Post by tripwire on Feb 13, 2008 0:43:29 GMT -5
New York
"White cavemen," is what Suzie the waitress called the Albanians of the Bronx,
the borough that is New York City's answer to bomb-blasted Beirut.
sour grapes since she was Italian and thus still ashamed of what happened to
the Mafia. The mob had made the big mistake of trying to muscle protection
money out of some Albanian-owned pizza parlors. The baseball-bat wielding
Mafiosi were met by a hail of well-aimed gunfire from the pistol-packing
Albanians, some of whom love guns more then their wives. After that, the mob's
insurance salesmen went elsewhere.
"My God," said a truly shocked Suzie - and you don't shock easily when you wait
on truck drivers on a Greek diner in the Bronx - "Albanian kids even mug black
muggers!" Now there, I thought, was a real man-bites-dog story.
Charls Bronson, move over.
The Bronx Albanians are America's newest and most interesting pioneers. They
come from the rugged northern mountains of Albania (turn right at the toe of
Italy to find Albania) and from KOSOVA, the part of ALBANIA occupied by
Yugoslavia. Most of the 30,000 Albanians in the Bronx are Gegs, fierce warrior
tribesmen who will defend a guest with their lives or carve up an intruder with
equal gusto. They eat Slavs and Turks for breakfast and think the more learned
Tosks of Southern Albania, who eat Greeks for breakfast, are sissies.
These Albanian mountaineers arrived in New York penniless refugees. Many
were illiterate and few could speak English. Poverty forced them to settle in
the Bronx, the half-ruined nightmare slum filled with drug addicts, criminals
and welfare cases.
Before World War II the Bronx was a prosperous, verdant residential area of
Irish, Germans and Jews. The Grand Concourse was built to rival Paris' Champs
Elysee. But after the war New York's rich liberals enacted the nation's highest
welfare payments. In short order, the Bronx was turned into a giant human
cesspool.
Up from the South came busloads of illiterate black sharecroppers and great
numbers of Puerto Ricans: All settled down on welfare, producing ensuing
generations aptly described by one black writer as "urban cannibals." Not
suprisingly, most of the Bronx's white fled.
The borough's new inhabitants quickly destroyed once-attractive
neighborhoods. Buildings were savaged: Wiring and plumbing ripped out of walls;
garbage thrown out of windows, excrement down stairwells. Muggers and addicts
prowled the empty streets.
So dangerous was the Bronx that even the police, who called the south Bronx
precinct,"Fort Apache," would not patrol on foot.
Into this wasteland of gutted buildings and broken humans came the Albanian
mountaineers. They saved money earned washing dishes or floors and bought
abandoned tenaments for $250. Entire families worked to repair these wrecks.
People began to move into the retored buildings.
Day and night, armed Albanians guarded their property. Black and Puerto Rican
muggers quickly learned to stay far away from the property and tenants of the
Albanians. Pistol-packing Albanians did what New York's police could not-they
restored order and civilization to the worst parts of the Bronx jungle.
Building by building, the tenacious Albanians created little islands of
security in the heart of the New York's most crime-ridden area. Middle-class
people began to return, drawn by clean buildings, low rents and, most
important, security.
Just as the cleanup of New York's Hudson River has brought back fish for the
first time in 50 years, the cleansing of the Bronx by its Albanians has
restored life to neighborhoods formerly written off as hopeless.
Incredibly in our socialist age, this heroic feat was done by the proud
Albanians without a cent of government money. More than 20 Albanians, some
barely literate, are now property millionaires.
Wich should remind us that nations are built by the hard work and guts of
private citizens, not by governments. Now if Chicago, Detroit and Houston could
just find more Albanians......
The Sunday Sun, June 29, 1986
"White cavemen," is what Suzie the waitress called the Albanians of the Bronx,
the borough that is New York City's answer to bomb-blasted Beirut.
sour grapes since she was Italian and thus still ashamed of what happened to
the Mafia. The mob had made the big mistake of trying to muscle protection
money out of some Albanian-owned pizza parlors. The baseball-bat wielding
Mafiosi were met by a hail of well-aimed gunfire from the pistol-packing
Albanians, some of whom love guns more then their wives. After that, the mob's
insurance salesmen went elsewhere.
"My God," said a truly shocked Suzie - and you don't shock easily when you wait
on truck drivers on a Greek diner in the Bronx - "Albanian kids even mug black
muggers!" Now there, I thought, was a real man-bites-dog story.
Charls Bronson, move over.
The Bronx Albanians are America's newest and most interesting pioneers. They
come from the rugged northern mountains of Albania (turn right at the toe of
Italy to find Albania) and from KOSOVA, the part of ALBANIA occupied by
Yugoslavia. Most of the 30,000 Albanians in the Bronx are Gegs, fierce warrior
tribesmen who will defend a guest with their lives or carve up an intruder with
equal gusto. They eat Slavs and Turks for breakfast and think the more learned
Tosks of Southern Albania, who eat Greeks for breakfast, are sissies.
These Albanian mountaineers arrived in New York penniless refugees. Many
were illiterate and few could speak English. Poverty forced them to settle in
the Bronx, the half-ruined nightmare slum filled with drug addicts, criminals
and welfare cases.
Before World War II the Bronx was a prosperous, verdant residential area of
Irish, Germans and Jews. The Grand Concourse was built to rival Paris' Champs
Elysee. But after the war New York's rich liberals enacted the nation's highest
welfare payments. In short order, the Bronx was turned into a giant human
cesspool.
Up from the South came busloads of illiterate black sharecroppers and great
numbers of Puerto Ricans: All settled down on welfare, producing ensuing
generations aptly described by one black writer as "urban cannibals." Not
suprisingly, most of the Bronx's white fled.
The borough's new inhabitants quickly destroyed once-attractive
neighborhoods. Buildings were savaged: Wiring and plumbing ripped out of walls;
garbage thrown out of windows, excrement down stairwells. Muggers and addicts
prowled the empty streets.
So dangerous was the Bronx that even the police, who called the south Bronx
precinct,"Fort Apache," would not patrol on foot.
Into this wasteland of gutted buildings and broken humans came the Albanian
mountaineers. They saved money earned washing dishes or floors and bought
abandoned tenaments for $250. Entire families worked to repair these wrecks.
People began to move into the retored buildings.
Day and night, armed Albanians guarded their property. Black and Puerto Rican
muggers quickly learned to stay far away from the property and tenants of the
Albanians. Pistol-packing Albanians did what New York's police could not-they
restored order and civilization to the worst parts of the Bronx jungle.
Building by building, the tenacious Albanians created little islands of
security in the heart of the New York's most crime-ridden area. Middle-class
people began to return, drawn by clean buildings, low rents and, most
important, security.
Just as the cleanup of New York's Hudson River has brought back fish for the
first time in 50 years, the cleansing of the Bronx by its Albanians has
restored life to neighborhoods formerly written off as hopeless.
Incredibly in our socialist age, this heroic feat was done by the proud
Albanians without a cent of government money. More than 20 Albanians, some
barely literate, are now property millionaires.
Wich should remind us that nations are built by the hard work and guts of
private citizens, not by governments. Now if Chicago, Detroit and Houston could
just find more Albanians......
The Sunday Sun, June 29, 1986