BROOKLYN FRIGHTS
Wannabe boxer Creed won over gangs
STEVIE Creed is staring at the snub-nose barrel of an Uzi semi-automatic pistol pointed only inches from his forehead.
The man holding the firearm and smirking at the Edinburgh teenager is in the Brooklyn Crips gang. Wannabe boxer Stevie has only been in America a couple of weeks. He admits: “I was sh ****** myself. And not just hoping and praying the guy wouldn’t shoot me, but that his finger wouldn’t accidently slip on the trigger, leaving my brains sprayed on the wall behind me like a pound of minced beef.” Stevie had told his parents, Alastair and Elizabeth, he was visiting the sights of Manhattan. But the truth was that the-then 19-year-old had wanted to live in Brooklyn and train at the Starrett City Boxing Club. In his autobiography – The Brooklyn Scotsman – Stevie reveals he was adopted by New York’s black community and how he quit boxing for hip hop. Stevie has taken so much to NY that he has had a tattoo of the Brooklyn Bridge, and Statue of Liberty inked on his back alongside Edinburgh Castle. Now 31, Stevie is back in Edinburgh with his latest album, Concreed Jungle due for release in a few weeks, while he did a two-year run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Stevie continues the story of the Uzi gunman: “I’d been hanging about with some people I’d met after I arrived in Brooklyn and the Crips guy was part of the group that day.
“I’d asked how I could get a bus pass, or a season ticket. The guy then steps forward, lifts his top up and points to the Uzi tucked down his waistband. ‘This is my mother ****** g bus pass,’ he tells me.
“When I see the gun I’m thinking it would be best if I just play along, so I laugh and tell him if I was a bus driver I’d let him ride anywhere he wanted with that for a ticket.’
“He doesn’t find my joke that funny and his demeanour becomes threatening when he asks: ‘You got guns in Scotland?’ I told him some bad guys have, them and he pulled his Uzi out and held it to my head.” His friends defused the situation and Stevie jokes about it now, saying: “What a welcome to New York, although our Crips guy has certainly failed his interview for a job with the local tourist board.”
Stevie also tells how he blagged his way on to the catwalk of New York Fashion Week and how at his lowest point he lived on one cheese bagel a day before becoming homeless.
The Brooklyn Scotsman is published by Macdonald Media Publishing for £12.99 from thebrooklynscotsmanbook.com.