Friends of Ours

Bonanno Associate Will Cop To Drug Dealing

John "Big Man" Venizelos wears horn-rimmed glasses and fancies Ralph Lauren Polo but the prepster is just a doper, and the reputed Bonanno associate will plead guilty for his role in an alleged $1 billion drug ring which brought hydroponic bud into New York and sent powder cocaine into Canada as reported by Mitchel Maddux for the New York Post:  "prosecutors also say they seized letters written by an unnamed colleague of Venizelos that discussed the Bonanno associate's ties to organized crime - including references to sit-downs with captains in various New York La Cosa Nostra families."

Drug trafficking always has been the life blood of the Italian Mafia, and apparently the wise guys still can't keep their grubby hands out of the lucrative racket.

Venizelos "held a 'straight job' before his arrest managing 'Jaguars 3,' a Brooklyn nightspot [allegedly] run by Vincent 'Vinny Green' Faraci, a [reputed] Bonanno crime family soldier," and patrons of the establishment apparently have included some cast members from The Sopranos such as Tony Sirico who appears with other of the tv show's alumni in the upcoming mob flick Nicky Deuce from kiddy network Nickleodeon.

The alleged ringleader of the drug operation is Canadian national Jimmy "Cosmo" Cournoyer who is slated for trial in a Brooklyn federal court.

Nicky Deuce Is Nickleodeon's Shame

Kiddy network Nickleodeon will premiere Nicky Deuce on May 27 which "centers on Nicholas Borelli II, a.k.a. Nicky Deuce, a nerdy teen who finds himself in Brooklyn with a mobster uncle he never knew he had after his plans to attend math camp go awry" as reported by The Huffington Post.

The film casts several actors from The Sopranos, and last year Nickelodeon executive Majorie Cohn said "having the Sopranos actors adds a level of authenticity and fun" as then reported by Martin Chilton for The Telegraph.  Among the tv show's alumni who appear in the upcoming flick is Tony Sirico who was convicted on a 1970 gun charge after allegedly harassing John Addison who operated the gay club The Together.

The Italian American ONE VOICE Coalition is calling for a boycott of Nicky Deuce, and president Manny Alfano says "these trash-television purveyors now want to brainwash a new generation with this insidious and hurtful stereotype of Italian Americans" as reported by Suburban News.

Frankly, it's hard to accept the mob genre as an appropriate subject for a kiddy network to explore give the long history of child exploitation by the Mafia.

What's next for Nickleodeon?  A movie about Mike Umbers and Ed Murphy who pimped out underage boys for the Gambino and Genovese crime families?  Or maybe an expose on the child porn racket operated by Gambino capo Robert DiBernardo?   Perhaps Nickleodeon can next tell the story about the Sicilian mobsters who kidnapped 11-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo, and then after torturing the boy for two years finally killed him and dissolved his body in acid?  How about a series on pedophile mobsters like Genovese capo Salvatore Granello or Outfit crew boss Jimmy Allegretti?

No doubt Nicky Deuce is nothing but white-washed comedic entertainment about the Mafia.  To flip a phrase from Majorie Cohn the movie is less about "authenticity" and more about "fun."  However, given the harm which the Mafia has perpetrated against children, portraying it as anything but pure evil perhaps is the real fault with Nicky Deuce.

Shame on Nickleodeon.

Character Actor Tony Lip Dies At 82

Tony Lip, a nightclub-employee-turned-character-actor known for his mob roles who appeared in The Godfather among other films, has died at 82 in Paramus, NJ as reported by Evonne Coutros for The Record.

Lip worked in a string of mobbed-up Times Square joints including as a bouncer at The Wagon Wheel and Peppermint Lounge which were secretly owned by Genovese capo Johnny "Futto" Biello until 1965 when Genovese capo Matty Ianniello took them over, and then at the Copacabana where he eventually became general manager and was discovered by director Francis Ford Coppola and casting director Louis DiGiamo.

The Wagon Wheel at 114 West 45th Street was a sailor-bar-turned-rock-club which by the mid-1960s under Ianniello's stewardship allegedly also became a gay hustler bar which "seemed to court trouble," and historian and playwright Martin Duberman recounts the rough trade there in his 2002 memoir Cures:  A Gay Man's Odyssey:

Only the front bar was considered hustler territory, and even there the mix was uncertain and volatile; the tough young hood sweet-talking an older man one minute might the next disappear with some stringy-haired blonde woman into the straight dancing area at the back of the bar and spoon away the night.  If the unlucky older man experienced disappointment, he could console himself by remembering the beatings and robbery rumored to befall "lucky" patrons who succeeded in bringing one of the young toughs home.

According to Duberman dates between hustlers and johns at The Wagon Wheel were arranged by "a curly-haired young Italian guy," and he writes:

It turned out he got his kicks in life, and part of his income, from fixing people up.  He combined the tastes of a madame and an entrepreneur and, not incidentally, got the side pleasure of enticing some of the more reluctant studs into his own bed, free of charge, by promising to fix them up with prosperous older men.  "Clearly," he said, with a winsome grin, "you aren't an older man -- at least not old enough to be prosperous enough.  Unless you got some inherited money.  Do you?"  I explained my limited means, gave him an ingratiating Tom Sawyer account of my life as a struggling writer, and kept mum about my academic credentials.  He excused himself for a few minutes and then reappeared with "Ned" in tow.  * * *  Ned, at first glance, was no more than eighteen, and since physical culture was not in the sixties an established art form, I couldn't imagine at which temple of the imagination this astonishing-looking young man burned his devotional candles.

The Peppermint Lounge at 128 West 45th Street of course was where the popular dance the Twist was created, and until the place was discovered by slummers from high society in late 1961 was just another Times Square dive bar which also served as "the headquarters and hangout for Biello and his men, who operated loan sharking and gambling rackets out of the back room" according to John Johnson Jr. and Joel Selvin in their new book Peppermint Twist.  The authors state that Biello took over the premises from his pal Sibbey Mamone who had to go on the lam in early 1958, and at the time it was a sailor bar dubbed the Gangpank after Mamone's prior venture in the space, a gay bar named Harry and Larry's, was shut down for a scandal involving a U.S. Senator's son.  Biello renamed the place as The Peppermint Lounge with the hope of drawing young rockers, and in Turn the Beat Around disco historian Peter Shapiro claims the following:  "In 1961, the New York Press started to report that celebrities like Judy Garland, Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward, and Marilyn Monroe had been spotted doing the twist at this seedy sailor bar and gay pickup joint attached to the Knickerbocker Hotel." 

Although The Wagon Wheel and The Peppermint Lounge at various periods over their histories apparently had a gay trade the owners, management and staff during these periods invariably were straight. Indeed, there may not have even been a gay customer base at either the Wagon Wheel or the Peppermint Lounge during their earliest years when Lip worked  there as a bouncer.  Lip must have been tough enough to work as a bouncer at the Peppermint Lounge which typically hired hulking ex-pro wrestlers with names like The Terrible Turk and The Bull.

Johnny Biello was whacked on orders of Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno in 1967, and Matty Ianniello,  convicted in 1985 with several associates for skimming profits from various incarnations of  The Peppermint Lounge and several other establishments including gay hustler bar the Haymarket, died earlier this year.

Apparently folks never tired of hearing Lip's stories from the club days:  "Lip said at his 80th birthday party in August 2010 that people craved hearing about the celebrities he met while working at the Copa ­— especially if they were gangsters or touched by scandal."

Nickleodeon Makes Mob Movie Nicky Deuce

Kiddy network Nickleodeon has begun production on the film Nicky Deuce which is adapted from "children's books by Steve Schirripa and Charles Fleming which tell the story of an affluent suburban kid who is sent to stay with his Italian relatives in Brooklyn, and becomes convinced they are secretly mobsters" as reported by Martin Chilton for The Telegraph. 

A review from the School Library Journal about the book from which the film is adapted provides in part the following:

When Tommy and Nicky agree to deliver bootlegged master copies of the computer chips for a hot new game, they are held hostage at gunpoint by some real gangsters. Nicky's dad and uncle, who turns out to be an undercover detective, save the day. The authors capture the flavor of an Italian household and neighborhood, sparing no stereotype. Though Nicky's foray into the world of petty crime has serious consequences, there is an underlying, boys will be boys attitude that could give impressionable readers the wrong idea.

Among those slated to appear in the film version are four actors from The Sopranos, and Nickelodeon executive Majorie Cohn says "having the Sopranos actors adds a level of authenticity and fun."

No doubt this mob story for kids -- dubbed by Cohn as "a comedic coming-of-age story" -- leaves out the mob's history of exploiting kids.

Jon Roberts Is American Desperado

Jon Roberts recounts his criminal life -- from his early NYC days as a Gambino nightlife operator to his later Miami days as a Medellin cocaine trafficker -- with noted journalist Evan Wright in the newly published American Desperado as reported by NPR:

By the time he was 20, he was one of New York's biggest nightclub impresarios, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Lennon.  But after a business partner turned up dead and an informant told the police Roberts was involved, he hightailed it to sunny Miami. The year was 1975. * * * By the end of 1976, Roberts says he was moving 50 kilos of cocaine worth $500,000 or more a month. Roberts was living it up: He had half a dozen servants, a Porsche, multiple houses, dozens of race horses and friends in high places, including the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Of course, it all came to an end.  The feds busted him in 1986, and then after a five-year run as a fugitive he became a "cooperating witness and informant for the federal government" in order to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.

During his NYC days Jon Roberts was known as John Riccobono who during the late 1960s and early 1970s muscled in on the burgeoning disco scene for the Gambino crime family.  Roberts saw that the discos were an untapped market which could be as big for the Mafia as the gay bars in which every crime family was involved.  Indeed, the idea came to Roberts after witnessing how profitable the gay bars were for reputed Bonanno mobster Anthony "Fat Anthony" Rabito, and he writes in American Desperado: 

I saw that Fat Anthony had a very nice business going. Fat Anthony controlled a bunch of fag bars in New York. In the late 1960s, the fag joints were changing. They weren't just for fags anymore. They were turning into discos. The fags still went, but so did all the normal people. Discos were a big business. They were growing up and down Manhattan so fast, a lot of them didn't have any Mafia control.

Carlo Gambino himself blessed the disco shakedowns, and Roberts claims the boss assigned his former personal driver and bodyguard Andy Benfante to work directly with him on the new business venture:

Most of the times we took over a club, we kept the same owners. All we asked was they give us a cut, buy booze from the suppliers we chose, put our guys on the door for security. * * * Andy and I took a piece of half a dozen nightclubs before I even turned twenty-one in 1969.

Going into the 1970s Roberts says they "expanded control of New York's discos for the Gambino family," and "we took cuts of . . . clubs up and down Manhattan."

Among the clubs from which Roberts says the pair took a piece was celebrity hotspot The Salvation at One Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village which was owned by Robert Wood, and he was murdered in February 1970 with five bullets to his head.

Wood had left behind three letters which were sent by his lawyer posthumously to District Frank S. Hogan and United States Attorney Whitney North Seymour Jr., and a March 19, 1970 article ("Gun-Charge Suspect Is Former Manager of Slain Man's Club") from The New York Times states:

A police official said that Wood's letters, which named several men listed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as members of the Mafia, described "a classic case of how organized crime moves in on bars and nightspots, puts its members or associates on the payroll, and eventually takes over. The Salvation, at 1 Sheridan Square, had been patronized by cafe society when it opened in 1967 but is said to have begun catering to homosexuals after Wood put money into it. It went out of business four months ago after the Mafia, according to Wood, drained off the profits and had him operating at a loss of $2,000 a month.

In American Desperado Roberts has nothing good to say about Wood:  "By 1970 he had become a real problem to our business. Any wrong thing you could think of, Bobby Wood was doing it. He was stealing money from us, picking fights with customers, shooting his mouth off."

And perhaps Wood's greatest offense was disrespecting wise guys who visited the club, and Roberts writes:

Bobby got into trouble with other wiseguys who came into our clubs. Bobby was a nobody Jewish guy from Jerome Avenue. He got so out of his mind, he hit on the girls wiseguys brought with them. When they'd comment to him that he should show respect, he'd insult them. Andy and I pulled Bobby aside many times and said, "You need to control yourself, bro."

Bobby did not listen. He disrespected the wrong people in our club. It got so bad, my uncles came to me. They told Andy and me to take care of him. Looking back, it's almost funny. There was no specific thing Bobby Wood did that made people want him killed. He was just an asshole. That was his crime. He was an annoying asshole, he had to go.

In early 1970, on a cold winter night, somebody put several bullets in Bobby Wood and dumped his body on the street. Everybody said Andy and I did it. I have no comment regarding the truth of that rumor.

Among those whom Wood may have disrespected was Junior Sirico.  Most may know Sirico today as the actor who played Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri on The Sopranos but Roberts claims that back in the day he worked under Fat Anthony Rabito.

According to the above-cited New York Times article Sirico allegedly was a former manager of The Salvation, and had been arrested -- and subsequently was convicted -- on a gun charge after allegedly harassing John Addison who operated the gay club The Together at 308 East 59th Street with a reference to the Wood murder.  At the sentencing hearing the prosecutor alleged Sirico stated the following to Addison:

He said there was one guy who gave him a hard time also, who refused to give Junior Sirico the respect he thought he deserves, who refused to comply with every wish and whim of Junior Sirico, and that was Bobby Woods, and he said, "You saw what happened to him," and Mr. Addison knew what happened to Bobby Woods. Mr. Bobby Woods was found dead with five bullets in his head in Queens with a .32 automatic. He told Mr. Addison that this could happen, and Mr. Addison was afraid, and he came to the District Attorney's office and filed a complaint.

Jon Roberts a/k/a John Riccobono now has fourth-stage terminal cancer, and soon will be reminicing with Bobby Wood about the good old days.