Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at Prohibition-era bootleggers on Long Island and the rapper who is a great-grandson of a lawyer who defended them.
What if a crooked state trooper hadn’t had to report the loss of his uniform, his badge and his gun — filched by Prohibition-era bootleggers who beat him up? In that case, a Brooklyn lawyer named Rufus Perry Jr. probably would not have been hired by a rival bootlegging crew that was in league with the trooper. And the rapper Freedom Williams wouldn’t have had a very personal reason to go to an exhibition about Prohibition-era rumrunning on Long Island, 100 miles from where Perry lived in Crown Heights and where Williams lives now. Perry, Williams’s great-grandfather, is one of nine people highlighted in the Montauk Historical Society’s exhibition “How Dry We Weren’t.” It makes the case that Montauk, before the surfers and the expensive houses in the dunes and the status-conscious New Yorkers, was rife with rumrunning. Williams, who was heard on 1990s hits like “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” and “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll),” said it was ironic that he had researched and written a movie about rumrunning, mostly in the Caribbean. He said he had not known about bootlegging on Long Island — or about Perry’s involvement with the Montaukers he represented in court. “Why did they hire a guy like Rufus, a Black attorney from Brooklyn?” he said, standing next to a life-size cutout of Perry. “He’d been the first Black assistant district attorney, so he was well-known, so maybe it wasn’t as far-fetched as we want to believe,” Williams said. “‘Let’s call Rufus.’ You know how in ‘The Godfather,’ when they said ‘who do we give the case to,’ Vito says, ‘Give it to Clemenza, we don’t want anybody thinking we’re murderers.’ Maybe almost in that same way, it was ‘give it to Rufus.’ “There has to be a reason. That’s one of those things you never get the answer to because it’s a closed-door conversation. You’re never going to see that in the history books.” Or in newspapers from the 1920s that the historical society combed through. “We still don’t know how he got involved in the case,” said Ariana Garcia-Cassani, the society’s historian. Mia Certic, the group’s executive director, said that Montauk was a “prime” location for bootleggers because it was remote. Bootlegging brought prosperity to fishermen who had been “living a hardscrabble life.” “This was a gift,” she said, “a way for them to go out only three miles, get the liquor, leave it on the beach for someone else to pick up or sometimes go straight to a dock, where there were cars waiting.” The illicit liquor trade became “so prevalent that The East Hampton Star wrote an article complaining that fish dealers in New York said no fish were coming out of Montauk.” Sometimes violence flared up: From the pews in church during one Christmas Eve Mass, “you could hear the gunfire” at the dock, she said. “Someone had tipped off the authorities that there was a batch of Champagne being unloaded.” Somehow no one was injured. Sometimes there were raids. Legend has it that Jimmy Walker, the party-loving mayor of New York City, was in a club with a speakeasy when a call came about a raid that was coming. Walker took off his jacket and draped a towel over one arm, hoping to be mistaken for a waiter. He was. Bootleggers perfected tricks to throw the authorities off the trail. The exhibition has a pair of “cow shoes,” shoes with soles that looked like hooves. Bootleggers wore them to thwart agents who assumed that following footprints in the sand — human footprints — would lead to where illicit liquor was stashed. The case that Perry took on began with William Delmage, the state trooper whom Perry’s clients had bribed. The problem was that Delmage couldn’t hush up what happened when they drove to a house where $250,000 worth of liquor was stashed (more than $4.5 million now). He couldn’t even go to work afterward: The men from the house, rivals of Perry’s client’s, made off with his uniform, his badge and his gun after roughing him up. He had to tell his bosses, and they collared Perry’s clients. Delmage became a witness for the prosecution. Perry didn’t win the case, but as the display notes, “he managed the next best thing,” a hung jury. His clients were never retried, as far as the historical society can tell. The Montauker who lived in the house with the liquor was fined $500 (just over $9,200 today) for storing the stash. He paid in cash, peeling bills from a wad he had been carrying, “with a smile on his face,” according to the exhibition guidebook. “He knew there was plenty more money — and booze — to be had in Montauk, and $500 was but a slap on the wrist.” WEATHER Clear skies are ahead! Expect a sunny day with temperatures nearing 86. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 72. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended today (Feast of the Assumption). The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. City Council approves plan for 9,500 homes in Midtown Manhattan
The City Council approved a rezoning plan that would allow some 9,500 new homes in the Midtown and Midtown South areas of Manhattan, where decades-old zoning rules have blocked new residential construction. The goal, city officials said, was to address the city’s housing shortage and revitalize areas that have been slow to recover from the pandemic. The plan targets about 42 blocks that will largely be rezoned from manufacturing to residential. About 2,800 of the new homes will be designated as affordable to middle- and low-income New Yorkers. The vote came eight months after Mayor Eric Adams pushed through a sweeping plan known as City of Yes to allow more development citywide. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who are running against Adams as he seeks a second term, have both pressed to make much more construction possible. The city is also encouraging the conversion of old office buildings to housing. Adams said after the Council vote on Thursday that the new zoning would “create a more affordable Manhattan where families can live, work and play.” Councilman Keith Powers, a Democrat who supported the rezoning and whose district includes some of the targeted areas, called the plan “one of the biggest leaps forward in creating new housing in Manhattan in quite some time.” METROPOLITAN DIARY Flying treats
Dear Diary: I, my brother and his girlfriend were visiting New York City from Los Angeles in late May. After spending hours on our feet at the Museum of the City of New York at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street, we hopped on an M1 bus headed down Fifth Avenue. The bus was fairly empty, and we sat up front near the driver. Traffic was heavy, and the bus crawled along. Eventually, we pulled alongside an ice cream truck. Its open window was facing the door of the bus. To our delight, the bus driver opened the door and into his hands flew a wrapped ice cream bar. But that was only the beginning. Inching along, we sidled up to the same ice cream truck again. Lo and behold, another ice cream came flying into the driver’s hands. Laughter ensued. But that still is not the end of the story. A little farther on, our driver pulled up alongside another city bus. A female driver with a smile on her face opened her window to say hello to our driver. After a few friendly words, one of the ice cream bars flew into her hands. She took a bite and gave us a wink. We laughed all the way to 57th Street. — Ilse Gordon Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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