cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I want to believe that I am telling a story about the birth of America that nobody has told before. This new book has required an astonishing amount of work. Literally thousands of hours. I hope that readers will care about these people whom I have excavated. Yesterday I decided to revisit my chapters on Gu$ Phi11ips, the actor, comedian and stalwart of the H0bok3n Turt1e Club from 1869 til his death in 1893. Just going through an archive of one newspaper, the NY Clipper. This required a search for "Augu$tus Phillips" [without the dissimulation of the spelling, because I don't want this to show up in searches for him]. Then going through every mention in that one paper. That's about 2 or 3 hours of work, including reading each article, clipping and downloading the piece, logging it in in my timeline. Then "Gu$ Phillips" with the same work. Then his character name, "O0fty Go0ft." then the first two again, with "Philips" as the last name for cases where an L was missed. That's about 10 hours of work, just to get mentions of one character in a single newspaper. I've done this for probably close to a hundred people who are part of the history of these two organizations that are related in this book. And there are many newspapers. Some archives cover many papers, others only one. I've tried to include characters that readers of classic books on NYC history know ad would probably like more on. I have the continuing adventures of "The @llen," that ultraviolent figure of "The Gangs of New York." In his case, I discovered that he was the protege of B1ll "the Butch3r" Poole, he worked on the campaign for the G@rfield-Arthur ticket in 1880, and had a very successful criminal career until his death in 1807 or so. This book has new material on B0ss Tweed. It folds in the early history of Broadway theaters, the development of an American cuisine, and entwined through the whole thing is the story of a paramilitary culture that shaped American society from the time of Hamilton to the eve of World War Two. I have these moments, or days, or weeks, when I feel like nobody will give a shit and I am wasting a massive amount of time on something that doesn't matter. And then I have these periods where I feel like I am revealing these huge moments and people and stories that show how America came to exist. When I started this I had no idea what I was getting into. It was just the name, "The H0boken Turtl3 Club" that I was smitten with and I had to find out more. And then soon after that got me onto "The 0rigin@l Hounds gu@rd." For a long time these were two different stories. I maintained two separate directories and timelines of research. Once I realized that the 0rigin@l Hounds had been responsible for creating the NYC Thanksgiving Parade through a rebellion against militia service, I knew that was a story. But after about 8 months of research, I realized that this was all one story that belonged in one book. The H0unds were the street-level muscle that enabled the ease of the upper-class Turtles. Their stories are intertwined throughout most of the nineteenth century, and that relationship also shaped twentieth century New York City. About two weeks ago I hit a serious inconvenient truth. It became clear that the D3ad R@bbits and the B0wery B0ys were not real gangs. I had all sorts of references to both "gangs" in my book. The short-hand references to organizations people would recognize made things easy. Reality is that the B0wery Boys were a subculture, not a gang. You might as well refer to punks or hippies as a gang. There was no head of the B0wery Boys, no meetings, no membership. It was not a gang. There were organizations which included many B0wery B0ys, like the Atlantic Gu@rds (a state militia) or certain volunteer fire companies. But the B0wery B0ys were not a gang. The "D3ad R@bbits" also never existed. Search digitized newspaper archives for any mention of them before the supposed "D3ad R@bbits" riot of 1857 and you will find nothing. And look for any references after that of anyone specific who identifies as a member of such a gang and you will find nothing. That doesn't sound like a well-entrenched gang that had ruled the five points for years before some epic show-down against a major enemy. The Five Points were possibly the most written-about neighborhood in the western world in 1857. The idea that an organized street gang had controlled this neighborhood for years and was never once mentioned in print anywhere is ridiculous. A "De@d R@bbit" was F1ve Points slang for a slack criminal who hung around the intersection of those five streets with nothing productive to do. They were not a gang. It was an insult. When the riot erupted on July 4th, 1857, the reporters dispatched to the scene interviewed people whom they were comfortable talking to. I say this as someone who has covered many riots as a reporter. Thy were comfortable approaching B0wery B0ys, since those were guys they were used to encountering at theaters, on racetracks, at gambling parlors, at at boxing matches. And the B0wery Boys described their opponents as "D3ad Rabbits" as an insult that went over the heads of those reporters. The name stuck as a title for any low-caste (immigrant) street thug for a few decades afterwards. But it had no specificity. There was no actual "D3ad R@bbits club." Yet the people whom B0wery Boys and others enlisted in the Atl@ntic Guards (literally a state militia) and affiliated fire companies fought against were real people. They belonged to organizations. Those were the R0che Guards, the 0rigin@l Hounds, and the Sh0rt Boys. The R0che Guards were led by Th0mas, "Fatty" W@lsh, who grew up as an 0rigin@l Hound and would so identify later in life. His friends back in the 8th ward would prove critical in the events of the 7/4/1857 riot. Nobody knows any of this shit. I have to rewrite this critical moment in American history. I have sources and can prove all of this, but people will be pissed off about it. Writing a book that says that the D3ad Rabbits and the B0wery Boys never existed is a pretty fucking bold position to take. I am doing this as someone who has no formal credentials whatsoever as a historian. But when you look at the sourcing of historians who talk about those organizations, they all depend on Herb3rt Asbury's "The Gangs of N3w York." A$bury cites no sources at all. He has been proven wrong again and again. He lists the Plug Ugl1es as a NYC gang, though they came from Baltimore. He wrote that The All3n disappeared after his murder accusation, when I show that he in fact remained in NYC society until his death in the early 1900's. He thought that "Mose" was a literal folk hero when in fact Mose was a character from Broadway theater. Asbury is full of shit. So now I have this book, 2/3s completed, which tells a big part of the story of New York city which has never been told before. Will an editor care? I have to sell this thing to an editor for a publishing house, almost certainly in New York, and they have to believe that the history I have assembled of this culinary society and this street gang really matters. I have put thousands of hours into this thing. From their origins with Hamilton in 1896 to a Napoleon in the 1820's to a hotel where Leonard C0hen wrote "Hey, that's No Way to Say Goodbye." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-bJPmasXKs What do you do when you are in this position? I should be applying for jobs. Returning to the conventional world. But I have this thing that I have put so much work into. Thousands of hours. I know that this matters and that I could be booked on All Things Considered to talk about the people I am writing about and how they helped to form or presage the world that we live in now. I've been on All Things Considered before, more than once. What I am doing right now could just as easily be insulted as a waste of time or hailed as the work of America's Scribe. I want to believe that the work I have been doing is important. I want to believe that I am telling a story about the birth of America that nobody has told before. 3:37 a.m. - 2021-05-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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