When I was playing tenor in a honky-tonk in Cicero, IL there were guys coming in wearing suits, sitting by themselves, ususally at the end of the bar. Remember, this was a “dive” and NOBODY wore suits except these guys.
I was warned by the bass player to never approach them, to stay away from them at all costs. He said they were Mafia soldiers and wanted to be left alone.
Mostly they stared at the wall and talked amoungst themselves.
No, I never went near them!
Worked for a highway construction firm.
Worked for a rental furniture firm. (great for laundering money)
Yeah, a few.
I had the greatest hairdresser ever once. He was in a very sparsely-furnished salon on the third floor of a rickety old building on College St right near the university. My hair is thick and curly and usually inspires hairdressers to do unwanted things to it, despite my pleadings to lay off the hairspray (this usually results in me looking like a TV presenter, an effect which is always ruined as soon as I put on my bike helmet to go home). I had a friend with hair just like mine, that always looked great, so I asked for a recommendation. That’s how I found myself in this odd place.
Every time I went in the place was empty. (Even when I went in without an appointment.) Just my hairdresser, sitting around. Occasionally he was on the phone in another language, and as soon as I came in he ended the phone call. He always did a brilliant job cutting my hair. I was very pleased, even though the fact that I was the only customer ever in there (aside from my friend, presumably) always struck me as somewhat odd. I joked that it was a front for the mob because I never saw any money (except for my occasional $20) pass through there.
And then one day I went in for my regular haircut, climbed all the rickety stairs, and found - to my horror! - some WOMAN sitting there, instead of my beloved hairdresser! I tried to conceal the look of horror on my face as I stammered (to my embarassment, because I had never learned his name) “Where … where … where is he?”
She told me, quite curtly, that he was gone, and no, she didn’t know when he was coming back, and would I like a haircut or what?
It seemed rude to say no, so I got one. but I’ve never been back.
(For the record, I spent a good long time extolling the virtues of my old, chosen, proper, mobbed-up hairdresser, and she STILL made me look like a TV presenter. sigh) I still want my hairdresser back.
Also I have an ex with a really, really creepy relationship with a man he calls his “uncle” who isn’t his uncle. This uncle has many huge cars and lots of (poor-quality) drugs. I was never sure if the uncle was in fact mobbed-up, or if my ex and the uncle just liked to pretend he was. In any event: shudder
When I was in high school, I went on an exchange trip to Russia. While I was there, the dad of the family I stayed with went to Moscow on “business”. The next day, Vladislav Listyev was assassinated in what looked like a Mafia hit. The dad came back and drove me to school the next day in a car that had piles of cash in it.
The coincidence has always had me wondering…
A former acquaintance of mine from college was last seen a couple of years ago driving a Merc round Birmingham (England) with blacked-out windows. The friend who met up with him said he picked him up from the station, then apologised and said he had to go on an “errand”, and left the dude sitting in the car, engine running, for an hour, while he took a parcel into a dodgy housing estate. Then went back to the dude’s house, which was nicer than his supposed living should have allowed him, and no sooner had he arrived, than he had to go on another “errand” for another hour. He returned, and that was the end of the visit.
So I reckon, yes. My friend said he thinks he had a handgun in the glove box too.
When I was in the Peace Corps, in my group going to Micronesia, we had a young woman whom we thought was something of a free spirit (a lot of that type in those days). It did so happen that she had a last name that was the same as a couple of well known mobsters, but such things happen, right?
It turned out she was the princess of that mob family and was really rejecting the family values, as it were, and doing the Peace Corps thing. It came out little by little as time passed and we all shared the local brew. She never ceased to be a ditz, though, and was always entertaining as she took her look at life and over-lay that on the locals. One time, members of her family came out to the main island, and talk about a clash of cultures…If it were a sitcom or movie, it would be considered too over the top. The other volunteers and I were just holding our collective breaths as to which culture was going to “off” which and trying not to break up laughing as we watched.
As I remember she ended up marrying a local (islander) and moving to the big island of Hawaii. I heard she was teaching at the University of Hawaii or a college there. The whole idea of a student sitting in her class not knowing this was a don’s jewel has always fascinated me.
Sorry; criminal defense attorney. 
I work in the waste removal industry in Connecticut . I do have fun when people find out I do contract compliance=)
Actually to some small haulers in the country can be nervous dealing with us. We may have the majority of their book of business under contract, and if we take away 75% of their locations at once, they can go out of business. Some of the larger haulers like Veolia in Melrose Park have something like 400 or so locations we have placed with them, something well over 5 figures a month in billing in just that one division. IIRC we hit $400 million in billing this past december.
Yup, I talk a LOT of trash daily, and have actually spoken and met most of the guys arrested for garbage racketeering =)
I’ve performed quite a few weddings where the grooms were pretty obviously in the business, which means that there are quite a few yakuza families that have photos of me in their homes.
I remember one in particular: the groom was a rather beefy guy, his father was similarly built and had the stereotypical ‘punch perm’ hairstyle of gangsters. His buddies in the back so comically matched the ‘young gangster’ look that I’d almost think they were faking it: garish suits (orange jacket and pants with purple neckties, for instance), sunglasses, and bandages over their noses and under their eyes like they’d just been in a fight the night before. And right in the middle of the groom’s side of the congregation was The Godfather: a man in his 60’s or 70’s, dressed in a simple green kimono (and no men in Japan wear casual kimonos anymore except aging gangsters and stage performers), shaved head and dark glasses, with a ring of empty seats going all the way around him and a pair of rather tough-looking gents on either side.
The New Orleans mafia doesn’t get the same press as the northern ones but Marcello was the real deal.
I mentioned this before but my wife had a nice young employee who heard about our problems with contractors and doing a massive kitchen rebuild when we first bought our house. She talked her father and uncles into doing the job which they did with me right there every night. They were nice enough but very Italian and very rough around the edges.
Shortly after they started, another coworker felt the need to inform us that we might have had more family to get the job done if they weren’t killed in the infamous Boston 99 Pub and Restaurant Massacre a few years before.
There was one kid in high school I almost knew had to be connected with the Mafia. He had the last name of one of the infamous Families. And he was always seen close with the juveniles in the halls. Actually, he never got into any trouble, always kept to himself.
I served drinks for a few in Brooklyn. Some even signed my paychecks. Many others thought they were wiseguys. One gentleman used to sit alone at a table and once or twice a week he’d rip a $50 in half, throw it in the clean ashtray and call a busboy over to ‘clean this mess up’. I tended bar in a place whose very connected owner was arrested while on vacation in AZ. Two weeks later the place mysteriously burned down. And one of my fondest memories was of serving espresso and sambuca to a funeral party of men. After I had taken their order and started for the bar I heard one of them mumble, “And for God’s sake…don’t forget the beans.”
In my very brief heroin experimentation period, the guy I bought from–and who got me high a number of times on “his” own dime–turned out to be a federal informant who brought down the most-wanted Mexico-to-Arizona drug cartel. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to that level of criminal intrigue. I figure that must’ve been one damn stupid smuggler, but then again the informant was convincing–my group of burnout friends took him in as one of our own immediately. Charming kid, and he could sell snowballs to an Eskimo. Either way, I figure the federal government has gotten me high on heroin, and that’s enough of a story for me.
I do remember once wondering, when I was younger and sillier, if a friend’s father hadn’t temporarily done something for the Mafia. Because there was an odd little period where, all of a sudden, they bought a dozen and one nice new things: New house, new computer, a huge cable package, a big plasma-screen TV, and broadband internet with a wireless router. Always made me wonder if they’d just been storing up money for a while… or if there had been a sudden suspicious “windfall…”
But I’m probably being paranoid.
No, and not meaning to hijack, but I was a bit zinged when I learned that my old primary school teacher was allegedly once in the IRA :dubious:
I say allegedly because at the time, there were no free for all prisoner releases, so I could only assume he was someone who got out without leaving evidence that could lead to him being arrested. Sort of like Martin McGuinness.
In Spain those lines blur…
do you mean Triads? Half the Chinese in the country, according to the police - not because they’re members but because at some point they had to pay extorsion money or work.
groups that use drugs and assasination but who claim their motivation is political? The parents of one of my Sunday school students were known ETA informants. A permanently unemployed electrician (???) and a cashier who’d been in a certain supermarket since said supermarket went into business, at which point all the employees had ETA links, they lived in luxury housing across the street from the local Guardia Civil headquarters (which doubles as their HQ and quarters).
Russian Mafiya? One of my brother’s immigrant friends is a Russian who bussed her way to Spain at age 18, got a job in a local hotel and has since become one of their receptionists, through hard work and a gift for languages. She says that she got the idea after he’d received a proposal to go to Marbella from a strongman - she figured that she’d rather bus in and try for a job that didn’t involve prostitution.
money laundering for ETA? there’s several stores in town…
Does the Socialist Party count? They’re organized and have had prominent members imprisoned for such things as murder, extortion, kidnapping and robbing the budget of the places where they were in charge (the stealing went to the party’s coffers, except for what stuck to the thieves’ fingers). The Socialist former president of Navarra who’s spent several years in prison was an old coworker and school classmate of Dad’s; while I can’t claim to be familiar with him, I’ve met him several times on the street or at the (semi)public pool my family attends.
i’m not saying anything, but the last few years i’ve bounced between living in chinatown, little italy & koreatown. not to mention where i work.
i mean, you know, y’know. or you don’t.
if you don’t know, good for you.
When I was young, my dad was an engineer for a railroad construction company. When the owner ended up with a bullet in head, dumped at one of the sites, the light bulb went over Dad’s head and he quit. I think he’s a little overly trusting…
One of my supervisors worked for Karl Rove.
:dubious:
Sailboat
So that’d make you, what, Gottish?