Iconic on the Menu

I hate to use the word iconic. It's overused, and probably misapplied most of the time. But really, how can you not say iconic when you look at the photo of Carmine Galente being carried out of a Bushwick Brooklyn restaurant in a body bag, all because someone didn't like him anymore. The outplacement policy amongst gangsters does not include severance pay, golden parachutes, stock options or tips on updating your resume. Once set in motion, it's swift.

This outplacement occurred July 12, 1979, a sufficient number of years ago. Yet, the picture of the body being carried out the front door of Joe and Mary's restaurant under a sign that says, "We Give Special Attention to Outgoing Orders" continues to find usefulness attached to newstories.  

This was the case on April 18, 2011, when the Paper of Record ran the picture, along with a few others to add visual to its story of how then, current federal tetimony was as much about bad deeds as it was about eating. A blog entry ensued, using the image above. http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2011/04/poetry-and-irony.html

And yesterday, the NYT again used the Joe and Mary photo along with several others, as they wrote about how many eateries with suspected mob ties the characters in Linda Fairstein's 14th crime novel 'Night Watch'  frequent in order to get to the bottom of things.

Food plays such a part in this book that the Times put its 'Murder and Mealtime' story in the Dining section.' It really does make sense, if you think about it.

It's the pictures that keep popping up that make me want to know their filing system that lets them retrieve appropriate photos when joining food and murder.

Perhaps they've got really good memories, or, and this is what I believe, they've built their own Google-like database of photos, that when queried with 'freshly murdered while eating,' gives them way more photos than space will allow.

Hey, the City never sleeps.

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