I know where they are....the New York City Mayoral Race!

The New York City Mayoral Race is a canary in the coal mine for the arc of political efforts in this country.

The Republicans nominated Curtis Sliwa a fucking clown if there ever was one. He is the leader of that bullshit group the Guardian Angels and a radio host on WABC. Look this guy was a publicity whore from the get go. A conservative version of Geraldo Rivera. He has a long history in New York of lying and bogus activity. This is the best the Republicans can come up with?

They are just conceding the election. Which they have done in other places like California and Portland and Minnesota. The Republican Party and the so called conservatives have decided that there not enough normal people to elect someone in these deep blue shit holes. The normal people have mostly moved out. Instead of trying to energize the more conservative Latino or Asian electorate they ran a joke candidate. Everything bad that happens to NYC is well deserved. More than 20 firehouses have closed because the fireman refuse to take Fauci's vaccine. The cops are in the same boat as thousands have been suspended. Paramedics too. The wheels are coming off the bus.

Just think about it. The best they can come up with is Curtis Sliwa.

Containers killed Brooklyn.....or at least the docks

 

When I was a kid growing up everything revolved around the docks. I might have told this story before but I am an old bastard so I like to repeat myself. You see my uncles worked on the docks like 99% of the people in the neighborhood. Everything revolved around the docks. The restaurants catered to the longshoreman. The stores carried working mans clothing. They even sold stevedore hooks. Then there was all the stuff they stole that fed the economy.

You see they would drop a crate off of the shit and when it broke they would take everything out. The crate would go to the coopers who would fill it with rocks and repair it and send it off to Kansas or wherever. Then they would go up and down the neighborhood and sell whatever they had. Dresses. Watches. Tools. Whatever. You could get some great bargains. Ten cents on the dollar.

Then they invented the container. Everything was in these huge metal boxes. No matter how high you lifted and dropped it ....well it just didn't break. It went right off the ship onto the truck. They had to build these big cranes to lift the containers off the ship. So they moved the ships out to Jersey or Howland Hook in Staten Island where they had room to build the cranes. Plus they needed a lot less people. It wasn't like an ant hill with hundreds of guys carrying sacks and crates. It was just a couple of crane operators. The union had to go on strike to get a guarantied wage for some of their members. Which they did. They closed the books since they needed so many fewer guys. It was a bloodbath.

Almost all of the longshoremen moved out to Staten Island or Jersey. Over the Guinea Gangplank and out of Brooklyn. To be replaced first by yuppies and then by hipsters. Now there is nothing left of a 150 year old culture. It's all gone.

So I don't care if a container ship sinks. I hope they all sink. We should buy American and only American. America First. Last. Always. 

RIP Anthony....is there Spaghetti in Heaven?

Anthony the kid in the Prince Spaghetti commercial is dead at 61. Just a couple of years younger than me so we are almost exact contemporaries. I lived that life in Brooklyn.

The clothes and the food and the decor in the commercial are what I grew up with in the 1960's. My Mom had the same haircut as his Mom. I used to be outside with my friends playing all day and at dinner time the Moms would open the window and shout at us to come home. It was never all the Moms. Just the one closest to where we were hanging out The rest of us got the message and hurried home. If we didn't want a smack.

Back in those days everyone bought the same stuff. Not Prince or Barilla or some other brand. Everyone bought Ronzoni macaroni and Red Pack tomatoes and Polly O mozzarella and ricotta. It was a given. They were always on sale at G&G on Henry Street and my Grandmother would send me out to buy it. A simple supper was often just spaghetti and sauce with nothing much on it other than grated cheese. Sometimes as a special treat she might cook up some veal spiedini in the sauce. But usually it was just a basic puree. Of course that wasn't the Sunday sauce with the meatballs and sausage and the pork skin. That was what made Sunday Special.

You can't buy Ronzoni anymore. It is way too starchy. The macaroni just falls apart. Some big company bought it from the family that ran it and ruined everything. Red Pack is still around but I use Pomi tomatoes exclusively that are imported from Italy in cartons not cans. Much less salt and much better tasting. Still only use Polly O since they are the best by far and are what we are used too.

Kids don't play out in the street anymore either. It's was all play dates or video games on the phone. Nobody plays stick ball or stoop ball or skelly.

Anthony wouldn't recognize the North End. Just like I don't recognize South Brooklyn.

I hope they have spaghetti in Heaven.

I know Hell has Indian food.

I heard of Jewish Lighting .... but I never heard of Jewish Earthquake?

Everybody knows what Jewish Lighting is right? That's when your business isn't making it so there is a "mysterious" fire and you get the insurance money instead of bankruptcy.

Well the Body Elite gym on Court Street had a Jewish Earthquake. The whole freaking building fell down. I know the owner Robert well. He has an Ego even bigger than me if you can believe it! He was conveniently away when the building collapsed. Just like Al Capone was when they had the St Valentines Day Massacre. You see he has been losing his shirt. Closed for months. All the nasty liberals demanding refunds of their gym memberships. Hemorrhaging cash.

Right next store is the Park Health Food store that I used to patronize every day. Owned by an old Korean dude named Mr. Park. Some reports say that the gym was owned by Mr. Park but I think that is bullshit. I am pretty sure I heard Robert say he owned the building in Marco Polo one night and that Park was a front. That he had to collect the rent from him.  But whatever. I do know that whenever the news reports anything they always get it wrong.

I have been inside the gym and noticed that they had removed several of the load bearing walls. I don't know shit about construction but I know that much. They opened up the floor plan so there was no obstructions. No beams holding it up. Just a floor through open space for the machines and the weights. They never do maintenance in buildings in Carroll Gardens. So this whole thing is fishy.

I do know one thing. Everybody in the neighborhood will be breathing in about an ounce of asbestos dust. That building was chock full of it. Good thing everybody is wearing a mask!