Closing Time Transcript
- Okay. Seem like. So. My friend.
- [Customer] Yeah?
- Come back around here. Me and you lift this up.
- [Customer] Okay.
- Okay, you take one side.
- How do you wanna? Do you got your corner there?
- Yeah, what corner?
- You take the back. I take the front, yeah.
- All right, okay, one minute.
- You good?
- One sec.
- Take your time, take your time.
- Yeah, okay.
- You got it?
- Wait, uh, yeah.
- You got yours. I got mine. Watch yourself.
- Okay.
- You know what, I think that this register just wanted to get into the photo, in the picture. Thank you. Watch it. Hold it steady. How is that? Good like that?
- [Customer] Yeah.
- Ah, thank you. You take care. I'll give you something else after, okay?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Owner] All right! He just put it on hand truck without putting it in a box. It's gonna get all scratched up. At least in the box, it has a little bit of a padding. You know, I think we got, what was it? 36, I think something in the 30s, 40s, 50s. Six, almost 69 years old, I think, or 70 years old, that register, so if I get another 20, 30 years, it'll be okay. Here it's not just a business for me. It's part of my life, I was born in here. My uncle used to give me a dollar a week. Then, I asked for a raise, a dollar and a quarter. My grandfather's name was Ernesto Rossi. He came to this country somewhere in 1902. So he got involved in music, and when he came here, from just an ordinary candy store, they started selling Italian newspapers, magazines, books, and he got involved in publishing Neapolitan music. A lot of the Italian singers, songwriters, all stood here. I mean you could actually trace the footsteps of the Italian immigrants that came into this country from the beginning of the century to this place. There are millions of souvenir shops on Canal street. I mean, in everyone of them look the same. Something like this here is unique. It's old. This is something that probably will never be duplicated again. A lot of stuff in here probably look like a lot of old junk, but to a lot of people could be things that could be treasures.
- Rank and people.
- [Robert] So we collect voices. In here is a collection of voices. Right, Puccini is god.
- The dish is perfect. It's not broken.
- [Caped Customer] They got all kinds of statues, and, you know, old cooking ware, and it's nice to shop around. You know, it's very nostalgic for the neighborhood because lot of these stores they disappeared, and it's nice for people who have families to come in, and they have memories here. The owner here, Louie, he knows my great grandparents. They used to come and buy their pots and the bowls here and everything.
- Anybody need help I'm coming.
- [Johnny] Well people know it for years and years and years. I mean you know, people knew it in the 20s and 30s. I run into people and everybody has either been in the store or they've filmed outside the store.
- [Robert] Just like that architecture you see out front. That was the world that lived here. This is the last gasp, this is it's last gasp.
- Okay wait.
- This is an old fashion Neapolitan coffee maker.
- [Older Customer] Did they record the sound?
- Oh no, that doesn't record sound does it?
- [Woman] Oh, yeah.
- Oh yeah. All right. This is an old fashion Neapolitan coffee maker. I'm gonna explain it to you. You put coffee in here. You fill it up with coffee, and level it. Don't pack it, just level it. Put water in here. Emerse this piece into the water. Place this on top of this. And now it looks like the coffee maker's upside down, but it isn't. You place this on your stove. So now you know the water's boiling. Grab this with two hands, and turn it over quickly. And just leave it. And let the water drip down through the coffee. And it's actually a drip coffee pot. And this pot will last you forever. Pray for me--my wife 's Italian. Oh.
- [Female Customer] She's Italian. Her husband 's not.
- [Ernie] And you'll have your husband wear it, huh?
- [Female Customer] It's for him.
- [Blue Capped Woman] I don't know if he'll be very excited to wear it. Are you being filmed because of your historic value, Ernie?
- We'll we're being, we're gonna be forced out of this, out of this store. After--
- [Blue Capped Woman] No!
- [Ernie] After almost a 100 years in this neighborhood.
- [Blue Capped Woman] No!
- [Ernie] We've been about 70 years right here on this corner. We're being forced out. New owners have bought the property, and they're looking for a 25 thousand dollar rent per month. Robert Ianniello, President of Little Italy Merchants Association. The businesses were paying relatively low rents before the buildings were purchased. What I'm paying here right now, even though it's below market, I think 25 thousand dollars a month is way over.
- [Black Capped Man] It doesn't look like it's the type of product that's going to make a lot of money. And the property's probably worth millions of dollars. And kinda, so it's a miracle it's here as long as it has been. [Ernie] We actually never had a lease. It was all handshake all these years. In a way it destroys the feeling that the neighborhood had of being an Italian community. You know, I think that should be preserved. How it used to be? Once. Luigi Rossi, speaking in Italian
- [Frances] You see more and more different ethnic groups moving into this area and little by little the feeling of Little Italy is, is not same as it was maybe 30, 40 years ago.
- [Ernie] Besides Chinatown coming in. That's also forced the rent up. But, from Soho coming this way, that's really bringing the rent up. So everything has become, I guess what, chic.
- [Robert] In a world that is as clean and neat as the Soho that you know about-- that didn't exist. That somebody's fantasy. This here's what's real.
- [Blue Capped Woman] This store is a landmark. I mean look at it. [Man speaking in Italian]
- [Robert] The only thing that stays the same here in Manhattan is that everything changes very quickly. And this is probably one of the last places that hasn't. I used to know a lot of old places like this, but they're all gone now.
- [Ernie] There's nothing in Little Italy, documenting, anything of the Italian immigrants except this place. People come here today. They'll walk in here. They'll look around. Then all the sudden you can see like, as if they are getting teary eyed. They'll walk up to me and they'll say, "You know I was a young boy or girl, "my grand parents or my mom and dad "took me here." So it'd be nice to see something preserved, so that people will be able to come here and see what actually Little Italy was all about, besides pasta, spaghetti and meatballs, and cannolis. I hope within the next week we can get everything packed and moved out. That'll be one big job. Fact, I should have been halfway through it by now. But, this week will, will move in heavy. Louie, speaking Italian
- [Louie] It's a mess. It's a mess.
- [Ernie] See the strings? As a kid I would come in here and play with this. I thought it was a musical instrument, but it wasn't. You make your pasta. Roll it out. And let's say, make believe this is the dough. You would get a rolling pin and we'd roll over the dough, and it would force it right through, inside. You'd pull out the tray and there's your pasta.
- [Camera Man] Where else can you buy one of those things?
- Probably only here. My grandfather established this store. I believe he had a store uptown somewhere. A candy store. Then around 1910 they came down to Grand street and Mulberry. And they opened up this store here, as you see in the picture.
- [Johnny] This is the oldest picture, we know, of Ernesto, that's our grandfather. And this goes back, this picture, to his 18th birthday.
- [Ernie] What year was he born?
- [Johnny] I think he was born 1869. I've got the papers here. He came to America in 1900. They asked right on the register, "Where are you going?" And he said, "New York." And he said, "Pasquale" "barber on Mott street."
- [Robert] He taught himself how to read and write English, and how to read and write, Italian. So just anybody who wanted to write back home, even people who we're well educated in Italy, came over here, as older people, they couldn't read and write in English. So he wound up being the scribe, the neighborhood scribe. You wanted to send a letter back, you had to talk to him. You know, the favorite one was he'd write something and on, on, on, and there's this, there's that, and there's that, and he goes that's all. And then the woman writes back, I got this, I got that, I got that, but where's the that's all?
- [Ernie] I mean, we've taken, down in the basement, took over a 100 cartons out But it hasn't even made a dent.
- [Johnny] People used to say this is like a general store, and when I say general store, I see old cowboy movies, you know. Where they had everything, but in a way, this is like a general store for the Italian population, that you came in to buy all these things, whether it be for the kitchen, whether it be for the nativity, or for the coffee pots or music. Supposedly what got us into the music business was the pianola rolls, and the Neapolitan sheet music. Where people used to come in, the Neapolitan, little, accordion players and the mandolin players, would come in to buy the sheet music.
- [Ernie] If you look in this picture, you can see, pianola rolls, those little boxes. Okay, they used to make the pianola rolls here, and they used to distribute them to all the Italian music stores. And then from pianola rolls, and I guess they started, the, I guess the 78 records came out. And in the back I have quite of old 78s. We used to sell them but I haven't sold any of these for years. I just want to keep them. It looks a little bit, no it's not bad shape. The labels bad, but the, I really hate, I even hate to touch these things. I'm afraid of breaking something.
- [Danny] We used to go in there and buy all our records. They used to sell the 45s and the albums, and 33s. You don't see them. I tell my kids, "Go buy records." They laugh at me. But he still has the turntables in the back. When they used to try the records out, then his uncle would say "Look, see I'm playing it, "it's not scratched. "So you can't bring it back to me." And then if we went to bring a record back, his father Louie would be yelling at us.
- I bet you there's some sheets in there that Louie's father used to have and printed.
- [Ernie] There's sheets that go back 100 years.
- [Sammy] There's so much stuff in there.
- [Ernie] Let's see here's a good one. "Gilda Mignonette." When my dad was a little boy, he remembered carrying her bags to the theater. My grandfather brought it here to sing, and here's one of the songs he sang, that my grandfather published called "Cartulina 'e Napule". Which means a postcard from Naples.
- [Robert] It's for a left-handed mandolin. The whole thing is backwards.
- [Johnny] It doesn't start at the bottom-- it starts at the top.
- Here, come here. Will this camera pick this up? Can you get this here? Okay? If anybody's watching this, somewhere, tell me if I'm wrong, but do those notes look exactly right to you?
- [Johnny] I'm saying the notes should be this way, here.
- [Robert] It's backwards. He can't understand why he hasn't sold these things.
- [Ernie] All the records we sold, we used to keep a listing. We had these books with song titles. Every single song was handwritten in these books. You would look and see all the singers that sang that song. The name of the record label. Look at all the work. All done by hand. Unbelievable. Every single record. Who the hell would have time to do all that today?
- You know everybody around here is musicians, right?
- [Woman Interviewer] Now tell me more about the studio that your uncle Mario--
- [Ernie] Oh uncle Mario, yeah! It was called Rossi's Enterprise.
- [Johnny] Like Rossi Enterprise through your west Main street.
- In fact I recorded a song there.
- [Johnny] But that was the first four-track you had. This was before beginning.
- Yeah, Danny got the last copy, he gave it to Sid Bernstein. And Sid Bernstein told Danny, the demo record I made, he says, "Your friend have a day job?" And that was the end of that. And when you listen to it, it's like going back in time. I grew up listening to this here as a child growing up in this store.
- [Robert] On a nice day. A lot of people would be walking in here, and they'll listen to the music, and they'll walk around, by the time they walk out again, you know, husbands and wives are suddenly. . . . When people look at our people, it's gangsters, it's loud mouthed comics, it's more gangsters, it's bad violence movies, but this romanticism-- la dolce bella, la dolce vita-- that's what our people are really all about, and it would be nice if once in a while someone would find that out.
- [Ernie] Hi Danny! Here's the king.
- They took those signs off, those signs off. Mental bastards taking off those signs off. Good luck. I don't know when. I don't know when. I don't know when. I'll be in touch. Good luck. I'm gonna talk to you. I will keep in touch. Okay, Ernie?
- [Robert] So that's, that's the world that existed here, until, I don't know, next Tuesday.
- [Ernie] Yeah, so I'll show you another trick of the trade. Look. It's a heavy nylon rope. But look it's a two-twine nylon rope. It doesn't break, this. So what I do, I turn it into one twine, and I get twice the use out of it. Frugal. I'm a frugal packer. You know my father used to a great job of packing. He'd make, he'd just get old cardboard boxes and, and adjust the size of the box. I mean, we had a customer come in one time and said that the packing was so good that when they go home they didn't want to take them out. They left them that way. No they want me out the 31st. I'm just hoping that they will have, will have a little bit of consideration. I just want to get it done and get it over with. So far we've, moved some boxes out of the basement, but we have a hell of a lot to do.
♪ It is time to say goodnight to Napoli ♪
♪ Though it's hard for us to whisper buona sera ♪
♪ With that old moon above the Mediterranean Sea. ♪
♪ In the mornin', Signorina, we'll go walkin' ♪
♪ When the mountains help the sun come into sight, ♪
♪ And by the little jewelry shop we'll stop and linger ♪
♪ While I buy a wedding ring for your finger. ♪
♪ In the meantime let me tell you that I love you. ♪
♪ Buona sera, Signorina, kiss me good night. ♪
- [Ernie] Ah. You might see dates on some of this stuff. I've seen boxes, bills from the '40s. Yeah, store books. What's the date on here? 1958! Yeah. Store books, whatever bills, store bills, whatever, from 1958. I mean I've seen stuff here from the '40s. I don't know if I've got anything from the '30s. Oh this is gonna take time. You could see, it starts to become tedious. Yeah, you can't just throw everything in a box. Oh this thing is so dusty.
- [Robert] Quit, your father said he put it up there when he bought it from somebody, he put it up there.
- When?
- [Robert] When he was a young man.
- Robert.
- [Robert] I'm here, hold on.
- Don't breath in.
- [Robert] Let go.
- It's pewter I think.
- [Robert] Oh, it's wood! It's wood? It's wood. Check it out it's wood. And it's hollow at the back, look at that.
- [Ernie] I would never had knew it.
- [Robert] It's hollow.
- [Woman] Oh my gosh.
- [Robert] It's wood.
- [Ernie] It's away up there all these years.
- [Robert] It's wood. Somebody painted wood. Say, check out, John, for sinners in purgatory.
- [Bearded Man] He's moving this tonight, he's telling me.
- I don't know.
- You better pack all statues, Ernie. You have a lot of, you have a lot--
- Oh, you've got a.
- You better see what he did. This is nothing compared to what he did.
- You have a lot of merchandise here, that's breakable. Look at this, you've got... Oh my God, Ernie, I can't believe what you have down here. Listen to me, I'll tell, I'll tell you what I'd do with you right now, while we are on tape. So there's no, there's, part of the record. How much do you want for the basement, right now? Right now? Right now, I'll give you cash money for the whole basement. Lock the door.
- [Ernie] I have no idea. I have no--
- Take five thousand?
- [Ernie] I have no idea.
- You take five thousand?
- [Ernie] Probably that isn't worth . . .
- If they're not worth it, I lose the money. You want five thousand?
- [Ernie] Nah, I gotta keep it. I have no idea.
- [Jon] Five thousand dollars cash, right now. I'd clean it out.
- He would, he would. Yeah.
- I'd clean it out. I call landlord right now. I'll put the padlock on the door. Honey, I'll give him five thousand dollars.
- [Margaret] He does his own thing.
- [Jon] You want to sell?
- Nah, nah.
- [Jon] Okay.
- Thank you I appreciate the offer.
- I would never, I would, let's lock the door and go through every item. My god. Ernie, I wish you luck down here.
- [Margaret] He wants us out Monday, but it's going to be very impossible. Very impossible because we have. . . He said, "You waited for the last minute." So this is the calibration. You have to make a living. Now we'll see. God is good, I believe in God, and God will help us. Right or wrong? So we'll see. Can I call up and tell him, this Mr. Calabrese, we can't work under pressure like this. We might need a couple of more days. Will there be a problem?
- Hello? Yes, yeah. Ah, hah, working. Oh, I understand that, it's just that that would. . . You know, it's getting. . . In other words I got to hand you over the key on the-- You know, Monday, I can still work here to pack out. I'll do the best I can. I mean we're working here all, we'll be working all weekend, night and day. I mean... We'll have to do, we have to do. A little understanding, I mean, don't forget we're moving stuff here that hasn't been moved in over 70 years. I'll stay day and night doing it. I'll do whatever I have to do. Thank you. Bye.
- [Louie] Did he give you more time?
- [Frances] No, we have to leave tomorrow night. But I told him so we don't know what's gonna happen. We'll never make it out. We still have the backroom.
- [Louie] It's clean.
- No! We still have the backroom, the basement, half the basement we have done, the other half of the basement, and all the paintings and all the tedious stuff. He'll be here tomorrow to talk to us, and I'm frightened.
- Mess. What are we gonna do?
- The deal is I'm supposed to give him the keys.
- [Woman] Tonight or tomorrow?
- Tomorrow. I need a couple of more days.
- [Woman] It's gonna be fine.
- I know.
- [Woman] It's gonna be fine.
- I know.
- [Ernie] Looks like Naples after World War II. Unbelievable. Looks like a bomb hit here. Everything's just shattered all over. Unbelievable. I can't believe it. This is totally unbelievable. You know what it's starting to look like to me? Just like, starting to look like now a big empty space. It's unbelievable, I just can't. Just unbelievable, every little piece. Every little item. Every night when I go to bed, I keep dreaming of something. In fact, I keep dreaming of something I've forgot. And the other day, see if I can find it here. I don't know how old this is. Yeah, if you've got five cents and 10 cents, stamps. Isn't this something. In my dreams I was saying, "Gee, I remember as a kid "I had old stamp machine in the back of the store." And here it is. A box fell down the other day, and right behind that box was the stamp machine. Now, I have to find the key that went in here, but I'm sure have the key somewhere. I guess that's it. Good night.
♪ Buona sera, Signorina, kiss me goodnight. ♪
