Have You Ever Met a Mafia/Mob Guy?

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#21

When my dad a was a cop in Kansas City in the 1970s, I met any number of mobsters, some of whom wound up getting blown up in the battle over River Quay.

I’m pretty sure I’ve worked for other mob guys - the guy who owned a “supper club” in North KC, various entertainment facilities, all these porn people I knew in the 80s, etc.

Ben Asner, Ed Asner’s older brother, had survived a Mob hit, and apparently that meant that he was ever after untouchable - he could tell made men to go fuck themselves and they’ve just laugh. Ben would tell most people to go fuck themselves, so it came in handy not having to worry about it. Imagine Lou Grant, but double the crankiness.

#22

I don’t understand why surviving a mob hit would make you untouchable. Any idea why? Are mafiosis that superstitious?

#23

I grew up in Bensonhurst. Yeah. Wiseguys really did hang out on the corner all day. I mean that’s all they did. Hang out on the corner all day in expensive suits and nice jewelry.

This was the 50s and I was just a kid. They weren’t “gangsters” in my mind because the closest thing they did to machine gunning their rivals was yell at a passing car every once in awhile. They sat around and stood around and laughed and watched all the kids play stickball and whistled at pretty women and that’s it. Of course, they were always leaving the group one at a time whispering to this guy and that and then heading inside the club and coming back out and whispering some more. I didn’t know at the time but they were conducting business.

Kind of boring actually.

#24

Welp, my uncle’s boyfriend went away for running something medium-high. Never knew what. Left my uncle the business.

Worked for a furniture rental place and a highway construction outfit. Both heavily mobbed.

This is ignoring the people I run into now in drug rehab. They’re rarely high up enough to be interesting.

I dunno.

#25

Yep, lots of yakuza, triad, and korean gangs. I played pool and hung around those places where they showed up. One of them, where the gangs would gamble in the backrooms, I would get free comp food.

The story I heard was that the gangs took care of me because me playing pool served as a front for a legitimate establishment, so I was, in the Godfather sense, a civilian.

#26

Another one I remember: I stayed with a friend in Australia who was living with the father of her two children. This friend was the most strident “girl power” feminist I’d ever met, and this guy was a total meathead of Italian origin. I couldn’t believe she’d ended up with him - he was chauvinist, racist, and expected her to wait on him hand and foot. He’d also hit her on occasion. He took me out to show me his seafood processing plant, and it didn’t look like it ever did a huge amount of business, if you know what I mean. Later, she told me he’d gone off on a ‘hunting trip’ for a weekend a few months previously, and returned with a bullet in his shoulder. “It was a ricochet off a rock,” he’d said. :dubious:

#27

I haven’t (to my knowledge), but my wife, who worked in Boston’s North End, certainly has. There were some people who wouldn’t come in the office when certain other people were there. And one time patients she worked on got caught in opposite sides of a shoot-out in Charlestown.

#28

I used to work for a guy whose uncle, long dead, had had something to do with the Brooklyn Democratic machine. So I must have met at least an older-generation neighborhood musclehead or two, because those guys were like his stand-in uncles - always there to do a favor or just get fed.

I remember an old lawyer who used one last name on his letterhead - Italian and multisyllabic - and another over the phone - short and snappy. How many lawyers use two last names?

#29

When I worked for a bookmaker I met George Freeman a few times. The biggest crooks I met in the gambling industry were politicians - guys like Rex Jackson, because NSW has the best criminal justice system you can buy.

#30

A guy I worked with was rumored to be room mates with a mob guy. I’ve always wondered why a mob guy would have a room mate.

I thought it was only a rumor until I accidently overheard my friend talking with the owner, and offering to “take out” someone they were having legal issues with.

#31

For seven years I dated a woman whose BIL worked in the scrap metal business. He was retired due to health problems when I met him, but he had enough money saved up to buy a giant house with a pool. His father is pretty rich. Also from scrap metal.

That’s almost certainly mob-related.

#32

Hey you just shut your fuckin’ mouth. You don’t know nothin’. Capice?

#33

Great username/post combo!

#34

Yes…scrap metal is indeed interesting. Here in Boston, the highway dept. was restoring the 110-year old Longfellow Bridge (Boston-Cambridge). As part of the restoration, the construction workers removed 110 tons of ornamental cast iron fencing, and put it into storage (to be put back when the restoration was complete).
Unfortunately, two state workers stole the fencing and sold it to a metal dealer-no questions asked!
There is also the matter of bronze grave makers and plaques being stolen-and never reported to the police.

#35

:confused: Gay Mafiosi?

(I mean, there might be a separate “gay mafia”, who knows, but I get the impression your uncle’s BF was suspected to be part of a “regular” mob)

#36

The sold it to a fence fence.

#37

I wonder how many degrees of separation I am from that. The guys I knew seemed to operate more out of Rhode Island.

#38

I’ve taught at a university which will remain unnamed the grandson of a very prominent figure, and lived next door to many, and overheard some conversations coming out of that nice older man’s mouth into his cellphone that are rather disturbing. Nobody fucked with our block, when I lived there – next block, sp*ks and shadows were getting whacked by crackheads, but our block stayed clean. And it was a multiracial, mixed neighborhood, in our block – they didn’t discriminate, as long as you lived within a few houses of dese guys, you were clear, as in, nobody fucked with anything or anybody.

Since moving to the west coast, I kind of miss the rules-oriented kind of patois everybody in my town spoke.

#39

Yes. Some in the family and some not. Apparently I had pair of great uncles that ran the numbers and when they died my Great Aunts who I remember as scary and crabby old ladies took over the family business without a problem. So this is very low rung of course. I also had a cousin-in-law that was not only in and extremely dumb but then got himself shot to death. I don’t know details but he was not a character I ever wanted to be near. Very guido.

I’ve met other retired members, I use to work in Long Branch, NJ which had a lot of retired minor members. I of course don’t know or even think any of those I met were “made men” but you never know.

My kids went to school with the children of at least one major financial guy that was convicted for illegal activities for the Mafia. I never met him though that is stretching it a bit.

#40

Yep. Gay italian mafioso. My uncle was a pretty pretty young man at the time.
I got nothin, there. I love 'im, but I don’t like him much.