Thanks for posting, I've enjoyed all your rochester info and anecdotes so far. Outside of the five families they are the most interesting for me to read about , mostly because of my cousins up there I am familiar with a lot of the establishments mentioned in these stories as well as the names.
I know the terms "a team", "b team", etc and the name "alphabet war" was coined by a cop up there when he was putting together charts of who was aligned with who once people were getting killed. There is an interview with this cop from RochesterHomePage.net and he explains this, along with some other stuff about the war.
Again thanks for the info and if you ever have more stories I'd love to hear them. One guy that there's not too much info about is Russotti. I know he was the top guy and seemed like he had a lot of guys loyal to him. Where was he from? North East or was he a west sider? A lot of the guys dead or in jail still have a ton of relatives up there, especially on the west side suburbs, but I've never heard of the Russotti name
Gingello...whats your fav restaurant up there?. I'm gonna be going up there in late April / early May for a few days. Can't wait to hit up Antoinettas or maybe the new spot on its way to becoming a local legend, Tony D's.
Red Russotti was either from Brighton or Henrietta, (my memory is failing at the moment), but like the rest of the breakaway Rochester faction, he was a made Buffalo guy who sided with Velenti and Gingello in an attempt to create the "Rochester Family". I think at one point he was the self styled "underboss"...something which the commission never recognized.
Been there and done it I am very much for real, so if you ask, make sure you really want to know.
