Knowing when to get out the streets is the best display of street smarts: Poot and Cutty

The best street smart is knowing when the streets are no longer for you. Poot and Cutty got there two different ways.

Cutty came home off a fourteen year bid with Avon's package waiting and Slim Charles next to him, and then he could not pull the trigger on Savino. He had him lined up. Something had gone out of him inside. When he told Avon that the thing that makes you do what you do was not in him anymore, Avon offered him another role in the organization, and he turned that down too.

Poot's version was quieter. He walked the part and talked the part, and that one time with Wallace he acted the part, and nobody watching believed the streets were for him. Eventually he did not believe it either. Bodie's death came at the end of that decision rather than the start of it. He gave his friend one last run at making it to tomorrow and saw right then that Bodie wanted to go out on his shield and he did not.

Both of them got out. Only one could take anybody with him. Cutty took Avon's money, opened the gym and spent the rest of the show pulling corner boys off corners. Poot got to Foot Locker, and when Dukie walked in needing something, Poot had nothing to give him.