The Mafia

Uh, I've known and been related to a variety of mob types.

Bah...real gangsters move in silence.

You know....like 50 Cent.

There's no such thing as the mafia.

At least that's what my uncle Val says.

One Grandfathers best friend is a huge mob boss. Well really he is a Union boss, but a Union boss of the Jim Haffa Type. Great fun guy who could make sure they would never find your body if you cross him or someone that he liked.

I'll say this - if it's a choice between not paying some Joe Pesciesque hood or the bank. I'll take my chances with the hood.

At least the Mafia don't rub salt into the wound by smiling whilst extorting you.

True story,

My mother was engaged to a man who turned out to be part of the mafia. She used to work as a bunny girl (like a uk verison of the playboy bunnies) at a holiday camp and they met there. Turns out he was gay and needed a cover so as to not bring the "family" shame.

They did not stay engaged for very long but apparanlty they were very nice people. (well to my mum anyway)

well, my whole country has had a peculiar tendency to be mentioned whenever the word mafia has popped out, but it's nothing i've ever experienced myself. not yet, anyway.

How do we know you aren't one of them?

I knew this mob guy Johnny, who once said, "Sure, we did illegal things...but we never bothered the general public." His main rival Roman was a fargin' acehole, though.

My godfather (whom is also my uncle) is in the mob.

Wow, that's redundant, huh?

The mafia today is a fuckin' joke. The Analize This/That movies, Sopranos, and general amount of exposure in the public through TV and movies has diluted their image in my opinion. I could not imagine paying some fat ass Italian for protection, or something or other, in this day and age.

People must walk through some sort of time vortex when entering these neighborhoods because people today know more about the mob than ever before, and I couldn't imagine putting up with that playground bully, give-me-your-lunch-money bullshit.

Seriously, I don't see a "mafia" active in society past the next 50 years.

On a different note, supposedly my great grandfather was in the Irish mob.

I have had no direct contact with any Mafia\mob people in my life but my family has history with them. My father when he was a kid in the Bronx worked for Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno Sr. Note, I said as a kid, it wasn't like he was a hit man or anything as nefarious as that. This was before any mob's ran drugs (my dad is like, 70ish now) so I suspect it was just running money from place to place or something like that (he doesn't know specifically what he was doing since they don't tell you WHAT you are carrying other then not to look... and he wasn't given a whole lot to do since he is Irish\German)... any who. It was a brief period nothing long or anything, just a job to get some extra cash so he could do a few things I guess? He doesn't really talk about it all that much like, OoOoh, I was in the MOB. BUT knowing the guy when he was a kid got him a lucrative contract out west in Las Vegas (he owned his own business, he just retired this year) since Bananas ended up out in Arizona. He got a contract with a company out of Arizona that had some affiliation with the guy (I think one of his kids ran it.. or something?) kept the contract between my fathers company and theirs fairly tight. It wasn't like it was some mob related juice, just showed he was from the old neighborhood and once in a while they would shoot the "sh*t" about what it was like, who they knew etc...

Now, My Grandfather...(he adopted my mom when she was a young girl...) he apparently was in the mob. I don't know how, nor does my mom and he never talked about it... but there was a lot of speculation and names brought up and some discrepancies in stories that bring us to this conclusion like... what he did before he was in WWII and met my grandmother --- I have a suitcase here with a work with a bunch of his stuff in it. We're looking to scan it into the PC's so we will have copies of it forever (some of the stuff is so old its almost transparent, like papers) We hope to find out some clue as to what he did before WWII, we also have no idea how old he was since he has no birth certificate, My mom thinks the name he had was changed at one point but I don't know about that. I don't know how he would have gotten in the Army or married??? any who....

now, my mothers BIOLOGICAL father.................... he was total Mafia.. All we have is a picture of him and several other people all we know for sure is he left overnight to go to California with George Raft and another guy who also ended up in movies, now, we have an idea what happened to George Raft, since he was in movies but no news had ever came back from what happened to my mothers biological father.

Now I know most of this, since my grandmother passed away before I was born, from my mother and from my grandmothers scrap books. She kept several of them. One of her career (bookings, reviews, pictures with famous people (A story about her engagement with Joe DiMaggio and I think the follow up story about the end of their engagement ), one of her family and one of her friends and one of just cartoons.. like, cartoons from newspapers she liked.

What I can tell you is there really isn't a 'Mafia' anymore. There are a few groups of people who like to call themselves 'Mafia' but they really aren't as powerful as they once were, where they could control things like police, activities etc... now its mostly just like a 'gang'. Not nearly the same in numbers or outreaching power. I mean, common at one point they spanned across the country from New York to California and parts in between. The problem is the Organized Crime division of the FBI has gotten good at busting those figures..

So was Tom Hagen, my Kraut-Mick friend.

I used to wash the cars of a couple of Mafia people. But like most everyone said, it's not like you see in the movies. Most of these guys run respectable businesses now. This guy and his family owned the local entertainment venue and a couple of other hot spots around town.

This one time I saw a black Cadillac with tinted windows and a vanity license plate that read "Thumbs." He then pulled into Buca Del Beppo Italian restaurant.

So I'm pretty sure he was a hood.


I get the feeling there's still an organized crime presence in Tampa, but it seems to be mostly involved in trafficking and smuggling, so I think they try to keep a low profile.

I've heard several times that the Russian mob has superseded the Mafia. I don't know how true this is.

Do they all look like Robbie Coltrane?

The Russkies are big into human slavery, so maybe that's the reason for their rise in stature.

When my Grandfather came over from Sicily he left some family behind that he rarely cared to talk about. He would only say that they were the kind of people one shouldn't be associated with. My great Grandmother promised to tell my Dad all about these people but she died before she could do that. I'd sometimes joke about having family in the Mob. Then, at my Grandfather's funeral, a group of people showed up that nobody knew. They arrived in limos and looked like the types. They didn't speak to anyone. They just paid their respect and left.

F.T.W. Kid

See, and people said that Tampa was a bad location for that recent film, the name of which escapes me.

My Dad worked in law enforcement and there was a restaurant we ate at, and still do, that he always said was run by the mob. I think he was just pulling my brothers' and my own legs, or the Italian food was just that damn good. I'd still love to run into the joint's main back room to see if they're fixing college basketball games or something.