The In-Flight Magazine Of Paul Castellano’s Lincoln Town Car
A Maxim for the Mob, a Mother Jones for the Made Man:
Posted: July 9th, 2007 | Filed under: Staten IslandA new Mafia magazine with a Staten Island flavor may give some residents another reason to gripe about the borough’s negative image.
But for those who’ve always wanted to be a gangster, Mob Candy has got you covered.
Claiming to be “The Underworld Magazine of Mafia Politics, Pleasures and Power,” Mob Candy promises an inside job on “The Life,” from hit-men confessionals and pictorials of getaway cars, to tips on pulling off the perfect smash-and-grab or buying bada-bling-bling for that special cumare.
The first issue features articles on Don Carlo Gambino’s legacy; 50 years of mob “rats;” the FBI vs. Italian Americans, and a profile of Christian (Chris Paciello) Ludwigsen of Eltingville, a mobbed-up former Miami nightclub owner who once dated pop star Madonna and was the getaway driver in a 1993 Richmond Valley home-invasion murder.
And of course, there’s plenty of “candy,” in the form of several Staten Island models. New Springville resident Mercedes Maia adorns the cover in pinstripe lingerie, with her finger on the trigger of a silver semi-automatic pistol. On the inside pages, Ms. Maia, a bartender from “Level One Lounge” in Annadale, poses crawling on a bar in leather corset, and little else.
New Dorp native Laura Siani and New Springville resident Priscilla Manella are also in the premiere issue.
Pleasant Plains resident Danielle DiPietro, one of three Islanders featured in the MTV “True Life” documentary, “I’m a Staten Island Girl,” joins Ms. Maia in some of the photos.
Ms. DiPietro, who also happens to be the magazine’s vice president of advertising and sales, doesn’t think Mob Candy will elicit the same negative responses the reality show did when it aired last fall.
“Most of the responses we’ve had have been very positive. People tell me ‘I can’t wait until it comes out,'” Ms. DiPietro said during a phone interview at the periodical’s first public event — a children’s fund-raiser in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
