Posts from — September 2011

Cleveland cop Tommy Alusheff moonlighted as a comedian, using the stage name Morey Cohen — a conflation of Morey Amsterdam and Myron Cohen (two of Alusheff’s favorite comedians).  Morey Cohen worked at Hilarities and other regional comedy clubs, plus he did some out-of-town gigs, like in Los Angeles.

Morey Cohen’s father, Chris Alusheff, owned the Baker Candy factory in Collinwood.  Chris Alusheff  once told me Jews like dark chocolate more than gentiles like it.  Why?  Kashrut?  (Kosher dietary laws?)   Probably.   The Alusheffs were Macedonians.   Their best-selling product was chocolate-covered whipped candy eggs, sold at Easter time.

Tommy Alusheff (Morey Cohen), about 2009

Morey Cohen died last year.  I didn’t go to the funeral; I only knew him by reputation.  Morey wasn’t in the Sixth District, which had been my police beat.  (I was a  reporter in the 1980s.)

The top comedy cop at the Sixth District had been Paul Falzone, a stand-up guy, but not a stand-up comedian.  Falzone was almost ready for prime time.  I hung out with Falzone in the burglary unit at the East 152nd Street station, aka The District, the cop shop.  The building had few windows.  It was a fortress, built after the 1967 Hough riots.  When the A/C went out in the building, it was a real sweat shop.  Falzone said, “I have eight minutes of material to Morey’s twelve.”

Falzone asked me, “How are the Jewish holidays treating you?”  It was September.

“Fine.”

“You’ve got to watch for neo-Nazis,” he said.

“Why?”

Mob makeover

“Everyone has to watch for somebody.  Italians, they got to watch out for other Italians; you start your car and it goes ba-boom instead of vroom.  The Irish, they got to watch for Jack Daniels.  Hey, how can you tell Ronald McDonald at a nudist colony?”

“How?”

“He’s the one with sesame seed buns.”

Falzone ran for county sheriff,  and president of the patrolmen’s union.  He didn’t win either.  He eventually became police chief of Bratenahl, a suburb.  Now he’s running for mayor of Bratenahl.

Paul Falzone, 1982, at the Sixth District

Two years ago Cuyahoga County tried to put Falzone in jail for theft.  Something about drugs and guns missing from the Bratenahl property room.

Falzone was acquitted.  Now he’s suing Bratenahl for “humiliation.”  Doesn’t sound funny, but Falzone can probably get some jokes out of it.  Bad jokes. He needs only four more minutes to match Morey Cohen . . .

“So I’m on patrol, and I walk into the Viking bar.  I see a 16-year-old punk with a Miller’s.  I say, “When’s your birthday, kid?”

He says, “October 10.”

“What year?”

“Every year.”

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Footnote: The Sixth District became the Fifth District  in 2008, when the Cleveland Police Department reapportioned the districts.
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From illustrator Ralph Solonitz’s Parade of  Nations collection:

Ireland

Italy

In Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, she hangs around with famous people on almost every page, even when she isn’t famous yet.

Patti needed 10 more cents for a sandwich at an automat.  Allen Ginsberg appeared in back of her with a dime.  Ginsberg mistook her for a “pretty boy.”  Ginsberg bought her a coffee too.

Smith dated drummer Slim Shadow.  After a few meetings, Slim told Patti he was really Sam Shepard, the playwright.

Patti ran into Janis Joplin a lot.

Ted Berrigan, the poet, lived on St. Mark’s Place.  Berrigan’s tenement had a clawfoot bathtub in the kitchen.    That was how tenements were built.  Berrigan was in bed.  It was the middle of the day.  His wife, poet Alice Notley, said, “When Ted gets dressed, you two should go to Allen’s to get the mail.”

Ted Berrgian, 1971. (Photo by Gerard Malanga)

Alice Notley was addressing Berrigan and me.  (I was in Berrigan’s apartment, not Just Kids.)  Berrigan collected Allen Ginsberg’s mail when Ginsberg was out of town.  Ginsberg’s place — on East 13^th Street — was neat.  It wasn’t messy like I had expected.

***

I played harmonica at Grand Central Station to assure myself I wasn’t just another commuter.  I checked my bags in a Grand Central locker, then talked to a staffer at the outdoor convention-bureau kiosk.  She directed me to the 34^th Street YMCA.

French tourists at the Y asked me why the street was smoking.  Smoke was wafting out of sidewalk vents.  I figured it had something to do with the subway.  (Am I right?)

A roommate service — Two for the Money — charged $40 to match you with a roommate in New York in 1972.  I met Nathan outside the agency, so we didn’t pay the finder’s fee.  We wound up on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village.

There were a lot of old people in Greenwich Village.  Not the best of scenes — old people.

So I called Webfoot — his phone number was W-E-B-F-O-O-T — in the East Village.  Webfoot said come over.  He lived on Second Avenue and was asking only $100/month.  ($539 in today’s dollars.)  I spent a night there.  He spit blood into the toilet and didn’t flush.

I checked out the NYU bulletin board and found an apartment in SoHo, across from where Ornette Coleman had played a loft concert. $100 for my share.  A mature woman (30-something) answered the door and said, “Let me make this perfectly clear, you aren’t going to score with me if you move in here.”

Score?  Only swingers said score.  Was this woman getting her news from Playboy?  Had she missed the whole hippie thing?

I wound up in a studio apartment sublet on East 13^th Street in the East Village for $150/month.  The tenant upstairs was lifting weights, it seemed.  I knocked on his door and said, “Can you tell me if you stay home all day and lift weights?  I’m laying down $450 for a deposit and rent, and I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“I don’t lift weights.”  He had a weightlifter’s build.  “And you don’t knock on your neighbor’s door in New York.  Where are you from?”

“Ohio.”

“That’s in Chicago, isn’t it?”

He also said his apartment had been broken into twice, and he had been mugged outside the apartment.

Maybe the wiser choice was the apartment on Waverly Place in the West Village.  I called Nathan.

Too late.  Nathan had rented the extra room to a law student.

I saw Patti Smith.

I saw her in Cleveland.  It was her first show in Cleveland.

Is that worth anything?
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Footnote: Ted Berrigan was a visiting professor at Michigan in the fall of 1969.    Here’s the syllabus from a class I took:

I could get the Ohio klezmer vanity plate.

In Chicago, a musician from the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band has the Illinois klezmer.  I saw the Illinois plate on the cover of a Maxwell Street CD.

klezmer is taken in New York.  I saw New York klezmer in the KlezKamp parking lot.

Ohio klezmer is available, according to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Do I want klezmer?  What if I cut somebody off; they’ll know it’s me.  (I remember getting cut off by ezras.)

What if I’m checking out a potential tenant, and  I’m parked by the guy’s sleazy mini-market on West 25th Street, and he comes out and has an anti-klezmer ’tude.

I remember mazel on Fairmount Boulevard.

I’ve seen yenta.

I’ve seen gevalt.

On Ohio’s newest license plate, you practically need a microscope to find the OHIO. Why does the state devalue Ohio so much?  Ohio is pretty catchy compared to other states.   How would you like to live in Maryland?

oHIo.

That’s my gift to the BMV.

Ohio first cluttered its plates in 1973 with Seat Belts Fastened?  That innocent public service opened the doors to Birthplace of Aviation, Bicentennial 2003 and Beautiful Ohio.

OHIO in big block letters would work.  If the BMV ever goes retro, back to  block OHIO, 1950s-style, I would seriously consider klezmer.

I want a plate I can nail to the side of the barn and be proud of.
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Footnote: Jewish license plates in California are well-documented, per this video:

The FBI building in Cleveland on Lakeside Avenue is on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie.  The building is outside the downtown district by a few blocks and somewhat secluded.

I went there to see the head man.

To get to him, I went through two minutes of various security checks in the lobby.  Then I was in the boss’ office, overlooking the lake.  Nice.  If the sun had been out, it would have been Santa Monica.

The boss, Gary Klein, and I were old friends from high school.   Gary had been a fearless JCC-league basketball player.  After high school, Gary went off to Annapolis, where he got his nose broken by a Southerner in a boxing match.  Gary told me some of the students had razzed him because he was Jewish.  It didn’t faze him.

Gary was tough, but not greaser tough.   He was smart and bowlegged like a cowboy.

Gary Klein, 2004. (Photo by Ted Stratton)

Gary showed me the FBI’s war room and the bug-proof room.  He said FBI life looked glamorous but wasn’t.  In 19 years he had lived in Boston, New York (Cosa Nostra and Russian mob work), Phoenix, Houston, Washington and Cleveland.

His new job was snooping on potential terrorists in northern Ohio, from Cleveland to Toledo.  He said, “Ninety-nine percent of it is B.S. leads, like somebody dumping burial ashes over Parma Heights.”

Fighting terror was job one, forget about The Mob, he said.

Gary, how can we forget The Mob?  They’re a lot more fun than Islamic terrorists!   We grew up on The Mob.  Hollywood wouldn’t exist without Mob movies.  I had been inside the Little Italy house of James Licavoli (aka Jack White), the last head of the Cleveland Mob.  Licavoli made wine in his cellar.  Drinks all around.

Gary asked me to keep my eyes open.

I said I would.  (This was 2003.)

So far nothing but B.S. leads, thank God.