Being a mobster in 2020?

[Jimmy Napoli]

How hard and smart is to be a made man in today age?Does it worth in money and respect despite tech and big jail time?Is harder to become Dr. (for example)or made man.Back in the days all types of people was mobsters,but today,what push average Italian from average family into criminal life.

[queensnyer]

imho, coming up where I came up and when, anyone getting involved is most likely a moron. a lot of idiot kids from "the neighborhood" idolize that life and some of the older guys still around. many of them wouldn't even be considered in the 60;s-80s as someone real mob guys would ever want around but out of survival these mooks are allowed in. no brain followers make up the up and coming ranks. all the indicrments are laughable. setting themselves on fire during arsons etc.
of course their are exceptions. some guys are born criminals and schemers and gravitate to the mob, but if the mob didn't exist these guys would still operate. they are just far and few between.
the rico laws and the chaos they have reaped added to the fact of the watered down ranks means most guys who can think for themselves aren't going near the life. again IMHO

[queensnyer]

I make 150k a year with a nice union job and bennies. no worries, what avg street guy can compete with that..

[queensnyer]

a sanitation guy can make 100k and retire by 50. there is a lot of ways to live out there unless you gotta be the flashy type in 100k cars and 50k watches.

[bert]

post by queensnyer » Tue Mar 31, 2020 11:22 am

I make 150k a year with a nice union job and bennies. no worries, what avg street guy can compete with that..
Top



a sanitation guy can make 100k and retire by 50. there is a lot of ways to live out there unless you gotta be the flashy type in 100k cars and 50k watches.

Exactly, and it's been so for years, any guy looking to join the mafia or be an associate since the 90's is making a dumb move. You can even say so about the 80's. Some realize it as they get older and leave, without ratting. The Gene Borrello's of this world go with it for as long as they can then rat to get off free.

The only real successful people in drugs or gambling or anything else are the ones who DON"T hook up with a Mafia Family. Frank Costello had no unions to join or opportunities for college, or a good paying union job. Same for all of the older generation members and associates. There may be exceptions, but that is how it was for the overwhelming old generation members. 75-100 thousand a year jobs with full benefits and they decide to do robberies instead. Idiotic.

[slimshady_007]

There’s always gunna be stupid people who join, that’ll never change. Some people just don’t think about the consequences of their actions and have a ‘fuck it’ mentality. A lot of it has to do with low self esteem. Guys don’t have confidence in themselves so they commit to a life of crime since its the easy way out and since it makes them feel like their a part of something. It’s not smart to be a mobster in 2020 but u gotta remember that there’s a lot of lost people who get sucked into the life.

[Grouchy Sinatra]

All criminal empires begin in the streets. What streets does the mob recruit from today? Luciano and those guys came from the same projects that are occupied by black and Latino people today. The mob still certainly exists though and I'd have guess gambling is still the bread and butter. Vice. Which was Luciano's specialty as well. Vice will never go away and someone has to control it.

[Peppermint]

a sanitation guy can make 100k and retire by 50. there is a lot of ways to live out there unless you gotta be the flashy type in 100k cars and 50k watches.

Can confirm, when my father still lived on Long Island, he worked for the County in Sanitation. At the time, the county would contract with the local garbage unions, and my father was making over 80k a year working only 4 or 5 hours a day. He knew a lot of people, and when they weren’t on the truck picking up trash, they were doing all kinds of shady shit. Probably why the County bought out all the Unions, my father says the garbage business in Long Island isn’t the same anymore, there isn’t any more in it now, and that’s why he quit and eventually moved to Pennsylvania with his wife and my half sister.

He doesn’t really say anything else about it other than that, no surprise, his grandfather was Louie Lombardi who ran the Peppermint Lounge for the Genovese family so needless to say, the code of silence is strong with him.

[stubbs]

On the flipside, some of these guys get pulled into the life because they’re not the type of person who could hold down a steady 9-5. Not to mention they had trouble in school and probably dropped out young.

So, without the mafia being there, the alternative for an 18-25 year old kid like a young Gene Borello who dropped out of high school and has anger issues is probably not a steady job paying six figures. It’s more likely a drug problem, petty crimes, getting fired from multiple low-level jobs, in and out of jail, etc. The mob just gives them a bit more rules and structure, and maybe helps them get into more sophisticated crime than they would have on their own.

We think they’re choosing to be gangsters verses having a good career and living quietly in the suburbs, but many probably don’t have the discipline to live like that. Maybe a Frank Costello or Angelo Bruno had the patience and discipline to be a regular career guy if they’d have been born decades later, but a lot of street guys probably not.

Just thinking out loud, I could be wrong though.

[gohnjotti]

There are also those that are brought into the mob through their legitimate businesses like, for example, John the Barber Floridia. The mob has an underrated little recruiting pool of gamblers, debtors, and otherwise legitimate guys who are compelled or forced into committing crimes. Could be anybody from a local cop (Frank Politi’s 2011 gambling case), to a restauranteur (Angelo Giangrande), to a festival organiser (Angelo Spata). The way I see it, and somebody tell me if they disagree, that is how the mob gets a lot of it’s earners. A healthy Mafia family in 2020 will probably have a mix of those meathead high school drop-outs and people like Little Angelo Spata.

[queensnyer]

There are also those that are brought into the mob through their legitimate businesses like, for example, John the Barber Floridia. The mob has an underrated little recruiting pool of gamblers, debtors, and otherwise legitimate guys who are compelled or forced into committing crimes. Could be anybody from a local cop (Frank Politi’s 2011 gambling case), to a restauranteur (Angelo Giangrande), to a festival organiser (Angelo Spata). The way I see it, and somebody tell me if they disagree, that is how the mob gets a lot of it’s earners. A healthy Mafia family in 2020 will probably have a mix of those meathead high school drop-outs and people like Little Angelo Spata.

yeah I agree to a point but the mob used to run rackets that guys needed brains to be successful with. these idiots I see today cant do anything more than sell a few kilos and give out a loan here or there. strong arm robberies etc. the mob went downhill when the blue collar everyday mobster gained more power. ie' Gotti clan. types.. when you had the "businessmen" in charge they controlled the whole damn city almost. why the Genovese family is still extremely powerful. they are not goons/street thugs. the goon/street thug guys have a place but it used to be at the bottom of the totem poll where they belonged. why would an guy with any brains want to follow some goon with an iq of a potato straight to a rico case??

[Wiseguy]

There are also those that are brought into the mob through their legitimate businesses like, for example, John the Barber Floridia. The mob has an underrated little recruiting pool of gamblers, debtors, and otherwise legitimate guys who are compelled or forced into committing crimes. Could be anybody from a local cop (Frank Politi’s 2011 gambling case), to a restauranteur (Angelo Giangrande), to a festival organiser (Angelo Spata). The way I see it, and somebody tell me if they disagree, that is how the mob gets a lot of it’s earners. A healthy Mafia family in 2020 will probably have a mix of those meathead high school drop-outs and people like Little Angelo Spata.

You're correct. The idea has been floated for years that, because there's no Italian ghettos, there's no recruiting pools. That is true, to some extent, and I've said attrition has killed more families than anything else. But the pools last longer with larger Italian populations, to state the obvious. The mob has recruited from the suburbs for decades now. Of course, that's where we move away from the idea of quantity to that of quality. But there is still a certain world (including the types that you mentioned above) that orbit and gravitate to the Mafia subculture; in the extended NY metro area especially.

[aleksandrored]

This topic gave me a doubt, is there a guy who joined the mafia in the 1990s/2000s and who did well, like the old mobsters?

[johnny_scootch]

Luciano and those guys came from the same projects that are occupied by black and Latino people today.

Housing projects didn't even exist when Luciano was coming up. The first one in the US opened in 1935 when Luciano was already at the peak of his power. Immigrants like him grew up in tenements with much worse conditions than any Housing project run by NYCHA today and that's saying something.

[queensnyer]

This topic gave me a doubt, is there a guy who joined the mafia in the 1990s/2000s and who did well, like the old mobsters?

sure but today its a short lived success.