Of course regular people lived in Bensonhurst too. Families, wives, kids. Goomars, goomars were girlfriends, shit man, yeah. Most of them guys had doubles, triples. If they were married they’d have a goomar, a side gig. They were all a part of Bensonhurst. Gangsters normally don’t like to leave the area where they were born. A certain breed, at that time, was living there. All the businesses were owned mostly by Italian people, except maybe the Chinese laundry. You bring your shirts to the Chink and they do a good job. My father used to do it. Everybody used to bring their clothes to the Chinese laundry. They do a great job, they come out perfect. The white shirts all pressed and everything. The Chinese were very, very good at what they did whether it was food or laundry. Besides Italian foods and fish and all the rest, Chinese was one of my favorites.
I loved the diners too. Most of them were open twenty-four hours. So you’re doing business twenty-four hours a day. You could get breakfast twenty-four hours a day. You could get lunch twenty-four hours a day. You can get dinner any time. Most of the time they’d have lunch specials that you couldn’t get any time, or dinner specials, but the menu itself you could get twenty-four hours a day. That was the best thing about it. You could end your day at two o’clock in the afternoon and get ham and eggs, you know? Or sausage and pancakes. They’d make them twenty-four hours a day. In Brooklyn every section has a couple of diners.
The Cadillac Diner in Farmingdale was one of my favorites. The Empress Diner was another one in Farmingdale. And then there was The Olympia Diner out on the Island, it was a big one. Most of these places, back before I left, were making extensions onto them and had bars in them. All these diners came apart. You build your foundation, you run your electric, you run your plumbing and then you stick the diner on top of it all. Everything plugs in. It’s like a trailer and it’s built in sections. You get the kitchen section, you get the counter section, you get the bar section, you get the dining room section. You can get just a couple sections then add on. They come with booths, they come with counters, they come with chairs. I saw them put together all the time, all the time. I wanted to get involved in it. I thought it was a damn good business because I ate in them all the time. I never cooked when I was younger, I cooked when I got older.
See, the thing with a diner is a lot of them cook homemade food. You know, Greek food like shish-kabob or rice. Fresh vegetables, homemade soups. Very healthy. It wouldn’t be a fast-food type place. Very healthy and very reasonable. Very reasonable.
I liked, I loved, steaks, shish-kabob and the fish. Greeks are excellent with fish. I ate loads of fish in diners. Well, Greece
And I liked the Jewish deli. There were many of them and all of them had good food. You know, a little too rich for me sometimes, the meat, but good.
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stand-Up-Guy-ebook/dp/B0068RPDF6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337880189&sr=1-1
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Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/164427
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