for the most part they are not friends with non Mafia people but meeting them is not rare.
My uncle on mother’s side was Italian and ran his own construction company in NJ and was said to have some “run ins” with the mob but I don’t know what that meant.
Remember all the talk about Jimmy Hoffa being buried at old Giants Stadium in NJ? My uncle did the grading and paving for the Giants stadium parking lot. Hoffa was alleged to be buried in the stadium end zone but that was just an urban legend.
My brother’s wife is Italian and grew up in San Jose, California where Joe Bonanno was “hiding out”. Her parents occasionally attended parties where Joe’s associates would show up. At one of these parties one of Joe’s guys pulled out a gun and my SIL’s dad told the host and left in a huff. Apparently that guy was never invited to any of the parties again. They knew that the mob was around, but they wanted nothing to do with it.
Possibly.
In college I worked at the Holiday Inn in Joplin, Missouri. Joplin, if you’re not familiar, is a little mining city of about 50,000 people, and the Holiday Inn was, at the time (and maybe still is) the nicest hotel in town (which isn’t saying much). Joplin is also about 150 miles from Kansas City.
Anyway, one night there was a wedding reception in our banquet room, and the guests weren’t the typical people one might see passing through our doors. Armani suits, big honkin’ rings (on men and women), thick Italian accents. Long story short, the rumor among the staff was that either the bride or the group was somehow connected to one of the KC mob families.
If true, then I was, at the very least, in the same room with either mobsters or people connected to the KC mob.
I remembered a college roommate of mine was married in a NJ restaurant that he said was mob run. I had some cousins that were married at the same place but I did not go to their weddings .
Does organized crime generally count (like criminal bikers) or does it have to be Italian/Sicilian organized crime?
I would be OK with hearing about any organized crime people, there are a lot more non Mafia groups.
Yes. My wife employed a nice young lady whose family turned out to be infamous Boston area Mafia. We needed a kitchen renovation and had problems finding contractors. The young lady asked her father to help us and he agreed to take on the job after hours with his brothers. I was there with them at night for weeks with my baby daughter and we became friendly. Finally someone pointed out, “You know who you are dealing with right?” I didn’t.
It turned out that they were the survivors of the infamous 99 restaurant Mafia massacre.
The funny thing was that there was a serial rapist loose in the North End of Boston a few years later. I turned on the news and saw that the oldest Mafia brother heard the screams of the newest victim and tried to chase the rapist down. He didn’t catch him but he did stop the rape and I don’t think it ever happened again. Mafia vs Rapist doesn’t ever work out well in the latter’s favor.
My female cousin had a boyfriend who was an associate of the Hell’s angels. I met him at a Christmas party. He seemed alright, the only notable thing about him was his admiration for high ambition. I don’t know who left who* but she started a relationship with an associate of another biker gang. He killed her in a drive-by.
Another guy was involved in a pyramid scheme. He also seemed alright, the only notable thing was his admiration for people who use what they have to succeed. When his accountant got cold feet on the pyramid scheme, he and his partner strangled the accountant in his office.
In either case, there was a worldview of using what you have to serve high ambitions of success which, if hemmed in by a few basic moral rules, would be a good thing instead of murderous and sociopathic. Also in either case, they killed someone in a way that was obviously going to be easily linked back to them. They were likely under the sway of emotions like jealousy or fear and didn’t have the foresight and self-control to stop themselves from doing something catastrophically counterproductive to their interests.
I’m guessing they were raised poor, perhaps with low-status role models who had little foresight and self-control themselves and had a lot more hunger than wisdom or discipline as a result.
*whom?
Vincent Solano was a capo in the Chicago Outfit and grandfather to a classmate of mine. I met him a few times at school events and he seemed like any other grandfather. It wasn’t until years later that I found out about his mob ties.
I read once about a guy who tried to rape a girl in a big mafia area in NYC. He was seen by Mafia guys who grabbed him and threw him off the roof of the building . They said that in those areas there was basically no crime at all except crime by the mafia.
My family is from Rhode Island, and I lived there quite a few years. Is the pope Catholic? 
I worked for a spell as a legal assistant for some criminal defense attorneys. We had some Outfit people come through. But that’s about the extent of it for me.
Growing up in my neighborhood in the Bronx, I almost certainly met some but wouldn’t have known it.
My sister dated a guy in high school whose father was reputedly in the Mafia or at least connected.
My brother lived in the same building and knew casually Louie Lump Lump, a low-level Mafioso who shot and killed a guy in a restaurant over an insult to a singer.
No shit about that. I have been to “establishments” in Rhode Island that are blatantly Mafia controlled even recently. I live in Massachusetts but close to the Rhode Island border in the small city that was ranked as the safest in the U.S. a few years ago and still among the top ones. There are many reasons for that but one that I have been told is that Mafia families live here but they conduct their operations in Rhode Island. Crime of any sort is not allowed at home so even the petty criminals know to stay away. I don’t know how true it is these days but at least one well-known Mafia family is from here.
The border crossing on back roads from my house into Rhode Island takes about 15 minutes and it is like crossing from the U.S. into Mexico. You would know it immediately even if they didn’t have that small sign.
I grew up in an Italian family, in Milwaukee, in the produce and restaurant business. Some of the people I’ve met or known over the years were involved with or in the mafia. Others I’d put more in the category of ‘I’m pretty sure’ they were at least doing something with it.
While, so far as I know, no one in my family was actually in it, the connections run close enough that my grandfather’s (and his brother) name is mentioned in a book about the Milwaukee Mafia and my dad ended up having to stand before a Grand Jury WRT IIRC a case involving the local mafia leader (one of the Balistrieri’s) and the owner of a restaurant that was heavily involved in the mafia.
In fact, even after she (the owner) closed her restaurant, she opened a new one in a building owned by the current Milwaukee boss (still a Balistreri). The food was really, really good there too.
Sopranos had an episode where they went up to Rhode Island to hire a hitman to whack someone. I thought that was odd but it now makes sense.
If I did, I’d cut off contact with them as soon as I found out.
Organized crime is contemptible.
Spontaneity is the spice of life.
One of my school classmates was related to the Mafia, though as far as I know his immediate family wasn’t involved. So far as I know.
I’ve encountered people over the years who I suspected were, but I never asked.
My husband’s uncle used to have a house in the Catskills, and we visited from time to time. His next door neighbor, whom I met, barely, was mafia. I know that for certain, because he served time for it. Also, a few years after the guy returned from prison, my husband’s cousin Dan (who also vacationed up there) got into an altercation with one of the guy’s sons. Dan was called to “testify” at a mafia court in the house. He was terrified, but thought it was better to show up than to ignore the summons. Both Dan and the kid described what happened, and largely agreed on the facts. The “court” ruled in Dan’s favor, and told the kid to mind his own business and stay out of Dan’s way.
My conclusion is that organized crime makes better neighbors than disorganized crime.