Tony Bennett On The Gowanus

For the last 20 years I've seen Tony Bennett interviewed 100 times about what he has learned, what it all means.  Here's what he taught me: I was 13 standing outside the frosted plate glass widow of Monte's Venetian Room near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Word had passed that TONY BENNETT was inside with "tree broads." I don't know who he is--well I would have recognized "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," constantly blasting out of the Capri Club where the wise guys hang out. I wait outside in the cold for two hours and don't know why. Now I do:  I wanted to taste this thing called fame  Finally, the man exits. Fat Ernie, JuJu, Philly Horse Teeth and the younger kids start chanting "Tony! Tony! Tony!" so I do too. He's wearing a beautiful black overcoat and has a giant f...ing nose. The chanting intensifies as his limo pulls up in front of the restaurant. "Tony! Tony!" As the car door opens Tony reaches into his pocket and throws and handful of nickels and dimes on the sidewalk. He ducks into the car, as the kids scramble for the coins. I start to, but stop when I see Tony watching us like  we're a bunch of monkeys. Philly, who would later die homeless and of AIDS, runs up and throws a flying kick at the limo's back fender as it moves off. He slips and falls on his skinny ass in the gutter.

Election Night on the Gowanus

An Election Night bonfire, built over Carroll Street’s cobblestones was a tradition predating the black-clad Italian women simmering tomato sauce on Sunday mornings or i pazzi, the crazies wandering our streets. It had very American feel to it, Bull Moose Party…Boss Tweed…Salem’s witches. We teenagers raided Chitty’s fruit store for orange crates and wooden bushel baskets, then Cambie’s Trucking, pulling splintery wooden pallets from the bays of tractor trailers. We went door-to-door begging fragrant wine barrels from homemade wine presses,..cracked linoleum and unwanted furniture. As the frenzy built, we’d literally pull wooden cellar doors off their hinges
At 13, I'm not sure I knew the name of the President. Not until Kennedy. I knew the mayor—a pie factory on Fourth Avenue, bore his name—Wagner. Buy damaged pies for a nickel and smash them, sticky lemon and pineapple, in each other’s faces. The name Rockefeller, was so alien it might have been a petroglyph.  Across the East River, Manhattan glimmered, unreachable, insubstantial. 
Wise guys Jerry Lang, Honey Christiano and Jackie Carr, abetted us, winking as we dragged busted folding chairs and card tables from the Glory Social and Capri Clubs on Third Avenue. They were, in all things, irresponsible. Perfect negative role model for lost boys bucking societal restraints.
No one cared about voting. My father would announce as if he’d unearthed a kernel of infinite wisdom—“No matter who wins, I gotta go to work in the morning.”
We competed against kids from President and Union Streets, and the alien territories across the Gowanus, for the biggest, most out-of-control blaze. Preempting us, the Fire Department, sent raiding parties to haul away our hidden stores of planks and beams. They were met with barrages of eggs and rotten fruit
If they caught you, these, burly Irishmen from Bay Ridge and Flatbush, They' d beat the shit of you. At dusk on Election Night, we emerged like crazed rats from hallways, cellars and alleys, lugging wood, stacks of newspapers and plastic gallons of gas, turpentine, paint. Darting, whirling, like Max from Where the Wild Things Are.Americo Guzzi, hammered the outsized brass nut on the fire hydrant, deforming and disabling it. The pile, grew three stories high and 40 feet across No one seemed to register that almost all the houses on Carroll Street were made of wood,sheathed in tarpaper and flammable shingles.
By 9:00 P.M., alarms were sounding everywhere. Sirens blared, fire trucks careened around corners. On the fire escapes younger kids readied volleys of eggs. Honey, 46-years-old, tossed a wooden torch—wrapped with rags soaked in gasoline—onto the pile. It exploded, turning night into day. I felt the combustion’s blast. A wave of intense heat sucked the air out of my lungs.
Holy shit!”
Half-blinded by smoke, gasping, grinning, I  watched Jeannie Wilcox, Amy Gallo, my cousin Clementine, cute girls in pink lipstick, leather jackets, tight jeans, as they stood transfixed. The heat washed over them, sensual. They ignored me.
All the telephone wires on the street were melting and burning. Embers were floating delicately over tar paper roofs.
“Where the hell is the Fire Department?”  Someone roared, the spell broken.
When they arrived, there was no water pressure in the pipes. I stood up, let fly with my last egg.
“Grab that little bastid!”
 I ducked and ran into the alley next to Honey’s house, a big guy in a yellow rubber suit closing fast. I cut, slipped, and rammed my head into the edge cinderblock wall. I've still got the "V" cut into my head.

Marathon Memories 1970

In 1976, the first NYC Marathon to encompass all five boroughs passed one block from my house on Carroll Street and Third Avenue in Brooklyn. Outside the Capri Club, The Goose and his crew of wise guys were busy taking football bets from the horde of degenerate gamblers wagering on Green Bay or the Giants. I ran up to them. "The greatest runners in the world are gonna pass by Fourth Avenue in 15 minutes!" I shouted, Yous should go see!" The response: "Who gives a shit! Go f**k yourself!"


Correction:  see Anonymous comments below. I was way off  remembering the NYC Marathon passing through Brooklyn in 1970. It was 1976 when  I stood on the corner as the runners passed along 4th Avenue for the first time.  As for Anonymous' s claim that 76th Precinct's reach ending at Bond Street that may be true, but the Colombo Family's reach and the cops' greed was much longer. Thanks Anonymous