he stayed in The neighborhood and I got sent to Chicago suburbs!

They used to call Joe Bonanno Fatty McButterPants. Then he went on Atkins. Lived to be almost 100.

And he even fucked that up. Now we gotta send him back to the minors. Like Joe Mantegna in "Things Change."

Honestly fucking pathetic & disgraceful what is happening to This country, especially in big cultural metropolises like NY, Chi, Boston, SF. Shameful.

I saw a recent episode of Extra Virgin on Cooking Channel and Debi Mazar took her Tuscany husband to Arthur Avenue in The Bronx. I would love to go there! Lots of great places to mangia! Debi was treated like every other person... no star treatment and no frills. She was home.

Lol, never thought she was attractive either, PB. What's with that lisp?! I will definitely be calling you if I ever get up there! Thanks!

PB next time y'all get a hurricane up that way you better show me the good joints! (that will probably never happen again in our lifetime though)

I went to San Gennaro festival in NYC when I was there on business in 2011. Here is a picture on Mulberry.

That'd be a threesome. A local Wop, a Midwestern Wop, and a Hillbilly Wop. We'll get arrested for sure.

Yeah TonyG the hill is fantastic. I hate everything about St. Louis except The Hill . So many great restaurants and bakeries and has probably looked the same as it did 50 years ago. You'd never think out of all the cities, St. Louis would have the best Little Italy!

Little Italy and 18 ave in Brooklyn went from Italian to 75 percent or more Chinese.

The feast I never liked it because it was always too crowded for my taste. If you go to that feast put a rubber band around your wallet. So you can tell if someone try's to lift it from your pocket. A lot of pick pockets during the feast.

The area is still safe

East Harlem where I was born was all Italian. Them it became Hispanic when they build the projects. Now it has become yuppie land some Spanish guy was complaint that the Hispanics are being pushed out. I told him now you know I felt when the Italians were pushed out.

Want to live near Rao's small studio is 2000 a month.

I think next time I go to east Harlem I am going to go during the day.

I am going to go to St.Anns grammar school. Break in go to the second floor where my kinder garden class was. There was a porch where if you were good you could go out for recess toys were there to play with.

I went the whole year and I never got out on that porch I always did something bad so I never got out there. I have been complaining about that for 69 years. I tell that story to my kids and to my grand kids. I think part of the reason they never let me out there was because the teacher was a fraud I would throw a class mate off that balcony.

The other thing I would do is go over the walking bridge to wards island. We flew kites from that bridge.

Wards island was like the country. You go there they had trees and not tenements.

But what they did have was a nut house it was fenced off there was a place where they held the insane there.

I felt bad for them because if it was not for luck I would have been housed in that place. Just before I left Harlem some friends of mine and I went to wards island with wire cutters and made a hole in the fence so they could get out. See we had a sense of humor

We in SF have our own area of the city called North Beach. Lots of history in this Italian neighborhood. Joe DiMaggio grew up here. My grandfather played ball with him as kids. DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe at Saints Peter and Paul church.

Believe it or not we had our fare share of wise guys out here. Joe "The Animal" Barboza was shot down on the San Francisco streets in 1976. Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno spent time here.

These days, like most old Italian neighborhoods, restaurants cater to the tourists and the folks who live in the area are well to do or young hipsters. My Nonno learned to speak English in Washington square park, my grandparents wedding cake was made at Victoria Pastry 63 years ago. History.

I CAN'T STAND Debi Mazar. She's homely, loud and obnoxious. And she's from Queens. Plus, she's married to a Northern Italian. They may as well be fucking French .

@ PB

tuscans aren't considered northerns, more like central italians
by those who still care for these sort of things obviously…since the 50s, with the mass immigration south > north, it's as easy to run into someone with a southern last name up there as in the mezzogiorno.

and be careful with the french/northern italian jokes always, but especially around italians during the world cup!

So when did Little Italy start going downhill? It seems like it happened really fast because around the early 90s it still looked the same but it obviously changed by 2000. Did it really happen that fast?