a fan edit of thisamericanlife.org
#127 - 16 April 1999
This entire show is devoted to just one story. A former pimp tells how he and three childhood friends became pimps in the 1970s in Oakland, California. He explains all the elaborate "rules of the game" among pimps and prostitutes of that era. He didn't have the stomach for the violence of pimping, and failed as a pimp because of that. Tamar Brott reports.