Borough of Brickbats And Baseball Bats

Rep. Vito Fossella's Mess Leads Us to Tour Staten Island

NEW YORK -- There was a lot of wincing and what-are-you-gonna-do shrugs on Staten Island when Rep. Vito Fossella went to trial Friday in Alexandria. In other parts of New York City, the "forgotten borough" has long been dismissed as a backwater for hapless goombahs. And when a local hero and six-term congressman is arrested for driving while blotto, admits he's had a long-running affair and fathered a love child, then is found guilty of DUI, well, that's not helping.

The image of Staten Island is slightly better in the rest of the country, but only because few Americans have any image of the place at all. Which is strange, given that it's a mere 20-minute drive, or 25-minute ferry ride, from Manhattan. Even people who've never set foot in Queens or the Bronx can describe vague impressions . But close your eyes and think of Staten Island. Nothing, right?

With Fossella back in the news, it seemed like a good time to fill in that blank, so we called J.E. Englebert and asked for a tour. Englebert is the self-described "King of Clubs" in Manhattan, and while this might overstate matters, he does own two venues that cater to Staten Islanders, a group considered toxically unhip by Gotham scenesters. Plus, soon after Fossella's arrest in May, Englebert sent him a letter offering to hold fundraisers and rallies on his behalf.

"If Bill Clinton would have resigned after Monica Lewinsky," he wrote, not quite grammatically, "we would have lost a great President."

Fossella didn't respond and has announced that he's leaving politics, but the generosity of Englebert's gesture made him seem like the perfect safari leader for our expedition. And when the day of this five-hour voyage arrives, it's clear that he's taking it seriously. He brings along a lengthy printout of highlights, which includes a stop at Nunzio's, a pizzeria that Englebert raves about through the whole drive and keeps raving about as he snarfs down his third slice.

"Did I tell you?" he asks rhetorically. The walls at Nunzio's are dotted with head shots of actors from "The Sopranos," and Englebert looks ready for a walk-on part. He's a meaty, soft-spoken guy wearing a black Adidas track suit, and his dark hair is Dippity-do'd into a stiff, shiny mass.

Next to him is Englebert's publicist -- who, oddly enough, asked that his name be kept out of this article -- and across the table is one of Englebert's childhood friends, Mike Gallo, a pit bull breeder who looks like a bouncer. On his iPhone, he shows off photos of both his ex-wives -- "the second one was drop-dead beautiful," he says -- as well as his prized dog, which apparently has the perfect head-to-body ratio and is worth $100,000. Talk turns to the subject of Staten Island pride.

"We didn't really have Staten Island pride so much as neighborhood pride," Englebert says.

"Yeah, it was more about your neighborhood," says Gallo, who sounds uncannily like Robert De Niro in "Raging Bull." "We fought other neighborhoods all the time. Thirteen carloads of kids would go fight 13 carloads of kids, with baseball bats."

With baseball bats?

"Oh yeah," Gallo says. "Crowbars, hammers. Right here," he goes on, tilting his shaved head, running a finger over zigzagging lines on his skull. "Stitches, stitches, stitches."

"Look at this," says Englebert, who stands, unzips his track suit and lifts his shirt, revealing a large, all-cap tattoo of SURVIVAL in a semicircle over his stomach and two thick, jagged vertical lines from his waist to the bottom of his rib cage. "Knife fight."