The suburbs

[Yo Pauly]

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yo, just another gumba from brklyn n.y. now living on long island, would not mind to talk about the fanciers of the 5 boroughs.

brotherstwoloft
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#5 18th January 2005, 10:18 AM
Yo Pauly
Squab Join Date: Jan 2005
Age: 56
Posts: 3




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Back in the day, there were probably more pigeon coops in our neighborhood than there were fire hydrants and traffic lights. On a spring, Saturday afternoon, the skies were filled with hundreds and hundreds of pigeons circling the rooftops. We used to call this type of activity "action." Whistles, shouts, and screams could be heard from blocks around. Long bamboo poles with rags tied at the end (used for "chasing") could be seen from the street. Anybody out there had a coop in Little Italy in NYC? Mott Street? Remember the days of "quarter-catch"?

Some Neighborhood legends:

Mousie (Mott & Houston Sts.)
Louie Eggs (Mott & Prince Sts.)
Jimmy Wilds (Mott & Houston Sts.)
Uncle (Kenmare & Elizabeth Sts.)
Little Pauly (Mott & Houston Sts.)
Sull-ivan (Mulberry & Houston Sts.)
Parente (Mott & Prince Sts.)

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Last edited by Yo Pauly : 18th January 2005 at 10:34 AM.

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#6 18th January 2005, 05:38 PM
brotherstwoloft
Pigeon Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: ,n.y.,u.s.a.
Posts: 132


yo pauly, where are you located now? where do you get your feed? i remember hanging out every sunday at the store and watching the old timers make their bets on catch keep and back then up to a buck for each bird. they use to call each other mutts ( guys that would not let their birds roll to far away from the loft) that name calling usually started off the betting and that same day we would go back to their lofts and watch the battle begin. yo nice hearing from a city boy. hope to hear from you soon.

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#7 Yesterday, 11:11 AM
beaumontsonny
Squab Join Date: Jan 2005
Age: 65
Posts: 1


Bronx New York: Rooftop pigeon flying in the 50's

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I raised and flew pigeons in the Bronx, N.Y. from late 40's to the end of the 50's. It was a tremendously popular sport and I have many many tales to tell.
The "Arthur Avenue" section of the Bronx (totally Italian) was the meca. At 66 years old I still keep a flock of canadians and flights. Let's talk some more.

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#8 Yesterday, 11:38 AM
Yo Pauly
Squab Join Date: Jan 2005
Age: 56
Posts: 3


Hello 2brothers and Sonny, My friend Pauly (he died in '99 at age 93) had pigeons on our rooftop from 1928 until he passed on. He took over for my uncle who married and left the neighborhood. Little Pauly would have loved this site; he loved pigeons and kite flying. I used to call him the "rooftop guru." Toward the end of his life, he struggled to make it up three flights of stairs to the roof, and the winter was especially hard on him. Sometimes I used to help him clean the coop, but even at 93, he was still the master. Plenty of times I felt I was only in his way. Pauly had flights and "tiplets" (that's what we called them), but when was much younger raced homers. In the late '50s, a man with a flatbed truck used to come up the roof each week and take the homers to Wilmington, Delaware, where he would release them from their crates. The truck driver used to charge the pigeon owners two-dollars a homer. But, in the early '60s, Pauly gave up the homers for the flights and tiplets.
I remember on Saturdays up on the roof. There would be about ten of us. We'd all put up a dollar each and then choose a pigeon from the stock. Two guys would jump on a train to Battery Park (a distance of about two-and-a-half miles from the roof) and let the birds go. The guy whose bird won the race had to buy lunch for everybody. Then, a meatball sandwich was only fifty cents and a soda fifteen cents. So the winner still had some pocket change. Good 'ole days.

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#9 Yesterday, 11:57 AM
Lin Hansen
Senior Bird Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Secaucus, NJ
Age: 45
Posts: 397


Hi Yo Pauly, and Beaumont Sonny,

Welcome, youse guys (LOL,) --- These are great stories about the "good old days" and I am sure many members would enjoy hearing about them.

Maybe you could submit them in our Stories sections or start a new thread (titled Good Ole Days, for instance) so they won't get lost in the shuffle.

Hope you will tell us more, I for one, am very much enjoying reading about how things used to be "back in the neighborhood."

Linda

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#10 Yesterday, 06:19 PM
brotherstwoloft
Pigeon Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: ,n.y.,u.s.a.
Posts: 132




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hey cuz, how are you guys doing, so b sonny i'm in the bronx from time to time i work for con ed, if i'm on arther ave and see a flock up there i'll use the air horn on my tanker for you to look down if you see a con ed truck that'll be me. we'll bull awhile and maybe grab a slice.
have either of you boys ever been japped? that's what we called it in brooklyn, when your loft was raided by someone in the night and you wind up with an empty loft. i was japped once we hit every pigeon store from queens to staten island and never found one bird.
what was the craziest bet you guys ever made? we had one guy bet another that he could not lift a 50 lb. bag of feed with his teeth and swing it around 3 times. the bet was for a 100 bucks well carmine did it and took use out to dinner that night. i wish i was still living in the old neighbor hood. yell at you latter.

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#11 Today, 05:27 AM
Yo Pauly
Squab Join Date: Jan 2005
Age: 56
Posts: 3


I have a friend who works for Con Ed. His name is Frankie Arroyo. Great guy, but not a pigeon flyer.

Japped? We use to call it "tapped off" in Manhattan. In its hay day, our roof had three coops holding more than seven-hundred birds. One guy had tiplets, and another guy had flights and breeders. It was a six-story tenement with thirty apartments. Everyone knew each other well and most of the apartment doors were always kept open. There were some scary-looking guys living in that place. This is no understatement: it would have been easier to rob a bank than to break into one of the coops. Besides, most neighborhood thieves knew that serving a year or two in the pen would have been a lot more entertaining than dropping six-stories down a shaftway.

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