Gangs of New York – The Lesser Known History

In Martin Scorsese’s epic film “Gangs of New York” he offers an historical perspective about the impact of gang activities in NYC. Well he may have missed one or two gangs of interested including the dangerous 215^th street gang. Yes, we were ruthless thrill seekers, hell bent on getting into trouble and causing “agita” for our parents. For the uninformed, agita is defined by the Urban Dictionary as “An Italian-American word for heartburn, acid indigestion, an upset stomach or, by extension, a general feeling of upset.” Yep, our gang was a regular source of “agita” for our parents.

We were a small gang, only 4 regular members, which was probably good as if there were more of us, the trouble would have been out of control. Four evil doers, criminals just waiting to happen. Besides myself, there was Mike, my brother, the quiet one. Tom, our friend from around the corner, the one with access to the explosives. Then there was Tino, the Cuban kid from up the block. He did a lot of the dirty work but he squealed al lot it you leaned on him just a little. The following is a list of a few of our escapades. This is not a complete summary of everything that we did, I ain’t no stool pigeon, but is just a taste of the mischief we got into.

When skateboarding was becoming the rage, we built our own from boards and taken-apart metal skates and found the nearest sidewalk hill to go down. Unfortunately for the man who lived in one of the apartments, the metal wheels made a terrible racket on the sidewalks and sidewalk cracks. This was especially disruptive when you worked all night and slept during the day and were skateboarding right outside your bed room window. He would regularly open the window to ask, plead, demand and then yell at the top of his lungs for us to leave. We only heard him when he yelled. Parental agita.

Growing up in Queens, we had a house that was built on two house lots so it had a big backyard. My dad built us a small fort, backed by storage shed. We would climb up a tree onto the top of the shed where we would hurl epitaphs, dirt bombs and eventually fire crackers. Parental agita.

Tom lived up the street and we often retreated to his house for board games on summer afternoons. His dad looked like a Mafia soldier, fallen off a charm bracelet, and his rough voice scared me. When we made too much noise he would send us outside to prowl around his yard. This included peeking into neighbor’s windows to watch them do housework in a semi clothed or rather unclothed fashion. She would yell and pull down her shade. Paretal agita.

Now Tom had great access to stuff. He had an older brother, much older and lots of “cousins”. Invariably this meant that during the summer we would get access to high quality fireworks – fire crackers, cherry bombs and M-80’s, not just the little kiddies sparklers, we had explosives. Tom also taught us the trick of the smoldering rope, whose end could be used to light said explosives. So here are the four of us, running around the neighborhood with smoking, smoldering lengths of rope. Nothing was safe in our presence. We blew up model cars and boats, garbage cans, tin cans, plastic cups and bowls. All just to watch them fly. One time we were spotted by someone while blowing stuff up and he yelled at us, the “guys with the big fuse in your hands.” We ran into basement of our home and hid out for a while but we were lucky that time. Parental agita.

Finally, we had a little wood stove in our basement. My dad would burn some wood scraps in it, to help warm up and dry out the basement as well as get rid of scrap wood. Well when he was not around we took control of the incinerator business. If it was flammable, we stuffed it inside and burned it. Later found out that aresol cans held flammable liquids and sprayed them into the stove. How we did not blow ourselves, the house or the stove apart, I do not know. Parental agita once again.

I promise there will be more installments about the exploits of the 215^th Street gang!