The Brooklyn Ink

By Althea A. Fung

Traffic on Fulton Street near Tompkins Avenue slowed to a crawl last night. Two police officers attempted to direct the heavy   traffic to   no avail, as cars blasting rap music  – the Notorious B.I.G.’s  “Juicy and “One More Chance – drove as slowly as they  wanted. The drivers stuck their heads out their windows to look at the people trying to   enter the Lab Banquet Hall, a night club where rapper Sean   “Diddy” Combs was hosting a tribute party and performance   commemorating the 13th anniversary of the killing of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Christopher   “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace.

But traffic was the least of the police officers worries. Unmovable crowds began to form on the corners with hundreds of   people waiting   to see who went in and out of the club, or just to talk about the late rapper’s music.

Tabboleno Bridges and Daquan Bunk stood in front of Cherry’s Unisex Hair Salon. Bridges was dressed in a button down shirt   and sweater   had a ticket to the party that brought celebrities like Beyonce   Knowles and Sean “Jay-Z” Carter to Bedford-Stuyvesant. But old friends stopped him from joining the line to enter the already   crowded club.

“We seeing people we ain’t seen in years. I just did seven years, my mans did five years. Everyone from the Stuy is here,” Bridges said. “Today should be a holiday. We about to get in the line but every step we go we seeing dudes we know.  Big brings us out here like that.”

Bunk hadn’t known about the party. He’d been searching for a laundromat open past 10 p.m. when he met up with Bridges.  He had little interest in paying the fee at the door, which was rumored to be $300. Ten times as much as what Bridges paid for his ticket.

“Why would I pay $300 to get in a club where I’m from? I   shouldn’t [have] to pay,” Bunk said. Nor, he went on, was he prepared to pay   the $30 either – the reputation of the  Lab  for its constant  fights   leave him leery. Just up the block a man in his car yelled to a man on the street that he would shoot him.

Bunk found a group of friends. Bridges decided to leave the corner to join the line that had stretched down the block in either direction leaving. But then Bridges met yet more old friends and the lure of catching up proved more powerful than keeping his place on the line to get inside.