September 14, 2004
City Gets Ready For The San Gennaro Festival
We've been waiting for the pungent smell of sausages and zeppoles to fill downtown, as well as the sight of somewhat portly men in velour tracksuits (no joke, you've seen them too) when the San Gennaro Festival returns to Little Italy this Thursday, and it seems that the Mayor has been anticipating it as well: San Gennaro Festival organizers have added two former prosecutors to their board, as officials are worried that "organized crime had once again tainted the annual festival in Little Italy," as the NY Times puts it. The Post calls Nelson Boxer and Austin Campriello New Ciao Hounds. Mayor Giuliani had started to rehaul the festival when he was in office; in 1996, the festival was almost cancelled when a federal probe found how deep the Genovese crime family's connections to the festival were. more recently, the festival fired a "reputed 'made' member of the Bonanno crime family."
Little Italy's site has information on San Gennaro as well: The Grand Procession is on Saturday at 2PM ("the statue of San Gennaro carried from its permanent home in the Most Precious Blood Church through the streets of Little Italy") and the Big Feast is on Sunday. Gothamist thinks there's nothing better than wandering from booth to booth, eating gelati here, zeppoles there, getting a cheap drink there, trying not to get lost in the crowd of others, for a mid-September jaunt. And Gothamist Food has some picks for great Italian wine.
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fyi, the plural of zeppoli is zeppole.
Yum, yum yum! Love the smell of that cooking oil.
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.
Vito,
It's actually the reverse. One zeppole, seventy-four zeppoli.
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."
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.
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.
I am Italian (ish). Goddamn it, why are people so f'ing defensive. can you lighten up please?
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?
i don't know lundegaard, any hot pants with "kiss me i'm..." on them are good in my book.