New York in the 70s/80s

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I can't really believe the gambinos are still on the go, any more than a couple of months ago. I have visions of the remnants being small men in their forties, with BMIs also in their 40's, reduced to shaking down squeegy people, and trying to fix high school wrestling tournaments. .

[ursus arctos]

There is no question that they've let themselves go

[ursus arctos]

Here is an article in English

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

See you've got to respect the Jewish gangsters. One generation and out. They put their extended families through college, and moved on up in the world. The alternative is this.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

There is no question that they've let themselves go

I bet he's only 22

[Hot Pepsi]

Did the Mafia fade because that's the inevitable fate of all family-based crime organizations - too many rats, too many murders, etc. Or was there something specific about their business model that just no longer works? Both, perhaps?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Not enough italians, too many italian americans.

Also Frank Costello's hands.

[ursus arctos]

No single reason.

Competition from other groups, particularly in the drug trade, was important.

So was the fact that their traditional businesses (protection, gambling, prostitution, public works corruption, etc.) didn't transfer well to suburbia.

Moving out if the old neigbourhood also meant that the tight social structures they had always relied on began to fray.

Then you have the traditional failson problem that Berbaslug notes. The system doesn't lend itself to bringing in new talent from outside.

And once guys started to flip, the whole edifice became very unstable.

[Hot Pepsi]

Not enough italians, too many italian americans.

Also Frank Costello's hands.

Not sure what you mean. That assimilating into American culture is not conducive to crime? Meadow Soprano would be the example of that. Dad did the hard work so she could get a decent education and make a good living doing something legal.

Or maybe you mean that American kids these days are just too lazy to be proper gangsters? AJ Soprano illustrates that possibility.

[Hot Pepsi]

No single reason.

Competition from other groups, particularly in the drug trade, was important.

So was the fact that their traditional businesses (protection, gambling, prostitution, public works corruption, etc.) didn't transfer well to suburbia.

Moving out if the old neigbourhood also meant that the tight social structures they had always relied on began to fray.

Then you have the traditional failson problem that Berbaslug notes. The system doesn't lend itself to bringing in new talent from outside.

And once guys started to flip, the whole edifice became very unstable.

It would seem that every group would face those challenges and as it becomes more competitive, the margins will get smaller and smaller. Just like any business.

[ursus arctos]

To a certain extent, yes, though it is particularly difficult for such tradition-based entities to innovate and it is also much more difficult for illegal organisations to leverage political power to protect their interests.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Not sure what you mean. That assimilating into American culture is not conducive to crime? Meadow Soprano would be the example of that. Dad did the hard work so she could get a decent education and make a good living doing something legal.

Or maybe you mean that American kids these days are just too lazy to be proper gangsters? AJ Soprano illustrates that possibility.

At some point the steady influx of italians to the US tapered off, for the Irish it was the emigration act of 1965, which I think may have had a similar impact on italian migration. And from that point you can see that there are not enough new people coming in to keep the old neighbourhoods going. Now little italy is two blocks on mulberry street and is essentially a park in disneyland that is in the wrong state. People were always moving out of the old neighbourhood, it's just that they were always being replaced. From that moment on it's not going to go well for any ethnic group based organization.

The sopranos is quite good on this bit. You keep hearing Tony waxing lyrical about the old neighbourhood, even though he never lived there after the age of about 8, and when push comes to shove, he sells the premises of one of the old style delicatessens to Jamba juice. Tony's father's was the one that moved to the suburbs, and his generation was the one that started to rat, so what hope for people like tony and the apriles who grew up in the suburbs, and what hope for their children who grow up in mansions.

The Crucial bit is when your organization is no longer mostly made up of people who come from conditions so terrible that they think that a spell in american jail is a restful break. That's when people start to rat. If there was still a steady flow of southern italians pouring into the US, the mafia would be a lot more active, and a lot more competitive in the US. And there would be bodies everywhere.

{Oops, wrong paul lansky}

It is also difficult to overstate the importance of the Apalachin disaster which stopped Hoover from vigorously denying that the Mafia existed and Joe Valachi didn't help

[Lang Spoon]

See you've got to respect the Jewish gangsters. One generation and out. They put their extended families through college, and moved on up in the world. The alternative is this.

The Kennedys managed a bootlegger to become Senator/Film Industry kingpin/Nazi sympathizing Ambassador and his son to get the Presidency. That's def the most impressive social climbing of the "ethnic" criminal gangs.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The Kennedys managed a bootlegger to become Senator/Film Industry kingpin/Nazi sympathizing Ambassador and his son to get the Presidency. That's def the most impressive social climbing of the "ethnic" criminal gangs.

Joe Kennedy didn't start out as a bootlegger though. He was already really rich by the time prohibition started. He went to harvard, and in 1914 bought out a bank and married the daughter of the Mayor of Boston. There doesn't seem to be any real evidence of him being involved in bootlegging, other than stories by frank Costello, but if he was involved in bootlegging it would have been as finance and at a very safe distance. It does however seem highly unlikely that he would have allowed the opportunity go past, given what he got up to on wall street in the twenties. He did buy a lot of scottish distilleries, and flooded america in scotch on repeal.

It is very difficult to confuse him with Meyer lansky. (and not just because of the old rabid anti-semitism)

[Lang Spoon]

There is that. Def not Murder Incorporated from Diamond Joe. He'd have bought shares in that but if he saw a margin.

his massive investments in Scotch just as prohibition was being wound down might point to either opportunism or a continuation of what he'd been up to previous in a more clandestine fashion.

[Hot Pepsi]

Tony Soprano and his contemporaries were the first generation of the mafia who had grown up watching The Godfather and apparently that had a significant influence, even though Puzo has just made a lot of it up.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It's hard to tell really. I'll put it to you this way, he made a small fortune in the stock market on the way up through all sorts of shitty means, then he promptly sold everything, and took out a lot of short positions, right in time for the massive crash, which made him a bigger fortune, which he promptly reinvested in distressed real estate, which made him a mind bending fortune. There doesn't appear to be anything to connect him to bootlegging, but it is difficult to imagine a scenario where he would ignore an opportunity to make money just because it was illegal.

There is One thing in his favour, he did a great job with the SEC. America would have turned out quite differently if he'd fucked that one up.

[ursus arctos]

[URL="https://twitter.com/jjmacnab/status/1153071340485636099?s=21"]https://twitter.com/jjmacnab/status/1153071340485636099[/URL]

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Lucky Luciano is turning in his grave .

[Incandenza]

Interview with two directors of a new documentary laying the blame of fires in the Bronx in the 70s at landlords and political decisions.

[beak]

That's made me want to re-watch 80 Blocks From Tiffany's.

[Hot Pepsi]

Interview with two directors of a new documentary laying the blame of fires in the Bronx in the 70s at landlords and political decisions.

I thought that was well known. I’d never heard a different version.

[ursus arctos]

Pretty much the case

[Sporting]

In the VU song Run Run Run there's a line about riding the trolley bus down to 47. Any significance in this and when did this form of transport disappeared from the city?

[Flynnie]

42nd and 9th, 1985.