THE BLACK HAND FORUM

by **Wiseguy** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:53 pm

BillyBrizzi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:41 pmA lot of universities in the Western world have an almost dictatorial leftist culture. They only want democracy and freedom of speech when it suits them, when elections don't go their way or somebody says something that they don't like they easily can become violent. A fairly recent example of this in the US, were all the riots that took place at certain universities because certain groups weren't happy that Ben Shapiro came to give a lecture. Freedom of speech? Only when it suits them it seems..

More truth.

by **BillyBrizzi** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:41 pm

Wiseguy wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:22 pm
Ivan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:09 pm
Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:56 pm criminal theory is something I'm lacking
Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)
Amen to this ^

I've had the same experiences in Holland when I studied Sociology back in the day. A lot of Nature vs Nurture debates and 90% of the class were dead set against Nature all the time, you couldn't even debate with them. It was always society who made people kill, steal and destroy.

A lot of universities in the Western world have an almost dictatorial leftist culture. They only want democracy and freedom of speech when it suits them, when elections don't go their way or somebody says something that they don't like they easily can become violent. A fairly recent example of this in the US, were all the riots that took place at certain universities because certain groups weren't happy that Ben Shapiro came to give a lecture. Freedom of speech? Only when it suits them it seems..

by **Ivan** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:42 pm

Wiseguy wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:22 pm
Ivan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:09 pm
Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:56 pm criminal theory is something I'm lacking
Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)
Amen to this ^

Haha, you went through that experience too? I was only 17-18 at the time and didn't know better. I figured a "criminologist" was, like, you know, a scientist who studied crime.

by **Wiseguy** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:22 pm

Ivan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:09 pm
Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:56 pm criminal theory is something I'm lacking
Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)

Amen to this ^

by **Ivan** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:09 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:56 pm criminal theory is something I'm lacking

Don't bother unless you want to hear a bunch of sheltered upper middle class douchebags whine about how cops are evil and how people like drug dealers are the real victims, and how crime is never the fault of criminals.

I had to find out about this the hard way. (The "hard way" as in, taking out student loans to pay tuition for criminology courses. Trust me, that's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.)

by **FriendofFamily** » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:03 pm

I didn't see anything that was really out of line. It all looks very probable and very similar to situations we saw in Northeast Ohio
Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown.

by **Angelo Santino** » Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:56 pm

Ivan and Sonny raise some interesting ideas regarding criminality. As much as I'd like to think I'm an organized crime expert, at least in some aspects, criminal theory is something I'm lacking.

With my post about the social club, that's not by any means the entire picture. My mistake if I made it sound like that. Rather I was describing the bottom level, the entry point for street criminals. The other side would be your semi-legitimate members, but unless a member already has that before entering or the member is a Tommy Gambino with deep connections, they are a declining percentage. Back in the 1900's you had doctors and lawyers and a failed politician who were mafiosi, some even bosses. But to purely call these people 'legitimate' is misleading since they love to press their thumb on the scale to skew things to their advantage. Joseph Bonanno tried to sugarcoat it by explaining how if someone opens a business in the same neighborhood as the made man's business, the poor sap has to pay tribute or face problems. That was the "legal" mentality, you can see it with the Concrete Club in the 80's, it's dealing in a legitimate industry but it's still illegal and unethical. But even so, this form of criminality requires some level of knowledge and sophistication that you generally don't see in the social club. But notice how the Mafia as an entity has room for everything, that's because it's largely organic and hierarchy aside, the criminal components are more horizontal in nature.

by **YOtoLI** » Sun Feb 18, 2018 2:35 pm

Is there anyone left alive that can back this guys story or did he wait til everyone in the crew was dead to start talking? not saying he wasnt there, but is he embellishing his importance?

by **AlexfromSouth** » Sat Feb 17, 2018 11:29 am

I dont think its that hard work at all, especially if you are a made guy. Read the story again guys. This guy Frank was a nobody and so was his pop Richard and yet again he spends the whole day going to bars and drinks. Thats what these guys do, and thats what they live for. Yeah maybe its tough in the start when your proving yourself to somebody but no mobster would want to be a mobster if it didint come with a shit load of perks. Look at the made guys and the capos even the high respected asocciates, they got guys runing around for them. Its all about money, respect, tradition, balls and sometimes family business. Back in the day it was luring to be a gangster, and some places it still is.

by **baldo** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:17 pm

Aren't there many mobsters that own businesses as well (restaurants, construction, etc)? For example, guys that are into construction, are they working at their office most of the day while dealing with mob related business as well? I can't imagine all mob guys are like in Donnie Brasco sitting in a social club all day. Unless I'm wrong.

by **SonnyBlackstein** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:58 pm

The main driver for being a criminal isn’t ‘to be rich’ it’s to escape poverty.

‘The life’ drew in thousands more a century ago than it does now simply because the overwhelming majority of associates and made guys chose it to break free of the poverty line. Now the overwhelming majority of the Italian population is middle class and the options for success are readily available.

To be sure the life retains a certain romantic draw, but this fades quickly when the reality of hard time as a consequence become apparent.

Italians chose the life to as it provided one of the only means of creating a better life for their families. Today that lack of opportunity doesn’t exist.

by **Ivan** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:41 pm

Chris Christie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2018 5:58 pm Sounds like The Life sucks, remarkably similar to Joe Pistone's tale of undercover entry into the Colombo and Bonanno underworld.

Currently I'm going through my own 1910's archive, viewing it from a different angle and The Life wasn't much to brag about then either. If you were a boss maybe you rented out a saloon and had people run it or was even a moderately successful businessman. But underneath this so-called top tier, is just grunt work. Saloons are congregating areas for scams and scores ranging from counterfeiting, extortion, kidnaping, robbery, murder. When Pistone laid it out 60 years later, he more or less stated the same with Jilly's store where people go there and plan scores. Seems like 70% of it never really goes anywhere.

And something we all take for granted today are smartphones, mapquest etc. Consider the Italo-criminal and the language barrier in NYC and being able to find their way around. Majority of the time they couldn't even locate each other, the address was wrong or the guy left town. He's known to hang around this club so let's go wait. It's alot of waiting. And when they finally do connect it's more fucking waiting, for materials, for some other party to appear. Always "there's a guy in Hoboken" or "as soon as so and so gets back from Rochester." It took these guys all fucking week to do what we can do in 2 mins in 2018. Seriously, I couldn't do this shit, better off just working a regular job.

I bring this up because it seems unless you're at the top or you've got good rackets going, it's not very rewarding, at all.

Yeah. Having read all about these guys for 25 years now, my current "unified field theory" about the mob is that the main reason organized crime is viable is because a certain type of person is EXTREMELY averse to doing a "boring" 9 to 5 job. A corollary of this is that the same type of person probably doesn't really mind being in jail all that much, because they don't have to do anything in there. Which, in turn, makes it easier for them to commit crimes in the first place, because they don't care all that much if they end up in jail. Just a theory!

Brings to mind a conversation from Murder Machine...

Dominick: This life is ours, it's a dead end.
Henry: Maybe, but it beats workin'.
Dominick: Yeah, you're right.
Henry: Here, have some toot.

You can get rich being a gangster, but that's not the main draw. The main draw is that it beats workin'.

I freely admit that I could be totally full of crap with this idea.

by **Confederate** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 6:31 pm

Good observation. And today, even though things can get done more quickly, it doesn't even really matter because everybody's got a camera, everybody sees everything, everybody talks too much, everything can be recorded, the Feds at much smarter, your best friend is now an informant etc. etc.etc.

by **Angelo Santino** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 5:58 pm

Sounds like The Life sucks, remarkably similar to Joe Pistone's tale of undercover entry into the Colombo and Bonanno underworld.

Currently I'm going through my own 1910's archive, viewing it from a different angle and The Life wasn't much to brag about then either. If you were a boss maybe you rented out a saloon and had people run it or was even a moderately successful businessman. But underneath this so-called top tier, is just grunt work. Saloons are congregating areas for scams and scores ranging from counterfeiting, extortion, kidnaping, robbery, murder. When Pistone laid it out 60 years later, he more or less stated the same with Jilly's store where people go there and plan scores. Seems like 70% of it never really goes anywhere.

And something we all take for granted today are smartphones, mapquest etc. Consider the Italo-criminal and the language barrier in NYC and being able to find their way around. Majority of the time they couldn't even locate each other, the address was wrong or the guy left town. He's known to hang around this club so let's go wait. It's alot of waiting. And when they finally do connect it's more fucking waiting, for materials, for some other party to appear. Always "there's a guy in Hoboken" or "as soon as so and so gets back from Rochester." It took these guys all fucking week to do what we can do in 2 mins in 2018. Seriously, I couldn't do this shit, better off just working a regular job.

I bring this up because it seems unless you're at the top or you've got good rackets going, it's not very rewarding, at all.

by **Bklyn21** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:22 am

Im just busting balls

THE BLACK HAND FORUM

Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Post a reply

Expand view Topic review: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia

Re: Article: The menial, everyday reality of life in the mafia