The Bitch Barked Softly

The last feral dog in Red Hook has been rounded up and relocated:

Two weeks ago, Mama Dulce took her last run around the vacant lot next to the massive steel frame of the soon-to-be superstore before stepping into a humane animal trap. It was the first time the muscular, straw-colored dog — matriarch of a pack of mutts that had lived for years on the site of the old Revere Sugar Refinery — had ever been enclosed.

The bitch barked softly all the way to the city’s Animal Care and Control center. Last week, she was resettled in a Pennsylvania home, reuniting with another refinery rescue, Big Mama.

“She had to go,” said Harriet Zucker, a set designer and dog trainer who led the rescue, her 60th over the last 12 years.

“The dogs had lived there for many years and they were relatively safe. When construction began, the [danger began]. It was an accident waiting to happen.”

. . .

The guards who watched generations of dogs settle on the rubble-strewn Revere property had let Zucker feed the brood for months, until she found people to adopt them.

After the puppy daddy, a Airedale named Scrappy, was adopted by a truck driver, the two mamas and a third feral companion were left alone at the old sugar plant, where they lived without a bark of trouble until 2005, when developer Thor Equities bought the rusting hulk for $40 million.

As construction crews began to demolish the plant, the dogs made a new home in the vacant, graffiti-covered lot nearby on the corner of Halleck and Ostego streets. Zucker delivered them hamburgers from the Fairway supermarket a few streets away.

“When I starting coming, their tails were curled up close to their bodies because they were scared,” said Zucker. “[Eventually they began to] wag their tails. They are wild dogs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a domestic instinct.”

What’s In A Street Renaming?

It’s the most important thing a City Council can do, and Charles Barron respects the will of the people in that regard:

Defiant community leaders will gather Saturday in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to unveil a new street sign bearing the name of Sonny Carson, a radical black activist who described himself as “anti-white.”

The renegade renaming comes nearly three weeks after the City Council voted down the proposal during a heated and racially charged hearing at City Hall. Council Member Charles Barron, a Democrat of Brooklyn, and his chief of staff, Viola Plummer, will attend the event.

. . .

Tomorrow’s renaming will be the second attempt by Carson supporters to honor his memory despite not receiving official approvals from the city. On Memorial Day, Mr. Barron and others unveiled a sign at Linden Park in Brooklyn with his name. The sign was taken down by the city Department of Parks and Recreation.

Mr. Barron is quick to point out that the local community board approved the proposal to rename four blocks of Gates Avenue before it was blocked in the council.

“No one is going to tell us who our heroes can and can’t be,” he said yesterday. “We are not going to let the white members of the City Council to tell us no.”

Wearing Latex Food Service Gloves Just Doesn’t Feel Right

Taco Bell notwithstanding, if the mayor is not careful, perceived Health Department overinspection of DiFara may unravel his administration’s nannyism:

“Put it back in the oven,” Domenico DeMarco was told.

The godfather of Brooklyn pizzadom had just pulled one of his signature pies out of the same old gas oven he’s used since Mayor Wagner’s administration — the temperature cranked up, the way he likes it, to around 750 degrees.

With his bare hand, he sprinkled some extra cheese onto the piping-hot pie.

That’s when the health inspector cried foul. She was spying from the usual packed crowd of pie tasters that assemble daily at Mr. DeMarco’s landmark Di Fara pizzeria in Midwood.

“My customers, they want it the way I do it,” said the legendary 70-year-old pizza-slinger. “I use good cheese. Parmesan Reggiano! So, I told her that.”

The inspector was not impressed. “She made me put it back in the oven,” Mr. DeMarco said.

Then she made him lock the front door.

Busted! Barehanded. Again.

On June 4, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shut down Mr. DeMarco’s popular pizza parlor on Avenue J for the second time this year, citing “unsanitary conditions including mouse infestation, flies, and bare hand contact with food.”

“Having failed five of six inspections in the last 18 months,” the regulators concluded, “[Di Fara’s] inspection history indicates an unwillingness or inability to meet health code.”

. . .

At press time, the pizzeria remained closed, though Mr. DeMarco and his family had tentatively brokered a set of stipulations that would allow them to reopen by week’s end. Still, Di Fara’s patriarch stressed that he would not reopen until he alone was ready: “The last time they close me up, after they give me the O.K., I say, ‘Nah, I have to close a few days because I want to close.'”

Even locked-up, Mr. DeMarco’s place was an attraction. “All day long, they’re looking in,” he remarked, as passers-by repeatedly pressed their faces up to the locked glass door.

“We’re with you, Maestro!” one supporter wrote in magic marker across a Health Department “CLOSED” sign posted to Di Fara’s door. “DOMINICK FOR PRESIDENT!” scrawled another.

Location Scout: Di Fara Pizza.

When You Want To Be The Freakiest, Only The Freakiest Will Do

Joe Sitt will have a hard time rebranding Coney Island if someone beats him to it:

The Shmaltz Brewing Company, maker of “He’Brew, the Chosen Beer,” last week released Coney Island Lager, the first of a side-show-inspired series of beers.

The logo, designed by Brooklyn-based tattoo artist Dave Wallin, features a tattooed and pierced version of the iconic Steeplechase smiling-face surrounded by slogans such as “Freak’s Favorite Beer” and “Alive.” The beer will be brewed in Brooklyn and profits will go to Coney Island USA, a nonprofit arts group that runs the sideshow and the annual Mermaid Parade.

Jeremy Cowan, the owner of Shmaltz, was approached by Coney Island USA with the idea shortly after his company put out beer commemorating the 40th anniversary of the death of Lenny Bruce.

. . .

Shmaltz plans to roll out Coney Island Lager over the next month.

“Coney Island Lager is already the freakiest new beer in the world,” said Dick Zigun, the head of Coney Island USA. “When we expand our Freak Bar, it will be featured as our bar’s house brand.”

And Here I Was Thinking That The Word “Reputed” Was Falling Out Of Favor . . .

There’s the Dickensian representation of the mafia currently commanding our attention and then there’s the real mob. And as the Sopranos series finale approaches, the real mafia wants you to know that they still exist:

The reputed mobster was found face up in his white striped pajamas, his mouth agape, half hanging off his bed in his Brooklyn home. He had been shot once near his ear, in the back of his head, and late last night investigators were still searching for a motive.

The death of the man, Rudolph Izzi — who the authorities said had been a soldier with the Genovese crime family — was the second mob-related shooting in the borough in three days, and had detectives investigating whether the two attacks were related.

On Tuesday morning, Robert DeCicco, whose father is a captain with the Gambino crime family, was shot in his arm and leg, and another bullet grazed his head, while he was sitting in his parked car less than a mile and a half from Mr. Izzi’s home on Shore Parkway. Mr. DeCicco, who was indicted along with his father and 11 others on federal racketeering and extortion charges in January, survived the attack.

Investigators are still trying to determine whether there was any connection between the shooting of Mr. Izzi, a loan shark, and Mr. DeCicco, 56, who lives on Staten Island and was said to have amassed heavy gambling debts. But both came from powerful crime families and have colorful histories of their own. There have been no arrests in either case.

According to the police, Mr. Izzi’s body was discovered after a friend of his, a doctor, stopped by for a visit and noticed signs of forced entry around the home’s door. The friend, whose name was not released, called the police. (Another investigator said Mr. Izzi was gunned down after answering the door, though that version was not corroborated by the police.)

And when investigators first saw Mr. Izzi, 74, who was declared dead in his bed, they said he seemed like a “beat-up old man,” a far cry from the eccentric, crisply dressed wiseguy whose nickname was “the Cueball,” and whose tangles with the law dated back nearly 40 years.