When he ran out of ammo he picked up a shovel and beat the germans manning the pillbox to death, successfully completing the mission. “i swear it’s true,” said Perkins. “i have seen letters and newspaper articles about it. i was always proud of him for that. He stood up for something great. i just wanted to be around him all the time when i was kid.” in order to spend time with his father, he often accompanied his father to work. His father’s clients, however, were not the type a young boy should have been around. “He built secret rooms inside of houses for mobsters and bikers who lived in Carrollwood and ybor City,” said Perkins. “these were known guys. they would have a fake wall in a den or living room and when you pressed a button the wall would open up and reveal the hidden room my father built.” Perkins’ father taught him everything he knew and as the years progressed, Perkins graduated from a simple helper to his father’s full-fledged apprentice. then, when Perkins was around 12 or 13 years old, he and his father had a falling out and have not spoken since. “i think he may be dead,” said Perkins. “i don’t care where he is or what happened to him. When i was in junior high, i overheard him on the would open up phone with my mom saying something like, ‘i think our son would kill me in his sleep if he had the chance.’ i have no idea why he said that but i was crushed. i looked up to my father. When i heard him say something so terrible about me it broke me and i never spoke to him again.” But he did keep the lessons he taught him. With his mother working fulltime, Perkins had little parental supervision as a teenager. He used this freedom to become tHe party guy at his high school by building an underground party room in his backyard, mimicking those secret rooms he used to build with his father. He said the room was a work of art, complete with hard wood floors and cubbyholes in the walls for alcohol storage. alcohol was something easy for him to get his hands on. He also made and sold fake iDs. every weekend he would put on a lab coat, rub some black makeup under his nose to create a five o’clock shadow on his upper lip, clip a USF medical student iD he made at home onto the jacket, and purchase alcohol using his fake iD at a liquor store drive thru. He would then return to the underground room in his backyard and host the weekend’s best party. Because the room had limited space, it was an invite only party with guests clamoring to go. By the end of the party, bodies were strewn across the hidden room’s floor and the smell of vomit was overpowering. “My mom knew i had the room,” explained Perkins. “there was no way to hide it from her when i was building it, but she thought it was just a boy’s clubhouse. She had no way of knowing what really went on. then one weekend when i was at a Saturday morning detention she saw one of my friends passed out on the lawn and when she checked on him she looked into the room for the first time and saw what we really did. When i got home, she made me cave the room in.” Perkins refused to allow that to be the end of his partying ways. at the age of 15, using his fake iDs, he rented a townhome near the University of South Florida. By that point he had earned and saved quite a bit of money by selling the fake iDs and by working at a KB toy Store, money he used to pay for the entire year’s lease up front, enabling him to avoid a credit and background check. and because the rental home was near a popular college, police left his parties alone, thinking it was another college party rather than a high school kegger.
the parties featured plenty of beer, a two-story funnel, and a pool of beer on the first floor that partiers dove into from the second floor. at the end of each party, he cleaned and then returned to his mother’s house. “it was just a party house,” he said. “i didn’t live there.” He rented the townhome throughout high school. Following graduation, he had little desire to attend college. He knew what he wanted to do – run his own business. Because he made a profit off the fake iDs and parties, coupled with the fact that he’d become a manager at KB toy Store, he felt he had the experience and know-how. His first legal business venture was a Saturn Subs in what was then the east Lake Mall. His calling card was a one-dollar hotdog and soda. the business was a success in terms of moving products, but it was not providing him with the type of income he wanted.
“He built secret rooms inside of houses for mobsters and bikers who lived in Carrollwood and ybor City,”said Perkins. “These were known guys. They would have a fake wall
in a den or living room and when you pressed a button the wall
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CigaR City Magazine
and reveal the hidden room my father built.” He sold the business for a small profit and returned to KB toy Store for a few years before again venturing out on his own, this time opening Cheap auto Repair on east Hillsborough avenue where the taco Bus is now located. Perkins knew next to nothing about fixing cars, but he knew commerce. On that strip of road on Hillsborough avenue were a car lot and auto shop but no auto repair shop. He knew there was a need for one. He hired a handful of qualified mechanics and was open for business. Perkins also knew how to promote, bringing in customers with unique promotions that catered to that area’s low income clientele. For instance, covering one side of his building was his slogan, “We have crack head prices!” “there was a ton of crack heads in that area,” laughed Perkins. “and they would come by the shop all the time with random objects they were trying to sell, like DVD players and pairs of shoes. i wouldn’t want anything they were selling, but they were persistent. they would say the DVD player was $5 and i’d say no. So they’d drop it to $3 and i’d still say no. Finally they would offer it to be for a buck, so of course i had to take it at that price. i even had one crack head who stopped by with a pair of scissors and asked to cut the lawn. i didn’t even have a real lawn; it was just one strip of grass, but i said sure and offered to pay him $10. When i checked in on him, he was cutting my grass with the scissors. it was crazy. So that is what crack head prices meant–we were always willing to negotiate and would do anything to get your business, like a crack head. the people in that community understood it and loved the slogan.” His other famous promotion was “Pimp Discount Mondays.” He offered a 30 percent discount to anyone who looked like a pimp, whether they were a real pimp or fake. More often than not, however, the pimps were real. the promotion was such a hit he decided to run with it. He would wear a fur coat and pimp hat, stand on the corner of the road near his shop, and wave a sign to the passersby that read either “We Have Crack Head Prices” or “Pimp Discount Mondays.” “and that’s how my pimp character was born,” he said. Perkins was a teenager, 13 or 14, when he bought his first video camera. He and his friends would hide with it near the fairways of a local golf course. When a ball rolled by, Perkins would grab it and film the golfers’ reactions when they couldn’t find the ball. if the golfer saw him grab the ball and run, the reaction was even funnier, explained Perkins.