The tall 24-year-old with the dazzling smile is one the young black men who cluster on Allied Drive. <

He's from the mean streets in Chicago. He's had jobs but is unemployed now. He likes marijuana, a lot. He's sold crack and been caught. He's an expectant father. <

And he's been part of a streetscape that makes residents and police uneasy. <

"Any type of activity is going to be a problem," he said of the effect hanging out has on neighbors. "It's a small neighborhood." <

But he insists that at any given moment, most teens and young men on the street are just passing time - not dealing drugs as many suspect. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he doesn't want his drug history to hurt chances of employment. <

The life he describes is common to many others whose presence on Allied's streets gives the neighborhood its intimidating glower. <

He was raised in Chicago - through the eighth grade by his grandmother and then his mom. "I never got a chance to meet my dad," he said softly. <

In his youth, he said he saw drunks on street corners, drug dealing, shootings, "every negative aspect of life, period." <

He saw a cousin "shot up bleeding half to death," and a man killed by gunfire. "I walked five or six steps and he's dead on the street." <

"Life's just crazy," he said. <

Yet he finished high school, and held jobs in a grocery store, telemarketing, delivery companies and as a home health aide. <

He saw a decent life, away from drugs and gangs. "I was just hoping that one day I didn't have to resort to that kind of lifestyle," he said. "But things happen." <

His 24-year-old girlfriend, who has three children from another relationship, moved from Chicago to Madison in 2001 to escape urban decay and her ex-boyfriend. She found an apartment around Allied Drive. <

While he was visiting his girlfriend that year, police crashed a dice game in an apartment hallway and he got busted for trespassing and marijuana possession. After moving here in 2002, he couldn't find a job. "I don't know why," he said. <

So he mixed on the streets. <

One day, a guy who owed him money repaid with a $20 rock of crack cocaine. He hung out on a corner that day. Cars passed and stopped. He and two other guys stuck hands into a vehicle to make a sale, and he sold his rock - to an undercover police officer. He was charged with a felony and sentenced to three months in jail, serving time late last summer. <

There are many reasons to sell drugs - to make easy money, to feel superior or to survive, he said. <

Gangs operate in Allied, but differently from Chicago, where protecting turf means violence, he said. "It ain't organized the way it is in Chicago." <

"You've got people who think they are all that," he said. "I see people around like that but I don't pay them no attention. I see people who look like they've got money. How much money, I don't know." <

Out of jail, he has smoked marijuana again, typically a $10 blunt - a cigar laced with the drug - that keeps him high for half a day. "You just walk around outside and find it," he said. "People just come up to you and ask you." <

You don't even need money to get high around Allied Drive, he said, naming marijuana and Ecstasy as choice drugs. "Everybody be smoking marijuana, mostly everybody," he said of his crowd. <

The high melts him into the TV or a video game, he said. "I don't get in trouble when I smoke. It keeps me humble." <

He shies from crack because he's "seen what they can do to people." But he still considers dealing again to make quick cash. "It's tempting sometimes." The money's not worth the risk of arrest, he quickly adds, saying he wants to find another way to care for his girlfriend, her sons, and their baby, due in August. <

For now, the family, which moved to the West Side months ago, gets by on public assistance. <

He's still not aggressively looking for work. And when he fills out applications, he admits his felony and doesn't get called back. His probation officer warns him against hanging on Allied Drive when visiting friends or relatives there. <

"If I got a job, I'd be much better off," he said. <