Anyone ever see a film called Goodfellas? I grew up and live in Ozone Park and around there the mafia was part of your life in a way. The notorious Bergen Hunt and Fish club was right next to my mothers bank on 101 ave. She'd go to the drive through after picking us up after school and many times you could catch John Gotti walking and chatting with an associate closely followed by two large goons. He'd throw a big 4th of July block party right there on 101 in front of Bergen and my parents took us there a few times. hot dogs, hamburgers, rides and fireworks. Their presence also kept away the "competition" giving people the notion that they protected the neighbourhood. The fact was everyone was so scared of them that no one would dare mess around on their turf.
You didn't mention them. I remember eating with my parents at my favourite Italian restaurant as a kid, Cartuccios on 101ave just down the road from Bergen. Well I was being the usual rambunctious child and due to all the people falling off buildings in Manhattan the name John Gotti was in the news a lot. So I must have heard it and for some reason blurted out "John Gotti!". The friggin restaurant goes silent record scratch style. My mother grabbed me and pulls me towards her and firmly whispers in my ear "Don't ever say that name out loud." I was actually given a talking to after we left on how he was a bad man who hurt people and lives near us.
There were always incidents and whispers of mob activity. The woman who owned the pharmacy two blocks from us was found shot in the head in the trunk of a burnt out car. She owed money. My uncles friend, an amateur boxer, drifter, gambler and alcoholic was found bludgeoned, wrapped up in a rug in a dumpster. Supposedly he stole or owed a lot of money and maybe worked for them. The first blockbuster in the area wound up burning down mysteriously while under construction. Twice. And a whole load of other crap I forget.
Not long ago I used to go to the local dive where just down the block above the glass shop was a "club". Now the gentlemen at said club would sometimes stop by and grab a drink. You knew who they were. Older, Italian, wearing nice designer clothes and shades. They'd come in, walk to the end of the bar and people would know to move. They're long gone now. But that place was and still is full of old neighbourhood goons and whatnot. One night I stopped in after work on a Tuesday and there's the bartender and another well dressed gentleman having a private conversation about Ronnie one arm. I felt unwelcome, finished my beer and left. Last year I was hanging out in the yard and and some old crew comes in, real goomba goons. This annoying jackass decides to drunkenly joke around with one of said goons. I knew shit was going down so I go back in and within seconds there were screams and the jackass comes running for his life through the bar covered in blood with two big goons after him. A guy picks up the phone to call the cops and the two other goons grab and start beating him up. I got the fuck outta there.
And just this past weekend I sat in my yard with two friends one of which invited a real neighbourhood character over, think Kramer from Seinfeld but a total degenerate and pill/coke head. Anyway he knows all of the other degenerates and told me that the nice man who lived next door to us was deep in the mob and supposedly a killer. His son was a cop. We just knew him as a nice guy who owned an auto wrecking, glass and radiator shop. He then tells me my other neighbour was also involved with a crew who went away for 15+ years and was handed their auto business. He wound up marrying my cousin. But that guy, you knew he was up to no good. And just a few years back Gotti's grandson was arrested for selling pills out of a tattoo shop just down the street. They're still around but just remnants.
And through the old family business I've had plenty of dealings with them. Once my brother helped me do a delivery i...
On a much smaller scale, one of the first apartments I rented ended up being on the other side of the fence of an alleged local Hell's Angels hangout. At first, it freaked me out. But I never heard a peep, and the neighbourhood was surprisingly peaceful given the location. (It was surrounded by fairly rough areas.) I later learned that this was not a coincidence. Their presence kept trouble away from the block, and they never caused trouble themselves. In other words: No one wanted to mess with them, and the Angels weren't gonna "sh*t where they eat".
I'm not saying this was a net positive. I'm glad I don't live there anymore, as there was a persistent anxiety about the potential for that peace to be disrupted. But it was the closest I ever got to experiencing what it's like to living in a gang-controlled area, and it was weird.
In the rural area that I live, Bike 'Clubs' are popular. There are a lot of bankers and other white collar workers that LARP as bikers, but raise money for charity.
Then there are the actual biker 'clubs'. What's confusing is that these guys are full on associated with the Hell's Angels or some other similar group. . . And still do all the charity stuff. So they raise money for childhood cancer or a local family whose house burned down during the week.
And on the weekend, they beat the shit out of a local bar owner who wouldn't let them drink for free because they're keeping him safe, then burn his bar down.
It's PR. You get a few feel good stories on the local news, and convince your neighbors that you do good for the regular people in the community and that if you're violent, it's only toward criminals. "These guys helped that child with cancer. They're such nice guys. That bar owner must've really deserved it." People eat that up!
There are also some biker clubs (unclear if "legit" or not) that do outreach for abused children.
If you're being beaten or molested or whatever, you can call them, a bunch of bikers show up and conspicuously hang out with you for a bit. The implication is that you have friends in low places so if you just said the word...
CPS is incompetent in my experience (they are auditors, not investigators) so I can imagine how bad it can get for victims to need quasi-legitimate services like this.
Lived up the street about half a block away from an HA club house for just over 5 years. When we first moved in the landlord straight up told us, then said that it was a safe neighbourhood because of it.
He mentioned the one time some kids decided to spraypaint a bunch of doors in the neighbourhood, nobody called the cops, but the next day those kids were cleaning everything up.
There was never an graffiti or anything in the neighbourhood until after they closed the clubhouse down.
They didn't seem to do much. They'd show up in nice trucks pulling trailers with bikes, then hang out sitting on their bikes watching tv.
Pretty sure they owned a few of the other warehouses on the block. There was one that was completely fenced and barricaded off you never seen people going in or out of, but there was always people there. No signs or any indication of what the place was.
>But it was the closest I ever got to experiencing what it's like to living in a gang-controlled area, and it was weird.
The thing i've come to learn, is that even if an area doesn't seem like it's gang controlled, it probably still is. They're just more discrete about it. You won't find out unless you're involved in shady things though.
It was pretty easy to bump into them depending on what industry (construction was a BIG one) or neighbourhood you were in. I just happened to be in a hotbed of mob activity and goons. That made it real easy for people around the area to claim they "know a guy" because it was likely true.
Your story reminds me a lot of the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter stories and of how everybody was afraid to mention Voldermort's name. Quite interesting that a phenomenon from a phantasy book actually happens in real life. But when you really think about it I guess it makes sense; J.K. Rowling was probably inspired from real life events.
Back in high school around late 95 a friend in the neighbourhood was friends with a real nutty kid in Howard Beach, we'll call him Tony. Tony was left back two or three times so he was 17 when we were barely 15. Tony's father was in and out of jail and was an enforcer in the mob. We knew this because my friends father was a cop and warned his son to keep away from that "mafia shit". Tony like his father was a brawny violent kid who had been himself arrested for assault and spent a few months in juve. The kid had no problem stomping someone out over nothing. So I'm by my friends place when Tony calls to come by. Tony shows up with a friend from the nearby Pink House projects, sorry to say it like this but he was a big scary looking black dude. Both were whacked out on coke.
Tony asks us if we wanted to go for a walk to Howard and grab pizza at Ginos. Hell yeah, love Ginos. Of course as a young teen kid I had this attraction to hanging with degenerates especially after my fathers recent passing (you wanna feel like a rebellious bad ass). So me, my friend, Tony and his friend start walking down Crossbay. They were still high and decide to walk through the local supermarket while acting like they were mentally handicapped screaming all over the store. So I'm thinking these are just two coked up clowns and we're laughing having a good time. No big deal. We stop at the ball field before the parkway to take a break and sit on the bleachers. Tony pulls his backpack off, and all that was in there was his hat, a little purse of weed paraphernalia and a satchel with half a dozen 8-ball sized vials of coke he shows me. They do a bump, offer us but we passed. I'm a little nervous seeing all that coke but just play it cool.
We get to Howard and Tony stops by a video store. Before we go in he firmly tells my friend and I "I gotta pick something up in there real quick. when we go in, look serious, don't laugh, don't smile, don't talk or say anything. if anyone comes in we leave. Got it" "Uh, Yeah man, no problem". We go in and Tony and his friend walk up to the counter and the guy behind it literally shoots up from his chair looking jumpy. Without saying a word Tony walks behind the counter to the back while his friend watches the door. He emerges with the nervous clerk seconds later, walks out and we all follow. This repeats at four more stores along the boulevard as we head south, passing Ginos. We'd go in, look serious, and Tony goes behind the counter to do something. One shop keeper, I forget which shop, winds up handing him a thick brown envelope in the open which upsets Tony who yells at the guy "don't wave that shit around in the open" while he grabs it and quickly stuffs it in his now laden bag. That was when naive me realized we weren't going to get Ginos. I was also pretty fucking scared.
Finally, we enter one more shop where this big fat very Italian looking guy is smoking a cigar along with another dude who happily greeted Tony and his friend unlike every previous shop keeper. The fat dude says "who the hell are these two." Tony tells them that we're cool and friends. The other dude walks to the door, locks it and flips a "back in 15 minutes" sign. Tony goes behind the counter, takes his bag off and they huddle around a bin with their backs towards us. I hear the bag open and see Tony hand the envelopes to the fat dude who fumbles with one and puts them in the bin. I hear the fat guy tell Tony "you did good kid." They chat for a few seconds as if bargaining and Tony hands the guy the bag with the vials of coke and the guy hands him a small cardboard box which Tony puts in his bag. The dude pats Tony on the back, other dude unlocks the door and we all leave.
We walk down and turn down an avenue. Tony tells me and my friend that they have to go somewhere else. He reaches in his pocket gives me and my friend each $20 and said "don...
"If some nativist in this country had warned in 1900 that mass Italian immigration would bring us vendetta-obsessed crime clans, capable of getting their tentacles on the public life (and budgets) of major American cities while also corrupting the American labor movement for most of the coming century, he would have been dismissed, correctly, as a bigot."
It's an incredible page of history, the amount of power and influence organized crime welded for much of the middle years (1950s-1980s) across the US.
With the amount of power they had, the lasting mythology seems, what is that phrase, apropos? I can't speak to the same level as MisterTea (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25429901) but coming from a city with a history of heavy mob activity, Philadelphia to be specific, you hear the same kinds of stories from family and very infrequently, you still encounter groups of 2-3 guys at a bar or restaurant where you think, let's give them a wide berth.
I might as well tell my two stories.
A relative who works in finance took some clients out to a restaurant in South Philly in the 80s. The 80s were a violent time in the Philly mob and also the FBI was starting to make major inroads in their fight. So 4 guys not from the neighborhood, in suits, at a restaurant in South Philly. And this relative, he noticed a guy at the end of the bar, eyeing them hard and so he asked the bar tender, "hey, is that who I think it is?" And the bar tender: "I dunno, who do you think it is?" Relative: "Well, I think I know who it is. Just tell him we're not the feds, we're just a bunch of bankers out to dinner." The guy at the end of the bar was the leader of the mob at the time (his name escapes me) but he nodded to them and bought them a bottle of wine. You hear a story like this and you understand the mythology, it's almost like it was a pleasant time. But that was just a veneer.
My one personal story on this topic speaks more to the mythology. A few years back, I was went to a 76ers game with some out-of-town (from the mid-west but not Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland, like far mid-west) co-workers. The 76ers play in South Philly and so I took them out down there after the game. I don't know how we got on the subject but one of my co-workers asked, "This is South Philly, you know the show the Sopranos? how real is that?" I said something like "First off, that's the North Jersey mob, so you don't really have to worry about them down here because this is the Philly Mob's turf. That being said, I think they're allies because they both work in Atlantic City and..." and then tried to explain how the different crime families interact, and how they have apparently fallen on hard times. Anyway, there's nothing really special about my story however I did take from it that, the American mafia experience can be a very regional thing. I had never realized that there are parts of the country that didn't have this shared history of organized crime. I just kind of assumed the entire country was under their control for 30-40 years. That's some mythology.
> "If some nativist in this country had warned in 1900 that mass Italian immigration would bring us vendetta-obsessed crime clans, capable of getting their tentacles on the public life (and budgets) of major American cities while also corrupting the American labor movement for most of the coming century, he would have been dismissed, correctly, as a bigot."
Prohibition did this. The mafia simply were both organized and ruthless enough to exploit it at the time.
Without prohibition, you don't get enough money flowing through the system to start the problem.
And prohibition is doing the same thing for the Mexican drug gangs.
I used to oppose decriminalization and legalization because the most abused drugs are the legal ones, but the inability to deal with our addiction problems is destabilizing Mexico and Central America to the point of virtual civil war, and killing people like only war can.
Decriminalization and legalization will stop the flow of money, and flow the money back into legal businesses and taxes, remove the need for mafia-esque and corrupting drug enforcement regimes in the police, save money, fund rehabilitation, make the supply safe for users, help in tracking use/abuse, etc.
For those on the far right spectrum, illegal immigration is likely driven to a great deal by the destabilization of the drug war, especially in central america. It is closer to libertarian ideals, and shrinks government funding and government authority. It will reduce crime. It will reduce prison populations and the associated government funding of those prisons. It will keep many more people out of the criminal system and keep them in the economy.
The dialectic between media and mob is interesting.
"The mob", and, "The mafia" are media terms: no one in the organizations designated called it that, it was "Cosa Nostra" (literally "our thing") internally. Strictly speaking the Mafia solely exists in Sicily.
Likewise for the names of the five families, created by the media after the Joe Valachi hearings; cosa nostra members simply adopted the names for themselves. Internally, different groups under a distinct boss are referred to as "borgata".
Colombo capo Michael Franzese has spoken on the infuence mannerisms and behavior found in The Godfather had an impact on actual guys on the street as they adopted the behaviors and idolized the movies. The Sopranos does a lot to point this out.
It's interesting though that the article leaves out Joe Colombo himself commendeering and editing the script of The Godfather for all references to the word "mafia" and other related offenses which really did happen.
Franzese is also on the record asserting technological change and RICO sentences ended the prominence of the mob.
I grew up in Salt Lake. It's not a very "mob" town. But my parents put me in a private elementary school, and there was this one kid who went there who arrived every day in a chauffered limo. Rumor was that his dad was the mob boss of Salt Lake. To us, though, he was just another kid - never beat up anybody, never threatened anybody, not treated any different from anyone else. Come to think of it, he may have kept to himself more than most, but I wasn't very socially cued in, so I can't be sure.
Eventually his dad went on the run. There were occasional reports that he'd been seen in a casino in Vegas for a few years, then nothing.
So even places that aren't mob territory still had some mob presence.
27 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 68.9 ms ] threadYou didn't mention them. I remember eating with my parents at my favourite Italian restaurant as a kid, Cartuccios on 101ave just down the road from Bergen. Well I was being the usual rambunctious child and due to all the people falling off buildings in Manhattan the name John Gotti was in the news a lot. So I must have heard it and for some reason blurted out "John Gotti!". The friggin restaurant goes silent record scratch style. My mother grabbed me and pulls me towards her and firmly whispers in my ear "Don't ever say that name out loud." I was actually given a talking to after we left on how he was a bad man who hurt people and lives near us.
There were always incidents and whispers of mob activity. The woman who owned the pharmacy two blocks from us was found shot in the head in the trunk of a burnt out car. She owed money. My uncles friend, an amateur boxer, drifter, gambler and alcoholic was found bludgeoned, wrapped up in a rug in a dumpster. Supposedly he stole or owed a lot of money and maybe worked for them. The first blockbuster in the area wound up burning down mysteriously while under construction. Twice. And a whole load of other crap I forget.
Not long ago I used to go to the local dive where just down the block above the glass shop was a "club". Now the gentlemen at said club would sometimes stop by and grab a drink. You knew who they were. Older, Italian, wearing nice designer clothes and shades. They'd come in, walk to the end of the bar and people would know to move. They're long gone now. But that place was and still is full of old neighbourhood goons and whatnot. One night I stopped in after work on a Tuesday and there's the bartender and another well dressed gentleman having a private conversation about Ronnie one arm. I felt unwelcome, finished my beer and left. Last year I was hanging out in the yard and and some old crew comes in, real goomba goons. This annoying jackass decides to drunkenly joke around with one of said goons. I knew shit was going down so I go back in and within seconds there were screams and the jackass comes running for his life through the bar covered in blood with two big goons after him. A guy picks up the phone to call the cops and the two other goons grab and start beating him up. I got the fuck outta there.
And just this past weekend I sat in my yard with two friends one of which invited a real neighbourhood character over, think Kramer from Seinfeld but a total degenerate and pill/coke head. Anyway he knows all of the other degenerates and told me that the nice man who lived next door to us was deep in the mob and supposedly a killer. His son was a cop. We just knew him as a nice guy who owned an auto wrecking, glass and radiator shop. He then tells me my other neighbour was also involved with a crew who went away for 15+ years and was handed their auto business. He wound up marrying my cousin. But that guy, you knew he was up to no good. And just a few years back Gotti's grandson was arrested for selling pills out of a tattoo shop just down the street. They're still around but just remnants.
And through the old family business I've had plenty of dealings with them. Once my brother helped me do a delivery i...
I'm not saying this was a net positive. I'm glad I don't live there anymore, as there was a persistent anxiety about the potential for that peace to be disrupted. But it was the closest I ever got to experiencing what it's like to living in a gang-controlled area, and it was weird.
https://gothamist.com/news/hells-angels-brand-new-clubhouse-...
That said, they did bomb our local police station back in '96 (before my time): https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/biker-bombing-anniver...
Then there are the actual biker 'clubs'. What's confusing is that these guys are full on associated with the Hell's Angels or some other similar group. . . And still do all the charity stuff. So they raise money for childhood cancer or a local family whose house burned down during the week.
And on the weekend, they beat the shit out of a local bar owner who wouldn't let them drink for free because they're keeping him safe, then burn his bar down.
It's the most confusing thing.
It's PR. You get a few feel good stories on the local news, and convince your neighbors that you do good for the regular people in the community and that if you're violent, it's only toward criminals. "These guys helped that child with cancer. They're such nice guys. That bar owner must've really deserved it." People eat that up!
If you're being beaten or molested or whatever, you can call them, a bunch of bikers show up and conspicuously hang out with you for a bit. The implication is that you have friends in low places so if you just said the word...
CPS is incompetent in my experience (they are auditors, not investigators) so I can imagine how bad it can get for victims to need quasi-legitimate services like this.
He mentioned the one time some kids decided to spraypaint a bunch of doors in the neighbourhood, nobody called the cops, but the next day those kids were cleaning everything up.
There was never an graffiti or anything in the neighbourhood until after they closed the clubhouse down.
They didn't seem to do much. They'd show up in nice trucks pulling trailers with bikes, then hang out sitting on their bikes watching tv.
Pretty sure they owned a few of the other warehouses on the block. There was one that was completely fenced and barricaded off you never seen people going in or out of, but there was always people there. No signs or any indication of what the place was.
>But it was the closest I ever got to experiencing what it's like to living in a gang-controlled area, and it was weird.
The thing i've come to learn, is that even if an area doesn't seem like it's gang controlled, it probably still is. They're just more discrete about it. You won't find out unless you're involved in shady things though.
Publish in the New Yorker!
Back in high school around late 95 a friend in the neighbourhood was friends with a real nutty kid in Howard Beach, we'll call him Tony. Tony was left back two or three times so he was 17 when we were barely 15. Tony's father was in and out of jail and was an enforcer in the mob. We knew this because my friends father was a cop and warned his son to keep away from that "mafia shit". Tony like his father was a brawny violent kid who had been himself arrested for assault and spent a few months in juve. The kid had no problem stomping someone out over nothing. So I'm by my friends place when Tony calls to come by. Tony shows up with a friend from the nearby Pink House projects, sorry to say it like this but he was a big scary looking black dude. Both were whacked out on coke.
Tony asks us if we wanted to go for a walk to Howard and grab pizza at Ginos. Hell yeah, love Ginos. Of course as a young teen kid I had this attraction to hanging with degenerates especially after my fathers recent passing (you wanna feel like a rebellious bad ass). So me, my friend, Tony and his friend start walking down Crossbay. They were still high and decide to walk through the local supermarket while acting like they were mentally handicapped screaming all over the store. So I'm thinking these are just two coked up clowns and we're laughing having a good time. No big deal. We stop at the ball field before the parkway to take a break and sit on the bleachers. Tony pulls his backpack off, and all that was in there was his hat, a little purse of weed paraphernalia and a satchel with half a dozen 8-ball sized vials of coke he shows me. They do a bump, offer us but we passed. I'm a little nervous seeing all that coke but just play it cool.
We get to Howard and Tony stops by a video store. Before we go in he firmly tells my friend and I "I gotta pick something up in there real quick. when we go in, look serious, don't laugh, don't smile, don't talk or say anything. if anyone comes in we leave. Got it" "Uh, Yeah man, no problem". We go in and Tony and his friend walk up to the counter and the guy behind it literally shoots up from his chair looking jumpy. Without saying a word Tony walks behind the counter to the back while his friend watches the door. He emerges with the nervous clerk seconds later, walks out and we all follow. This repeats at four more stores along the boulevard as we head south, passing Ginos. We'd go in, look serious, and Tony goes behind the counter to do something. One shop keeper, I forget which shop, winds up handing him a thick brown envelope in the open which upsets Tony who yells at the guy "don't wave that shit around in the open" while he grabs it and quickly stuffs it in his now laden bag. That was when naive me realized we weren't going to get Ginos. I was also pretty fucking scared.
Finally, we enter one more shop where this big fat very Italian looking guy is smoking a cigar along with another dude who happily greeted Tony and his friend unlike every previous shop keeper. The fat dude says "who the hell are these two." Tony tells them that we're cool and friends. The other dude walks to the door, locks it and flips a "back in 15 minutes" sign. Tony goes behind the counter, takes his bag off and they huddle around a bin with their backs towards us. I hear the bag open and see Tony hand the envelopes to the fat dude who fumbles with one and puts them in the bin. I hear the fat guy tell Tony "you did good kid." They chat for a few seconds as if bargaining and Tony hands the guy the bag with the vials of coke and the guy hands him a small cardboard box which Tony puts in his bag. The dude pats Tony on the back, other dude unlocks the door and we all leave.
We walk down and turn down an avenue. Tony tells me and my friend that they have to go somewhere else. He reaches in his pocket gives me and my friend each $20 and said "don...
It's an incredible page of history, the amount of power and influence organized crime welded for much of the middle years (1950s-1980s) across the US.
With the amount of power they had, the lasting mythology seems, what is that phrase, apropos? I can't speak to the same level as MisterTea (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25429901) but coming from a city with a history of heavy mob activity, Philadelphia to be specific, you hear the same kinds of stories from family and very infrequently, you still encounter groups of 2-3 guys at a bar or restaurant where you think, let's give them a wide berth.
I might as well tell my two stories.
A relative who works in finance took some clients out to a restaurant in South Philly in the 80s. The 80s were a violent time in the Philly mob and also the FBI was starting to make major inroads in their fight. So 4 guys not from the neighborhood, in suits, at a restaurant in South Philly. And this relative, he noticed a guy at the end of the bar, eyeing them hard and so he asked the bar tender, "hey, is that who I think it is?" And the bar tender: "I dunno, who do you think it is?" Relative: "Well, I think I know who it is. Just tell him we're not the feds, we're just a bunch of bankers out to dinner." The guy at the end of the bar was the leader of the mob at the time (his name escapes me) but he nodded to them and bought them a bottle of wine. You hear a story like this and you understand the mythology, it's almost like it was a pleasant time. But that was just a veneer.
My one personal story on this topic speaks more to the mythology. A few years back, I was went to a 76ers game with some out-of-town (from the mid-west but not Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland, like far mid-west) co-workers. The 76ers play in South Philly and so I took them out down there after the game. I don't know how we got on the subject but one of my co-workers asked, "This is South Philly, you know the show the Sopranos? how real is that?" I said something like "First off, that's the North Jersey mob, so you don't really have to worry about them down here because this is the Philly Mob's turf. That being said, I think they're allies because they both work in Atlantic City and..." and then tried to explain how the different crime families interact, and how they have apparently fallen on hard times. Anyway, there's nothing really special about my story however I did take from it that, the American mafia experience can be a very regional thing. I had never realized that there are parts of the country that didn't have this shared history of organized crime. I just kind of assumed the entire country was under their control for 30-40 years. That's some mythology.
Best mob movie: Casino.
Nicodemo Scarfo, aka Litle Nicky
Prohibition did this. The mafia simply were both organized and ruthless enough to exploit it at the time.
Without prohibition, you don't get enough money flowing through the system to start the problem.
I used to oppose decriminalization and legalization because the most abused drugs are the legal ones, but the inability to deal with our addiction problems is destabilizing Mexico and Central America to the point of virtual civil war, and killing people like only war can.
Decriminalization and legalization will stop the flow of money, and flow the money back into legal businesses and taxes, remove the need for mafia-esque and corrupting drug enforcement regimes in the police, save money, fund rehabilitation, make the supply safe for users, help in tracking use/abuse, etc.
For those on the far right spectrum, illegal immigration is likely driven to a great deal by the destabilization of the drug war, especially in central america. It is closer to libertarian ideals, and shrinks government funding and government authority. It will reduce crime. It will reduce prison populations and the associated government funding of those prisons. It will keep many more people out of the criminal system and keep them in the economy.
Been years since I've seen it but IIRC one of the minor characters was a cameo by the mob hitman involved in the original events.
"The mob", and, "The mafia" are media terms: no one in the organizations designated called it that, it was "Cosa Nostra" (literally "our thing") internally. Strictly speaking the Mafia solely exists in Sicily.
Likewise for the names of the five families, created by the media after the Joe Valachi hearings; cosa nostra members simply adopted the names for themselves. Internally, different groups under a distinct boss are referred to as "borgata".
Colombo capo Michael Franzese has spoken on the infuence mannerisms and behavior found in The Godfather had an impact on actual guys on the street as they adopted the behaviors and idolized the movies. The Sopranos does a lot to point this out.
It's interesting though that the article leaves out Joe Colombo himself commendeering and editing the script of The Godfather for all references to the word "mafia" and other related offenses which really did happen.
Franzese is also on the record asserting technological change and RICO sentences ended the prominence of the mob.
Eventually his dad went on the run. There were occasional reports that he'd been seen in a casino in Vegas for a few years, then nothing.
So even places that aren't mob territory still had some mob presence.