Big Smoke's Crack Palace is the home of former Grove Street Families member Big Smoke after he leaves Idlewood, Los Santos. The building is located in East Los Santos, southeast of The Pig Pen strip club.
Description[]
The Crack Palace is made up of four floors, the "Security Area", the "Drug Lab", the "Ballas Lounge" and Big Smoke's suite. The building is used as a crack palace by allies in the form of security from the Ballas, Los Santos Vagos, San Fierro Rifa, corrupt LSPD officers and the Russian Mafia. It is a front to distribute drugs around the city, mostly crack cocaine, hence the name. Even though the building is blown up during End of the Line, it is still accessible after the mission, undamaged. A statue depicting Big Smoke's beta character design can be found inside the building. In Big Smoke's suite, there is a Sprunk vending machine and three "Go Go Space Monkey" arcade machines.
Events of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas[]
While their enemies, the Grove Street Families, are disbanded, Ganton is controlled by the Ballas, Carl is taken out of Los Santos by Frank Tenpenny and Eddie Pulaski, Sweet is imprisoned, and Smoke rises to power. His power increases with the drug trade from the Crack Palace to all over Los Santos. Big Smoke moves into the building sometime after Carl Johnson is forced to leave Los Santos. The other front of Big Smoke's drug empire, second to the Crack Palace, was the crack factory in Doherty, San Fierro, destroyed by Carl Johnson in the mission Yay Ka-Boom-Boom. In the mission End of the Line, Carl breaks into the building with a SWAT Tank and kills Big Smoke, before Frank Tenpenny destroys the building. Carl escapes, and, after a chase across Los Santos, witnesses the death of Tenpenny.
Influence[]
As evidenced by the prop models using the prefix "carter", the building is inspired by the Carter Complex, a housing project turned crack den featured in the 1991 film New Jack City. The real-life building used to portray the Carter Complex was the Graham Court historic building in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City.
Glitches[]
- In the PlayStation 2 version of the game, the entrance to Big Smoke's Crack Palace can be blown off with any sort of high level explosive (Rocket Launcher's and Satchel Charges for example, regular Grenades and car explosions do not work) before End of the Line, which reveals Blue Hell, as the game is not programmed to launch the interior before the mission. However, this was fixed in later ports of the game.
Gallery[]
Exterior[]
Interior[]
Trivia[]
- The interior of the crack palace is a lot larger than it should be. This is especially noticeable when looking at the number of floors: from the outside, the building only houses 4 floors, while in the interior, there is a total of 7 floors.
- At one point during the mission End of the Line, a SWAT Tank breaks through the wall from a back alleyway, allowing SWAT to enter the building. However, there is no alleyway behind the building.
- After the mission, the hole remains, but the player cannot exit the building due to an invisible wall. If the player does manage to leave the building via the hole, they will fall through the ground as the "alleyway" is not solid.
- The statue of the beta Big Smoke depicts him holding an Uzi in his left hand. The weapon does not exist in the game, only the Micro variant of the Uzi exists. However, this may point out that the Uzi was going to appear in the game.
- After End of the Line, if the player enters one of the small rooms on Floor 3 that have stripper poles, music will suddenly start playing. This is because that was intended to happen in the mission.
- In the beta version of the game, Big Smoke's Crack Palace was supposed to serve as a safehouse after the final mission before the idea was dropped. However, the Palace remains accessible following the end of the game.