Searching for Tony Manero

February 17, 2007


By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

Is there anyone left in Brooklyn who recognizes the name Tony Manero?

“I know who Tony Manero is, but I might be the only one left in Bensonhurst,” said Howard Feuer, district manager of Community Board 10. “There is no ‘Little Italy’ left in Brooklyn — they all moved away.”

No Little Italy?

Feuer’s first year as district manager, 1977, was the year “Saturday Night Fever” opened across the county. While most of America probably thought John Travolta’s alter ego was a fictional character, Feuer remembers seeing plenty of Travolta wannabes cat-calling the ladies from their muscle cars up and down 86th Street.

“You wouldn’t believe the crowds just cruising — just like the movie,” Feuer added. “But now the demographic has changed.”

Brooklyn’s Little Italy has become littler and littler, morphing into a Very Little Italy before becoming the Micro-Mini-Italy of today. According to the 2000 census, the number of residents of Italian descent is down to 59,112 — half that of two decades ago.

Many of the original houses dating back over 90 years are being torn down and replaced by three-story brick apartment buildings and multi-family condos.

Top Grade Meat? It is now a 99 Cent store.

The holiday lights along 18th Avenue that used to shine from Thanksgiving to New Year’s were absent last year — and local officials said they may become a permanent ghost of Christmas past.

The lack of a cohesive trade association took the blame.

“Do I think that there will be a Little Italy in Bensonhurst 10 years from now?” said Dom Trunzo, who owns Trunzo’s, a popular Italian meat and cheese market at 6802 18th Ave. “I don’t think one exists today.”

How could a neighborhood that was once so vibrant that Hollywood set a seminal disco movie there be dying? Where did all the Italians go?

“Sometimes you don’t have to kill yourself in order to kill yourself,” Manero once said in all his wisdom.

In the case of Bensonhurst’s Italian culture, you don’t have to kill yourself at all — just find a bridge.

“Italian children grew up believing that life was better across the bridge in Staten Island and New Jersey,” Feuer said. “When the Italians moved out, other immigrants saw Bensonhurst as an opportunity and the neighborhood followed suit.”

So no one squeezed the Italians out of Bensonhurst. They just wanted to live somewhere else.

“It happened within the last 10 years,” said Trunzo. “The kids got married and the parents followed the kids right across the bridge.”

Bensonhurst is now a melting pot, home of Mexican restaurants, Russian jewelers, and the number of Chinese grocery stores has reached 15. What was once known as “Little Italy” could now just as easily be called Little Russia, Mexico, or China.

“Today it is easier to find a good sushi restaurant than an Italian one,” Feuer added.

The moment when California rolls outnumber calzones marks a safe time to begin to write the obituary for Brooklyn’s “Little Italy,” and along with it the memories of Tony Manero.

But don’t bury the past just yet.

“I’m looking for Tony Manero,” I said told the counterman at Lenny’s Pizza on 86th Street and 19th Avenue. He hardly looked up, pointing to series of framed pictures memorializing that famous scene where Manero visited for a double-decker slice.

“You gonna order something?” he asked, so I told him I wanted the double-decker.

Tony Manero — Stayin’ alive!

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