It made his brain all fucked-up. He was from the Marcy Projects and he would always come down with a gun. I never believed in that, so I never did it. Everybody knew who was who. The bullet penetrated his abodmen wall and because of the injury his leg became gangrenous and he had to have his right leg amputated several inches above the knee. Mostly we drank wine. Some Red Wings attended near-by Benjamin Franklin High School. That was the big thing. We just got along. I think snuff is much worse than cocaine. But it isnt like we were setting out to take over the building. Consider: Bronx gangs (mid-20th century) or something like Bronx gangs (1940s-1960s). And I tell you, it was a great fuckin scam. We called ourselves the Italian Dukes. It was a crazy neighborhood. By the time I started with the Unknowns, I already had a little reputation. Youre walking down the street, you see somebody that you dont like, who isnt in your gang. Somebody else could come and rob your mother and you wouldnt like it. It took a lot of people out. Anybody who had a Boy after their nameJohnny Boy, Frankie Boythey were always in trouble, cause they were always trying to prove they were a man. Their leader is Terror, a 6'6", 400-pound monster of a man. Jun.1, 1954 - Several Members of the Red Wings' gang from East Harlem drove to Fordham Baldies turf in the Bronx and shoot dead Ernest Montuoro after being insulted in a fracas at Orchard Beach. I mean, we liked to have a good old-fashioned fight and beat the hell outta each other, but we never had no intentions of, Lets go down there and kill a few of em. We all lived in the same neighborhoodthat was another reason why we werent out to kill each other. So thats how it happened. That was the year when it started getting real serious. I've watched the movie The Wanderers each time it's been on, and still get a kick out of how the Ducky gang was supposed to be represented. One group gathered at PS 171 at 30th Ave and 14th Street, the other 1926), Words gane to the kitchen,And words gane to the ha,That Marie Hamilton gangs wi bairnTo the hichest Stewart of a.Unknown. So they kept the neighborhood. To this day, we still hang out, and wed do anything for each other. Unlike the idiotic movie the wanderers, however, they didn't have any blacks in the gang, they went around to other neighborhoods to see if they could find some to beat up. Murder Inc. came out of that neighborhood. I remember the older guys coming around and passing the word that if any white kid in the neighborhood stole an old ladys pocketbook, they would have their hands and legs broken. We meet the Wanderers (Italian), the Del Bombers (Black), the Wongs (Asian Kung Fu), and the Fordham Baldies (oversized bald guys). There were opium dens down in Chinatown. The balcony on 204th and the 'tunnels', and the whole area surrounding Twin Lakes was our turf! Meanwhile, a local gang, the Fordham Baldies, menacing blacks and Hispanics in Roosevelt's vicinity, kept enrollment overwhelmingly white. down on them. If they caught you, you were going to get an ass whuppin. Me and him got along because there was no competition and we really loved each other. Back in those days, we always had a clubhouse. At the same time, Henry remembers . Then they got out of the cars a second time and the guy ran away and Frankie ran after him. Clubs may be doing their dirt, but the people on the block aint bitching because they do good for the block. Any girl that wasnt a virgin, if you went out with her you couldnt let her get away, because there werent many around. This was our life. My brother Alex started wearing patches when he was hanging out with this other club, the Dirty Ones. It started as a dance club, and as things happened in the clubarguments and fightsit became a gang. Its where the old freight trains used to run out of Long Island City. Me and a couple friends of mine went to a hooker. If anything happened to one of us, we had all of these guys. Their gang was the Comanchero Chaplains. Wed break into cars, stuff like that. Little Italy was strictly Italian. In the 1960s, among students citywide, truancy increased and socializing gained priority, whereby other high schools often issued diplomas once their requirements were met via Roosevelt's evening and summer . For everybodyespecially our people but even for strangers, what we called Merigans, like Ameriganswe had respect for all of them. It was something for show. If you made someone look bad, theyd wanna retaliate. The book is 6x9 and has 370 pages! Wake him up, hustle. One gang, the Fordham Baldies were reputed to shave the heads, and other body parts, of those they caught. A Mother of one of the Lucky Lords was arrested with a gun. It was the stomping grounds of both the real-life Fordham Baldies gang, immortalized by Richard Price in The Wanderers, as well as where then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy addressed a. But it wasnt like they asked us to. Eventually, though, it got to where you were lucky to get within a block of each other. We could see them from the hill. My brothers were making money selling drugs but I didnt want to get into it. Lots of guys were fucking up, but all I wanted was to have our club, and for everybody to have bikes and go places together and ride. You lived in one building, and the buildings to your left and right were abandoned, because they were gutted out by fires. I would go anywhere Jews worked because on Fridays, they cant put on the light, the air conditioning, nothing. That was my opportunity. From time to time, wed bump into them and theyd make fun of us like, Hey, we got your park. What was so funny was that a lot of the people were intermingled, family-wise. The battle lines between opposing armies had already The Dukes were on Roebling and South 3rd, over to South 1st. One time, something had happened so I went looking for this guy to get him. Sometimes after I got done kicking her ass, one of my girlfriends would come and, you know, kick her ass some more. If you remember the scene where they tied a rope to the penises of two guys on a bridge and threw a cinder block over the side down to the a river, that was the Bronx River near French Charlie's baseball field. The year is 1963 but their experiences are universal: falling in love, surviving in school and defending their turf against rivals like the Fordham Baldies, the Del Bombers and the Ducky Boys. Yeah, it was nice. So it was an epidemic, but an economic type of epidemic. I remember cars coming by and shooting at the guys, then we would jump in the car and go after them. A lot of them I met through fighting with them. He was out on the street. But yeah, I broke into every factory. During this time, both began to listen to rock and roll and go to dances on Friday Night. Most were dressed in the 'uniform And then when youre like 13 or 14, you start to hang out a little bit and the older guys start to notice you and start to talk to you and before you knew it youd been groomed into what they were. Also, we used to have a lot of gay guys come around and theyd get us a couple pills, some marijuana, and bullets for our zip guns. You push a guy up against a wall with a car, just push him till he hits the wall. The memories are all roughly the same, or close to it. I was from one side of the Southside, and the Unknowns were from the other side. After I received this email, I received yet another email, this time from Ernests niece who has some stories to share about Ernest that her father shared with her. Their members use racial epithets to describe their rivals. Joey DiMassi is leader of the Fordham Baldies, respected for his fairness and decency. Then of course the cops picked up on it, and it got to be really tough. The official 2023 Women's Volleyball Roster for the Fordham University Rams It got to a point where a gang called the Fordham Baldieswho were like the biggest Italian gang in the Bronxheard about us and came down and made us a brother club. It wasnt too hard to see the handwriting on the wall. If we had a problem between us, wed all go meet over at City Hall and wear different color bandanas so people knew where you were from. Their turf was around Jefferson Park, 116th Avenue and Pleasant Ave. When I stepped off the train, I saw all these abandoned buildings, and every night there were the sirens of the fire trucks, and people being displaced, crying, no place to go. I used to walk around with a gun every day. "When they were shooting the recruiting scene with the Fordham Baldies," Price recalled, "the actors were hanging out on the intersection of the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road right by Alexander's Department Store and Loew's Paradise, this massive Moorish movie palace. It could more than double in size at that point. Back then, if a car sat for a day, wed strip it. It was all music and sex and everybody getting high. I also had a guy who used to bring me cars for parts. They talked about it, shook hands, and then we were brother clubs. For each institution, films are listed by release date, starting with the most recent. TRIKER1 (talk) 15:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply], I read the article twice and I still have no idea what most of it was talking about. It was a sanctuary, this rectangle here. Im 46 now and Im still with this thing. I carried a .25, then later a 9 mm. Fordham Baldies: As their name suggests, they are all bald, reportedly to prevent their hair from getting in their eyes during a fight. Everybody else ran. Its cheaper than coke, and you get whacked on it. Thats all I ever wanted to do. They were a very big club. Sometimes. Mario was Ernests brother but passed away a couple of days prior to his son emailing me in March 2012. They had high collars, buttoned down, and on the back you had RR. But we didnt really go out of our way too much with the sweaters and the costumes. A close knit group that consisted mainly of blacks and Puerto Ricans, The biggest place we would go was the Starship. That was when the neighborhood was mostly German, Irish, and Italian. In fact, you dont turn around for anybody either. Well, I once carved a marzipan voodoo effigy of The Fonz after smoking some Bolivian prayer hash at Sammy Davis Jr.'s house. We were able to do that, whereas the newcomers werent. I was a heroin addict from the age of maybe 13 to 17, but not like a falling-down addict. Or if he was with his mother, we wouldnt say nothing to him. Over the course of one or two summers, they outnumbered us. Most of us came from broken homes, or parents that had two jobs or alcohol and drug problems. Everything was about turf. Both Frank and Vincent were packing fully loaded automatic pistols. The force would cause the rubber band to shoot a .22 bullet. For about ten minutes the two groups faced off against each other, calling each other names, threatening each other, and in the Baldies case, jeering Bella. Bernard Caleo and Angelo DiVincenzo were seated on the stoop in front of the candy store, unaware of what was about to happen. The guys in the restaurants were cool with us, and in return, we took care of them. We had a clubhouse. The gang was started around 1955 by the older guys. Factories close up at night, you break in, get what you want, and sell it. We never went crazy in our neighborhood, and whoever did, they would hear about it from us the next day. This was on Fulton and Rockaway, a half block from my house. When you left your house you had to worry about somebody grabbing you and kicking your ass. But still, they found the same guy who got stabbed before. We used to make choppers with four- and six-polesextensions, you know? I left my mothers house when I was 14. Bellagio99 20:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply]. Only Chinese guys did opium. Like 12 or 13. We had a lot of guys in the gangsometimes we had 40, sometimes we had 60, sometimes we had 100. Right now, the Majestics is a motorcycle club. Giampetruzzi, Bonano, Santanielli and the rest of the Red Wings high tailed it out of the Bronx back to East Harlem, seething over the insults and plotting revenge. Our drug of choice then was heroin. This was found to be a nice touch in the Wanderers movie, but in reality, the Fordham Baldies were named for the bald eagle and had the duck's ass or "D.A." hairstyle later made famous by . We used to look up to the Hells Angels back then. Youd be saying, I dont give a shit who you are, calling the club out. I got stabbed in the head one day with an umbrella. The ending was tragic and if one were keeping score on such a grim topic, the Red Wings came out on top. I got in, it was dark, and then when I put on the light all I saw was coffins, so I ran out. I buried three of my brothers because of being in gangs and being involved in drugs and living in the ghetto. It was about territory. Girls drank free. After the Kennedy assassination, somebody opened up the door and let the drugs in. Every time he came by the block there was a shootout, so everybody was always aware when he was passing by. Colors are more respected than your whole family. I told him to open the garbage can, one of those big silver ones, and I went in there, and I told him to put everything on top of me and put the lid on. A lot of guys got hurt, and a couple a guys got hurt really bad. I snorted it, sometimes I shot it, but not often. We were so fuckin broke, we had six jackets and maybe 30 guys. Homicide Dozen, The Hustlers, The Web, El Kavons, Cobras, and The Murder Junkies. The Jewish part of East Harlem was mostly west of 2nd Avenue. I removed the references to Brooklyn gangs in popular culture - does not make any sense to have them there - this article is not about Brooklyn. Set in the Bronx in 1963, the film follows a gang of Italian-American teenagers known as the Wanderers and their ongoing power struggles with rival gangs such as the Baldies and the Wongs. There would be a fight set up, and we told you to be there at seven oclock. It wasnt about, This is where were hanging out, anymore. But there were girls where I had to kick their ass. I didnt do that. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Bronx_gangs_(1950s1960s)&oldid=1101692437, This redirect does not require a rating on the project's, This page was last edited on 1 August 2022, at 09:49. They knew it was my kid brother, but all the witnesses were saying it was me. Not every club was friendly. It went right through his forearm. He left behind a wife and child. During the day wed just be hanging out, walking the streets of Brooklyn, meeting people, going to parties. I saw him on the corner at South 10th and Bedford, and I started shooting. Baseball Baseball: Facebook Baseball: Twitter Baseball: Instagram Baseball: Schedule Baseball: Roster Baseball: News Basketball Basketball: Facebook Basketball: Twitter Basketball: Instagram Basketball: Schedule Basketball: Roster Basketball: News Cross Country Cross Country: Facebook Cross Country: Twitter Cross . I went into the service in 66. My childrens fatherwe had five children togetherhe and I slept in abandoned cars and buildings, what we called clubhouses. Apparently Mario and Ernest looked very much alike and although Mario didnt discuss the death of his brother, it was something that Marios son always knew about. You had to have respect. She used to be a dispatcher for a car service. 1954 Red Wings & Fordham Baldies The Red Wings were a well-known and powerful Italian gang situated in East Harlem. He might have been black, he might have been Puerto Rican, and then that was it, the shit started. I went over to the South 9th Bikers in early 1980, the same year I went to jail. We were trying to hide, actually, because the NYPD Youth Squad was always down here, asking us questions like who was who, and who was our leader. Egyptian Dragons". The Ducky was not predominantly irish or anything else, but yes, we were certainly a 'large' group. In football, the Rams play in the Patriot League of NCAA Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision. But that was once in a while, you know? Tvoz | talk 06:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply], I agree with and understand all the changes. You wanna have a game of football? or sometimes wed say, F youse, were gonna come down and kick your asses. When we were drinking, wed scream down at them, Hey, you fuckin black bastards! Wed say something racial, you know? The quarterback of the Lynvettes, Thomas "Tommy" Wall, a Woodsider and former Chief QB said about the Chiefs "in the off season we were a gang." And of course, you dont let nobody take your colors. But they looked at us and they said, It was Alicat So it was Alicat. Then another five would do another dance routine, and it became like a fucking dance-off. Pichon, President of the original Latin Kings of Highbridge Park, '63, currently living in the West Coast. There were also after school programs Stephanie went to that had a lot of activities for the kids. They said, Why should I buy drugs to sell when I can steal his and sell them? It happened all the time. We went down one night, had a fight with them, and Ill never forget it: We chased them all the way down Evergreen Avenue, and all of a sudden about 60 or 70 of them came out of a house. They werent pussies. When I lived in the Bronx, prior to 1953 - there was a gang called the Fordham Daggers. I swear to God. Tully High School seniors Richie, Joey and Perry run with a gang called The Wanderers in the Bronx. Belmont Avenue, near East 189th Street. We were coming down Freeman Street to the club, and they started calling us out. Underneath the hill, there were the train tracks. Wed get harassed by the cops all the time, but then again, that was a time when if you had a fight on the street, the cops would grab you, kick you in the ass, and send you on your way like, Get outta here. But you gotta remember one thing: When we were kids, we didnt have to kill anybody. Like if we were walking down the street and we saw one of the Spanish guys with his girlfriend, we wouldnt beat him up. The gangs -- with names such as the Ducky Boys, Del Bombers and Fordham Baldies (who really are bald) -- are racially segregated. So wed take the apartment over. Some shotguns, a .30-06, a .30-30. It was two carloads of the fellas, just headed toward the block, coming from Greenpoint. Corona Queens - Best Italian Ice in New york City. If two women came into a bar, they never paid for a drink and nobody even went over to talk to them. Caleo took another bullet just about the left buttock, near his belt line. Read more about Bronx Gangs (1950s1960s): Popular Culture, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Batteryto holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and childrenbrought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain and drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,Allen Ginsberg (b. (3) Police busted up a potential rumble and arrested some Gowanus It was also common for someone to be walking down the street, and a car would stop, and a bunch of guys would jump out and beat on him. Five leather jacket clad Astoria gangs almost mix it up with Once you drink a couple gallons of that wine, youre ready to go. When they started with the knives, we started with the zip guns. I got locked up in 80 and came out in 83. The Fordham Baldies were one of the gangs featured in the movie "The Wanderer". We went to Seward Park High School, and it was mostly Jews. Wed hang out in the park at night. 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