In a nutshell, I was wondering what you guys all do to keep your interest in the field of LCN?

I have been learning the history of it for about 5 years now and I know every big event that occured, I learned as much as I can about all the big name members.
Occasionally an article comes out that grabs my interest but, most of the stuff I read seems to be the same story, told in different words.
I have seen all the documentaries too.

The only book that is coming out soon that I will buy is the Ralph Natale book. Not sure it will contain anything earth shattering but I will give it a whirl.

So, do tell! How do you manage to still have an interest?

Don't limit yourself to books and docs, they are interesting but self serving to the authors and producers and only shed light on minute set of circumstances. Research FBI files and documents, Newspaper articles, Time Magazine articles etc.

One thing I've found in the past few years since getting back into this is visiting some of the locales you've read so much about or seen movies about can be interesting and fun. For example, I was up in New York last year and went to see Sparks Steakhouse--which looked completely different from how the different Castellano and Gotti movies showed the street. That was a much more intimate and in-your-face hit than them shooting on a Manhattan boulevard, which is how the movie Gotti at least showed it. One-way traffic on a narrow street!

Same thing in Philly--Merlino's old clubhouse, where he and Mikey Chang got shot, is on one of those classic South Philly streets, one way with cars parked on both sides, that is no wider than your average suburban driveway--you really get a sense of how effectively the Philly mob could use "blockers" to prevent cops or enemies from disrupting a hit.

In SP, of course, visiting some of the restaurants like Dante & Luigi's or Villa di Roma also shows you how impossible it would be to "anonymously" whack somebody downtown--way too intimate, way too much in the way of foot traffic, no easy escape onto an expressway or even a major boulevard. If you shoot someone at dinnertime in D & L, a lot of people see you do it, even if nobody saw nuthin.

Remember your interactions with the People whether Made, Associates, Peripheral People and their Stories. Even tough guys have a softer side that some may know about. Waitresses, Hat Check Girls, Bartenders, all have stories to tell.

Some people just see the Killing or the Money. It's about an Italian Lifestyle. There was so much more about LCN than Major Events. If you want that "Buy A Chart" - Become a Statistician. It is so much more than that - the experiences that can only be told in some of the Stories of what the Life was about.

The most simple thing that keeps my interest is the fact that I DONT know everything. And neither do you. There was a point where I felt like "Wow, I've learned all I could know, I know all these events and when they occurred, etc, etc". Then I found a bunch that knew a lot more than me, and easily disputed what I thought I knew. You're only scratching the surface. Like Yates said, books and news reports, don't even contain half of the history and information of LCN & Organized Crime. You're better off looking up documents, police files (local), FBI files, court transcripts, Confidential informant reports, etc. Things like that help greatly and will offer a bigger insight into LCN & it's relation to the overall world of OC. Another good thing about that is the simple fact that not one report is correct, you'll find many informant reports which conflict each other. What you need to do then, is find more than just two, even if informant stories differ somewhat, try to find the common factor within all reports, and that will lead you to the most likely truth of the matter. That's really the major thing. Don't think you know everything. Simple.

Talking to guys who "may have been in the life" is cool and all, but the fact is, not everyone has that possibility, same as with landmarks. Not everyone has the means to travel. You could try to find something local, if your town ever had a mafia history. Like mines, I live in Long Island, I've recently begun a little project of my own of trying to get photographs, that I'll take myself, of Joe Bonanno's old home in Hempstead, that he used to live in during the 40s & 50s..


And by no means, am I telling you "stop reading books, they offer nothing" when the fact is, you can get a lot of info from books. But another fact is, a lot of whats written in books, is either mistaken, lacking in detail, or just flat out wrong. Some of them, not all of them. What I've found out though, is almost every book has its own flaws.

Well said SC..when i was younger i did the trips thing,living in Philly,sat on Bruno's front stoop 4 a half hr. w/ a pint a Jack thinking about where the car was at visualizing the whole showdown..been 2 nickys compound in A.C where the mailbox still said Domenica Scarfo, & eat @ various restuarants,they showed the table where nicky jr. was shot @ D&L..some oldtimers told stories @ nicky crows clubhouse @ Camac & Moore..but these days I just try 2 find police reports,court trans.,1 recent good long read was a N.J. state report on scarfo's control on all bars & restuarants as told to the authorities by Phil Leonetti..but now & then,as I guess all of us do, I get bored also w/ the whole nine yrds & start maybe building a model ww2 battleship...

Even though the FBI files can be bullshit (most often more right than wrong) it is VERY interesting to read them. You can learn a ton reading them as the story is coming straight from a gangster.

Be carefull what you wish for. Thats the biggest advise i can give.

You'll never know anything other than the same old stories revisited over and over if you stick with books/docs/reports. To actually get a feel for the streets and know the things you never heard before you have to mingle with not the guys you read about necessarily but the people that know them and are apart of their lives because those people are the true gossip queens. People from the neighborhood, and neighboring neighborhoods (whatever), friends of friends, friends of family members and so on.

I get the impression, judging from your post, that you seem to be of the belief that guys like us, speaking on current, unclosed, mob matters is going to get one of us hurt. Like some wiseguy is going to come out of the bushes and put a louisville slugger to our knees, all because of an open case we talked about on a forum using an internet alias. Just curious, do you really think that?

SC.. Maybe he's referring to a statement u made in the shout box, some wisecraker he is..

You have to be very careful about what you read from any source (including FBI files) because gangsters aren't the types to leave their collected letters and papers to college and university libraries for people like us to peruse. A single lie or exaggeration by one writer can go a long way because it gets taken as gospel by every subsequent writer. I try to read multiple sources on each gangster, family or event and cross-check them.

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I find it interesting to listen to wiretaps that have been released to the public, like pistone's, or the ones that have been released. I imagine there are thousands that were never released to the public. they could tell a lot.