Southside Gym - 348 S Sentinel St
A sweaty smelling place frequented by amateur boxers and a handful of semi-professionals. The gym is owned by Luca Maruzzo, who's also the trainer. For $30 he'll train a male individual in the subtle art of the sweet science for six months. Over that time, the student boxer has a fair chance to get a decorative broken nose.
Maruzzo refuses to train females. In this place they're just cause for whistles.
Regularly found here is Buster, Maruzzo's tough as nails Boxer dog. Buster is gruff, rude, easily irritated, and generally found frowning about something. He dislikes the Rocks intensely, considering them "cheap punks" who don't show Luca proper respect and need "a good pop in the mouth".
The Rocks: made up of Italian-descent teenagers and named after their traditional weapon, they often congregate around the Southside Gym, for the moment regarded by both local gangs as neutral territory. The Rocks like to tease Buster and act like they don't fear the dog. Secretly they are all scared to death of him and always make sure to only tease him when he is on a leash.
The Rocks were once under the wing of Joe Potrello but now operate without a patron. The Rocks hate the 'Finns as Irish interlopers, ironically unaware that two distinct waves of Irish immigrants have passed through New Jerusalem already, the first more than eighty years before, long before Italian immigration.
They steal a little and cheat a little, but there's not much to buy in New Jerusalem, and no fence will trust kids. The Rocks meet in the afternoons, sauntering and swaggering as they go nowhere.
Amabile Uberti is a teenager and one of the Rocks, the gang of Italian-descent teenagers who cause a bit of trouble. Amabile has a bit of cachet with the other members of the Rocks, having been born in Italy before WWII and having come over when he was already a teenager after the end of the War in 1953. Amabile tells them stories of the things he used to do in Italy, claiming that he had connections to the powerful gangs. This is all a lie, though many of the stories Amabile tells are true; he simply heard or read them when he was in Italy.
The Irish gang feels safer around French Hill, while the Italians favor the lower Southside east of Garrison and south of Pitman.
Type
Gym
Parent Location
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