The Cracker Smacker
Fight night in Harlem, where black celebrities bay for white blood in a reversal of the famous scene from Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy’
Poop in the shower of Mrs. Greenfield’s boarding house
A visit with the Bleeder of Bayonne
Sammy was in his late sixties and he worked the door at Gleason's Gym, which was on 30th Street in Manhattan. That was in the mid 1970s, before the home of great boxing champions like Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali, and Roberto Durán migrated to Brooklyn to begin its third life in a new borough, on Water Street. In the 70s, in Manhattan, Sammy ruled Gleason’s door. Strangers, media representatives, and anyone Sammy didn’t like paid a buck and a half; girlfriends, managers, trainers, fighters, and wingmen were admitted free. Very few girlfriends applied to Sammy for admittance, though. Gleason’s was a business-like place. Boxers worked out, matchmakers came and went; trainers, occasionally, and managers, inevitably, (still) smoked cigars at ringside. Boxers would train and get out. No one lingered longer than was necessary to decide on somewhere else to meet. The smell of boxers’ hand wraps was that bad. Locker-room wisdom had it strong enough to whip the needle of an old analog …