A Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year to you All.
The weirdest Christmas tree I ever had was decorated with motor oil cans and matchbooks.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
Lots of murders lately
East New York has been in the news a lot lately. Especially the Boulevard Projects. Murder murder murder. Some lunatic stabbed two kids in an elevator in the next building from where I used to live on Schenck and Stanley. Two other murders on Wortman Ave. Things are out of control. I hear there are murders every week there. When we were growing up there were gang wars, there were switch blades, iron pipes, even zip guns. But you didn't hear about murder much. Fights, yes . Plenty of fights.
Some very tough guys in East New York. Arnie Mandel was very tough. One time he Buster Russo, and Jackie Maggot took on about ten guys at Boy's High at recess. They ended up in jail when one pressed charges. Arnie at one time was the best fighter in Sing Sing prison. He is dead now. He got hit by a truck and died. Maybe it wasn't an accident , who knows.
Johnny Reb once had a fight with Goody on Stanley and Van Siclen , Reb bit off Goody's ear. This was years before Mike Tyson did the ear thing. By the way, Mike Tyson was a member of the Brownsville Boys Club, where we used to be members as kids. I wonder if Mike ate hot dogs at Coney island Joe's.
Patsy Penna once stabbed a guy on Sutter Ave in the chest about 100 times with a little knife.
I cut Ikey's wrist because he dared me. He was gushing blood and we rushed him to Brookdale hospital. They said he could have died. Apparently I cut him pretty deep with my Jaguar knife.
Richie Texas and Big Mel had a brutal fight by Dry Gulch Park. Those were very tough guys.
Bobby Brown was the toughest kid in PS 273. I think he was like 3 years older than everybody, and he had many scars on his face. I had a fight with his brother Calvin, Sandy Schmidt jumped in and helped me out.
Sandy was tough, fast and fought like an animal. Robbie Rogue was known to be the toughest , craziest guy on New Lots Ave. He hung with Arnie. Richie Q wrote a book about ENY recently , I read excerpts of it. He was a New Lots Member and had a reputation of being a very bad dude.
Danny Russo from Cleveland Street Boys, was known to sucker punch people . "hey gotta light" POW... He did have some boxing training at the Boys Club on New Lots Ave. This guy Leon in my building was a boxing instructor there. Buster Russo was a Golden Gloves boxer.
Crazy Rigat, was so strong and so tough. He went to Automotive high School , and He still lives in Boulevard Projects on Stanley Ave. He is the only White guy living in the projects.
The Albanese Brothers were all very tough. Lil' Joe's daughter happened to have married Gotti' Jr.
Just trivia. Lil Joe's brother Anthony was tougher than most. There was a story about how he flushed Junior Siricco's head in the toilet at Colony Bowl on Linden Blvd. Junior played Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. The story went, one day Junior was looking all mafia like, black shirt white tie , jitterbugging into ENY/Brownsville from Bensonhurt. He didn't know what he was in for.
Anyway, people didn't just go around murdering people like they do today. Yes, some people were murdered by accident like when Jay Worm stabbed this friend of his. Or when someone had a hit put on them, like when they found Johnny Reb in the trunk of a car on CrossBay Blvd in Howard Beach.
But these days too many people running around with guns.
Peace, my brothers and sisters.
Some very tough guys in East New York. Arnie Mandel was very tough. One time he Buster Russo, and Jackie Maggot took on about ten guys at Boy's High at recess. They ended up in jail when one pressed charges. Arnie at one time was the best fighter in Sing Sing prison. He is dead now. He got hit by a truck and died. Maybe it wasn't an accident , who knows.
Johnny Reb once had a fight with Goody on Stanley and Van Siclen , Reb bit off Goody's ear. This was years before Mike Tyson did the ear thing. By the way, Mike Tyson was a member of the Brownsville Boys Club, where we used to be members as kids. I wonder if Mike ate hot dogs at Coney island Joe's.
Patsy Penna once stabbed a guy on Sutter Ave in the chest about 100 times with a little knife.
I cut Ikey's wrist because he dared me. He was gushing blood and we rushed him to Brookdale hospital. They said he could have died. Apparently I cut him pretty deep with my Jaguar knife.
Richie Texas and Big Mel had a brutal fight by Dry Gulch Park. Those were very tough guys.
Bobby Brown was the toughest kid in PS 273. I think he was like 3 years older than everybody, and he had many scars on his face. I had a fight with his brother Calvin, Sandy Schmidt jumped in and helped me out.
Sandy was tough, fast and fought like an animal. Robbie Rogue was known to be the toughest , craziest guy on New Lots Ave. He hung with Arnie. Richie Q wrote a book about ENY recently , I read excerpts of it. He was a New Lots Member and had a reputation of being a very bad dude.
Danny Russo from Cleveland Street Boys, was known to sucker punch people . "hey gotta light" POW... He did have some boxing training at the Boys Club on New Lots Ave. This guy Leon in my building was a boxing instructor there. Buster Russo was a Golden Gloves boxer.
Crazy Rigat, was so strong and so tough. He went to Automotive high School , and He still lives in Boulevard Projects on Stanley Ave. He is the only White guy living in the projects.
The Albanese Brothers were all very tough. Lil' Joe's daughter happened to have married Gotti' Jr.
Just trivia. Lil Joe's brother Anthony was tougher than most. There was a story about how he flushed Junior Siricco's head in the toilet at Colony Bowl on Linden Blvd. Junior played Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. The story went, one day Junior was looking all mafia like, black shirt white tie , jitterbugging into ENY/Brownsville from Bensonhurt. He didn't know what he was in for.
Anyway, people didn't just go around murdering people like they do today. Yes, some people were murdered by accident like when Jay Worm stabbed this friend of his. Or when someone had a hit put on them, like when they found Johnny Reb in the trunk of a car on CrossBay Blvd in Howard Beach.
But these days too many people running around with guns.
Peace, my brothers and sisters.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Random childhood thoughts in the projects
There were a few things I remember as a youth, i'm not sure if I already wrote about but I find them amusing.
We lived in the Projects in East New York. One Easter my father brought home baby chicks. We had them so long they became big chickens. Imagine 6 big chickens running around an apartment. Then to our surprise my father brought home an Irish setter named Lady. OMG the dog went nuts when she saw the chickens. We had no choice but to let the chickens free. We took them, in several trips to the "lots" behind the projects and set them loose. I thought we were doing a good thing. Now , looking back, those chickens maybe lasted a day in the wild.
Science was fun, especially making gun powder and bombs. A little potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur and there you have gunpowder. work that into a fuse to set off a magnesium ribbon in Hydrochloric acid and you have a little hydrogen bomb. Well, the result was a giant hole in my mother's formica counter top. My mom hated science.
Charcoal grilling at its finest. I loved charcoal grilled burgers. But we didn't have the luxury of a backyard in the projects. So what better place to grill. In the bathtub. I placed the charcoal grill in the tub, figuring nothing will catch fire. I was very smart about safety <cough>,, So i was grilling away, and choking away, and then my parents came home and they weren't thrilled with my cooking skills. They thought the place was burning down, it was just some hamburgers grilling and charcoal burning and smoke everywhere. Oh yeah, we didn't have a bathroom window,just a tiny vent.
Ball throwing, it was a big challenge at around age 11 to throw a Spalding rubber ball or Pensy Pinky ball on the roof of a 6 six story building. We would try and we would hit windows on the 5th floor. Finally one happy day we'd reach the roof. A real happy feeling. Throwing them on the roof of the 14 story building is something I was never able to do. But I loved going up on the roof of all the buildings. It could be dangerous. One kid convinced another that he could fly , like Superman, just using a 2 cent paper parachute the size of a handkerchief. The kid jumped , maybe pushed, and died.
A guy named Walter, used to throw cats off the roof, very mean and crazy dude.
Me and my buddy Sandy were the dumbest robbers around. We would go to Joe and Eddie's candy store, one of us would hold the door open the other would grab candy bars and , create a bit of a scene running out. We would alternate who held the door open and we would do this at least twice a week. The thing is, the owners knew us and our parents. Obviously they saw us. No one ever confronted us. I wonder if our parents paid them for the stolen goods.
The movie THEM , had giant ants. We thought feeding our tiny ants sugar would make them grow. We tried for about a week, nothing happened. What a disappointment. We moved on to catching bees , picking them up by the wings . Tricky business. Catching butterflies was fun too.
Why was there such temptation to pull the legs off of daddy longlegs spiders. Still a mystery to me.
I had a dog that could eat about 30 of them in a couple of minutes.
I was afraid of dogs, My father filmed me running from a tiny chihuahua type dog . Very funny.
But I always hung out with dogs and loved them. We had Laddy, a stray dog and member of a pack. he would come around everyday, and we would play with him. He was so smart, he would crawl like a soldier in combat. Laddy was part Collie and part shepherd and part other stuff. Great dog. Captured by the ASPCA several times. He escaped several times. At least that is what we believed. He hated people in uniform. He had nice white teeth , and would bark at uniformed people. We tried to take him into our house as a pet, but he preferred to run free. There was also Queenie, a favorite of ours. Spaghetti, not too many people knew. He was part great dane, and ended up having rabies and died.
The pack hung out by the flagpole in the projects. To get the bus on Linden Blvd, you had to venture by the pack. It was quite frightening. I had a dog Poncho that ran off with the pack for a couple of days. I was not going to go after him. I think he became a leader of the pack after beating the leader in a fight.
We used to eat lunch fast. Usually peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and race back to school. I think this kid David had the 7 minute record.
I was a toy soldier in the school play, Christmas Story. I brought my own props. This caused havoc. I found a Japanese WWII rifle, loaded with a 7.7mm bullet and a bayonnette. I brought it to school. I thought I looked so cool as a soldier, with a real gun. The teachers didn't think it was so cool. My father didn't think it was so cool. My butt after being whooped with a belt by my father didn't think it was so cool.
Well, those are some thoughts for now.
We lived in the Projects in East New York. One Easter my father brought home baby chicks. We had them so long they became big chickens. Imagine 6 big chickens running around an apartment. Then to our surprise my father brought home an Irish setter named Lady. OMG the dog went nuts when she saw the chickens. We had no choice but to let the chickens free. We took them, in several trips to the "lots" behind the projects and set them loose. I thought we were doing a good thing. Now , looking back, those chickens maybe lasted a day in the wild.
Science was fun, especially making gun powder and bombs. A little potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur and there you have gunpowder. work that into a fuse to set off a magnesium ribbon in Hydrochloric acid and you have a little hydrogen bomb. Well, the result was a giant hole in my mother's formica counter top. My mom hated science.
Charcoal grilling at its finest. I loved charcoal grilled burgers. But we didn't have the luxury of a backyard in the projects. So what better place to grill. In the bathtub. I placed the charcoal grill in the tub, figuring nothing will catch fire. I was very smart about safety <cough>,, So i was grilling away, and choking away, and then my parents came home and they weren't thrilled with my cooking skills. They thought the place was burning down, it was just some hamburgers grilling and charcoal burning and smoke everywhere. Oh yeah, we didn't have a bathroom window,just a tiny vent.
Ball throwing, it was a big challenge at around age 11 to throw a Spalding rubber ball or Pensy Pinky ball on the roof of a 6 six story building. We would try and we would hit windows on the 5th floor. Finally one happy day we'd reach the roof. A real happy feeling. Throwing them on the roof of the 14 story building is something I was never able to do. But I loved going up on the roof of all the buildings. It could be dangerous. One kid convinced another that he could fly , like Superman, just using a 2 cent paper parachute the size of a handkerchief. The kid jumped , maybe pushed, and died.
A guy named Walter, used to throw cats off the roof, very mean and crazy dude.
Me and my buddy Sandy were the dumbest robbers around. We would go to Joe and Eddie's candy store, one of us would hold the door open the other would grab candy bars and , create a bit of a scene running out. We would alternate who held the door open and we would do this at least twice a week. The thing is, the owners knew us and our parents. Obviously they saw us. No one ever confronted us. I wonder if our parents paid them for the stolen goods.
The movie THEM , had giant ants. We thought feeding our tiny ants sugar would make them grow. We tried for about a week, nothing happened. What a disappointment. We moved on to catching bees , picking them up by the wings . Tricky business. Catching butterflies was fun too.
Why was there such temptation to pull the legs off of daddy longlegs spiders. Still a mystery to me.
I had a dog that could eat about 30 of them in a couple of minutes.
I was afraid of dogs, My father filmed me running from a tiny chihuahua type dog . Very funny.
But I always hung out with dogs and loved them. We had Laddy, a stray dog and member of a pack. he would come around everyday, and we would play with him. He was so smart, he would crawl like a soldier in combat. Laddy was part Collie and part shepherd and part other stuff. Great dog. Captured by the ASPCA several times. He escaped several times. At least that is what we believed. He hated people in uniform. He had nice white teeth , and would bark at uniformed people. We tried to take him into our house as a pet, but he preferred to run free. There was also Queenie, a favorite of ours. Spaghetti, not too many people knew. He was part great dane, and ended up having rabies and died.
The pack hung out by the flagpole in the projects. To get the bus on Linden Blvd, you had to venture by the pack. It was quite frightening. I had a dog Poncho that ran off with the pack for a couple of days. I was not going to go after him. I think he became a leader of the pack after beating the leader in a fight.
We used to eat lunch fast. Usually peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and race back to school. I think this kid David had the 7 minute record.
I was a toy soldier in the school play, Christmas Story. I brought my own props. This caused havoc. I found a Japanese WWII rifle, loaded with a 7.7mm bullet and a bayonnette. I brought it to school. I thought I looked so cool as a soldier, with a real gun. The teachers didn't think it was so cool. My father didn't think it was so cool. My butt after being whooped with a belt by my father didn't think it was so cool.
Well, those are some thoughts for now.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
warning labels
i heard someone on the radio talking about funny warning labels on products:
I should keep adding to the list i'm sure there are really funny ones.
1) a box of pudding said on the bottom of the box " do not turn over"
2) Christmas lights said on it " can be used indoors and outdoors" hmmm where else is there?
3) Korean knife said "warning: keep out of children"
4_ Frito Lay package says on the bag regarding a contest " WIN! no purchase necessary, details inside package"
I should keep adding to the list i'm sure there are really funny ones.
1) a box of pudding said on the bottom of the box " do not turn over"
2) Christmas lights said on it " can be used indoors and outdoors" hmmm where else is there?
3) Korean knife said "warning: keep out of children"
4_ Frito Lay package says on the bag regarding a contest " WIN! no purchase necessary, details inside package"
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Christmas tree mink coat
Happy Holidays to all.
I was creating a joke from a thought I had. For all I know, someone thought the same thing many years ago , but I never heard a joke about Christmas Trees. So here is what I got.
Fact: Many Christmas Trees are Douglas Firs.
Joke: Where did Cathrine Zeta-Jones get her mink coat from?
she got it from Michael Douglas' Christmas Tree.... LOL
ummmmmmm,,,,,,,, it's a Douglas Fur Tree
Hey, I try.
I was creating a joke from a thought I had. For all I know, someone thought the same thing many years ago , but I never heard a joke about Christmas Trees. So here is what I got.
Fact: Many Christmas Trees are Douglas Firs.
Joke: Where did Cathrine Zeta-Jones get her mink coat from?
she got it from Michael Douglas' Christmas Tree.... LOL
ummmmmmm,,,,,,,, it's a Douglas Fur Tree
Hey, I try.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
SPIT
Happy Thanksgiving. It is a day of overindulgence , over eating, feeling so stuffed that one can't even move. Well, that's how I feel ,, Like , why? why? why?
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Let's talk about spit. When I was maybe 11 years old I had a nickname Spit. I've had several nicknames throughout my life. Some were, Chops, Spit, Fog, Dart, Fingers, Wigout, Qtips, Lip, Colonel,
Anyway back to Spit. There was a weird time when something hit me, that spit was dirty and not to be swallowed. So i would spit every ten seconds I think. Hence the name of Spit. I had developed many techniques of spitting. If you are going to spit you have to be cool about it, not gross about it. Did you ever see these gross dudes, hocking and getting up balls of phlegm. Then they spit and then hold their nostril and shoot a snot rocket. Pretty damn disgusting.
I was a cool spitter. I could spit between my teeth. It's not that easy to do. You kind of push your tongue behind your front teeth and it makes a sound and spit shoots out. By the time I got to the 7th grade I lost the nick name spit. But didn't stop spitting. Just not as much. I mastered many techniques of spitting. Dotting, was a very cool way to spit. It was like pitching underhand. You lifted the spit out from that reservoir in your lower mouth and gracefully pushed it up through or past your bottom teeth and a dot of spit would come out and fly a good distance. My friend Manny was the best dotter I've seen. It is an almost silent spit. Manny used to dot a lot on the guy sitting in front of him in class. It was pretty cool at the time. Now in a spit fight, you really want to get some phlegm up and really shoot it out. I think I could shoot a phlegm ball a good 12 feet. Some would call it "hocking a louie or loogie".Spitting was an important skill in East New York. Spit balls were popular. Where you spit a tiny piece of notebook paper. In any case my favorite type of spitting was the thru the top teeth making that squeeshy sound. I have lost most of my skill over years of not practicing. But I can still make the sound, just the projectile is weak.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Let's talk about spit. When I was maybe 11 years old I had a nickname Spit. I've had several nicknames throughout my life. Some were, Chops, Spit, Fog, Dart, Fingers, Wigout, Qtips, Lip, Colonel,
Anyway back to Spit. There was a weird time when something hit me, that spit was dirty and not to be swallowed. So i would spit every ten seconds I think. Hence the name of Spit. I had developed many techniques of spitting. If you are going to spit you have to be cool about it, not gross about it. Did you ever see these gross dudes, hocking and getting up balls of phlegm. Then they spit and then hold their nostril and shoot a snot rocket. Pretty damn disgusting.
I was a cool spitter. I could spit between my teeth. It's not that easy to do. You kind of push your tongue behind your front teeth and it makes a sound and spit shoots out. By the time I got to the 7th grade I lost the nick name spit. But didn't stop spitting. Just not as much. I mastered many techniques of spitting. Dotting, was a very cool way to spit. It was like pitching underhand. You lifted the spit out from that reservoir in your lower mouth and gracefully pushed it up through or past your bottom teeth and a dot of spit would come out and fly a good distance. My friend Manny was the best dotter I've seen. It is an almost silent spit. Manny used to dot a lot on the guy sitting in front of him in class. It was pretty cool at the time. Now in a spit fight, you really want to get some phlegm up and really shoot it out. I think I could shoot a phlegm ball a good 12 feet. Some would call it "hocking a louie or loogie".Spitting was an important skill in East New York. Spit balls were popular. Where you spit a tiny piece of notebook paper. In any case my favorite type of spitting was the thru the top teeth making that squeeshy sound. I have lost most of my skill over years of not practicing. But I can still make the sound, just the projectile is weak.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Cool you tube of Brooklyn 60's gang called Ellery St. Bops
below are two you tube videos i found. and enjoyed very much . Featuring the Brooklyn gang of the 1960's called the Ellery Street Bops. They were famous and tough in Bushwick area, but known all over. The photos are great and the background Doo Wop is awesome.
video credit goes to rtoledo who did a great job with these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ijxFG2QBU&noredirect=1
and movie 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVC-JKM-zkM
video credit goes to rtoledo who did a great job with these.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ijxFG2QBU&noredirect=1
and movie 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVC-JKM-zkM
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