Vaguely related, and 100% TRUE not a joke, a buddy of mine has a friend who did time in the Graybar Hotel, and caramel kettle popcorn saved his life.
Not kidding! He figured out how to combine popcorn a various other ingredients from the prison commissary using a process that turns those ingredients into caramel kettle popcorn. He wisely kept the process secret.
He made lots of it and sold it to his fellow inmates, who LOVED the stuff. Well, at some point some gang decided they didn't like him (for some reason unrelated to the kettle corn), and they were going to kill him, but basically all the other inmates in the other gangs caught wind of it and sent the word out: NO, YOU DON'T KILL HIM. Why? Because all the other gangs wanted to keep getting the awesome snack he made!
Hilarious, and true. He was eventually released, quite alive.
Related to that, another friend of his (yes he has multiple ex-con friends!) was sent to prison for stealing stuff from his employer.... a construction company. In New York state. And this guy had a super-ultra-Italian-sounding name. Once he gets to prison he doesn't tell anyone WHY he's in there, but does tell them his name, and that he was in the construction business, and remember this is NY state.
EVERYONE treated him really, really well with lots of politeness and respect. Haha, I wonder why!
Vaguely related, and 100% TRUE not a joke, a buddy of mine has a friend who did time in the Graybar Hotel, and caramel kettle popcorn saved his life.
Not kidding! He figured out how to combine popcorn a various other ingredients from the prison commissary using a process that turns those ingredients into caramel kettle popcorn. He wisely kept the process secret.
He made lots of it and sold it to his fellow inmates, who LOVED the stuff. Well, at some point some gang decided they didn't like him (for some reason unrelated to the kettle corn), and they were going to kill him, but basically all the other inmates in the other gangs caught wind of it and sent the word out: NO, YOU DON'T KILL HIM. Why? Because all the other gangs wanted to keep getting the awesome snack he made!
Hilarious, and true. He was eventually released, quite alive.
Related to that, another friend of his (yes he has multiple ex-con friends!) was sent to prison for stealing stuff from his employer.... a construction company. In New York state. And this guy had a super-ultra-Italian-sounding name. Once he gets to prison he doesn't tell anyone WHY he's in there, but does tell them his name, and that he was in the construction business, and remember this is NY state.
EVERYONE treated him really, really well with lots of politeness and respect. Haha, I wonder why!