With all due respect, I think some of you guys are a bit off base. Take it from a second generation Italian American who's lived in the Bronx for more than fifty years. It's not the city itself that made those old timers a tougher breed (I've known PLENTY of tough-as-nails rednecks in my day). It's the abject poverty they were born into that made them real gangsters. And that's why (among other reasons) it will never be the same.

Italian Americans today just aren't born into the kind of poverty that makes a real gangster. Are there exceptions? Sure, you have plenty of suburban kids with blood ties and all that. But they're the exception, not the rule. Generally speaking, it takes a childhood of poverty to give you a true gangster mentality.