{"id":1388,"date":"2006-08-07T11:40:17","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T19:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/08\/omerta_is_sicilian_for_courts_6_and_7_are_ours_motherfuckers.html"},"modified":"2006-08-07T11:40:17","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T19:40:17","slug":"omerta_is_sicil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/08\/omerta_is_sicil.html","title":{"rendered":"Omerta Is Sicilian For “Courts 6 And 7 Are Ours, Motherfuckers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest front in the war between old timers and hipster carpetbaggers is the McCarren Park tennis court<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Hipsters, beware: Brooklyn’s old-timers are protecting their turf. Or at least they are at the McCarren Park tennis courts, in Greenpoint, where a gang of 50 retirement-age ralliers — a de facto tennis mafia — calls the shots, swearing at those who try to uproot them from “their” two chosen courts.<\/p>\n

“They seem to own the place,” complained one young player from Williamsburg, who said that in the past the men cursed at him when he asked them to move after their scheduled time was up.<\/p>\n

Another irate — and intimidated — player corroborated those claims, saying that the men have hurled “more Polish at me than I know what to do with.”<\/p>\n

Many of the McCarren racketeers are old friends, and have met at the park for tennis for more than two decades.<\/p>\n

“Over the years, courts 6 and 7” — the two most-secluded courts, on the Berry Street side of the park — “kind of became the Polish courts,” explained Amleto Mazza, a rare Italian member of the group.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

And although they might not be playing nice, technically these Greenpoint goodfellas aren’t breaking any rules. For instance, by rotating players on their own, no one violates the one-hour per player per court time limit.<\/p>\n

But try explaining that to the players who end up stalled on the other side of the fence — a crowd that has doubled in the past five years.<\/p>\n

A few spats over the years got so bad that police had to intervene and toss the guys out.<\/p>\n

The group’s bad reputation has grown, and the threat of conflict seems to have effectively aced would-be interlopers. A handful of McCarren’s younger regulars hesitated when asked to comment on the gang.<\/p>\n

“Trying to get them off is a big headache,” one tennis player finally said. “They don’t want anybody else playing on their courts.”<\/p>\n

Another player said he sometimes gets to play with the geezers, “but it took me years to get to that point,” the player told The Brooklyn Papers — as long as we promised anonymity.<\/p>\n

He refused to answer additional questions. “I’ve pretty much said all I can say,” he explained.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest front in the war between old timers and hipster carpetbaggers is the McCarren Park tennis court: Hipsters, beware: Brooklyn’s old-timers are protecting their turf. Or at least they are at the McCarren Park tennis courts, in Greenpoint, where a gang of 50 retirement-age ralliers — a de facto tennis mafia — calls the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,17,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blatant_localism","category-brooklyn","category-there_goes_the_neighborhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}