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Carroll Gardens then and now + Ask Mario
Sobeit Union | July 24, 2007
When the irrepressible Josh Guttman asked each of us to contribute one thing that we felt newcomers to the neighborhood should know, my mind quickly recalled my very first day in Carroll Gardens back in the antediluvian era of 1997. I parked my trusty Dodge Raider out in front of the dilapidated brownstone we had purchased on Union Street and was removing my tool belt from the back. I was suddenly surrounded and suffused by a kaleidoscope of sweat gear, gold chains, deep tans, toothy grins and pomade.
“Yo,” said the largest of the trio. “Does the owner know you’re coming to do work on his house?” “Ah…I am the owner,” I replied, wondering what other wisdom this Welcome Wagon was going to impart. Three sets of obsidian eyes narrowed. “I’m Mario,” said the largest. “This is Frank and Carmelo. Are you Italian, or one of these f—- yuppie liberal types? Actually, both, I thought one by birth and one by circumstance. But they how could I explain to these gentlemen their disjunctive taxonomy couldn’t account for factors like my voting Libertarian? So I decided not to stay defensive without hopefully giving too much offense: “Sono Italiano, sono nato qui in American ma ho vissuto e lavorato a lungo in Italia quando ero piu gioavane,” I replied.
“OK, that’s better,” said my large new neighbor. He bent his face closer to mine and his Tyrannosauric dentition glinted in the late afternoon light. “But there’s one thing I got to tell you: Don’t ever RAT on your neighbors!” My anglicized, yuppified self recalled the scene in “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” when young Stephen Daedelus receiving a similar admonition on his first day of school: You must never “peach” he was told, on his schoolmates? Fortunately, my new neighbors proved less fearful and more helpful than Joyce’s Nasty Roche and Saurin. The rodentian reticence rule was just one of the many useful things the triumvirate imparted to me — it ran the gamut from using dishwashing soap in a spray bottle to check for a leaking gas line to spraying it full-strength under a car to get it to move enough so I could move it enough to make a viable parking spot. Since Carmelo is gone and Frank is soon to leave, I thought I’d ask my original mentor — a lifelong resident of Union Street — to expostulate on the anti-ratting rule. He was gracious enough to share his unique interpretation and has promised to reply to any such requests in the future. Episode 1 of Ask Mario is available here.
If you have a question for “Mr. Union Street” feel free to send it to askmario [at] bergencarroll [dot] com.
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