⁴ᴷ⁶⁰ Walking the Bronx: Fordham & Little Italy with a Resident (August 14, 2020)

hey everyone it's friday august 14 2020. i have a special guest here with me today his name's rich mancuso from the bronx still in the bronx many know me as rich sports because i've been a sports journalist almost 40 years four years and yeah action kid it's so good to have you in the bronx with me thank you get this little tour going tonight and uh there's a lot of history in this borough and i've seen you walking around but i like to fill you in a little more okay because i know his boro than anyone else all right especially if he's been here for as long as he has and we're in the fordham neighborhood of the bronx right now and right now we're near the paradise theater which you can't see because they're doing a lot of construction on it scaffold this is the oldest movie theater in the city and maybe one of the oldest in the country that used to be home to a lot of high school graduations including mine back in 1975 which gives you an idea how old i am oh wow and also some famous stars from theater performers they did live events in here but mostly in movie theater and then of course the movie did is as you know went out of to the different multiplex situations and the paradise became just about obsolete and gone and then they renovated and they tried to do some boxing shows in there and they've been building issues and everything else but they're trying to revive it again but this the architecture in that building if you get to see it was unbelievable not like anything else and this whole area of fordham road where we are action kid is also a lot of movie theaters that was the thing growing up in this area as i did on arthur avenue which we'll see later we had four or five movie theaters in proximity of each other so you had your choice we had the rpa fordham down the block we had the valentine theater we had the globe theater a little further down the main one here was the paradise the rko and uh the other one the the valentine and it was unbelievable you had your choice where to go and get this to go to the movies in a saturday matinee it's only 25 cents when i grew up 25 cents yeah so you know you did your reverence at home your mother your dad to give you 50 cents for the day and you had your movie popcorn and soda all for 50 cents it was unbelievable back then we're talking 1960s even into the early 70s and it's hard to believe when you say that to people they that in this generation today they can't believe it that that's what you were doing and you had a day out you had a good time all tell a little less traffic less noise congestion uh there's been a transition in the whole area fordham road down to where we're gonna go to arthur but the paradise theater is a remarkable structure and also a great uh a great icon i call it an iconic building in new york city if not around the country and too bad you can't go in there see the architecture but i encourage everyone to look up the history the paradise theater bronx new york you'll see what i'm talking about yeah now a little bit of a tight squeeze over here [Music] and now you know we're walking down the neighborhood here that has been a major transformation over the years where these were established men's women's clothing stores you didn't have these big furniture stores on the side because if you look in the distance in our white building on fordham and the concourse where we are which says marshalls at the top they used to be alexander's department store that's where everyone went five floors of shopping you could spend the whole day there wow and i think i saw the old lettering that's how yeah and then if you look at the iconic i call everything iconic here dollar savings bank that brown building in the distance and they have a we always used to look at that clock on the top for the time and that's where you did your banking what was your major bank right there that big brown building dollar savings bank dollar savings bank yeah and here's the d train where we used to walk from out the raven to come here to come to fordham road i might spend the day up here have lunch go to a movie well this is unbelievable this is a trash mountain yeah it's been a big transition here it's uh and it's a lively area i don't come up here as much as i used to uh there are any number of reasons why i'm on the other end of the browns and tell them and i'm getting you know i can't deal with the noise the traffic and i got co-op sitting near me where a mall where i paid closer where i could do my shopping okay so let's walk yeah let's go let's go down this way ken i call you ken or action kid yeah it doesn't matter to me i like calling you action package but we're gonna walk down fordham road towards fordham university and then head right into off the revenue that way and then give a little tour perspective of that area and how that's changed since i grew up here you know and it uh was well in the evening with a nice dinner at my favorite place amelia's restaurant and arthur avenue i think i've eaten there twice they've got good food [Music] but what i'm amazed at is how action kid gets all around the city on a bike walking and in a car and goes through neighborhoods that i've never seen before i know i pretty much got the city covered with the exception yeah i think you've touched all bases and uh i'll tell you one thing that i really enjoyed recently that you did and i'm going to do it within the next week or so and you went down to class and point took that ferry ride oh yeah i'm going to do that i've been meaning to do that and you showed me the ropes for that so that's on my agenda not bucketless agenda so yeah that's pretty uh recent they put that there yeah i watch all your videos that everyone should because you're the biggest and major tour guide for new york city and the surrounding areas because we have a lot of banks up here now that only used to be one bank dollar savings bank now you got a td bank here on a corner i wonder what that dollar savings bank is now it's a general office building oh it's an office building now yeah because there is no dollar savings bank no more and there's the alexander's and you can see up there on top pc richard sign i used to say alexander's in red and it was just alexander's but they made it into a mini mall different divided up yeah i see children's place marshalls there's a horizon store there or a mobile store there's a bunch of stores on the corner so let's just be careful here because the traffic could be nuts and uh just like the traffic is pretty crazy it is look at this yeah welcome to the bronx and if you travel all the way down here the grand concourse which is miles a road down to 149th and bruckner and you'll also get to yankee stadium this way we as kids used to walk from here to get to yankee stadium it was a nice walk wow that's a long walk and the grand concourse is one of the biggest thoroughfares in new york city that's also changed because this used to be a predominantly jewish community and then when they built co-op city in the late 60s or and that used to be freedom land and amusement park the grand concourse became different the whole diversity of it the community because a lot of the jewish community went to co-op city and that was the beginning of a transformation of the bronx from one culture to another but the grand concourse is still alive and thriving they're working on traffic pedestrian areas to prevent pedestrians from getting hit by cars because there's been a lot of those incidents that were played but it's still a lively uh thoroughfare to in the bronx and one of the biggest in the cities next to i think uh eastern parkway okay and probably like queens boulevard yes too yeah hope i'm not talking you uh that's fine and i'm giving you a nice perspective of what's going on here now i've been waiting to ask you for this this best italian pizza is it really the best no it's not no in fact i could tell you i never ate there before you have a right here before no you want good pizza you go to arthur avenue you go to pelham bay where i am this is just a neighborhood what i call neighborhood store only four customers at a time yeah and also that they don't have the ingredients that uh one of the regular pizza stores privately owned would have here on fordham road right now past the concourse and across the street that used to be the rko theater over there that i was telling you about or you can even see it's just a bunch of snow because they converted everything oh i think they closed it down for good in the late 70s there was no burger king there and none of these type of stores that dr j's didn't even exist back then reason why i thought it was still there because of the construction you see the old yeah no it's not there no more but see that was in proximity to the paradise and we walk down further and you see valentine avenue and across the street right over there in the middle where the chase bank is that used to be the valentine theater oh that's why yeah it's amazing how much this has changed it's really changed and every time i come up here and i don't come up here much i see the change even more and more and the diversity most the people my generation that are still around don't even live in the bronx no more they've moved up to putnam westchester county or out of the state completely they feel they have a better living there and now it's so busy here yeah did it used to be this busy when you're going out wow you could walk up and down here freely with with none of the loud music places to eat like right over here uh it was the best frankfurter place in the city you could get a frank for 25 cents even less at gorman's franks i think it was right over here we used to come right here to gorman springs mormon electronics yeah the best frankfurter in a row in the city of new york better than nathan's and cheaper i mean we could spend hours in there and never get kicked out a beautiful orange age soft drink less than a quarter how much is a frankfurter now a dollar a dollar and a half you could walk up and down fordham road and there were clothing stores like this there weren't racks of clothes outside the stores and you can make good time you don't have to avoid pedestrian training but this has become such a retail oriented community and it's also worse now because of the pandemic they're exactly pushing everyone outside right right and to see this to tell you the truth it's good to see business going even despite what we're under but to see how this area changed so rapidly in the last 20 years and how it's gone from these mom pop stores and a lot of jewelry shops and that men's clothing store and women's apparel and things like that no longer here and all of this is what you see now but um walking down here kenny i get a lot of memories because i grew up here and i spent a lot of time here with my friends and we again saturdays was the thing fordham road if we could get to the movie we did we just hung out went up here for a frank at gorman and i didn't show you half the other places we used to hang out in the concourse we could do that another time yeah another time there's so much to see and and go back and remember and and of course the cultures change that's a big difference big big difference yeah because before you say this is jewish italian yeah jewish predominantly italian and irish and now it's predominantly blacks and latinos who i grew up with all the time that's that's never been an issue with me i come from the arthur avenue area where we had the 1960s 70 racial awards there and as we'll talk more about it when we get there that was a community that was very close knit with the old mobsters and very protective and at that time back there if a black person and this might be racial and i never was involved with it a black person walked in that community they had to look twice i always thought it was wrong because i wasn't brought up that way and i stayed away from all that but you remember the bronx tale the movie that's the realistic part of it that's what was going on and i was a part of that i lived through that but this area predominantly now as you see [Music] and uh so busy here yeah yeah and majority of my friends are black and latino so i can i can adapt to this easily and that comes from my upbringing being a sports guy living around sports all my life where you always have a diverse background in sports with the athletes the people involved did you broadcast all types of sports or i broadcast yet some and then did shows here in the bronx we have a public access station called bronx net and i had the most popular show on there for four years for bronx scoreboard the live pollen show and i was on wfing and torch radio at the time so i had a very big popularity i still do i do have a big following i don't want to brag about it but anyway let's get back to this it's more interesting than my boring life um you can see across the street what we're just talking about yeah t-mobile these were all men's stores that's what you had no mcdonald's here either there was nothing there was no gamestop at the time these were all men's stores men or women's stores you could go in and out reasonable prices i'm sure the uh the clothing there only cost a few dollars back then too yeah yeah and as you're getting towards decatur avenue a little further right in the net block before we could have seen the new library they built in the bronx uh but down decatur was the old library so that was the library down that block that i used to do all my work get books out who knows about a library today nobody goes yeah so in that down there oh boy fordham branch is down there they built a new one uh around the next block and they ran out the revenue they built the enrique fermi library which used to be another movie theater at the time called the uh chanelli's theater i'm going to show you that and we called it the dumps because it was a dump but we'd go there on saturday morning and have a good time too and and have a lot of fun so but here now we reached the point of webster and fordham and this didn't exist best buy all of this was just off maybe office or frankly it was another department store it wasn't alexander's it wasn't a macy's but they broke this up into another center of business and right across from fordham university which there's another story there that's my favorite place to go in the bronx i do ball games there football basketball which hurts me now with the pandemic because that's not going to be happening this fall and winter and uh but that car that university is still strong and a lot of great people have graduated from there for more folks forms of life and in the bronx if you went to clinton d with clinton high school like i did or one of the other schools mostly clinton you weren't you went to college you didn't go to florida you couldn't afford it still very hard that is one of the highest tuition schools in the country uh you went to city college in new york just like i have here in my ring 1980 graduate or you went to nyu florida and i went to city college got my degree there i wanted to go to fordham got accepted but couldn't afford it i don't regret it i had a great college life yeah that's what happens to a lot of people yeah they get accepted to a school they afford it and but you have to go somewhere else we had the metro north station there but not like it is now of course it was just an old walk down the steps across the street which is right adjacent to the fordham rose hill campus and the bus traffic wasn't as big we only have one bus that could come up and down this street the number 12. that could take you from here all the way from uh started up in inwood would go across in good time no traffic into city island and i think in the summertime it goes to orchard beach right i think that was the only bus that was the only bus traveling on this route and yeah we did have another one that used to cut into arthur avenue 187th street where we're gonna go and they had to reroute that because of those race awards oh wow there was uh more than one incident where people from that neighborhood did not want and i thought it was wrong and i stayed away from it because i was brought up differently they they toppled over a bus and that was the number three it was called the number three bus of which now that's crazy you get over here is they think the 19 bus but they redirected the traffic because it got really really bad and dangerous and um the 12 though has always been here and that was the only it never saw this traffic never look this went for miles and miles yeah and this is the main governmental building next to the bronx county courthouse a lot of new york city businesses are in this building human resources department of education medicine health facilities this is new this is relatively new yeah that's the housing authority yeah so this whole building was new there was nothing here right across from fordham university in that beautiful library they have that cost over 3.3 million dollars to build one of the best that library is gorgeous informative and open only to the students but if you want to go in as an outsider you get permission you can go in the fordham camp is the rose hill campus which goes for miles this way and up beautiful scenery just knowing that interesting you brought up that point with the bus i always wondered why there was no bus that went down arthur avenue that's why i'd always have to get off the train and walk yeah and this whole block all these businesses were not here so but it brings back memories yeah it really does it brings back a lot of memories every time i walk up and down including the white castle i'm going to tell you that story in a moment well the murder burgers that's called the murder burgers and then the bronx zoo is not far away from here either right the bronx zoo botanical garden where i lived there also as a kid and no longer ago because time-wise and everything and those were two institutions that people come from all over the world hung out at the botanical gardens when i was a kid we used to play ball in there climb the fences get chased out at night chased out at night here's theodore roosevelt high school under an extensive renovation which is now been incorporated into one of those campus high schools where there's one school and others inside and they've done a lot of renovation with it not many famous people who have come out of here when you lived in this neighborhood you didn't go here you went to deal with clinton or christopher columbus high school and then later on lehman high school in pelham bay a little later on because then they had schools known as zone schools and you were restricted to go in the school that was in your neighborhood yeah they had those too yeah when i was there but then they opened up the door to getting rid of that and i was able to go to clinton and i'm glad i did because that made me got my career moving at a young age and i didn't want to go to worlds about because i heard so many bad stories i have a swimming pool in there and i heard someone died in there someone got murdered thrown out of a window uh if you remember the bronx tale theodore roosevelt high school that's which this is the area where a lot of the racial stuff a lot of the racial encounters occurred right here on this corner by this school if you look at the movie but this wasn't the school we went to out of the neighborhood because our parents didn't want us to go you weren't eating whether those schools were a catholic school if you could afford it and my family takes forever my family wanted us to be diverse my late mom and dad always wanted us to get along me and my two brothers with other people and we learned how to do that and part of it was we didn't go to a catholic school we were able to integrate and it worked out so there's a sign of theodore rosa was founded in 1919 that's how old this building is how old the school is 100 years old yeah it wasn't this big but uh it's still got a lot of the same dimensions to it it would have been nice just to walk here to go to school but uh wasn't the right route to dwell and i'm glad i no disrespect but i didn't want to go here so you see it's quieted down a little bit because we're not near any businesses yeah right past the metro north station right where everything just that was across the street there's more at fordham university the rose hill campus which originally was supposed to be nyu nyu moved from got bronx community college property and then went to their spot in the city but rose hill is rose hill as you look more roosevelt than the structure you can see how old the building is but they keep it up they're keeping it up the park i tell you're a good walker yeah i go far and i have the endurance and the stamina to get to off the revenue you could get to any one of these blocks over here bathgate avenue where i hung out a lot hoffman street which is by the white castle what you're gonna see and then you're at arthur avenue and again there's rose hill some of the outlining buildings some of the dormitories over there one of them there yeah these dormitory buildings are old that's an old one a lot of students from fordham well board will campus in the neighborhood fordham university bought a lot of properties in the arthur avenue area to enable their students to live there because they ran out of campus housing you can't have students if you don't have housing yeah that's one of the entrances to go into fordham if you go through that gate you're going right into the main campus and rose hill as they call it it's a long walk to rose hills good exercise beautiful scenery i gotta do it one day i don't want to do it in the winter though no new york winners are brutal so good new york summers like this summer has been unbelievable it's been so humid oh and the thunderstorms they just come out of nowhere yeah you got a nice weather channel too yeah the black and shadow channel i lost my umbrella during that last i saw that staten island ferry escapade and i'm going camp what are you doing there you look like a meteorologist in the height of a storm i wanted to try it at least once well don't do it again now hoffman street junior high school 45 that's the other right there there we go and that's where i also went and in this building right here you know the lindbergh disaster what's that i don't know the um the big zeppelin that exploded in the sky wow in the 1930s i think you had over the history remember the dates well the hindenburg family was a very rich affluent family in new york and in that building lived the hindu bear hindenburg family and the baby that got kidnapped so that's one of the oldest tenements in the bronx right there amazing that's a history there at junior high school 45 where i went and had some celebrities come out of there an entertainment field and i just right now drew a blank it'll come to me who graduated from that school and down the block is the bronx columbus boys club which was built when i was a kid we'd go there at times and there's a little statue of christopher columbus which i hope they don't destroy because i remember them putting it up many years ago when i was there and i'm very proud to be an italian american and very proud of my heritage and christopher columbus despite what all they say i'm proud of it so but down there's the bronx boys club and we could swing around there after i show you this way a little further down as the botanical garden the bronx zoo which we can get to later on our way back but here's the white castle and they actually designed it like a white castle this is new because the white castles i remember were little hutches like a little house yeah and very dinky small smelly but we came to this original this one of the original white castles in the city and in the country that's how old it is because they're right there in all the white castle just from there yeah you want that over an amelia's dinner or not the revenue no way so um we come here and i came here a lot because as we make the right here on hoffman street which also is a famous name so you know the streets are all named after famous people that settled in the bronx hoffman was one of them i don't remember his first name but a lot of these streets were named after people including arthur avenue which is next but you can hit it this way with fordham university that way the reason i'm taking you down here hoffman street the white castle where you can get a burger for less than five cents we used to get a stack a bundle for a dollar i wish you can get burgers for less than five cents now and we need tons of them because these buildings here on hoffman street this is where my mother and father grew up were raised here born here in this building on the fifth floor my mother and father were born and they met here and they got married a lot of history in this building a lot they met here and got married and my grandmother my father's mother that's her window right here and what we did we go visit her me and my brothers some of my friends we knew we could get a dollar from her to get burgers in the white castle so it was a visit to grandma but it was also a visit for white castle [Music] that's the dream right there where i went and i can remember going through these doors wow yeah i eventually taught there too i taught there i did uh i did some teaching in my my life and i poured here over here and so we've reached east 189th and hoffman street and you can see some of the tenements a lot of them renovated some of them are new a lot of fordham students living in these buildings and off-campus housing down this block we'll go and we're almost throughout the revenue we make good time yeah that's the old uh there's the boys club i was talking about i see it and next across the street is the old school yard where we played softball flip football we all had a sunday sunday football league in that school yard if you want to walk there now we can do it or we can just go let's go check it out right here these buildings are still here and they're still relatively pretty good i think they're very clingy a lot of the landlords are albanians they've developed they've managed to come to the bronx and buy a lot of property and here's the boys club i remember when they were building this place sometimes used uses classroom annexes for the junior high because they had an overflow of students in here wow and i loved having a class net christopher columbus boys club it was roomier cleaner not as many students and what did they do a lot here this was the uh playground this was the this was the yard where we played ball if we weren't playing stickball on the street what we did is we went here and had organized leaks sunday morning football league touch tackle and if you hit the concrete you had to be careful like a guy i grew up with let him rest in peace nikki lederici we will never forget that sunday morning he went up came down that was it if that was here because that was all concrete no grass no ass nothing you were like this you weren't protected yeah beyond that is a catholic school holiday among carmel cyo for school elementary school unfortunately the archdiocese is closing schools down that's one of them and there's a lot of history there and in that school was a gym boxing gym the old coach charlie caserta let him rest in peace that's where i got my introduction to the sport of boxing that i love i even boxed four times as an amateur and everybody hears the story rich mancuso got knocked out four times and i don't remember but charlie concerto got me in the ring and it all happened over here it's all right so we're going to go to arthur yeah we want to go look let's go you know what we can hit it this way okay this way we can see where the great joe pesci got his start joe pesci didn't live here until he got some apartment space above the restaurant which was then known as amici's he was a waiter and came from here so we're going to pass that spot no one will call the michi's and we'll walk down there and then we'll hit arthur avenue as well and take a look at the church on carmel which is one of the oldest in the country oh and beautiful churches where i got baptized confirmed weddings everything in there but this thing you know i'm well here um kenny i tell you i'm very surprised how quiet it is here on a friday night because this normally would be very very noisy unless it's still early yet i don't know but you know they these houses are rolled and well maintained yeah look at this this is all wood yeah takes a lot of work to keep it in this condition yeah there's also apartments for rent here too yeah probably expensive too the 188th street will take us right into 187 towards arthur avenue and you know what we can go down here okay because i want to show you the old playground and then we could show you amici's on the way up and then go back [Music] i'm telling you memories come aboard i mean i'll drive through here once in a while i don't walk down here no more and i just look at that you know and i go this is where i grew up this is where i grew the up times of my life were in this community my dentist was in that building this doctor syracuse who wrote my teeth his office was right there in the front i don't think there's a dentist there anymore no it's a regular apartment hoffman street has been changing this whole area um amici's is on that corner do you want to go there and take a look at it yeah and then come back to the playground [Music] and there's a mini mart over here were there a lot of like grocery stores and bodegas no bodegas you didn't even know what a bodega was back then this is fordham housing see see these are what i was talking about off campus housing for fordham university this is their property and they're empty right now they've been the students are coming back but uh they're gonna be tests that i heard twice a week [Music] and of course we never had that noise of a loud car we used to have an italian festival two of them here one of them still happens this feast of saint anthony now they only have one this is the lady of mount carmel in july the name of the church that probably didn't know but that's changed because you know it's no more about the tradition and the church it becomes a big hangout and not a good one as well and now with the pandemic yeah stuff was cancelled they cancelled that the feast of saint anthony and mount carmel used to go from the beginning of southern boulevard where the bronx zoo is to down the end of third avenue here where i remember and you may want to zoom into that so that was a me geese and joe pesci lived at the time a little bit on that first floor window and that was a restaurant he was a waiter there then he became mr famous from arthur avenue hoffman street now a lot of industrial industries st barnabas hospital uh off the block which is one of the main hospitals in the bronx privately owned by montefiore now and that's down the block towards the end of arthur avenue and i ran a boxing gym in that old parking garage up there in the middle of the block for one of the old mob guys that was into boxing he wanted to get involved with it in fact i'm grateful to him because he had me get involved with some of the fighters he had and i got a free trip to russia out of it wow he wanted me because he wouldn't fly to russia he said i need you to go and i went made my way and took care of me reminds me of the uh rocky iv movie yeah that's what it was like go to russia that's what it was like and again down the block third avenue this whole strait of east 187th street which is a little over a mile uh has made a there's been a big transformation at the end of third avenue 187th street on the left was a a pool wall and that's where i used to hang out pool and we had to get kicked out because it was not for miners and the old third avenue well ran there was an elevated subway line that they knocked down that that was where the true train ran and even the three train at one time the two and the five ran through there it was unbelievable wow third avenue l they called it and you you weren't a new yorker unless you went on that l and that's the 41 bus now that goes in its route in its place so it's webster avenue up into the wakefield section crazy oh yeah yeah people don't know by beirut so want to keep walking yeah let's go down to arthur ave yeah well let's go on this side let's watch out for these cars because they're crazy and take a look at some of my old hangout spots and what's going on in the old neighborhood see here's what we call bodega and this wasn't here i don't even remember was over here at the time his deli yeah but on this block was one of the most expensive men's clothing stores in the country where a lot of the big shots you know people with money and also um those in the into you know in the entertainment field would come here and buy their men's clothes all right and there was a former heavyweight fighter that was on the cover of sports illustrated he got shot in that store and survived with a bullet in it and they have his hand up like this wow and survived there's a barber shop wasn't it she used to be a travel agency i used to hang out right now this used to be a travel agency yeah wow it's gonna be owl travel where i used to hang out this is my friend gino's pastry shop and he's not here because he's closed people from all over come here chairs commentary hangs out in here the late danny aiello used to come in here and my friend jerome who i grew up with owns a place he's still he's a mainstay and in this neighborhood keeps it together uh gino's pastry shop one day he's open will come have a nice cup of tea in fact i don't know if he's in there right now i don't even know nah he's close it looks dark in there jerome cooks everything fresh and they have neighborhood tours and people come here people come from all over to take stuff out of there and take it home the old clothing store used to be right here that i was talking about right the pharmacy here this was the clothing store it was called b and g and this this where you used to get all these expensive soups and of course another bank northeast community bank i think my older brother still banks here and here's another one there chase we're heading to the arthur avenue district and we're going to see the plaza they opened up to eat outdoor dining we'll get there if you walk down across the street we'll get to the playground all right if you want to see that with a and then we'll head to the church walk further down show you where i grew up the building come back here and then we'll take a look at the restaurant we'll go ahead and check that out this playground's always been here this playground's been here forever went through extensive renovations site of community meetings to clean out the neighborhood there's the italian american flag still in the middle i remember when they put that up years ago it's still here yeah a little bit faded though but and you see now with the pandemic good restaurant that closed and antonio is this close all the time i was here last year i remember seeing this the owner was such a family friend a family friend and i see some of the fordham students must be in town here they are all of this is new this is all new quest diagnostics a medical building a 24-hour laundry super laundromat this restaurant tino's deli you can't go wrong in here family-owned fresh italian delicacies a lot of the fordham community comes here here's the playground now what's real interesting here is right here in the middle right here right here we erected and i say we the community used to have their meetings community meetings to clean out the neighborhood of what was coming in that they didn't like and they erected a wall where handball courts american flag to show their strengths and i can see it's no longer here and tell you the truth i'm a little dismayed it's not here no more because it was a symbol of our unity and it was a symbol of what we were about and that we were peaceful and we weren't looking for trouble we just wanted to be united as a community and we did it we did it overall we did it despite all the racial tension that starts everyone thinks now that racial division was an issue now it was back then when i grew up in this neighborhood and we had some fierce fair situations here at a time you couldn't go out we had curfews with our parents this was not a very good uh place to be back in the late 60s with the racial division i can imagine and it wasn't caused by any number of factors it was just a conflict of we don't want you here because you're going to cause trouble but i stayed away from it again i'm going to reiterate it ken because i did not want to be part of that because i grew up to learn to live with everyone i don't care who you are black white whatever you are i lived with you i worked with you growing up that's what my parents taught that's a lot of a lot of it is upbringing who you have is your upbringing who's in the house with you so that's a little disappointing that we don't see that here no more in the playground uh chicony park it's called by the way okay i don't know if it still is i don't know if it's still cold out so we'll walk down 187 now again and we'll go by the church right now social distancing yep plus people need money to shop yeah and the issue too is that a lot of these atms they don't have many in their vegetables you know they're small this neighborhood has become a lot of albanian too i also see some mexican yeah a lot of mexicans let's go this way all different completely different what i see if you ask me i don't even remember was it what was here but this wasn't here the there's another the little pastry shop another girl you get the best italian pastry eater i'll tell you that i've gone gone there before the little owls and across the street agidios i had my gelato there last time i was here and the old carmel pharmacy which is called the models and it's still here it's been here for ever to come here the old doctor this is where we used to go for our prescriptions it's called the model pharmacy so i'm glad to see this is still here five dollars for a drink over there yeah i'm making well the italian ice was what we used to do fresh italian ices and now we're walking towards the iconic as i call it mon carmel church across the street you might want to take a shot of that there's kobo that's the council of belmont organizations that's the community-run organization that started when about more than 25 years 30 years ago help with housing and other issues and there's bulgari people around the country might know bulgaria's because everyone from around the country comes here for fresh ravioli and egg noodles and everything else and what i want to tell you ken you never had a better fresh pasta from that place christmas time you can't get in that store wine goes around the corner that's crazy and the prices are reasonable freshly made you can't go wrong i see it it's like 5.99 yeah 6.99 a pound on the corner of that right there's an old roma cafe used to call roma cafes just sit there and have a cappuccino as i got older no more and here we are carmel church it's even which is still well maintained and beautiful and when i piss here i remember oh we can even go inside go in yeah a confirmation in here funerals yeah we have my dad's journal here with all the pack i think there's a mask are we allowed to film inside okay there's a mask going on now okay um and that's what they're doing and you know the dd parish has changed it's been there's been a transformation with the parish yeah i don't want to be mostly spanish masses now just to come here for midnight mass for christmas the architecture in this this church is just the architecture is beautiful the oldest churches in the country right here very proud that this was my parish and then i got my car confirmed here did a lot in here baptisms you know what i'll just stop funerals and show the the roof this is my father's funeral in here was unbelievably packed wow just a quick little shot over there because i don't want to destroy see the architecture how nice it is it's beautiful should we walk a little more down than hit off the revenue or do you want the right to authorize let's go right to arthur okay you must be hungry yeah because down there [Music] is where i was our raised so pastry shop where we all work me and my brothers with stuffed canola shells are two cells known worldwide people order the cannolis from all over the place from there they're still there the family i think there's two brothers left still living and the old post office the old play street the belmont play street where we grew up in the summer right here oh ken the memories are unbelievable yeah think about it so much change especially stuff that's no longer here i think about the memories and how we played stickball on the street if we had time i take it to my old street over there where i grew up on cam rolling avenue and showed you my window where my mother used to call us she had the loudest voice in the neighborhood i could swear she'd be on the window we could hear her over here walks away when it was time for dinner oh wow you call three brothers of us get upstairs all the memories and she would lug her shopping from these stores go up five flights of stairs no elevator and cook dinner every night let's cross this way that's the old chinelli theater the dumps i was telling you about you know we can do that and then walk right into harthur avenue let me show you this yeah that was i think you can do that that's now the enrique fermi italian library and culture center here's a gto's where i had my gelato last time it was great go to gino's next usually in september and not this year because they're not doing any of that with the pandemic we have an annual event in on arthur avenue called faragusa and that's like one long block about the revenue where people are eating outside and it's a reunion so you see a lot of your old friends and it's a whole day of activity and music and eat to tell you the transformation can i don't know what this building is says the huge house fordham university yeah there you go more housing what's up richard how are you hey what's up up some old friends we're making a youtube video i'm live youtube you all are we go on live youtube with action kid yeah i'll be on youtube i'll put the video up maybe next week yep how's everything good good to see you just some of the old friends i still yeah they're still keeping in touch with us no i haven't seen him in years wow yeah i'm still writing reporting the same old same old not as good as it was but huh oh my god yeah i'm just telling them yeah still we're gonna go for dinner the best you can have enjoy good to see you that was great to make your show right yeah hey look there's a cat coming here yeah there's a lot of them straight a beautiful one too yeah i love cats and if i could i'd take you home this is a beautiful cat what a beautiful cat yeah it's beautiful makes me think it's not a stray but no i think he might have just snuck out for a walk yeah a day of pastry shot a day of bread adio bread as they call it i keep in touch with the owning here grew up with him the original panet the casa meaning the original bread from the house and fresh pizza dough and fresh everything this is the spot too i'm telling you all the revenue 187 street's got the best food and delicacies you can get you'll put on a lot of pounds you're shopping once again you know it's bad to live here you're getting a lot of weight and across the street that's the old dumps jenelli theater we come on saturday 25 cents mom would throw it out the window go have a good time we could watch a matinee two movies whatever and have popcorn spend the whole day in there if we wanted to but it was a dump i mean sometimes you would see rats running under your feet that's why they called the dumps wow and remember the old psycho movie psycho i never heard of it how about the exorcist yeah well we went here to watch those movies and what we did in there is watch it just because we wanted to have fun we could kill us about the movie we knew that it was those were horror flicks and we were going to laugh so some of our girlfriends younger at the time that we hung out with they're actually vomiting in the seats they couldn't take it they're getting up walking scared holding us and we're laughing because we know it was all fake and that happened in there and now that is one of the one of the best italian-american culture centers libraries theater and i don't think it's open as much as it was because of cutbacks and now they're pandemic but it's a mainstay of this community and next door is the arthur revenue retail market which also has a lot of little stores it's right next door and you can grab it over there or on arthur avenue they have a cuban cigar store in there that's the best but they have uh the deli tino's deli and tino is another one where he you want something good italian you go to tino's turn the camera around kenny down here i know i'm giving you so much yeah so down the block here's crescent avenue 187th street and and that's one of the restaurants where a lot of media people all over will go there and eat antonio's right there on the corner me people from the media all over the city and the country want to come to new york they're coming to eat and we did too but it's relatively new but they all came here and another time we'll walk more up that way and go to my old block and we'll go into the old old neighborhood up further i'll show you where we played stickball and hung out too and how that's changed too i'll get very very emotional when i do that and if you pan the camera down a little more down here was my old social club growing up as a kid in my in like in my early 20s late teens we had a club down there it was a storefront called the red windows called the chateau crescent because that's questionable oh wow and i got memories out of there that are unbelievable but when you hung out in that club you became a man you know we had initiation all that stuff just like the mob guys used to do and here we are across from the enrique fermi culture center where anything you want to know about an italian-american and italian culture is in this building you know so yeah it says this is a big library this was a big deal well it is a library in italian-american cultural center and it was a big deal back then when they opened this it was a big deal we utilized it i did but no more it's a shame you know the diversity and now you reach arthur avenue hey yep used to be a berto's clam house up until a few years ago the one that's down in the middle of italy you know what this was before that what was that when i grew up this was a live chicken poultry store oh man that means you could smell you walk by it with the stench and then through the windows you could see them chopping heads of chicken wow and that was a kick for us too because we'd go there and we we wanted to take those i mean this is gross but we'd want to see it and take those chicken heads and scare our girlfriends all over the neighborhood and that was gross and smelly yeah yeah tidal brothers is right here this is a store where you can get the best italian delicacies as well it's a jewish owned store and we always said why would a jewish guy having his title brothers but where they get their stuff i have no idea [Music] just and now arthur revenue because of the pandemic and no indoor dining which is a shame has done this from thursday to sunday deal outdoor dining as and they block the street off it's like an old piazza an old world as they do in italy reminds me of europe now just walking down the street yeah everything yeah well we're going to go to amici's which is up further and past some of the other places to send this fish market fresh you used to have you know here's a story about this place outside it would have the fresh clams you could eat right there they have a little set up pay the guy you eat fresh clams from the shell my father loved that would you put a lemon on it eat them for i never liked that right then you had live crabs and lobsters that you could eat there was a guy in this neighborhood who passed on he was a show because he would come here in front of crescendo's and he would take a live crab or lobster and eat it raw right in his mouth alive whoa crazy things growing up here that was a show every almost every weekend we saw that yeah yep i'm amazed like he didn't get sick from that we don't know but he wasn't normal that's for sure you know adeo again here's another store they have beyonce's fresh meat i see there's an old sign too yeah maybe the original sign it is biancardi's fresh meat uh madonna bakery another like adeo 1980 and i'll tell you that then i love the dale but breadsticks in here oh i wish they were open i'd buy two bags of them now that's what i notice over here everything closes early the exception of the reference yeah the pandemic has closed them earlier here's the retail market this is open a little bit want to go through uh yeah we can go take a look i haven't been in here in a while yeah they're open they're open oh yeah they are open but you have to be wearing a mask of course here's a cigar place you've been knowing it's the cigar place a lot of the places are closed now but you can't get more italian than this place oh it's like this is like a plaza in italy cecilia this is sicily and i don't know if my friend is here let me see i know the whole thing about sicily and italy yeah so my family my family was a clash of sicily naples and calabria and you put those three together forget about it oh my god this is uh and he caters and he does everything here he's not here but every time you come he's gonna give you a free taste of whatever you want yep last time i got a free trip remember yeah you can't go wrong look at that all fresh every day i see it get a little tour of the neighborhood on youtube how's my buddy good how's uh what's his name how is he good tell him i said i stopped by oh we gotta get something now i mean look at this place they got all kinds of meats okay stuff you can buy he knows me and my brother as well look how fresh this stuff is you know just looking at us like well i'm getting hungry let's go see he's going to give you a stamp another sample all right i told you okay this is like being in italy yeah i know this oh this is this is fresh and my deli this is uh right and i'm italian i can't remember oh one out of ten how is it 10 10. let me try it you make that fresh right that's two years old and that's safe to eat oh there's definitely a 10. oh it's a 10. oh it's a 10. nothing low can't get it better than this in the bronx look at this oh off the charts i know all right try now 10. [Music] oh my gosh there's a 10. i made an 11. what time you open until 8 o'clock wow they're open late i'll tell you one thing i'm off tomorrow i'm not doing nothing tomorrow man it's my old neighborhood i might come in yeah i want to see him thank you very much all right take care oh is that good or why oh it's so good and now we need a nice glass of wine and a dinner that's it now this place i think they closed really early this marketplace meat market it's old this is an old one of the oldest retail markets in the country right here there's another one too by the bowery that's old and now everything's changing down there they moved across the street yeah i think i think it's a diverse change of new york yeah that's the essex market diversity of the city some of it good a lot of it bad but there's nothing like your roots coming back to your roots which is the memories will never leave you and i'm out loud a lot of my friends still which is a great thing uh i think we may be done with our little tour for now yeah let's just walk down the arthur avenue there's not much left of it um enzos marios i had a panini here yesterday we won the best panini i've ever had here mario's is the best really mario's the original owner passed away [Music] this was actually a very good idea what they did and good we considered a million there's plenty of room yes it's busy today friday night we could sit there a little while outdoor dining and yeah here's amelia's salad restaurants are dying and they still are yeah everywhere is like this yeah this only helps yet they want to open up the schools don't let fans in ballparks if they want to open up schools i feel you gotta open up the dining i know it makes no sense it's like a double standard rigoletto the guy i grew up with there's a long story here owns this place i can't go into the history i don't want to get it known but there's quality rigoletto very uh very very fine-tuned dining here but i don't want to go into the history of it i could get in trouble and there's prince coffee house catania's pizza the best he's not open now my two two kids i grew up with that owned the place took it over from the original owner that was down further on arthur avenue on the other side made it bigger titanius is the one of the oldest pizza shops in the city fresh pizza great pizza really known for their mini calzones and you can get a tray of them for like twelve dollars about 12 of them in there a dollar a piece still very reasonable price and you never tasted anything i know i've been saying that for the last hour but you'll never taste anything better than a mini calzone all different meatball whatever you want small little calzone that you could gulp down quick cutaneous pizza you gotta remember that if you ever gotta remember it next time say hello to style even always a huge yankee fan and i'm not but sal was a good guy and built this business into a nice nice establishment i tell you i don't know how well he's doing because you can't dine in there i don't see nothing outside and that's the uh yeah you know a lot of in the bronx emergency room yeah anything that goes hostile right around the area where that young young man was killed that 18 year old that 17 year old boy uh that got uh machete yeah i saw that and dragged him out well he lived right over there up the block and ran into one of the bodegas which is right around that area and they rushed he rushed into the emergency room here where he died so they have a mural in his memory right up in that area and one day we'll go see that yeah because there have been some incidents around here lately that just make me cry because in the old day when i grew up here it was kind of like any of the mob guys used to have wards with each other and you never heard gunshots though like you would now as much as arthur avenue is a great place to be to come eat and visit this is not the community i once remembered you knew you were safe this was once considered the safest neighborhood in america that was the stat that came out from the fbi and numerous other agencies the reason was you had the old mob guys that used to come from here just like they were in the lower manhattan the east side you know lower east side they protected the neighborhood and they made sure everybody was okay and then they took them off the streets they got rid of them but you know what they never had a war against other people the war was amongst themselves and you knew when you were around this neighborhood back then you were protected all right so i had to change the camera out because it got too hot but again we were talking about the mobsters protecting the neighborhood and i wasn't one of them but i hung around them and i could tell you that you didn't double cross those guys but one thing i will say they went out of their way for people in the neighborhood and beyond and if you did them right if they did you right it was out of their heart but you didn't want to double cross them in any way because that was their way you know that's how they were but if they loved you they loved you and i was one of them they helped me along in this neighborhood and to this this few of them are still here that i know and maybe one day i'll meet up with them we can trade some stories over a great nice cup of cappuccino you know so what you can find around here still but again can this neighborhood have seen a transition the whole area from border road down to here uh some of it good some of it bad but lots of memories you're still like i could look here right now down arthur avenue i remember the days i remember how i grew up here how i left this community a little saddened because i was leaving my roots but i could always come back and i could always like the day like tonight i could always uh go back and reminisce about those days when i grew up here as a kid and how good a community this was and a lot of ways it still is because we still have this great shopping district it is great stores great people and most of all the culture that still exists in this community and the many people that still come here because they know what they can get when they're here and we've seen it in the last hour it's been great it's really been great but i think i'm hungry and you are and it's time to go to one time the favorites amelia's i like them all but the millions i don't know i like amelia yeah they have good food i've been there a few times can't go wrong with them yeah but anyway folks i hope you enjoyed today's video mr rich here he's awesome during this tour but smash that like button for us subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you all next time and i will uh next time take you to yankee stadium yeah take a look at the old ballpark where it was what it is now and anyone who wants to reach me sports whatever i'm on facebook at ring786 twitter at ring786 instagram mancuso786 just google rich vancouver you'll know who i am i'll also put it in the description below so can you find it great let's go all right let's go [Music] [Music] you

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Id: Wm9UbRDH5yU

Length: 82min 5sec (4925 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020