killing one. Stza loves 9/11 (he calls it “Super Tuesday”), and he’s had a love affair with crack cocaine. He’s everything you’d ever want in your favorite punk rocker, and more. And New York City’s Leftöver Crack, the most controversial band you’ve never heard of, has been banned from countless NYC venues because of their anti-American, anti-cop politics.

So when a bunch of crack-smoking punks come to Sacramento for a show, where do they play? Silk, on Del Paso? The Boardwalk? Nah, they play Empire Events Center. Yeah, the same place you can receive (or administer) fellatio on the dance floor while grinding to a house mix of “Material Girl” is also a good spot for moshing to ska/crust/metal/gutter punk, I guess.

Well, I wanted to talk with Stza to ask if all those anti-American ideas are still buzzing around in his skull, how he’s preparing for his West Coast tour and what he thinks about playing such a cologne-heavy venue.

“I can’t make any promises, but if you can send me some questions, I can try to answer them in the next couple of days,” Stza said, which in punk-rock terms means: “Fuck you, media scum.”

But still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, so while I’m waiting for his kind reply, I’ll tell you about the summer I turned punk.

It was 1991 and I was 16. My friend and I worked as waiters at an Italian restaurant—an upscale joint in Midtown Manhattan with mostly well-to-do, regular customers. One of them was an eccentric old guy who came in every day with his duffel bag, always at 4:15 p.m., and loitered for exactly four hours every day. He wore a huge gold cross around his neck and apparently missed the whole “bathe regularly” fad. He only ordered black tea, “Two bags, two cubes of sugar,” he’d say. We called him “Mr. Tea” because, well, we were kids, and kids are fucking stupid.

Anyway, Mr. Tea, like a lot of nearly senile old people, was a total asshole. He yelled if anyone came too close to his table or cleared away his empty cup too soon. He just sat there, glaring at the help.

Being 16, my first instinct, of course, was to piss in his tea, but before I could actually whip out my penis, nerves always got the best of me. Instead, I settled for quietly waiting on him, trying not to look directly in his eyes, like a geisha girl.

One day, Mr. Tea set down his duffel bag, as usual, but this time it was partially unzipped. Inside the bag was a brand-new camera. Being 16, of course, my first instinct was to steal it.

When Mr. Tea got up for his daily post-tea urination ritual, I grabbed the camera and put it in my pocket. I told my friend what I had done and showed him the camera, and before I could reveal my devious game plan, he already knew the score.

When Mr. Tea was done pissing, we did what any other heterosexual kids our age would do: We went into the bathroom and took hundreds of pictures of each other’s dicks, balls and assholes.

Mr. Tea left that day without his camera, but he didn’t notice. He returned the next day without a word. That day, when he went to the bathroom, I slipped the tainted camera back in his bag, like nothing had ever happened.

In hindsight, it wasn’t a flawless plan. After all, Mr. Tea was a white, Christian male in his 80s, so a camera full of teenage dicks, balls and assholes had probably been on his wish list since he turned 35. But the point is, we took action against Mr. Tea. He was The Man, and we socked it to him as best as we could. Punk, huh?

And no, Stza never got back to me. Fuck you, Stza. Fuck you, Leftöver Crack. I’ll see you at your show Friday. Oi!