Er­rol "Bushi" Hold­er, 60, re­mem­bers play­ing crick­et on Dun­can Street in the 70s with Dr Alvin Hi­laire, who grew up to be­come T&T's Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor.

He re­calls the glo­ry days of East Port-of-Spain which has al­so pro­duced a for­mer prime min­is­ter; George Cham­bers, who grew up on Duke Street; for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Ger­ald Yet­ming, from St Paul Street; two for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters John Sandy, Dun­can Street and Mar­tin Joseph, Nel­son Street; and for­mer chief jus­tice Clin­ton Bernard.

The trend still con­tin­ues with rep­re­sen­ta­tion from res­i­dents in var­i­ous spheres in pol­i­tics such as new­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Don­na Cox, (Nel­son Street), sports, sci­ence, cul­ture, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, and busi­ness.

Now, many peo­ple more as­so­ciate George, Nel­son and Dun­can Streets with gang war­fare, drugs and vi­o­lence than its tal­ent­ed sons and daugh­ters.

Hold­er was speak­ing non­cha­lant­ly to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day with a bul­let hole in the wall two feet to his left and two more bul­let holes in the glass win­dows at his tai­lor shop on the cor­ner of Queen and Nel­son Streets, Port-of-Spain, that came from er­rant shots from up­per Dun­can Street.

Hold­er said "I've been a tai­lor for 48 years, what I would re­al­ly like for us is to get a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in the area. In my time grow­ing up around here as a kid, sports, ed­u­ca­tion and learn­ing a trade was the hour of the day.

"It was re­al­ly nice, we weren't think­ing about vi­o­lence, it hurts my heart to see what is go­ing on now. Long time we could play foot­ball in the riv­er, we used to run from po­lice play­ing crick­et and foot­ball in the street.

"We could walk up Nel­son Street, jump in the riv­er to go Gon­za­les and play foot­ball in the night. We can't do that any longer be­cause of the va­grants liv­ing in the riv­er and we might catch a dis­ease."

"It's a shame to see how the place has be­come. I'm call­ing on the youths be­cause they can do bet­ter than that."

De­scrib­ing him­self as a "pro­tégé of Ap­ple­jack­ers," one of the gangs of Port-of-Spain in the 60s. He said those long-time gang mem­bers in gangs such as the Law Break­ers, Silk Hats, Sun Val­ley, Fall­en An­gels, Com­man­dos, Thun­der­birds and steel­band gangs Rene­gades and Des­per­a­does had a code of ethics ad­dress­ing el­ders in their com­mu­ni­ty with re­spect.

Hold­er said those long-time "Bad­johns" al­so helped women and se­niors with their bags, and pro­tect­ed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty.

He said peo­ple like Ted­dy, Fur­long, Tepool, Fats, and Armin Smith gave him and oth­er chil­dren mon­ey to buy suck­er bags and mon­ey to buy balls to play sports.

Hold­er said his friends in the com­mu­ni­ty such as Samuel Thongs, Neil Wil­son, him­self, Steve Bap­tiste, Ter­ry Moore, Kendon Joachim, Lin­con Grif­fith, Rocky Stowe, Mar­cus and Hay­den Bernard John and Al­bert Sandy were hurt see­ing how the place they came from or still called home had lost some­thing pre­cious.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to take heed of the sit­u­a­tion and work with the peo­ple to help bring about pos­i­tive change.