wise guys

I walked the other day from 34th Street and 7th Avenue down to the west village and then followed Hudson Street back down to Tribeca. Along the way a thunderstorm broke and I took shelter, along with several others, under a framework of scaffolding. Across the street on the corner of Hudson and Barrow was a small red brick bar. A simple sign in the window named the joint as the Barrow Street Bar. Through the rain I could see a man standing in the open doorway watching it cascade. I could make out only one or two people inside. The bar looked like the kind of place that this neighbourhood may have had many more examples of in times gone by and it was this and the persisting rain that drew me through the doors. Two men were talking in Italian and English as I entered and as I passed them for the bar my comment, 'rain's here to stay, thought I'd have a beer', seemed to go down well with them. There was no-one else in the bar but me, them and the barmaid, and over the course of the length of time it took to drink the beer I listened to these two guys and it was like watching an episode of the Soprano's. They had every tick, gesture and flick that we've come to know as being associated with the cliche, and yet they were the real deal. Eavesdropping surreptitiously I listened as they spoke about wise-guys and goomba's. If only I'd had a voice-recorder. They struck me as the real deal and the last of their type in a neighbourhood that has gone upscale. The best line I heard was one that they uttered almost in unison when talking about a colleague of theirs that they felt had been the undeserved recipient of a lucky break...."God gives biscuits to those with no teeth!"