Milk - an La Story

Frank Costanza

Description

Milk, An LA Story is a gritty story about an LA kid struggling to follow his dream of playing in the NBA. Young Milk moves across the country from the Midwest to LA to live with his divorced Dad and his grandparents with the hope of playing big time high school b-ball and eventually the pros. His story begins when he gets beaten up by gang members early one morning at the Venice Beach basketball courts where he wanted merely to try practicing some skills.. A well-known film action actor comes to his rescue, and advocates for Milk with local gangs the V13 Crips and Shoreline Crips. Milk plays whenever he can, quicking learning street ball with finesse, and, at the same time, becoming close with a local street tough. They have big fun playing at the beach courts, but also causing chaos that only teenagers on the loose can create. Milk comes to realize through some tough experiecnes that his new friend is an extremely violent sex predator being hunted by a local task force. It is a hard lesson to learn, but he takes it to heart and focuses on his high school basketball team...and the young ladies who root for him!
Milk goes on to team up with friends of his Dad, a famous local NBA player and his manager as they help him to enroll in a famous LA SouthCentral basketball program. Milk becomes the first white basketball player ever at the school, which leads to mind-boggling experiences both on and off the court. His story is so unique that it becomes featured in national magazines and local papers. Milk, An LA Story gives readers rich and compelling street level, authentic stories of a young man driven by ambition and extraordinary athletic skills that help him to navigate the highly competitve world of the best high school basketball in the country.

Sujets

• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669839538
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MILK - AN LA STORY
Frank Costanza

 
Copyright © 2022 by Frank Costanza.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022921736
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3955-2

Softcover
978-1-6698-3954-5

eBook
978-1-6698-3953-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 11/19/2022
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
844804
CONTENTS
Foreward/Introduction
Sixth Grade
Junior High
Ninth Grade
Tenth Grade
Tenth to Eleventh Grade Summer
Big John Williams
The Bank
Crenshaw day 1 tryout
Seventeens
Day 2
Water Line
Ping-Pong
Summer Cuts
The Wildcard Gym
Milk Is Born
First Day at the Shaw
Alpha Status
Black Jesus
Food from the Hood
Rico’s House
Valley Ridge
Final Push
Taylor’s House
Midday Madness
LA Times
Crenshaw Boulevard
Slauson Donuts
Double Date
Mystery Disease
Portland Trip
San Diego Trip
MLK Classic
Carson High
1999 Semifinal City Championship Game
1999 LA City Championship
Billy Blanks
Hoop Rat
Compton Dominguez
Las Vegas
The Neighborhood
The Taylor Situation
2000 LA City Championship
The Two Insanes
LAX

I would like to give a spe cial thanks to my attorneys who have stood by me through thick and thin - T, JP, Kelly, Beth and Jeff; and also, to Pervis, Ann and Shelly. They are all amazing people that helped me overcome difficult and challenging obstacles in my path to finishing this book and releasing it to the world.
“Frank”
FOREWARD/INTRODUCTION
“Frank Costanza” - it turns out - is an extraordinary writer. I met “Frank” four years ago when he hired me, and my litigation team to represent him on certain legal matters. At the time he was a cross-country trucker, hauling big rigs from coast-to-coast, and someone had apparently used his name, likeness, and life story in a television cartoon. “Frank” had one unbelievable life story…and he was only 35. At the time, I had no clue that in addition to all of “Frank’s” talents, from long distance trucker to an exceptional basketball player, he was a writer and a good one. A year after we concluded handling those legal matters, he astonished me with a manuscript where his singular, original voice, jumped off page after page of a memoir of his childhood. Growing up on the tough streets of LA, with a home life that was as equally challenging, “Frank” eventually became the first white basketball player on an historically all-black team local basketball team, coached by a legendary coach, a team where many pro players had gotten their start. The team nicknamed him “Milk,” a name that his family and friends still use to this day.
In his memoir – Milk, An LA Story – “Frank” brings to life a true, no-holds-barred picture of his life as a white guy trying to find his place in the Black culture of South-Central LA and high school basketball in the late 1990s. He captures the bravado and angst of teenagers bouncing off each other as they try to establish their own turf, and in so doing, he gives voice to their struggles with a striking authenticity that will astound readers. Throughout the narrative of his short-lived rise to fame (the media actually reported on his story at the time), “Frank” courageously allows us to hear and visualize the inner journey of a young white male daring to enter the exclusive black world of high school basketball and South-Central LA with a verisimilitude seldom seen in literature today. “Frank” is brutally honest, and in his exuberant bluntness, he exhibits a heartrending, stunning vulnerability that is, ultimately, a powerful story of his young life. Subsequent to the story in these pages, “Frank” experienced difficult times adapting to a world where he would not be able to play either college or pro basketball, which was his dream. He emerged from the dark tunnel of drug addiction and violence to become the man, the writer, he is today. He is currently polishing an action-packed screenplay adapted from his book and the events of the last twenty years of his young life where he battled that addiction and the dangerous, violent environment that he barely managed to survive, as well as other screenplays. Over the last year or so, he has also been preparing for an acting career in action movies and having seen his ability to laser focus on his life goals, I believe he may just explode onto the big screen with great panache.
November, 2022
T. Ballgame
SIXTH GRADE
M INNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, IT’S 1994. I’M Frank Costanza, a kid that loves sports. Today it’s soccer. I sprint upfield and slide tackle a player for the ball. Ref blows the whistle and yells, “OK, I warned you.” He reaches in his shirt pocket, pulls out a yellow card, and holds it up high. That’s the warning card.
I see it and start going crazy. “That’s total bullshit. That was a play on the ball. You’re horrible. You get paid to do this. You’re a sorry sack of shit.” My teammates Ilkka Monson and Andy Preisen run up and start pulling me away from the action. It’s a close game and we want the W bad.
The official yells, “That’s it. Get him out of here. He has no respect for the game.” And he pulls out a red card, which means I’m ejected.
As I’m getting dragged off the field, I scream back, “I have no respect. You’re an embarrassment. You shouldn’t have a job, buddy.”
Ilkka says, “C’mon, bro. He can suspend you for more games in the future. Take it easy.”
Andy chimes in, “Yeah, bro, c’mon. We need you. You know you don’t wanna miss any more games.”
Finally, they get me to the sideline, and Coach Monson, Ilkka’s dad, meets me and says, “Frank, now we’ve talked about this. Remember your breathing, walk with me. You’re all excited right now. Just calm down.” Finally, play resumes and things go back to normal. The Monsons are the best. They’ve been our neighbors on Thirty-fourth and Hennepin since we moved into uptown years ago.
My parents met in LA, where my brother and I were born. But when I was three, they got a divorce, and our mom moved us back to Minneapolis, where she’s from. Life in Minneapolis is good. Much of my family is here. I’m twelve now in sixth grade, and things haven’t been going great for me lately. I’ve been struggling academically and have been involved in a number of fights and other sports- and school-related incidents. So it’s decided that I’ll go live with my dad in LA. I definitely haven’t been feeling the private school scene for a while now. I’ve been going to Breck since kindergarten. Located in Golden Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis, it’s the best school in the state. It’s very strict and very demanding.
It’s my first day here. I flew in late last night. I love Venice. My dad lives just three blocks from the Venice beach courts. I fell in love with the Venice courts long ago, visiting one Christmas vacation. My grandparents are so happy to see me. We all live in a three-level apartment building on Canal St., just off Venice and Pacific. The building has three units, one on each floor. Dad and Jenny his girlfriend live on the top floor. My grandparents live in the second-floor unit. And our tenant Les lives in the bottom unit.
I’m very happy with my new living situation. My grandparents do everything for me. My whole life, I’ve had anything and everything I’ve ever wanted. My family isn’t rich, but we’re not poor either. My grandfather is a semiretired banker. He still does some accounting work for my dad out of his home office. And my grandmother works for a very wealthy family that recently moved to Phoenix, so a lot of the time, Grandmother won’t be around unfortunately. And Dad is always working hard at BadCraft, a women’s shoulder-pad- and button-manufacturing company in Commerce, California, that he owns and operates with his girlfriend Jenny. Dad also usually has a number of women on the side that take up plenty of his time.
After Grendeddy and I have a large breakfast at Nichols in the Marina, we get home, and I immediately grab my ball and hit the door to go play some ball at the beach. Basketball has been my favorite sport for a few years now. It’s my dream to play in the NBA, and I know I can do it. It’s so great I just left our place and I’m already approaching the Jim Morrison mural on my left, like twenty yards from the courts.
As I dribble up the sidewalk on Mildred, a few young Hispanics pass me as one wearing a beanie bumps me hard with his shoulder and says, “Dis Shoreline crip nigga stay the fuck out my way unless you wanna get hurt, homie. Dis our hood, nigga.”
I reply, “Sorry, bro.”
Another guy wearing a wifebeater adds, “C’mon, ese, fuck him. He look like 5-0 nigga. Let’s go get dis money.”
The instigator looks at me and replies, “I’ll see you around, ese. I’m serious. I don’t like seeing new snowflakes around my beach, homes.” And they all just keep walking toward Pacific.
I think, what the fuck? I didn’t even do shit.
I just keep dribbling up to court 1 and