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    New York in the 70s/80s

    Well it's made by ESPN so if you don't like baseball it's not for you. It's mainly about the baseball, though they do touch on the other stuff through film clips and some scenes featuring Jimmy Breslin.

    If you are a right-thinking human and DO like baseball, it's flawed but quite watchable. I recall Oliver Platt was a terrible choice as Steinbrenner, but Daniel Sunjata made a pretty good Reggie Jackson and John Turturro made an outstanding Billy Martin. The guy who played Munson wasn't bad either. They did some interesting things technically so the actors could portray baseball players instead of portraying baseball playing, such as splicing in the original footage from the games.

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      New York in the 70s/80s

      I think the book was made by ESPN as well.

      I just wanted to shout "grow up, there's a fucking war on" at the squabbling Yankees.

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        New York in the 70s/80s

        Nah, the book pre-dated the series by a couple of years.

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          New York in the 70s/80s

          I was joking.

          He's a very good writer, but I think there's always a problem with juxtaposing eg the Blackout with Reggie Jackson having a rough patch with his fielding. You'd need a tiger to come on and eat a fielder to live up to the power of the stuff happening in the rest of New York.

          I didn't know there'd been Puerto Rican terrorists about that summer too. Incredible.

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            New York in the 70s/80s

            jasoñ voorhees wrote: I completely forgot Tubby, The Great Migration. This was quite possibly the most important event in urban history that wasn't really mentioned until now.
            The Warmth of Other Suns is an interesting book about the Great Migration I read recently. It focuses on the stories of three people moving out of the South and to L.A., Chicago, and New York (Harlem), respectively. Recommended if you're interested.

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              New York in the 70s/80s

              Thank you.

              I'm reading about the South in Robert Caro at the moment. I think I know why they left.

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                New York in the 70s/80s

                Tubby Isaacs wrote: I was joking.

                He's a very good writer, but I think there's always a problem with juxtaposing eg the Blackout with Reggie Jackson having a rough patch with his fielding. You'd need a tiger to come on and eat a fielder to live up to the power of the stuff happening in the rest of New York.

                I didn't know there'd been Puerto Rican terrorists about that summer too. Incredible.
                Meh - it's not like he was one of those writers who tries to explain how Vince Lombardi explained American males in the 1960s, or how Gunter Netzer was the embodiment of the confused post-war German youth or something.

                Baseball's a fairly big deal in New York...you can't really attach a massive amount of wider social context to it, outside of occasional frippery like Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich or the one big one, integration.

                But nonetheless, it's not like weaving in a narrative about ice hockey or cricket. It's the biggest, most popular sport in the city and because the season is 7 months long, it's really part of the day to day life in the city that no other sport can match.

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                  New York in the 70s/80s

                  Yeah, I know what you mean.

                  I just found the other stuff more interesting.

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                    New York in the 70s/80s

                    And the New York Post seems to have stunk out even that annus horribilis (non baseball version).

                    That Jimmy Breslin bloke (not on the Post, I don't think). He was a dickhead, right? He wrote some "they're snobs" bollocks about the New Yorker who criticised the shit coverage of the Son of Sam murders.

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                      New York in the 70s/80s

                      Breslin (who is still alive) wrote for the Daily News.

                      He was a "man of the people" columnist who was obsessed with celebrity (among other things, he ran for president of the City Council on Norman Mailer's mayoral "ticket"), got too big for his own good and ceased to be relevant, which caused him to explode in episodic public rages.

                      He still wrote some good columns, though.

                      Murdoch bought the Post in 1976. Son of Sam was sort of their coming out party as a red top influenced tabloid. It had more than doubled its circulation by 1978.

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                        New York in the 70s/80s

                        He's back at the Daily News - he has a Sunday column.

                        Breslin's the kind of guy who had habits and a personality (outer borough, Irish...did he go to college? If he did it was to CCNY), found that people liked them, and developed it into a full-blown schtick that he leveraged endlessly. Beer commercials, a TV show...everything. That back in the day he looked like an Irish George Wendt and has a voice which I can only describe as a puppy with a three pack a day habit just made the schtick work even better.

                        That said, you can't entirely blame him after he wrote some columns about the Mob only for Jimmy Burke to nearly kick his head in. Writing about the Mets and what the lady who's married to the super in the big building on Toidy-Toid and Toid thinks about Ed Koch is safer that way.

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                          New York in the 70s/80s

                          danielmak wrote: linus wrote:
                          I'm going to watch this tomorrow at the local microcinema.
                          I had never seen that before. I need to chase that down. The opening description (other than the punk rock music stuff) made it look a bit like a Taxi Driver knock-off.

                          The other film I forgot to mention, although not really of the dystopic NYC genre: Times Square.
                          Full movie now on youtube

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                            New York in the 70s/80s

                            Flynnie wrote:

                            That said, you can't entirely blame him after he wrote some columns about the Mob only for Jimmy Burke to nearly kick his head in. Writing about the Mets and what the lady who's married to the super in the big building on Toidy-Toid and Toid thinks about Ed Koch is safer that way.
                            Talking of the Mob, how important are they in 1977?

                            In fact, how bad bad is "white" crime generally?

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                              New York in the 70s/80s

                              Tubby Isaacs wrote:
                              Originally posted by Flynnie

                              That said, you can't entirely blame him after he wrote some columns about the Mob only for Jimmy Burke to nearly kick his head in. Writing about the Mets and what the lady who's married to the super in the big building on Toidy-Toid and Toid thinks about Ed Koch is safer that way.
                              Talking of the Mob, how important are they in 1977?

                              In fact, how bad bad is "white" crime generally?
                              The Mob were and are the biggest criminal organization in the United States. In fact, the last 10+ years have been great for them - the feds have been so busy trying to find Muslim terrorists they've ignored the Mob.

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                                New York in the 70s/80s

                                Yeah, but they only hurt their own.

                                Do they say that about gangsters over there, like they do here?

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                                  New York in the 70s/80s

                                  Because if you're not another gangster, you've almost certainly paid up.

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                                    New York in the 70s/80s

                                    BTW, to answer the other part of your question...

                                    The Mob was pretty active in '77. The Lufthansa heist was in December '78, and almost all of the "GoodFellas" (Jimmy Burke = Robert DeNiro's Jimmy Conway) were still active guys.

                                    Breslin got the shit kicked out of him in Henry Hill's restaurant.

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                                      New York in the 70s/80s

                                      Tubbs, we just experienced the greatest period of financial fraud in the history of the republic and you're asking if "white crime" in New York is bad?

                                      The 70s were notable for a number of Mob-related turf wars and succession crises. Joe Colombo was shot at the Italian American Civil Rights League rally at Columbus Circle, Joey Gallo was whacked at Umberto's Clam House, and a host of lesser guys (including one of our neighbours) ended up dead.

                                      I continue to be impressed by Flynnie's knowledge of this period.

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                                        New York in the 70s/80s

                                        I thought you'd know what I meant. Crime as a daily problem as you lived in the city in 1977. I was talking about then. It all seems Puerto Rican and black in The Bronx is Burning.

                                        "Officer X got himself a quiet beat in a working class Italian neighbourhood" etc.

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                                          New York in the 70s/80s

                                          I wasn't being completely serious.

                                          The Upper West Side wasn't the South Bronx, but it also wasn't particularly safe. There was a lot of property crime, and muggers were examples of equal opportunity (as were their victims). Long haired, smart mouthed white kids such as your correspondent also needed to keep an eye on the cops.

                                          The reason why the book focuses on blacks and Puerto Ricans is because that's who lived in the Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, at that time.
                                          It's also worth remembering that Son of Sam is white, as were his victims.

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                                            New York in the 70s/80s

                                            Late 70s New York is the nexus of so many things I'm interested in.

                                            Baseball, white ethnic communities in cities, the Democratic Party and the liberal consensus, public transportation, organized crime, fashion, the media...uhh, hey the Ramones were the exclusive soundtrack for the Bronx is Burning, so now we've mentioned punk rock...

                                            Oh, and pastrami.

                                            So a lot of strands come together to give the impression I know what I'm tawkin' about.

                                            The 70s were the last decade of the classic Mob. Guys whose parents or grandparents didn't speak much English, who dropped out of school in the 10th grade and went to work on the docks, and could marshal friends who went into the police or into the unions to help them out. Who came from fourth floor walkups in places like Harlem or Little Italy or Bushwick. Tough, tough guys, but hoods nonetheless.

                                            Paul Castellano eating an awful lot of lead was the official end of that era, but by then cocaine had severely eaten into the integrity* of the mob, the new breed were suburban losers from Staten Island who wore too much velour and too many shell suits and Rudy Giuliani was making a career out of sending these guys to jail for a long, long time. John Gotti is often remembered as the Last Don, but he wasn't the last anything. The Mob's prime had passed a long time ago.

                                            * Of course the mob never had integrity, but cocaine just bought a ton of asshole out of the Mob. Whether from the money or from ingesting huge quantities of it (often both), guys got sloppy. It also strongly contributed to the Hammer of God that the US District Attorney's office bought down on the Mob after decades of looking the other way.

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                                              New York in the 70s/80s

                                              Just to bring this back to the burning/baseball nexus, it was during the summer of '77 or '78 that I saw a guy's Red Sox cap being lit on fire in the upper deck at Yankee Stadium.

                                              While it was on his head.

                                              Everyone involved in that was white, btw.

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                                                New York in the 70s/80s

                                                Best ever period for the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry.

                                                2003-2004 was great, but the players basically liked each other. Alex Rodriguez and Jason Varitek probably didn't, maybe one or two other people, but that's it.

                                                But Thurman Munson hated Carlton Fisk and it all grew from there. And nobody liked Reggie Jackson.

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                                                  New York in the 70s/80s

                                                  Yeah, it was all much more genuine then.

                                                  The fact that ESPN didn't exist (and was broadcasting Aussie Rules when it did) helped.

                                                  Now, we have Youklis saying that his heart is in New York 24 hours after saying that he'll always be a Red Sox.

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                                                    New York in the 70s/80s

                                                    ursus arctos wrote: I wasn't being completely serious.

                                                    The Upper West Side wasn't the South Bronx, but it also wasn't particularly safe. There was a lot of property crime, and muggers were examples of equal opportunity (as were their victims). Long haired, smart mouthed white kids such as your correspondent also needed to keep an eye on the cops.

                                                    The reason why the book focuses on blacks and Puerto Ricans is because that's who lived in the Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, at that time.
                                                    It's also worth remembering that Son of Sam is white, as were his victims.
                                                    Sorry if I misjudged your tone.

                                                    They did well to notice the Son of Sam given the routine carnage going on. I take the point about the book being focussed on the Bronx but other areas are mentioned- Bushwick isn't in the Bronx, I see, but it sounds similar to the South Bronx, albeit with a bit more to pinch. He doesn't really develop comparisons with "white" areas.

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