Brooklyn Al Primo Posto: Vincent Coppola’s Magical Memoir of the Church, the Mafia and the Gowanus Canal
About this episode
Vincent Coppola shares his experiences growing up in Brooklyn and discusses his memoir about the unique culture of his childhood neighborhood.
“I never knew, and I was a bright kid. I didn’t know who the mayor of New York was, but I could tell you the names of all the mafia guys on the corner.” — Vincent Coppola So we finally found a Coppola for the show. No, not Francis Ford. But somebody just as cool and even more authentic. The longtime Newsweek reporter Vincent Coppola grew up in Brooklyn three subway stops from Manhattan, but never went there until he was a teenager, nor even visited Central Park until his twenties. Coppola’s version of Brooklyn, a teeming Italian ghetto squeezed between the banks of the polluted Gowanus Canal, no longer exists. Except in his exquisitely rendered new memoir, Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood , which has the most delicious story about an Easter pie recipe you’ll ever read. The Brooklyn of Vinnie’s childhood was intact, insular, cut off from everywhere more than three stops away. It had its own government — the Mafia; its own religion — the Catholic Church; its own poisoned geography — the Gowanus Canal. A world inside a world. He didn’t know who the mayor of New York was, but he knew the name of every wise guy on every street corner. To a kid, Gowanus was a magical place. The…
People in this episode
Host: Andrew Keen
Guest: Vincent Coppola
Topics covered
- Brooklyn
- memoir
- Mafia
- Catholic Church
- Gowanus Canal
- Italian culture
Keywords
- Brooklyn
- mafia
- memoir
- Gowanus Canal
- Vincent Coppola
- Italian ghetto
- Catholic Church
- New York
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Newsweek
Books & works: Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood
Places: Brooklyn, Gowanus Canal, Columbia, New York, Central Park
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