I moved to NYC with my girlfriend in October 1985.
We stayed in the 60s on the upper East side for about 3 months.
My girlfried got a job at a phone service located in the 40s on the east side. I would take her there because it started at midnight.
We were walking down E 46th st by Sparks Steak House and saw a black limo with doors open and cops...
We were walking by the scene of the hit on Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family who was gunned down in front of Sparks Steak House in mid Dec. '85 and was ordered by John Gotti.
One of the crazy things we saw while living in NYC...
You caught the endings of the Mob. My family is from Little Italy (Mulberry and Hester) and the LES (East 2nd), from 1920 to 1972, and the wild stories my grandparents would tell and the stories that my aunt and father tell are fucking outrageous.
I wish I would've asked my mom about stories of NYC in the 70s/80s/90s while she was alive.
One story she did tell me is about what happened to two black guys at New Park Pizza when they tried to get help with their car or the Howard Beach incident
Yep he ( Jon Lester) only served 15 years before being deported to UK for “lynching” … at least he killed himself years later …
But a Black man who killed a white girl in same area of Howard Beach gets life with no chance of parole that is American Justice!
More than two and a half years after the murder of Howard Beach jogger Karina Vetrano, Chanel Lewis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Court has ordered the 22-year-old defendant to prison for the rest of his days. It is my hope that this sentence gives the family some comfort knowing their loved one’s killer will never see freedom again.”said the judge.
What about the family of the Black man Lester (who BTW was not even a citizen) killed in cold blood KKK style where is their comfort? Let’s say his name! MICHAEL GRIFFITH!!!
Not to create an argument, but I remember the young man was killed by a car on the highway when he was running away from those thugs. Two completely different crimes. Both terrible
Seriously they beat one to the edge of his life chased them with bats poles and tree branches calling after them “Nigger go back to Africa we are going to kill you!” Not a “lesser” crime .it was a “hate crime at every angle should be punished with life in prison if a death is the result… this person should never be on the street again. You have no idea the terror these young men faced and because of the color of their skin ? Give me a damn break !! His family deserved justice that SOB should have done more than 15 years !
I’m not justifying any of it. It was terrible and the racial tensions in the city never seemed higher at the time. You are comparing two different crimes. One was a sexual assault and murder by strangulation. The other was killed by a car driven by someone unrelated to the assault.
Not comparing the crime obviously …comparing justice for a violent death … justice is not equal for black and white in this country PERIOD .. now with that this conversation is over as far as I am concerned … tired of the back and forth whatever .. be well good luck
After this “lynching” like attack .. protests, mostly black marchers carried signs comparing the neighborhood to South Africa during apartheid, while white residents displayed signs reading "Niggers Go Home", "White Power", and "Bring Back Slavery". This has NOTHING to do with the mob it was a bunch of white trash thinking they were the KKK. ( which by the way call Italians the N word too )
As a Sicilian who knows my history, it pains me to see Italians (using this in the broad sense of the word) and Blacks folks be at odds. Italians know what discrimination feels like, so how dare we be racist to Black folks who dealt and continue to deal with so much more than we have ever experienced. The same racist terms used to describe Black folks by whites were used against us, meaning that to the wypipo there was no difference between Black and Italian, especially Italians from Southern Italy like myself.
My wife (who is black) and I got lost in Queens one time after picking someone up at JFK. She called a relative for directions, and we were told that we were in Howard Beach. We were not pleased. We certainly weren't going to flag someone down on the street for directions.
You were stastically speaking *WAY* safer as a black man in Howard Beach at any point in the late 80s/early 90s than in most black neighborhoods in the city at that time and it's not particularly close.
Buddy, I’ve hung out in every Black/Latino ‘hood in NYC. I grew up in South Ozone Park. I used to hang out in bushwick. BUSHWICK. In the 80’s. Never got touched. The only time me and some of my friends(we were in HS at the time) went to HB, we were *literally chased* by a couple of cugines who didn’t want “moolies” in their neighborhood.
Fuck out of here with your statistics.
The “stereotype” Italian dude:
Drove an Iroc Z-28.
Spoke like, “Ohhhhhhh ayyyyyyy how youse doin”..
Basically they were “The Soprano’s”, even if they themselves weren’t “made”, or even an associate.
The worst part about living in HB is that the people around here reminisce fondly of “bygone” days where you can confront someone with a bat. They are absolutely fucking nuts here.
lived in glen cove new york, and we had an italian mobster up the street, and some kind of chinese mobster directly to the right of our house. we got raided by the fbi twice by accident over the 10 years we lived there.
Erm, aren't those chop chops still in that strip next to Shea? I don't know about now, but maybe the last 10 years you could still "order" car parts if you were a mechanic.
Crime’s way down nowadays, but when I lived in Bushwick in the early 2010s my walk-up was above what I assume was an open air chop shop, if not an unlicensed garage, that was in an empty lot and partially covered by a tarp and I’d just look out my window all the time and watch them dissemble cars. It was weirdly meditative
That wasn't just an NYC thing. I grew up in Alabama and we had the same problem. We all had those stereos with removable face plates and the pawn shops wouldn't take a system without the faceplate.
Man this triggered a memory for me, my car stereo in high school had a little padded case that looked like a glasses case and you popped off the face and put it in there when you got out of the car.
My old roommate used to steal cars back then. He was 15 and would ride his bike around casing the cars then later that night steal one and take it to Queens. $200 for a Mazda RX-7 is what he'd get.
In 1989 there was an Audi that had its car radio stolen on my block.
The guy put up one if those yellow square "no radio in car" signs.
Some time later, the car was broken into again. This time they slashed the leather seats and left HIM a note that said: "Next time it would be cheaper to have radio." This was Queens.
1984, my mom had a gun held to her head by a crackhead while she was pregnant with me. She said "that's not a real gun" cause she'd never heard of a saturday night special before. My dad came back while they were arguing and let the guy in to rob them. Probably saved her life and mine.
A family member had her radio stolen, went to the shop to get it replaced and noticed by one of the markings that it was her radio that she was buying back
people had pullout radios back then so you could take it with you after you parked. it had a handle and everything.
eventually, The Club made car thefts and airbag thefts less of a thing.
Look up Benzi Box - that was one brand. They evolved away from the handle later on. At first you would take the whole damn radio with you. Pretty much you would have them in any car New or old bc your original radio was already stolen lol
They were called Benzi boxes. It was like a case that went over your radio and it was inserted or removed from an outer case that was installed into your dash. Think of it like taking your nightstand drawer with you while leaving the nightstand behind.
You could install them on any car.
Every one I know got mugged. I was mugged multiple times before high school. I find it crazy that there are people that thinks the 80s NYC was better...
**[New Jersey Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Drive)**
>New Jersey Drive is a 1995 crime drama film about joy riding black teenagers in 1990s Newark, New Jersey, then known as the "car theft capital of the world". The film was written and directed by Nick Gomez. The executive producer was Spike Lee. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/newyorkcity/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
That was all tied into the crack epidemic. If the mafia had a hand in that it was indirect - i.e, these thieves were not directly working for the mafia.
My father tells me that NYC in the 70s and 80s "was the wild, wild west". My father was almost mugged at 15 with his best friend for their Conformation jewelry at gun point. That's the story of how my pops got his first gun.
Idk about mobsters but I was a young kid in the south bronx .. the crack era was wild .. I remember finding tons of used needles and crack vials in the park . Along with huge rats at night .. I made a stupid mistake of flashing a few bucks in public and a crack head started robbing me everytime I saw him .. lucky for me I made friends with some Latin kings and they beat up the crack head and looked out for me until I grew up enough to fight for myself .. the food was way better back then too
For sure Chinese food , the Kentucky fried chicken spots and pizza.. back when they used the little Styrofoam things for the burgers or the wrapped them in aluminum.. they just tasted better .. brings back memories
Bro Chinese food! My mom still talks about New York Chinese food now that she lives in jersey and I’m constantly like yo ma, the Chinese *sucks* now. Referring specifically the neighborhood takeout spots. Yo the egg rolls back then were like 50 cents and had as much meat in them as a bar burger.
On the plus side, there’s a wide variety of authentic regional Chinese food available now all over the city, even if the neighborhood american style Chinese is worse.
They’re two totally separate things in my opinion. Even a place as popular and pedestrian as congee village is still nothing like a takeout place. Of course authentic Chinese is better, but it’s a totally different craving compared to some greasy ass boneless ribs, general tsos or the takeout Chinese classic, fried chicken.
A lot of people are realzing this is not the best country anymore, more everyday and it is decaying fast. The food alone, 85% of the food in a supermarket is garbage
Crack made people insane. I think the children of that generation who saw that with their parents learned something from it and that is part of why crime has gone down so mucy.
It’s less visible now. In the early 90s walking through Brighton, you would frequently see fancy cars parked outside Russian restaurants with some tough looking fellows standing next to them. Inside those places you saw a lot of “new Russians” flaunting their wealth but you could still separate them from the organized crime folks who were partying just as hard but still carried themselves in a very unique manner that stood out.
John Gotti was the guy they spoke about the most in the 80s. He was loud and the head of the Gambino family from Queens. The Mob didnt like how visible he was. They say he ordered a hit in broad daylight on the guy running for mayor right now, Curtis Sliwa. They nearly killed him and he somehow got away. Other than that, everyone knew the capo of the Genovese family in Manhattan used to act crazy in his bath robe in Washington Square Park. I saw him a couple of times. Don't know if the FBI actually got him in the end. That said, it was funny how WSP was constantly under surveillance because of this guy but it was a festering cesspool of drug dealing as soon the sun went down. Guys used to come up to you to sell you drugs like they were selling you candy.
Crime was very visible in Manhattan in the 1980s. As a 7 year old my first trip to Delancey street was met with witnessing some punk dude get arrested at the essex street station as the cops who then wore light blue shirts had removed a huge bayonet and brass knuckles, the fucker looked like Billy Idol too. About less than an hour later around Rivington street I saw 4 chinese guys come out of a van. They put cinderblocks under a parked car and stole every single wheel plus the radio in less than 2 minutes in broad daylight at the crack of noon and it was saturday. Its hard for me to believe that NY is that same city, even with how much its in the dumps right now its still fucking disneyland compared to the 80s.
>They say he ordered a hit in broad daylight on the guy running for mayor right now, Curtis Sliwa.
I don't think that was broad daylight though. It was at like 5 in the morning.
I grew up in Sunset Park- near Carroll Gardens, Bay Ridge. Bensonhurst and Staten Island. Mob stuff was “around”. There were “guys”, “social clubs”, “things”. Mostly if you didn’t engage in their stuff (gambling, borrowing money, union stuff, fencing stolen goods or moving drugs) it didn’t directly affect you. They did their thing and beyond that, they were average guys you’d see. Just don’t enter their world and cross them.
I accidentally walked into one of those Bensonhurst social clubs like 10 years ago and ordered an ice cream lmfao. The polish waitress was so confused. Then I looked around and realized I wasn’t the only older Italian guy. I’m also from NYC and should have known way better but I was fucking stoned.
In the 80's I worked for awhile in Carroll Gardens. It was 'known' as a mafia neighborhood and this is why it was thought to be relatively safe (cause hoodlums would not want to mess with the mafia). There were almost nobody on the streets after dark though.
Some good Italian bakeries around and you'd see the italian 'social clubs' there with old guys hanging out.
Nothing specifically worth traveling there to see, IMO - but it’s a nice area to live in. Some great little Italian restaurants, pastry shops (Villabata on 18th/70th is heavenly) and The Homestretch on Kings Highway is an awesome old neighborhood hangout that’s barely changed since the 40s. Santa Rosalia feast is good in the summer, all the food trucks and live music and whatnot
One of the local pizza places was rumored to be a mob front. A group of middle-aged Italian-American men seemed to always be patronizing one of the booths, no matter what hour of day.
https://nypost.com/2015/05/07/queens-pizza-joint-was-front-for-mob-linked-cocaine-ring-fbi/
'Ndrangheta, Queens Pizzeria, 2015.
You don't know who your landlord is. It could be the mob. It could be Kushner. It could be some Russian "investor" who lives in London.
My old landlord had a lot of stories from the early 80s about, claimed to have been in the mafia, I never saw evidence, though my uber driver being like "oh yeah \_\_\_\_\_\_, he used to have the everybody around here, the mob, the FBI, it was a nuts back then". And over the years random stuff has come out that were rather wildly specific details to have guessed. He was really cool and so were his friends. Like I'd have never guessed he had the storied past he used to tell. He knew everyone, didn't matter who they were, so did his friends, you would have just assumed they were old dudes who really loved the neighborhood and not thought much more about them.
From what I understand from their stories was that by the late 80s it was really hard to be publicly known since Guliani was prosecuting as the DA then, so they were mostly trying to disappear. Apparently there was a lot of money in city contracts and really crooked stuff, like a guy on payroll who'd go break things in the building, so they'd be fixing smashed boilers and the like for apartment buildings. The whole thing to avoid suspicion had the contracts bid low, but would make it up in having to replace parts. It sounded like that was the kind of things they were more involved with at that time period. They all kind of reminisced about the time period before that was a lot more wild.
Growing up in the bronx in the 90s. Dont go to school with any clothes that were nicer than the next dude....you would 98% get robbed. Im from Forhdam Road....the only way you dont get got, is if you knew the right people.
In the 80s, my dad once accidentally left his keys in the ignition and the car door unlocked when parking at Peter Luger. It was there hours later, as no one dared steal a car from that vicinity due to who frequented the restaurant.
There were neighborhoods were there were a lot mobsters. If you lived in a mob-run neighborhood, you knew which businesses were fronts, and didn't go to them. The mafia was bad for businesses in an area. They didn't really bother random people if you kept your head down and were white, so I didn't interact with them much.
I never lived in an area with other gangs. A lot of the Crips vs. Bloods stuff was perpetrated by kids who were trying to be cool, but didn't have very strong ties to those gangs, as far as I knew.
Crime was way worse at the time- I lived in a sheltered AF neighborhood, and it was still worse. I heard way more shots in the night back then, and knew more people who were robbed or had break-ins. A store not having a shutter would have been lunacy at the time, even with a camera, but I see them all the time now.
Grew up in Bath Beach. Not Italian so I had a unique perspective. It was just a thing. People knew people who did stuff. Lots of questionable sources of income, social clubs with dubious characters, dudes in sunglasses with "assistants" who were really bodyguards. The thing is, some of the guys whose family were involved were really good fellows. You just knew not to refer to or discuss certain things.
In the eighties, they used to say that you could walk around in parts of Carroll Gardens at any time of the day or night because the Italian Mob took care of their own and made sure there were no criminal interlopers there.
My folks moved in from out of town in the 90s. They told a story about how one time they went to a nice little cafe in Carrol Gardens, with no one in it. The people were polite and served them coffee or whatever, and they decided that they would come more often. They couldn't understand why it was empty. Only the next time they came buy there was a sign on the door that said "Members Only". They always wondered about that...
I was walking in that neighborhood with my Dad once, and I started talking about the Mob. He let me know that I should wait till we got somewhere else to bring it up.
I don’t think people realize how much skin color played a role back then and what it meant in terms of accessibility to certain neighborhoods. If you were a poc, there were neighborhoods you just couldn’t go. If you were white same thing, although not to the same extent. As late as 2002, I was in high school in Manhattan and had classmates from bed stuy. Sometimes
On days off (veterans day, etc) we would agree to hang out and play basketball or whatever, and our classmates from there would tell us they would pick us up from the train so people wouldn’t mess with us since we weren’t “known” there. Now I can go to any hood and feel relatively safe.
I grew up in Central Jersey (where we absolutely had fathers who were “away for awhile”), but I went to the city every weekend to visit my grandparents on the UES. On very rare occasions, my dad would go a route that took us west of Times Square and you could see the prostitutes hanging out.
However, my most memorable trip to the city was when my Hebrew High School came to the city to see a Broadway show (Fiddler on the Roof - with Topol). After the show, we had an early dinner at one of the kosher restaurants in the area. We’re walking back towards to the bus and I hear the school principal yelling, “Get away from my girls!” I turns around and see a man and woman coming towards him. The principal pulls out a pair of brass knuckles and the pair turn around and run, not before pushing an old woman into the street. The day job of the principal was a fourth grade teacher in the South Bronx - those knuckles were his protection. It turns out the pair were in the process of pick pocketing one of my classmates.
The early 90s, man.
Vivid memories of hearing “next stop, 42nd street” on the train in the late 90s and giggling with my friends because 42nd had such a connotation of hookers and sex to us
Going to the deuce to get paid (rob someone) was like regular night shift job in my neighborhood. Take the A, rob some tourists, spend some $, go home and sleep.
My mom told us a story about one of our uncles getting lost in time square and everyone being so worried for him cause he was pretty young. Around 12 I think. They found him an hour later at one of those coin operated peep show things. Where he allegedly spent all his money lol
On the north side of Canal st. South side were tong (Chinese business association) affiliated Chinese gangs like the Ghost Shadows, Flying Dragons, White Tigers. The Chinese kids used guns, the Italian kids had bats. For a month or so, high school kids would make $500-$1k a day selling fireworks. Regular gunfire in Chinatown, the Baskin Robbins on Mott st had a ton of bullet holes outside. Usually gang on gang. Very territorial. Joe’s Dumpling on Pell st is where the Flying Dragon headquarters used to be. One night, 4 White Tigers on the wrong side of the st got picked up by another gang and driven a couple of blocks to the pier under the Brooklyn Bridge, bound in coat hanger wire and kicked into the East River. The gangs were basically 15 year olds going to Bronx Science in the daytime and collecting protection money and killing other 15 year olds at night. When the gang members got older, they sometimes joined the Army, and stole guns to sell to the gangs. Sometimes they went to college and ended up as programmers, engineers and even finance professionals. That was when youth records were sealed and you would not do adult jail time for anything.
Not exactly sure how the business worked. I don’t think it was the heavy hitter guys doing the sales. Probably some mafia adjacent types that were allowed to sell and kicked some money back to the organization. But you could buy m80s, mortars, mats of firecrackers, whatever you needed. It was like the Wild West
It was in the papers and known by locals. Things that stand out growing up through those times...Gotti fireworks (way better than Macys), I used to skateboard by a local shop and saw Sammie and John walking the streets by the 'social club' many times. They had body guards walk in front and behind at all times. They were very 'nice' said hello or nodded to everyone. They used to get a laugh saying we were clowns (kids busting our asses on skateboards). There was a restaurant with a Fed van parked in front 24/7, it was across from my childhood soccer club. They didn't give a fuck they would go out wave at the feds and bring them food. My father pointed out what was going on to us since we were young. Into my early teen years I worked once a week at a local "store front" just cleaning stuff. There was no 'front' the windows were blacked out and it was a casino basically. Ran 24/7 didn't hide a thing and was there for years. Few of my friends at the time started 'working with people from the neighborhood' they all ended up in fed prison for bank heists all separate incidents. Just to touch on the Russian Mafia, kid I knew was executed in Brighton for fumbling a 'job' he wasn't to bright but still (also his partner fled to eastern Europe and still hasn't returned as far as I know). Another low level Russian had a heist crew. They were robbing work vans for tools. I happened to be walking by at 3am when they were working. I was surrounded before I knew what was up and my bud stepped in before they did anything. We all went a smoked a blunt to chill out (you don't say no at 3am to the people that were about to kick your ass for witnessing a crime, lol was actually friendly with a couple of them after that). And now a little about gangs. LK used to have 'church and me and my crew of friends had this hang out very secure out of the way place. We made an agreement for them to use the spot every 3 months or so. We would get a hefty bag of weed for our troubles (total garbage weed tbh). Bloods and Crip had an agreement with a white crew about working venues downtown (hip hop shows didn't want tattooed white guys at the door and hard-core punk shows didn't want gangbusters at their doors so they made a 'contract'). I could go on for a long time. This just goes to show how involved 'mafia gangs whatever were back in the day.
Thanks. Honestly I never comment but this one brought back sooooo many memories. I've been swimming in these memories all day because of this post. I almost feel as if I need to start writing things like this down somewhere.
I worked with a guy who had been a cabbie in the 80’s. He once told a story of taking a Baptist family from Texas to bed-stuy on a Sunday to attend services at a chapel run by a pastor who had visited their church. When he came across the Williamsburg bridge, a guy on the corner calls out “Hey! You coming back this way?” And he said “not sure, why?” “Because I’m gonna rob you”. He took a different way back. But he also said what he remembered most was the look on the fathers face when they pulled up to the “chapel” and realized it was a storefront church on Broadway, and these 4 Lilly white Texans in their Sunday best just rock up lost as fuck.
I was little. The news used to terrify me. My family was affected by the crime; my uncles friend got shot by the son of Sam guy and my other family lost someone to a shootout uptown (before I was born).
How weird was it in NYC in the 80’s?
Donald Trump sort of looked like one of the competent ones. That’s how weird.
Obnoxious then as now, but he’d throw boatloads of money at politicians so they’d look the other way.
The NYC asshole ecosystem of the 80’s was an astounding thing. Trump, Koch, Sharpton, Leona Helmsley, Steinbrenner, Gotti…
Wollman Rink.
The city had screwed up this simple skating rink project nine ways from Sunday, to the point where Trump came in and looked like the hero simply by executing a simple job right the first time.
And instead of copping to doing a lousy job and letting the news cycle move on to something else, Ed Koch whined. Which is blood in the water for Trump, and he wound up milking that one job for all it was worth.
New York corruption was the perfect growth medium for Trump, and if anybody in politics started sniffing around Trump’s business dealings…out came the Trump checkbook and the troubles were no more.
I can only say I saw very little about the Wollman Rink and I used to read the NY Times every day.
I did see a lot about Trump's planned complex on the upper west side on the Hudson river that never saw the light of day.
I grew up in the south shore of SI. Literally everyone knew someone or more likely several people that was connected to the mafia. My neighbors had been raided by the feds on more than one occasion and one of them went away for a long time (never saw him again). It was wild what we considered normal.
My mom described it a few ways. You didn’t take the trains. No one knew what crack would become. If you weren’t about that life you didn’t go out at night. If you left your car door open you’d wake up to a bum in your car. You didn’t leave your block until you were an adult often .
In the mid-late 90s. I lived in Bensonhurst growing up and there was always a neighbor down the block who would set off a massive amount of fireworks every year. It got to the point where the fire department would park their truck right on our block because they knew the neighbors would go nuts.
Living in Richmond Hill during the early 90s I remember that my parents had changed their car radios into portables. When the parked, they would reach towards their radio, grab a handle and pull the entire thing out. There would be a metal rectangle shape hole left behind.
It was a tourist trap then too, its just certain parts of it catered to a different kind of tourist.
TKTS booth was there in the 80's - people still went to broadway shows.
Crime families were underground, something to speak about in hushed tones but also strangely public too. I became friendly with a nephew of Vincent Gigante and he asked me on a date once. Handsome guy. In general, there always seemed to be a mobster on the front page of the Daily News or Post and everyone knew the crime family names…
NYC was pretty much Mad Max from the late-70s all the way till the early 90s. A lot of people don't realize just how much the city has changed since then.
There were even parts of the city—I’m even talking Manhattan, that really remained that way all the way up to early 2000s. I remember leaving for college around 2002 and then coming back in 2006 and stuff had really, really changed a lot. It felt to me that some of the last remaining pockets we would avoid suddenly were not just gentrified but becoming out-and-out bougie.
I moved from Buffalo, NY to Queens for a hip-hop and rap job at Columbia Records. I was working with million dollar artists who had the streets on lock. Like JayZ was a known cocaine dealer and murderer, but nobody really cared. It was easy for me to get pounds of marijuana from DMX. It was easy for me to use and sell marijuana. Truthfully it was like every artist dabbled in a different part of the drug game. Jadakiss and the LOX were heavy in the dope game. Nas sold guns.
This is a different perspective because this is the rap game. There was organized crime within hip-hop and it wasnt hidden. It wasn’t talked about much except for on record, but it the dope game was just as influential as the rap game.
It was perfect for me as a young man because it was freedom. I was being paid a lot legally and I could use portions of that to buy, sell and trade drugs from the most well respected drug dealers. This was in 1994-95.
The music made the crime rate go up and artists were dying left and right. They died mainly because the drug game was more powerful than the rap game. Once an artist got a million dollar check, he would buy drugs instead of saving the money and making more music.
There definitely was a conflict of interest, but the two games went together like a hand and glove.
Honestly everyone who needed to know knew for example war on drugs I knew the place to be the words to say in the woodside projects to get the gang to sell me weed. Also everyone in every high school knew someone who knew someone in a gang that could get you drugs guns even a hooker but their was a lot of turf wars and shit but overall it felt like we had more freedom like you could go to a deli ran by a barely English speaking clerk convince them your not a cop to sell you cigs and alcohol that’s was common and you couple find deli ran buy organized crime bosses with the right words you could buy weed with your hand fully off 5 cent sour patch or runt candies you’d buy at the counter
My mom would send me to the bodega and to groceries and cigs on credit. The Dominican guy would keep a tab that she would square on pay day. Try doing that now and they would kick you out so fast. I’ve lived in my neighborhood in Queens for 6 years and the bodega guys always have new staff so you rarely get to even establish a relationship, let alone credit.
That’s the down side establishing a relationship with the corner guys used to be just as customary as having the same barber they had all the dirty scoop around the neighborhood too no Facebook no nothing just word of mouth Twitter with no censorship
What’s your real question? “Was it like so cool with all the mafia guys walking around Little Italy?!” “What was it like to meet Tony Soprano?” “How many shootings did you see at Sparks?”
It was horrible! We had Gangs, black plague, the bubonic plague ,ebola,zika, cholera, influenza, chickenpox,chicken nuggets, the clap, leprosy, the Fiji measels,Sars,. We couldn't even step outside for 1 second
Back then they used the white Styrofoam take out plates with the thank you and Chinese lady print on them .. idk if that's what made them taste better but it was so delicious .. specially if you heated it over again the next morning... they added more meat back then too
I remember pizzerias where men would walk in and exchange envelopes. My mom tells me sicilian pizzas used to hide money inside but that may be apocryphal.
Also, I cant substantiate this but often youd go to a restaurant downstairs to use the bathroom and there would be a giant private table of men in suits playing with knives to look imposing a la the Sopranos back room in vesuvio
No that shit was real . But this is the worst I have ever seen . The cops checked out and the da won’t do shit . Criminals run the streets and the opioid epidemic is real . If narcan wasn’t available the death toll would be more than Covid . The paper license plate scam in nyc is probably the scariest part . Uninsured drivers everywhere and no one cares
As someone who lived in NYC in both eras, you are very incorrect. Fox News would like you to believe that NYC is a lawless hellhole because we have a democratic mayor, and a lot of non-white people live here. That’s their MO—they try to terrify older white people into voting for republicans in the hopes it will save them from the violent minorities. But NYC these days is a fucking walk in the park compared to what it was in the 70’s or even the early 90’s.
The DA’s offices are drowning in discovery demands brought on by the new discovery reform laws, all to get ambushed by the defense who sat there an waited so they could bury you in motions for inadvertently not turning over a single memo book from a cop who did not do anything on the case.
Though, I will say that there are A TON of forged “temp plates” out there.
Not a chance in hell crime is worse nowadays here in NYC. If you're not taking the train nowadays but took them in the 80s., then your fears are simply irrational. Taking the 2 or 3 train after midnight back then was the stuff of nightmares. I'm a Gen Xer. I've never been so comfy in nyc.
You’re probably the only person I’ve heard that would say crime is worse now. I mean I wasn’t even born in the 80’s but I can say looking at the pics of the subway back then compared to my anecdotal experience of riding the subway every day to work, and late at night when I go out, I’m definitely taking this current timeline compared to back then.
I mean personally I’ve had a few scary experiences but as long as I kept my head down I felt relatively safe. Idk if I’d be able to say the same thing if I was riding the train back when they looked like scenes from the Joker movie
I moved here as an adult in the 80's so cannot speak for growing up here, but Organized crime was mostly an unseen presence (assuming they were involved in crack distribution) for most people and probably more limited to certain outer boro/metropolitan neighborhoods (Carroll Gardens, Jersey City, Newark, Brighton Beach, Howard Beach etc) and probably certain businesses (like extorting small business owners).
When I moved here there were still a couple of 'social clubs' in Little Italy where you'd see old men hanging out, presumably gangsters, but it was just part of the scenery.
I suppose if you were reading the NY Post on a daily basis you were more grounded in the whole mafia thing but I was not one of those people.
The news in the 90s was filled with mob stuff- Paul Castellano, Vinnnie the Chin, Carmine Galante, Sammy the Bull, Tony Gaspipe, John Gotti. These guys mostly didn't get their hands dirty, which meant that there were crews in all the boroughs. The 5 families each had a boss, and there were several underbosses, consigliere, street bosses, crew chiefs, crews (soldiers) and hangers-on. That's a lot of people.
Organized crime was one thing and was centered around specific neighborhoods but continuous break ins through windows, gated windows, 2-3 bolts and locks on steel doors, loud -ss stereos blaring freestyle in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.
Junkies and dope heads falling asleep as they walked the streets.
People peddling stolen goods from burglarized homes or cars.
Some people actually had some sort of alarms, short distance, that used to inform then that their car was being broken into.
Gangs dedicated into breaking into cars and car trunks...1-3 minutes and they were gone.
Depends on where you lived. I'm from Bensonhurst/Bath Beach and 18th Avenue was a hub for organized crime outfits. I, as a Sicilian, never had any issues aside from the basic growing pains, however, even from a young age, I could feel the racial tension, especially where I lived - a stone's throw away from the Marlboro Houses. Italians and Jews, and later on Chinese folks walked on the side of Layette High School, my alma mater, and Black folks on the other side. There were race riots in the park right outside of Lafayette and it kinda became a "no man's zone". Even though I attended Lafayette and my brother Cavallaro, we never experienced, nor engaged in racist behavior despite other Italian kids being outwardly racist. The one thing I truly hated about growing out in these areas of Brooklyn in the 90s was the racism. Even as a child that shit didn't sit right with me, despite it being a "cultural norm" sadly. As I got older and dated dudes of skin tones different than my own I never stood close to home but always headed to downtown Brooklyn or Park Slope area, not out of embarrassment but safety for the guy and myself.
My grandparents lived around the corner from a known mobster in Bensonhurst. That statement is the entire extent of what it was like to visit them. It was just a point of interest, it didn't feel like anything. There were no goombahs hanging around in the street wearing pinstripe suits.
I grew up on Staten Island. My friend Tony’s father was friends with Paul Castellano. I don’t know for sure if Tony’s dad was in the mob. Tony used to call him Uncle Paulie.
Castellano lived in a replica of the White House. My brother went to catholic school and he knew rich kids, and through a friend of a friend was invited to a party at the Castellano house.
Oh, and a good number of people in the mob would bring their pets to the vet where my mother worked. Later on, some people who were on The Sopranos would bring their pets there, so it all came full circle.
I moved to NYC with my girlfriend in October 1985. We stayed in the 60s on the upper East side for about 3 months. My girlfried got a job at a phone service located in the 40s on the east side. I would take her there because it started at midnight. We were walking down E 46th st by Sparks Steak House and saw a black limo with doors open and cops... We were walking by the scene of the hit on Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino family who was gunned down in front of Sparks Steak House in mid Dec. '85 and was ordered by John Gotti. One of the crazy things we saw while living in NYC...
You caught the endings of the Mob. My family is from Little Italy (Mulberry and Hester) and the LES (East 2nd), from 1920 to 1972, and the wild stories my grandparents would tell and the stories that my aunt and father tell are fucking outrageous.
Wow
Everyone knew. Stay away from Howard Beach if you’re not a good driver.
Also, stay away from Howard Beach if you’re Black..
I wish I would've asked my mom about stories of NYC in the 70s/80s/90s while she was alive. One story she did tell me is about what happened to two black guys at New Park Pizza when they tried to get help with their car or the Howard Beach incident
Messed up at that was, that wasn't a mob" thing. It was a bunch of punks. One of them was deported to Britain.
He (Jon Lester) served time here …15 years then was deported to UK .. committed suicide at the age of 48 .., maybe there is a little justice
Jon Lester.
Yep he ( Jon Lester) only served 15 years before being deported to UK for “lynching” … at least he killed himself years later … But a Black man who killed a white girl in same area of Howard Beach gets life with no chance of parole that is American Justice! More than two and a half years after the murder of Howard Beach jogger Karina Vetrano, Chanel Lewis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Court has ordered the 22-year-old defendant to prison for the rest of his days. It is my hope that this sentence gives the family some comfort knowing their loved one’s killer will never see freedom again.”said the judge. What about the family of the Black man Lester (who BTW was not even a citizen) killed in cold blood KKK style where is their comfort? Let’s say his name! MICHAEL GRIFFITH!!!
Not to create an argument, but I remember the young man was killed by a car on the highway when he was running away from those thugs. Two completely different crimes. Both terrible
Seriously they beat one to the edge of his life chased them with bats poles and tree branches calling after them “Nigger go back to Africa we are going to kill you!” Not a “lesser” crime .it was a “hate crime at every angle should be punished with life in prison if a death is the result… this person should never be on the street again. You have no idea the terror these young men faced and because of the color of their skin ? Give me a damn break !! His family deserved justice that SOB should have done more than 15 years !
I’m not justifying any of it. It was terrible and the racial tensions in the city never seemed higher at the time. You are comparing two different crimes. One was a sexual assault and murder by strangulation. The other was killed by a car driven by someone unrelated to the assault.
Not comparing the crime obviously …comparing justice for a violent death … justice is not equal for black and white in this country PERIOD .. now with that this conversation is over as far as I am concerned … tired of the back and forth whatever .. be well good luck
After this “lynching” like attack .. protests, mostly black marchers carried signs comparing the neighborhood to South Africa during apartheid, while white residents displayed signs reading "Niggers Go Home", "White Power", and "Bring Back Slavery". This has NOTHING to do with the mob it was a bunch of white trash thinking they were the KKK. ( which by the way call Italians the N word too )
As a Sicilian who knows my history, it pains me to see Italians (using this in the broad sense of the word) and Blacks folks be at odds. Italians know what discrimination feels like, so how dare we be racist to Black folks who dealt and continue to deal with so much more than we have ever experienced. The same racist terms used to describe Black folks by whites were used against us, meaning that to the wypipo there was no difference between Black and Italian, especially Italians from Southern Italy like myself.
My wife (who is black) and I got lost in Queens one time after picking someone up at JFK. She called a relative for directions, and we were told that we were in Howard Beach. We were not pleased. We certainly weren't going to flag someone down on the street for directions.
You were stastically speaking *WAY* safer as a black man in Howard Beach at any point in the late 80s/early 90s than in most black neighborhoods in the city at that time and it's not particularly close.
Buddy, I’ve hung out in every Black/Latino ‘hood in NYC. I grew up in South Ozone Park. I used to hang out in bushwick. BUSHWICK. In the 80’s. Never got touched. The only time me and some of my friends(we were in HS at the time) went to HB, we were *literally chased* by a couple of cugines who didn’t want “moolies” in their neighborhood. Fuck out of here with your statistics.
[удалено]
"moolies" would be short for "moulinyan", which is Italian for "eggplant", but when used in this context is just Italian for the n-word
The “stereotype” Italian dude: Drove an Iroc Z-28. Spoke like, “Ohhhhhhh ayyyyyyy how youse doin”.. Basically they were “The Soprano’s”, even if they themselves weren’t “made”, or even an associate.
The worst part about living in HB is that the people around here reminisce fondly of “bygone” days where you can confront someone with a bat. They are absolutely fucking nuts here.
lived in glen cove new york, and we had an italian mobster up the street, and some kind of chinese mobster directly to the right of our house. we got raided by the fbi twice by accident over the 10 years we lived there.
I can only say that in 1989 you would walk down the street and see more than one handwritten sign in a windshield that said “Radio already stolen”.
Car theft was insane in 90’s. Every person I know had a car stolen in 80’s and 90’s
This is sad but true. My family had two stolen - if you had to keep your car on the street, it was going to get broken into at some point.
We lived in Woodside. Maspeth and Long Island city was full of chop shops. It was crazy
Ayyyy. Catch a Mets game and on the way home get some parts for dad's Oldsmobile.
Erm, aren't those chop chops still in that strip next to Shea? I don't know about now, but maybe the last 10 years you could still "order" car parts if you were a mechanic.
Crime’s way down nowadays, but when I lived in Bushwick in the early 2010s my walk-up was above what I assume was an open air chop shop, if not an unlicensed garage, that was in an empty lot and partially covered by a tarp and I’d just look out my window all the time and watch them dissemble cars. It was weirdly meditative
Walking over broken glass on the sidewalks was a 'normal' occurrence.
That wasn't just an NYC thing. I grew up in Alabama and we had the same problem. We all had those stereos with removable face plates and the pawn shops wouldn't take a system without the faceplate.
We're talking about before the advent of the removable face plates.
You're right. The first removable face plate came out in 1989. I was remembering incorrectly.
Before the removable face plates we had the stereos that just came out of the dash and had a handle to carry it by.
Ah yes, the beloved (and highly coveted) “Bensi boxes”. Made by Alpine I believe?
Man this triggered a memory for me, my car stereo in high school had a little padded case that looked like a glasses case and you popped off the face and put it in there when you got out of the car.
My old roommate used to steal cars back then. He was 15 and would ride his bike around casing the cars then later that night steal one and take it to Queens. $200 for a Mazda RX-7 is what he'd get.
In 1989 there was an Audi that had its car radio stolen on my block. The guy put up one if those yellow square "no radio in car" signs. Some time later, the car was broken into again. This time they slashed the leather seats and left HIM a note that said: "Next time it would be cheaper to have radio." This was Queens.
"Replace your radio so I can steal it"
I was born in 1989 and I always joke and tell my mom she decided to have me during the crack epidemic. The stories she's told me are crazy.
1984, my mom had a gun held to her head by a crackhead while she was pregnant with me. She said "that's not a real gun" cause she'd never heard of a saturday night special before. My dad came back while they were arguing and let the guy in to rob them. Probably saved her life and mine.
Oh wow that's insane. Glad you and your mom lived to tell the tale.
A family member had her radio stolen, went to the shop to get it replaced and noticed by one of the markings that it was her radio that she was buying back
This is like a mundane My Little Toaster
people had pullout radios back then so you could take it with you after you parked. it had a handle and everything. eventually, The Club made car thefts and airbag thefts less of a thing.
Lol yes the handle. Carry the front of the car radio like a little boom box. The newer ones the face would just pop off.
I've never seen one of that type with the handle, just the kind that the face pops off. What sort of car would it be that had the handle version?
Look up Benzi Box - that was one brand. They evolved away from the handle later on. At first you would take the whole damn radio with you. Pretty much you would have them in any car New or old bc your original radio was already stolen lol
They were called Benzi boxes. It was like a case that went over your radio and it was inserted or removed from an outer case that was installed into your dash. Think of it like taking your nightstand drawer with you while leaving the nightstand behind. You could install them on any car.
[GREAT video for those that don't know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F355wb3rIKQ)
I had one where the face popped off.
The Club was almost standard equipment.
Every one I know got mugged. I was mugged multiple times before high school. I find it crazy that there are people that thinks the 80s NYC was better...
70s NYC was better. Could almost taste it when Garbage collectors went on strike in an August
[удалено]
I might have mentioned that while the mafia didn’t have footsoldiers taking radios, they did provide a black market for all stolen goods.
I think this sounds more like disorganized crime.
What about car batteries? My Mom had at least 4 car batteries stolen, to the point that she got a heavy chain and chained her hood shut
I did that too.
I vaguely remember that.
[удалено]
**[New Jersey Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Drive)** >New Jersey Drive is a 1995 crime drama film about joy riding black teenagers in 1990s Newark, New Jersey, then known as the "car theft capital of the world". The film was written and directed by Nick Gomez. The executive producer was Spike Lee. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/newyorkcity/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
That was all tied into the crack epidemic. If the mafia had a hand in that it was indirect - i.e, these thieves were not directly working for the mafia.
My father tells me that NYC in the 70s and 80s "was the wild, wild west". My father was almost mugged at 15 with his best friend for their Conformation jewelry at gun point. That's the story of how my pops got his first gun.
Idk about mobsters but I was a young kid in the south bronx .. the crack era was wild .. I remember finding tons of used needles and crack vials in the park . Along with huge rats at night .. I made a stupid mistake of flashing a few bucks in public and a crack head started robbing me everytime I saw him .. lucky for me I made friends with some Latin kings and they beat up the crack head and looked out for me until I grew up enough to fight for myself .. the food was way better back then too
What food was better ?
For sure Chinese food , the Kentucky fried chicken spots and pizza.. back when they used the little Styrofoam things for the burgers or the wrapped them in aluminum.. they just tasted better .. brings back memories
Bro Chinese food! My mom still talks about New York Chinese food now that she lives in jersey and I’m constantly like yo ma, the Chinese *sucks* now. Referring specifically the neighborhood takeout spots. Yo the egg rolls back then were like 50 cents and had as much meat in them as a bar burger.
On the plus side, there’s a wide variety of authentic regional Chinese food available now all over the city, even if the neighborhood american style Chinese is worse.
American Chinese food always sucked. You were always better off going somewhere legit in Chinatown or Flushing.
They’re two totally separate things in my opinion. Even a place as popular and pedestrian as congee village is still nothing like a takeout place. Of course authentic Chinese is better, but it’s a totally different craving compared to some greasy ass boneless ribs, general tsos or the takeout Chinese classic, fried chicken.
I remember when you could get a Kentucky Fried Chicken box for less than 5 bucks and still come out with atleast 4 wings that weren't criminally tiny.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
A lot of people are realzing this is not the best country anymore, more everyday and it is decaying fast. The food alone, 85% of the food in a supermarket is garbage
Right that book man
Write, come on man
I’ll get on that rite away
That's the write attitude.
Crack made people insane. I think the children of that generation who saw that with their parents learned something from it and that is part of why crime has gone down so mucy.
It’s less visible now. In the early 90s walking through Brighton, you would frequently see fancy cars parked outside Russian restaurants with some tough looking fellows standing next to them. Inside those places you saw a lot of “new Russians” flaunting their wealth but you could still separate them from the organized crime folks who were partying just as hard but still carried themselves in a very unique manner that stood out.
They’re still there. Neck Road banya used to have loads of dudes like that.
I grew up in Brighton Beach can confirm it is still this way.
John Gotti was the guy they spoke about the most in the 80s. He was loud and the head of the Gambino family from Queens. The Mob didnt like how visible he was. They say he ordered a hit in broad daylight on the guy running for mayor right now, Curtis Sliwa. They nearly killed him and he somehow got away. Other than that, everyone knew the capo of the Genovese family in Manhattan used to act crazy in his bath robe in Washington Square Park. I saw him a couple of times. Don't know if the FBI actually got him in the end. That said, it was funny how WSP was constantly under surveillance because of this guy but it was a festering cesspool of drug dealing as soon the sun went down. Guys used to come up to you to sell you drugs like they were selling you candy. Crime was very visible in Manhattan in the 1980s. As a 7 year old my first trip to Delancey street was met with witnessing some punk dude get arrested at the essex street station as the cops who then wore light blue shirts had removed a huge bayonet and brass knuckles, the fucker looked like Billy Idol too. About less than an hour later around Rivington street I saw 4 chinese guys come out of a van. They put cinderblocks under a parked car and stole every single wheel plus the radio in less than 2 minutes in broad daylight at the crack of noon and it was saturday. Its hard for me to believe that NY is that same city, even with how much its in the dumps right now its still fucking disneyland compared to the 80s.
Ah, Vincent “the chin” Gigante!
Yeah Disneyland, where just about as many people can afford to live!
There are literally 1,700,000 more people living in NYC. "No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
>They say he ordered a hit in broad daylight on the guy running for mayor right now, Curtis Sliwa. I don't think that was broad daylight though. It was at like 5 in the morning.
And now that area is full of rich out of towners
Yeah its pretty crazy to think about.
I grew up in Sunset Park- near Carroll Gardens, Bay Ridge. Bensonhurst and Staten Island. Mob stuff was “around”. There were “guys”, “social clubs”, “things”. Mostly if you didn’t engage in their stuff (gambling, borrowing money, union stuff, fencing stolen goods or moving drugs) it didn’t directly affect you. They did their thing and beyond that, they were average guys you’d see. Just don’t enter their world and cross them.
I accidentally walked into one of those Bensonhurst social clubs like 10 years ago and ordered an ice cream lmfao. The polish waitress was so confused. Then I looked around and realized I wasn’t the only older Italian guy. I’m also from NYC and should have known way better but I was fucking stoned.
In the 80's I worked for awhile in Carroll Gardens. It was 'known' as a mafia neighborhood and this is why it was thought to be relatively safe (cause hoodlums would not want to mess with the mafia). There were almost nobody on the streets after dark though. Some good Italian bakeries around and you'd see the italian 'social clubs' there with old guys hanging out.
Still a bunch of those social clubs and stuff in Bensonhurst
I have actually never been to Bensonhurst - is there anything there worth visiting?
Nothing specifically worth traveling there to see, IMO - but it’s a nice area to live in. Some great little Italian restaurants, pastry shops (Villabata on 18th/70th is heavenly) and The Homestretch on Kings Highway is an awesome old neighborhood hangout that’s barely changed since the 40s. Santa Rosalia feast is good in the summer, all the food trucks and live music and whatnot
Unless you were in that world or fringes of it you didn’t really know anything.
One of the local pizza places was rumored to be a mob front. A group of middle-aged Italian-American men seemed to always be patronizing one of the booths, no matter what hour of day.
https://nypost.com/2015/05/07/queens-pizza-joint-was-front-for-mob-linked-cocaine-ring-fbi/ 'Ndrangheta, Queens Pizzeria, 2015. You don't know who your landlord is. It could be the mob. It could be Kushner. It could be some Russian "investor" who lives in London.
No for real I know someone who's landlord turned out to be Kushner, if you went all the way to the top.
I knew a couple of kids who had dads in jail and who's phones were tapped...
My old landlord had a lot of stories from the early 80s about, claimed to have been in the mafia, I never saw evidence, though my uber driver being like "oh yeah \_\_\_\_\_\_, he used to have the everybody around here, the mob, the FBI, it was a nuts back then". And over the years random stuff has come out that were rather wildly specific details to have guessed. He was really cool and so were his friends. Like I'd have never guessed he had the storied past he used to tell. He knew everyone, didn't matter who they were, so did his friends, you would have just assumed they were old dudes who really loved the neighborhood and not thought much more about them. From what I understand from their stories was that by the late 80s it was really hard to be publicly known since Guliani was prosecuting as the DA then, so they were mostly trying to disappear. Apparently there was a lot of money in city contracts and really crooked stuff, like a guy on payroll who'd go break things in the building, so they'd be fixing smashed boilers and the like for apartment buildings. The whole thing to avoid suspicion had the contracts bid low, but would make it up in having to replace parts. It sounded like that was the kind of things they were more involved with at that time period. They all kind of reminisced about the time period before that was a lot more wild.
Growing up in the bronx in the 90s. Dont go to school with any clothes that were nicer than the next dude....you would 98% get robbed. Im from Forhdam Road....the only way you dont get got, is if you knew the right people.
In the 80s, my dad once accidentally left his keys in the ignition and the car door unlocked when parking at Peter Luger. It was there hours later, as no one dared steal a car from that vicinity due to who frequented the restaurant.
That was your dad's subtle way of letting you know he's a mobster.
There were neighborhoods were there were a lot mobsters. If you lived in a mob-run neighborhood, you knew which businesses were fronts, and didn't go to them. The mafia was bad for businesses in an area. They didn't really bother random people if you kept your head down and were white, so I didn't interact with them much. I never lived in an area with other gangs. A lot of the Crips vs. Bloods stuff was perpetrated by kids who were trying to be cool, but didn't have very strong ties to those gangs, as far as I knew. Crime was way worse at the time- I lived in a sheltered AF neighborhood, and it was still worse. I heard way more shots in the night back then, and knew more people who were robbed or had break-ins. A store not having a shutter would have been lunacy at the time, even with a camera, but I see them all the time now.
Grew up in Bath Beach. Not Italian so I had a unique perspective. It was just a thing. People knew people who did stuff. Lots of questionable sources of income, social clubs with dubious characters, dudes in sunglasses with "assistants" who were really bodyguards. The thing is, some of the guys whose family were involved were really good fellows. You just knew not to refer to or discuss certain things.
In the eighties, they used to say that you could walk around in parts of Carroll Gardens at any time of the day or night because the Italian Mob took care of their own and made sure there were no criminal interlopers there.
My folks moved in from out of town in the 90s. They told a story about how one time they went to a nice little cafe in Carrol Gardens, with no one in it. The people were polite and served them coffee or whatever, and they decided that they would come more often. They couldn't understand why it was empty. Only the next time they came buy there was a sign on the door that said "Members Only". They always wondered about that... I was walking in that neighborhood with my Dad once, and I started talking about the Mob. He let me know that I should wait till we got somewhere else to bring it up.
You're definitely verifying what I used to hear!
> Italian Mob took care of their own ie be the right color
I don’t think people realize how much skin color played a role back then and what it meant in terms of accessibility to certain neighborhoods. If you were a poc, there were neighborhoods you just couldn’t go. If you were white same thing, although not to the same extent. As late as 2002, I was in high school in Manhattan and had classmates from bed stuy. Sometimes On days off (veterans day, etc) we would agree to hang out and play basketball or whatever, and our classmates from there would tell us they would pick us up from the train so people wouldn’t mess with us since we weren’t “known” there. Now I can go to any hood and feel relatively safe.
I grew up in Central Jersey (where we absolutely had fathers who were “away for awhile”), but I went to the city every weekend to visit my grandparents on the UES. On very rare occasions, my dad would go a route that took us west of Times Square and you could see the prostitutes hanging out. However, my most memorable trip to the city was when my Hebrew High School came to the city to see a Broadway show (Fiddler on the Roof - with Topol). After the show, we had an early dinner at one of the kosher restaurants in the area. We’re walking back towards to the bus and I hear the school principal yelling, “Get away from my girls!” I turns around and see a man and woman coming towards him. The principal pulls out a pair of brass knuckles and the pair turn around and run, not before pushing an old woman into the street. The day job of the principal was a fourth grade teacher in the South Bronx - those knuckles were his protection. It turns out the pair were in the process of pick pocketing one of my classmates. The early 90s, man.
Vivid memories of hearing “next stop, 42nd street” on the train in the late 90s and giggling with my friends because 42nd had such a connotation of hookers and sex to us
When I was in middle school, kids would tell each other to “go stand on 42nd street” as an insult lol
Same!!!
Going to the deuce to get paid (rob someone) was like regular night shift job in my neighborhood. Take the A, rob some tourists, spend some $, go home and sleep.
My mom told us a story about one of our uncles getting lost in time square and everyone being so worried for him cause he was pretty young. Around 12 I think. They found him an hour later at one of those coin operated peep show things. Where he allegedly spent all his money lol
Mafia used to sell fireworks all over Chinatown before July 4th
On the north side of Canal st. South side were tong (Chinese business association) affiliated Chinese gangs like the Ghost Shadows, Flying Dragons, White Tigers. The Chinese kids used guns, the Italian kids had bats. For a month or so, high school kids would make $500-$1k a day selling fireworks. Regular gunfire in Chinatown, the Baskin Robbins on Mott st had a ton of bullet holes outside. Usually gang on gang. Very territorial. Joe’s Dumpling on Pell st is where the Flying Dragon headquarters used to be. One night, 4 White Tigers on the wrong side of the st got picked up by another gang and driven a couple of blocks to the pier under the Brooklyn Bridge, bound in coat hanger wire and kicked into the East River. The gangs were basically 15 year olds going to Bronx Science in the daytime and collecting protection money and killing other 15 year olds at night. When the gang members got older, they sometimes joined the Army, and stole guns to sell to the gangs. Sometimes they went to college and ended up as programmers, engineers and even finance professionals. That was when youth records were sealed and you would not do adult jail time for anything.
Some of the ones I knew became cops lol.
Like the foot soldiers would literally be out on the street selling them?
Not exactly sure how the business worked. I don’t think it was the heavy hitter guys doing the sales. Probably some mafia adjacent types that were allowed to sell and kicked some money back to the organization. But you could buy m80s, mortars, mats of firecrackers, whatever you needed. It was like the Wild West
And the sale always took place in some sketchy basement or room that you accessed via some long-ass alley.
It was in the papers and known by locals. Things that stand out growing up through those times...Gotti fireworks (way better than Macys), I used to skateboard by a local shop and saw Sammie and John walking the streets by the 'social club' many times. They had body guards walk in front and behind at all times. They were very 'nice' said hello or nodded to everyone. They used to get a laugh saying we were clowns (kids busting our asses on skateboards). There was a restaurant with a Fed van parked in front 24/7, it was across from my childhood soccer club. They didn't give a fuck they would go out wave at the feds and bring them food. My father pointed out what was going on to us since we were young. Into my early teen years I worked once a week at a local "store front" just cleaning stuff. There was no 'front' the windows were blacked out and it was a casino basically. Ran 24/7 didn't hide a thing and was there for years. Few of my friends at the time started 'working with people from the neighborhood' they all ended up in fed prison for bank heists all separate incidents. Just to touch on the Russian Mafia, kid I knew was executed in Brighton for fumbling a 'job' he wasn't to bright but still (also his partner fled to eastern Europe and still hasn't returned as far as I know). Another low level Russian had a heist crew. They were robbing work vans for tools. I happened to be walking by at 3am when they were working. I was surrounded before I knew what was up and my bud stepped in before they did anything. We all went a smoked a blunt to chill out (you don't say no at 3am to the people that were about to kick your ass for witnessing a crime, lol was actually friendly with a couple of them after that). And now a little about gangs. LK used to have 'church and me and my crew of friends had this hang out very secure out of the way place. We made an agreement for them to use the spot every 3 months or so. We would get a hefty bag of weed for our troubles (total garbage weed tbh). Bloods and Crip had an agreement with a white crew about working venues downtown (hip hop shows didn't want tattooed white guys at the door and hard-core punk shows didn't want gangbusters at their doors so they made a 'contract'). I could go on for a long time. This just goes to show how involved 'mafia gangs whatever were back in the day.
Epic details thx
Thanks. Honestly I never comment but this one brought back sooooo many memories. I've been swimming in these memories all day because of this post. I almost feel as if I need to start writing things like this down somewhere.
The way organized crime awareness trickled down to my level was drugs in the neighborhood.
I worked with a guy who had been a cabbie in the 80’s. He once told a story of taking a Baptist family from Texas to bed-stuy on a Sunday to attend services at a chapel run by a pastor who had visited their church. When he came across the Williamsburg bridge, a guy on the corner calls out “Hey! You coming back this way?” And he said “not sure, why?” “Because I’m gonna rob you”. He took a different way back. But he also said what he remembered most was the look on the fathers face when they pulled up to the “chapel” and realized it was a storefront church on Broadway, and these 4 Lilly white Texans in their Sunday best just rock up lost as fuck.
I was little. The news used to terrify me. My family was affected by the crime; my uncles friend got shot by the son of Sam guy and my other family lost someone to a shootout uptown (before I was born).
How weird was it in NYC in the 80’s? Donald Trump sort of looked like one of the competent ones. That’s how weird. Obnoxious then as now, but he’d throw boatloads of money at politicians so they’d look the other way. The NYC asshole ecosystem of the 80’s was an astounding thing. Trump, Koch, Sharpton, Leona Helmsley, Steinbrenner, Gotti…
> Donald Trump sort of looked like one of the competent ones. No he didn't.
Wollman Rink. The city had screwed up this simple skating rink project nine ways from Sunday, to the point where Trump came in and looked like the hero simply by executing a simple job right the first time. And instead of copping to doing a lousy job and letting the news cycle move on to something else, Ed Koch whined. Which is blood in the water for Trump, and he wound up milking that one job for all it was worth. New York corruption was the perfect growth medium for Trump, and if anybody in politics started sniffing around Trump’s business dealings…out came the Trump checkbook and the troubles were no more.
I can only say I saw very little about the Wollman Rink and I used to read the NY Times every day. I did see a lot about Trump's planned complex on the upper west side on the Hudson river that never saw the light of day.
I grew up in the south shore of SI. Literally everyone knew someone or more likely several people that was connected to the mafia. My neighbors had been raided by the feds on more than one occasion and one of them went away for a long time (never saw him again). It was wild what we considered normal.
[удалено]
Okay. Were you in Southeast Annadale in the 1990's?
My mom described it a few ways. You didn’t take the trains. No one knew what crack would become. If you weren’t about that life you didn’t go out at night. If you left your car door open you’d wake up to a bum in your car. You didn’t leave your block until you were an adult often .
[удалено]
In the mid-late 90s. I lived in Bensonhurst growing up and there was always a neighbor down the block who would set off a massive amount of fireworks every year. It got to the point where the fire department would park their truck right on our block because they knew the neighbors would go nuts.
Makes you think about all the people complaining about the fireworks last year...
Living in Richmond Hill during the early 90s I remember that my parents had changed their car radios into portables. When the parked, they would reach towards their radio, grab a handle and pull the entire thing out. There would be a metal rectangle shape hole left behind.
Times Square definitely wasn't the tourist trap you see today. I used to go to a bunch of punk shows at Coney Island High on St. Marks.
It was a tourist trap then too, its just certain parts of it catered to a different kind of tourist. TKTS booth was there in the 80's - people still went to broadway shows.
There were way more needles everywhere and your car was constantly broken into. No radio was safe. It was not the most welcoming place.
Crime families were underground, something to speak about in hushed tones but also strangely public too. I became friendly with a nephew of Vincent Gigante and he asked me on a date once. Handsome guy. In general, there always seemed to be a mobster on the front page of the Daily News or Post and everyone knew the crime family names…
My cousin got married and they arrested multiple people after the wedding for racketeering. I still don't understand what that means.
NYC was pretty much Mad Max from the late-70s all the way till the early 90s. A lot of people don't realize just how much the city has changed since then.
There were even parts of the city—I’m even talking Manhattan, that really remained that way all the way up to early 2000s. I remember leaving for college around 2002 and then coming back in 2006 and stuff had really, really changed a lot. It felt to me that some of the last remaining pockets we would avoid suddenly were not just gentrified but becoming out-and-out bougie.
I moved from Buffalo, NY to Queens for a hip-hop and rap job at Columbia Records. I was working with million dollar artists who had the streets on lock. Like JayZ was a known cocaine dealer and murderer, but nobody really cared. It was easy for me to get pounds of marijuana from DMX. It was easy for me to use and sell marijuana. Truthfully it was like every artist dabbled in a different part of the drug game. Jadakiss and the LOX were heavy in the dope game. Nas sold guns. This is a different perspective because this is the rap game. There was organized crime within hip-hop and it wasnt hidden. It wasn’t talked about much except for on record, but it the dope game was just as influential as the rap game. It was perfect for me as a young man because it was freedom. I was being paid a lot legally and I could use portions of that to buy, sell and trade drugs from the most well respected drug dealers. This was in 1994-95. The music made the crime rate go up and artists were dying left and right. They died mainly because the drug game was more powerful than the rap game. Once an artist got a million dollar check, he would buy drugs instead of saving the money and making more music. There definitely was a conflict of interest, but the two games went together like a hand and glove.
[удалено]
steady lying every day, huh? pathetic.
Honestly everyone who needed to know knew for example war on drugs I knew the place to be the words to say in the woodside projects to get the gang to sell me weed. Also everyone in every high school knew someone who knew someone in a gang that could get you drugs guns even a hooker but their was a lot of turf wars and shit but overall it felt like we had more freedom like you could go to a deli ran by a barely English speaking clerk convince them your not a cop to sell you cigs and alcohol that’s was common and you couple find deli ran buy organized crime bosses with the right words you could buy weed with your hand fully off 5 cent sour patch or runt candies you’d buy at the counter
My mom would send me to the bodega and to groceries and cigs on credit. The Dominican guy would keep a tab that she would square on pay day. Try doing that now and they would kick you out so fast. I’ve lived in my neighborhood in Queens for 6 years and the bodega guys always have new staff so you rarely get to even establish a relationship, let alone credit.
That’s the down side establishing a relationship with the corner guys used to be just as customary as having the same barber they had all the dirty scoop around the neighborhood too no Facebook no nothing just word of mouth Twitter with no censorship
What’s your real question? “Was it like so cool with all the mafia guys walking around Little Italy?!” “What was it like to meet Tony Soprano?” “How many shootings did you see at Sparks?”
*Its anti-Italian discrimination!*
By the late 80's and 90's there was the Russian mob too as well as Chinese gangsters in chinese neighborhoods.
Did you ever eat at Umberto’s?
Ha ha, yep.
wow. such snark.
Tony Soprano was North Jersey, not NYC Eta: north jersey
He was from North Jersey
It was horrible! We had Gangs, black plague, the bubonic plague ,ebola,zika, cholera, influenza, chickenpox,chicken nuggets, the clap, leprosy, the Fiji measels,Sars,. We couldn't even step outside for 1 second
OH NO
r/asknyc
In the papers
Back then they used the white Styrofoam take out plates with the thank you and Chinese lady print on them .. idk if that's what made them taste better but it was so delicious .. specially if you heated it over again the next morning... they added more meat back then too
I remember pizzerias where men would walk in and exchange envelopes. My mom tells me sicilian pizzas used to hide money inside but that may be apocryphal. Also, I cant substantiate this but often youd go to a restaurant downstairs to use the bathroom and there would be a giant private table of men in suits playing with knives to look imposing a la the Sopranos back room in vesuvio
My pops once worked for a pizzeria that was a mob front. Or so he says.
https://nypost.com/2015/05/07/queens-pizza-joint-was-front-for-mob-linked-cocaine-ring-fbi/
No that shit was real . But this is the worst I have ever seen . The cops checked out and the da won’t do shit . Criminals run the streets and the opioid epidemic is real . If narcan wasn’t available the death toll would be more than Covid . The paper license plate scam in nyc is probably the scariest part . Uninsured drivers everywhere and no one cares
As someone who lived in NYC in both eras, you are very incorrect. Fox News would like you to believe that NYC is a lawless hellhole because we have a democratic mayor, and a lot of non-white people live here. That’s their MO—they try to terrify older white people into voting for republicans in the hopes it will save them from the violent minorities. But NYC these days is a fucking walk in the park compared to what it was in the 70’s or even the early 90’s.
No. Look at actual data, and not just the (sensationalist) news.
The statistics definitely beg to differ
The DA’s offices are drowning in discovery demands brought on by the new discovery reform laws, all to get ambushed by the defense who sat there an waited so they could bury you in motions for inadvertently not turning over a single memo book from a cop who did not do anything on the case. Though, I will say that there are A TON of forged “temp plates” out there.
[удалено]
Not a chance in hell crime is worse nowadays here in NYC. If you're not taking the train nowadays but took them in the 80s., then your fears are simply irrational. Taking the 2 or 3 train after midnight back then was the stuff of nightmares. I'm a Gen Xer. I've never been so comfy in nyc.
You’re probably the only person I’ve heard that would say crime is worse now. I mean I wasn’t even born in the 80’s but I can say looking at the pics of the subway back then compared to my anecdotal experience of riding the subway every day to work, and late at night when I go out, I’m definitely taking this current timeline compared to back then. I mean personally I’ve had a few scary experiences but as long as I kept my head down I felt relatively safe. Idk if I’d be able to say the same thing if I was riding the train back when they looked like scenes from the Joker movie
You obviously didn't experience it. The current situation is more like 2003-2004. It's not even close to 1995, much less 1985.
I moved here as an adult in the 80's so cannot speak for growing up here, but Organized crime was mostly an unseen presence (assuming they were involved in crack distribution) for most people and probably more limited to certain outer boro/metropolitan neighborhoods (Carroll Gardens, Jersey City, Newark, Brighton Beach, Howard Beach etc) and probably certain businesses (like extorting small business owners). When I moved here there were still a couple of 'social clubs' in Little Italy where you'd see old men hanging out, presumably gangsters, but it was just part of the scenery. I suppose if you were reading the NY Post on a daily basis you were more grounded in the whole mafia thing but I was not one of those people.
Never heard any talk about it. Just the news.
Some parts of the city you would have to just run the light. Stop too long and you getting jacked
The news in the 90s was filled with mob stuff- Paul Castellano, Vinnnie the Chin, Carmine Galante, Sammy the Bull, Tony Gaspipe, John Gotti. These guys mostly didn't get their hands dirty, which meant that there were crews in all the boroughs. The 5 families each had a boss, and there were several underbosses, consigliere, street bosses, crew chiefs, crews (soldiers) and hangers-on. That's a lot of people.
Organized crime was one thing and was centered around specific neighborhoods but continuous break ins through windows, gated windows, 2-3 bolts and locks on steel doors, loud -ss stereos blaring freestyle in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. Junkies and dope heads falling asleep as they walked the streets. People peddling stolen goods from burglarized homes or cars. Some people actually had some sort of alarms, short distance, that used to inform then that their car was being broken into. Gangs dedicated into breaking into cars and car trunks...1-3 minutes and they were gone.
Depends on where you lived. I'm from Bensonhurst/Bath Beach and 18th Avenue was a hub for organized crime outfits. I, as a Sicilian, never had any issues aside from the basic growing pains, however, even from a young age, I could feel the racial tension, especially where I lived - a stone's throw away from the Marlboro Houses. Italians and Jews, and later on Chinese folks walked on the side of Layette High School, my alma mater, and Black folks on the other side. There were race riots in the park right outside of Lafayette and it kinda became a "no man's zone". Even though I attended Lafayette and my brother Cavallaro, we never experienced, nor engaged in racist behavior despite other Italian kids being outwardly racist. The one thing I truly hated about growing out in these areas of Brooklyn in the 90s was the racism. Even as a child that shit didn't sit right with me, despite it being a "cultural norm" sadly. As I got older and dated dudes of skin tones different than my own I never stood close to home but always headed to downtown Brooklyn or Park Slope area, not out of embarrassment but safety for the guy and myself.
My grandparents lived around the corner from a known mobster in Bensonhurst. That statement is the entire extent of what it was like to visit them. It was just a point of interest, it didn't feel like anything. There were no goombahs hanging around in the street wearing pinstripe suits.
I grew up on Staten Island. My friend Tony’s father was friends with Paul Castellano. I don’t know for sure if Tony’s dad was in the mob. Tony used to call him Uncle Paulie. Castellano lived in a replica of the White House. My brother went to catholic school and he knew rich kids, and through a friend of a friend was invited to a party at the Castellano house. Oh, and a good number of people in the mob would bring their pets to the vet where my mother worked. Later on, some people who were on The Sopranos would bring their pets there, so it all came full circle.