Score another victory for the 11th Streeters.
When we were kids on 11th St. in Brooklyn, we used to play rival blocks in stickball, a quarter a man for the losers, until we won bragging rights for the whole neighborhood. Which in those days of the 1960s was the whole world.
Bill de Blasio led the 11th Streeters to victory on Tuesday night, earning him bragging rights for the whole city. Now he must lead his team to reunite every block of this divided town of haves and have-nots into a one big neighborhood.
It’s an effort that starts, where he lives, in the outer boroughs.
On Election Nights back in the 1960s, we used to light a huge bonfire on 12th St. just below Seventh Ave., continuing a tradition that started in the 19th century as a way of letting the political machine bosses in Manhattan know that Brooklyn had voted.
On Tuesday night, Manhattan needed to light a bonfire to inform Brooklyn and the other three boroughs that its ballots were in. Because the city had moved from an elite Manhattan-centric town to a boroughs-centric city of workers and immigrants and second chances.
De Blasio started the unification of New York by winning nearly 75% of the vote.
He has the right 718 area-code street cred for that task because he’s a neighborhood guy. I got that feeling last week when I strolled through his Brooklyn neighborhood, my old stomping ground, and felt a sense of local pride. Roberto Lopez was sweeping the sidewalk in front of his El Milagro arts and crafts store on 11th St. and Seventh Ave., a de Blasio campaign poster in the window.
“I don’t know a lot about politics,” said Lopez. “But the de Blasios are just really good people. Bill always says hello. His wife shops for jewelry and arts and crafts, mostly from India. His kids seem nice. The kind of family you can trust, know what I mean?”
That’s straight from the sidewalks of New York.
“I’ve been watching Bill de Blasio’s kids grow since they were little,” said Joe Zito , who runs Smiling Pizzeria on the corner of Ninth St. and Seventh Ave. “Dante was a cute little kid. Smart. He’s grown up so big and strong now. Amazing. Maybe our pizza helped him grow.”
Zito laughed a little nervously on Election Night, talking about the de Blasios, his regular neighborhood customers, who would be the First Family of New York when the polls closed.
“Bill came in recently and ate a meatball parm hero,” Zito said. “They’re just down-to-earth Brooklyn people from the neighborhood.”
That’s de Blasio’s appeal.
That’s what delivered him an overwhelming mandate like a large pie with everything on it. The family guy who eats in the corner pizza joint became a political hero by being that ordinary guy with extraordinary political skills and a clear vision of equality. By being the neighborhood guy whose public-school kids played Little League for the 78th Precinct in Prospect Park. By being the guy who wants every New Yorker, from the Central Park West penthouses to the Far Rockaway projects, to get the same chance in this city of glaring double standards.
“We are not going to let our community hospitals be turned into million-dollar condos,” de Blasio promised in his victory speech in a Brooklyn armory just 3 miles from Long Island College Hospital, where he and his wife had been handcuffed trying to save the vital community institution from an indifferent board and salivating real estate buzzards.
In Brooklyn, in neighborhoods across the big-hearted city, that’s called walking the walk instead of just talking the cheap politician’s talk. When I saw that image of de Blasio in cuffs in July, I knew Christine Quinn was in critical condition and the others candidates were DOA.
De Blasio’s 11th Streeters had won an important Brooklyn game. On Tuesday, they won the whole city.
“Of course I voted for Bill de Blasio,” said a smiling Joe Zito of Smiling Pizzeria. “He’s a good customer and a regular neighborhood guy.”
