Day 1

This is it.

The start of all this madness called Stoked.

We met at the Marc Ecko building at Stoked headquarters, introduced ourselves, signed some papers about promising to be good people, and jumped right into it.

M Cash is 16, a freshman in high school, likes chillin', riding his bike and rapping with his crew the Harlem Bandits.

Our kamikaze on this city couldn’t have begun any better than with some real-life from-the-heart honesty:

Me: “ MCash, I heard there’s a great exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum right now, you wanna go check it out?”

MCash: “Yo I’m gonna be real with you for a minute – sometimes I find that stuff like, real boring.”

MCash is a straight shooter.

But he can also spell compromise. We decided to go to the museum.

Which wasn’t as much of a compromise as it was just doing what I wanted to do.
But maybe the Museum won’t be boring.

THAT, my friends is where compromise is rewarded, and patience pays off.

Dang, I’m running a clinic on life skills. Check back soon.