Rick Rofihe's Blog - Posts Tagged "jimmy-breslin"
Charlotte Curtis was the first to edit and publish me....
I'm forever indebted to my original editor -- the late Charlotte Curtis of The New York Times. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVAEQa...
Pastry, the Mob, and Principle (and The New Yorker, too...)
PASTRY, THE MOB, AND PRINCIPLE
Newsday — Long Island, N.Y.
[CITY Edition:]
Author: JIMMY BRESLIN
Date: Aug 6, 1991
Start Page: 02
Section: NEWS
Text Word Count: 1147
What aspiring writer or artist ever could resist the thoughtful atmosphere and white tile walls of De Robertis pastry shop? It is a place with the smell of pastry and the much stronger odor of principle, that last word being an exact description of the effect the place always had on people. The joint weighed on you.
There was an early evening when an artist with painted hands — “Future,” waitress noted — was telling somebody that he did not like what he was doing and that, as he refused to commit fraud, he was going back to his studio and start all over again. A chubby, jovial guy named Rick Rofihe, who teaches writing at Columbia, was talking about the work he still had to do on a short story. He didn't think it was quite right, he said. He went home and when the work finally pleased him, he sent it to The New Yorker magazine, which was pleased to print it. The short story was called “Carmen,” and was well received.
Another man who drew strength from the place was Joseph Armone, also known as Joe Piney. He had this name because he sold Christmas trees. When he tired of doing that, he became a gangster. He took a Mafia oath, given by the late Carlo Gambino, and then sat in De Robertis as an official member of organized crime. As he was sworn to absolute secrecy, he rarely said more than hello. One night, however, he wondered over to the Reno Bar on Second Avenue and began looking at a girl for far too long a period. The girl was with Barney the Polack, who handled the matter by shooting Joe Armone five times. Somehow, Joe lived, but when first the detective asked him who did it, and then Carlo Gambino inquired, Joe gave both the same answers. “I swored I never would rat on anybody.”
Because Armone wouldn't talk, Barney the Polack lived for about 25 years, or until he ran into the usual hail of bullets, for reasons unknown.
There came a December when Joe Armone was convicted of being a criminal in Brooklyn Federal Court and he asked the judge if he could spend Christmas with his wife. He guaranteed that he would return to court for his sentencing.
The judge, Jack Weinstein, said he thought it might be all right, but he placed a condition: Joe Armone had to sign a paper swearing that he would renounce his membership in the Mafia and neither see, nor speak to, anybody in the Mafia.
An iciness came from Joe Armone. Had he not sworn to keep an eternal silence about the Mafia? How could a mere judge ask him to break a solemn oath? Joe Armone walked through the door and spent Christmas in silence and in a jail cell. Which is where he is to this very day.
Because of such things, De Robertis, even though you must walk down steps to enter the place, always seemed a promontory that was out of the reach of the turmoil of the rest of the city.
Oh, the neighborhood at 10th Street and First Avenue, hardly has been serene. Two middleweight champions of the world, Rocky Graziano and Jake LaMotta, came off the corner. So did a couple of major criminals, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. It was also in this corner that Hymie the Bookmaker and his girlfriend Iris swirled out of Hymie's storefront gambling headquarters and boxed a draw on the sidewalk. It was a fair fight. Then they had a return match in a bar at 120-25 Queens Blvd. in Kew Gardens and this was not fair. Iris grabbed the pay phone receiver as Hymie walked out of the men's room and she caught him in the face with the instrument. The result was a straight knockout.
None of this, however, spilled into De Robertis. Of course there were guys in and out of the joint, crewmen from the Gotti vessel, but they were just part of a quiet room, with the tile walls and old booths and pictures from 1904, when the place was first opened. This attracted people like Rofihe, the writer. Certainly, it wasn't like any of these other places where people used to gather their thoughts.
Once, in Queens, there once was the splendor of Licata's on Forest Avenue, in Ridgewood. It had a backyard with tables, which were in front of a high wall covered with ivy. Tomato plants were on the other side of a wrought iron fence. Unfortunately, the place also had a front door and this was used one night by people who came in accompanied by assault weapons. And that was the end of that place.
Always, however, there was De Robertis, which was safe from everything but, it now turns out, John Gotti's mouth. Gotti is the first rap star of the Mafia. Whenever he walks into a room, he turns it into a sound studio. Here he is in a hallway at his Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street and, acting as if even the doorbell had not yet been invented, he talks, for the entire electronic world to hear, “You tell this punk . . . I . . . me . . . John Gotti . . . will sever your — - — head off!”
How can any place, even the most secluded fortress, survive the anger and widespread energy that rises in the law enforcement business upon their hearing something like this?
So into De Robertis they came, these lawmen in their suits and with their badges and warrants, and they lugged off all the Gotti people they could find, Jack Giordano, known as Handsome Jack, most prominent. They charged them with running an entire criminal enterprise out of the back room of De Robertis. The Manhattan District Attorney's office said that they had heard tremendous statements being made by these criminals as they sat in De Robertis' back room, the same place where artists and writers consider their talent. Gone, apparently, is Joe Armone's allegiance to his oath of silence at all costs. Apparently, it has been replaced by a lot of loose talk.
Oh, the owner, John De Robertis, said he didn't know what all this was about. He has eye trouble and doesn't see as far as the tables in the back of his pastry shop. Therefore, how could he be expected to know who was sitting back there?
But this was hardly enough to prevent the inevitable. De Robertis, once so wonderful and important to anybody who sought solace and a place to think, probably will be changed forever. For now it is famous as a mob hangout, one of the Gotti gang's places, and the tourists and onlookers will come into De Robertis like a herd, shattering the quiet.
***
(Read "Carmen" by Rick Rofihe at http://anderbo.com/bop9.html#carmen )
Newsday — Long Island, N.Y.
[CITY Edition:]
Author: JIMMY BRESLIN
Date: Aug 6, 1991
Start Page: 02
Section: NEWS
Text Word Count: 1147
What aspiring writer or artist ever could resist the thoughtful atmosphere and white tile walls of De Robertis pastry shop? It is a place with the smell of pastry and the much stronger odor of principle, that last word being an exact description of the effect the place always had on people. The joint weighed on you.
There was an early evening when an artist with painted hands — “Future,” waitress noted — was telling somebody that he did not like what he was doing and that, as he refused to commit fraud, he was going back to his studio and start all over again. A chubby, jovial guy named Rick Rofihe, who teaches writing at Columbia, was talking about the work he still had to do on a short story. He didn't think it was quite right, he said. He went home and when the work finally pleased him, he sent it to The New Yorker magazine, which was pleased to print it. The short story was called “Carmen,” and was well received.
Another man who drew strength from the place was Joseph Armone, also known as Joe Piney. He had this name because he sold Christmas trees. When he tired of doing that, he became a gangster. He took a Mafia oath, given by the late Carlo Gambino, and then sat in De Robertis as an official member of organized crime. As he was sworn to absolute secrecy, he rarely said more than hello. One night, however, he wondered over to the Reno Bar on Second Avenue and began looking at a girl for far too long a period. The girl was with Barney the Polack, who handled the matter by shooting Joe Armone five times. Somehow, Joe lived, but when first the detective asked him who did it, and then Carlo Gambino inquired, Joe gave both the same answers. “I swored I never would rat on anybody.”
Because Armone wouldn't talk, Barney the Polack lived for about 25 years, or until he ran into the usual hail of bullets, for reasons unknown.
There came a December when Joe Armone was convicted of being a criminal in Brooklyn Federal Court and he asked the judge if he could spend Christmas with his wife. He guaranteed that he would return to court for his sentencing.
The judge, Jack Weinstein, said he thought it might be all right, but he placed a condition: Joe Armone had to sign a paper swearing that he would renounce his membership in the Mafia and neither see, nor speak to, anybody in the Mafia.
An iciness came from Joe Armone. Had he not sworn to keep an eternal silence about the Mafia? How could a mere judge ask him to break a solemn oath? Joe Armone walked through the door and spent Christmas in silence and in a jail cell. Which is where he is to this very day.
Because of such things, De Robertis, even though you must walk down steps to enter the place, always seemed a promontory that was out of the reach of the turmoil of the rest of the city.
Oh, the neighborhood at 10th Street and First Avenue, hardly has been serene. Two middleweight champions of the world, Rocky Graziano and Jake LaMotta, came off the corner. So did a couple of major criminals, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. It was also in this corner that Hymie the Bookmaker and his girlfriend Iris swirled out of Hymie's storefront gambling headquarters and boxed a draw on the sidewalk. It was a fair fight. Then they had a return match in a bar at 120-25 Queens Blvd. in Kew Gardens and this was not fair. Iris grabbed the pay phone receiver as Hymie walked out of the men's room and she caught him in the face with the instrument. The result was a straight knockout.
None of this, however, spilled into De Robertis. Of course there were guys in and out of the joint, crewmen from the Gotti vessel, but they were just part of a quiet room, with the tile walls and old booths and pictures from 1904, when the place was first opened. This attracted people like Rofihe, the writer. Certainly, it wasn't like any of these other places where people used to gather their thoughts.
Once, in Queens, there once was the splendor of Licata's on Forest Avenue, in Ridgewood. It had a backyard with tables, which were in front of a high wall covered with ivy. Tomato plants were on the other side of a wrought iron fence. Unfortunately, the place also had a front door and this was used one night by people who came in accompanied by assault weapons. And that was the end of that place.
Always, however, there was De Robertis, which was safe from everything but, it now turns out, John Gotti's mouth. Gotti is the first rap star of the Mafia. Whenever he walks into a room, he turns it into a sound studio. Here he is in a hallway at his Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street and, acting as if even the doorbell had not yet been invented, he talks, for the entire electronic world to hear, “You tell this punk . . . I . . . me . . . John Gotti . . . will sever your — - — head off!”
How can any place, even the most secluded fortress, survive the anger and widespread energy that rises in the law enforcement business upon their hearing something like this?
So into De Robertis they came, these lawmen in their suits and with their badges and warrants, and they lugged off all the Gotti people they could find, Jack Giordano, known as Handsome Jack, most prominent. They charged them with running an entire criminal enterprise out of the back room of De Robertis. The Manhattan District Attorney's office said that they had heard tremendous statements being made by these criminals as they sat in De Robertis' back room, the same place where artists and writers consider their talent. Gone, apparently, is Joe Armone's allegiance to his oath of silence at all costs. Apparently, it has been replaced by a lot of loose talk.
Oh, the owner, John De Robertis, said he didn't know what all this was about. He has eye trouble and doesn't see as far as the tables in the back of his pastry shop. Therefore, how could he be expected to know who was sitting back there?
But this was hardly enough to prevent the inevitable. De Robertis, once so wonderful and important to anybody who sought solace and a place to think, probably will be changed forever. For now it is famous as a mob hangout, one of the Gotti gang's places, and the tourists and onlookers will come into De Robertis like a herd, shattering the quiet.
***
(Read "Carmen" by Rick Rofihe at http://anderbo.com/bop9.html#carmen )
