Gothamist: City Gets Ready For The San Gennaro Festival

tien

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:24:31 -0500

i don't know lundegaard, any hot pants with "kiss me i'm..." on them are good in my book.

lundegaard

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 16:37:51 -0500

San Gennaro--the most overrated street festival in NYC. Where else can I pay $6 for a shred of tough beef and a postage-stamp sized piece of cheese on a stale roll? Or walk by gaudy carnival games hawked by Puerto Ricans blasting horrible hip-hop music on underpowered stereos? Or pick up my "Kiss me I'm Italian" hot pants?

SteveO

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:26:03 -0500

I am Italian (ish). Goddamn it, why are people so f'ing defensive. can you lighten up please?

Jon

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:21:52 -0500

SteveO - at least Italians retain some sort of connection to their roots, however mangled it may be. I'd love to hear your average WASP American take a stab at their ancestral Gaelic, German, or Dutch.

SteveO

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:06:34 -0500

Welcome back hoards of guinea-T, gold chains and matching warm-up suit families to "Little Italy". Come listen to them butcher the Italian language, "Calimads!!" (calamari) "Mootzarel!" "Proscuitt!" (there are vowels on the end of those words people) ... SAUSEEEEEGE!!! Find a spot to park the Cadilac, shine up those shiny bright-white sneakers and bitch about how the Chinese are ruining Little Italy.

Carlos

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:01:18 -0500

Actually, Fried Dough, you're both wrong. Vito's right, the plural is zeppole. But he's wrong about the singular - which to set the record straight, is zeppola - NOT zeppoli. All this confusion probably comes from the fact that most New York Italians' forbears came here as illiterates (and before anyone comes at me for that, I'm the first to say with pride some of my own people were Abruzzese pig-farmers.) You get the same problem with many other Italian foods. Another example is "cannoli." That's a plural, not a singular, as it's commonly used. The singular would be "cannolo."

Fried Dough

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 11:11:32 -0500

Vito, It's actually the reverse. One zeppole, seventy-four zeppoli.

Frank Beane

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 10:32:08 -0500

My favorite San Gennaro story, from a Daily News article dated April 26, 1995: Back in 1990, cops, tapping Gambino capo John (Handsome Jack) Giordano's phone at his headquarters at the DeRobertis pastry shop heard some talk about bookmaking, but also picked up a discussion that turned their stomachs. One of Giordano's Gambino family duties was to oversee the San Gennaro festival, which runs right by John Gotti's old hangout, the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry St. Cops overheard an alarmed festival worker telling Giordano that there was a problem with the meat delivered for the fair's famous sausage sandwiches. "The meat's all bad, it's filled with maggots," the caller said. "Don't worry. Take it in the back and wash it off," said Giordano, who is paralyzed from the waist down after an attempt on his life two weeks ago.

Tony

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:54:16 -0500

Yum, yum yum! Love the smell of that cooking oil.

vito

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:04:58 -0500

fyi, the plural of zeppoli is zeppole.