Tremendous, tremendous interview with legendary writer Pete Hamill by our guy Pat Fenton.
Step inside Farrell’s.
Make your way to the bar.
Order a container and listen to the stories.
Compelling…to say the least. By the way, Pete clears up the story of Shirley MacLaine being the first woman served at the bar.
Love this explanation from Pete on the name of the neighborhood:
“Did you call the neighborhood Park Slope when you were growing up in Brooklyn?” I ask him. “A lot of people who came from Windsor Terrace always just called the whole neighborhood the
Slope.”
“Where I lived on 7th Avenue and 12th Street we really didn’t call it anything,” he says. “What I loved about the South Brooklyn Boys, as they called themselves, Junior Persico and those guys, they lived in North Brooklyn. When you looked at the map you realized that. But they called themselves the South Brooklyn Boys. Geography was not one of their strong suits,” he says smiling, as he talks about a neighborhood street gang, many who went on to become part of the Mafia. Junior, aka, Carmine the Snake Persico, would become the Boss of the Colombo crime family.
“So my neighborhood was this unnamed place, between Park Slope and Windsor Terrace. But now it’s been re-named by the real-estate guys as the South Slope.”