Vault (eBook)

Anthony Marini (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
106 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9781667803401 (ISBN)

Infos

This book , The Vault , is about the rise of one of the most controversial and successful clubs in the history of New York City and the person largely responsible for taking it there. It details the change and rebuilding of the downtown club scene in New York. It's not just a story about celebrities but explores political corruption , police corruption and the mob involvement in it all. !

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This book , The Vault by Anthony Marini with Kenny Lee is an explosive account of the rise of one of the most successful and controversial clubs in New York City history , and the person responsible for making it all happen. It's not just a story about celebrities and their secret lives but goes deep into police corruption, political corruption , the evolution of the down town New York club scene and the mob involvement in it all !

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

ANTHONY MARINI

GROWING UP MARINI

As the only child of Philip Marini and Florence Riso, I grew up in a strict Catholic family in the Bronx. My father was a successful commercial artist, who specialized in portraits for the last forty years of his life. My father had a very fascinating career. How many of your dads got to constantly work with celebrities? He worked with Andy Warhol in the late 50”s and early 60”s when they co-owned a company called Art Department, located at 342 Madison Avenue in New York City.

Several years later, my father secured a contract with the famous toy company, Milton Bradley and for the next ten years designed the covers of such famous games as Toss Across, Candy Land and Mouse Trap. (Dad, you could’ve really used a Lizzie Grubman and gotten us some nice royalty checks). He then began drawing romance novel covers, specifically the Harlequin and Silhouette additions. My father also painted portraits on the side and his portfolio included celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Wayne as well as many other rich and powerful people in the private sector.

My mother was the quintessential homemaker, taking care of the household and spending all of my father’s money. (She literally did. Mom, I love you. May you rest in peace). She was a wonderful woman, and as a child I spent all my time with her. She was responsible for keeping me in school and out of trouble.

I attended strict Catholic schools my entire life starting with Saint Mary’s Parochial School in the Bronx and later attending Mount Saint Michael High School in Mt. Vernon. At that time, Mt. Vernon seemed to be a haven to many up and coming artists: Sean Combs, Run DMC”s Darryl McDaniel, Heavy D and Denzel Washington, just to name a few. I enjoyed my neighborhood and my friends and was completely unaware of the special talent I was living among.

COLLEGE AND BEYOND

Following high school, I attended Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York and graduated with a degree in marketing and finance. I accepted a position with an upscale advertising agency in the city shortly after graduating. In my first two weeks, I realized that the corporate world was not where I belonged. In my mind, my parents didn’t spend 75 grand so that I could be a glorified copy and coffee delivery boy. I felt suffocated and did not want to conform. I hated the politics and didn’t want to “play the game.” I wanted to be in charge of my day and answer to myself.

THE ADULT ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY

After several years of working as a manager in the massage industry, my partner and I decided to open up a high-end escort service. At the time, this was a great industry to make a lot of money quickly. Unfortunately, in the escort business drugs are a major factor with both the girls and the clients. We would always explain to the girls that the two most important things to remember when going on a date were to never go alone and never under the influence of any drugs or alcohol.

One girl, Amber, did not take our advice and ended up in a life threatening situation one evening. She was supposed to show up to a loft on East 23rd Street with another girl to entertain a group of firemen at a bachelor party. She showed up alone, extremely high and immediately demanded her fee up front, which was fine with the firemen. After they handed her the money she said she was going to leave and would return in an hour. I imagine that “What have you been smoking?” would’ve been any guy’s response, and the firemen would’ve agreed. They informed her she could leave the money and go, or keep the money and remain to do the show. Obviously, this was not going to work for her and the voice in her head that was screaming at her to go score some drugs.

Things got ugly really quickly. She drew a pocketknife out of her bag and pointed it at the firemen. I have no idea how she thought she was going to take on twenty firemen, but she lunged at one of them with the knife. They bent down, picked her up and tossed her into a black curtain hanging on the wall. Naturally enough, the curtain was covering the 2nd story window and they threw her right out of it. Amber ended up in the alley with a fractured skull, a broken arm and a punctured spleen. Unfortunately for our company, the incident became very public and consequently drew a tremendous amount of negative attention to our business. After being questioned and scrutinized by local vice and FBI, we decided it was in our best interest to close up shop.

I went to work for a man by the name of John Wilson, who was running an adult lounge inside the famous Show World Club on the corner of 42nd and 8th Avenue. Show World consisted of five floors of adult activity with everything from bookstores and adult toyshops, to fantasy booths and live sex shows. My job was to manage the lounge, which consisted of ten fantasy booths and three revolving stages of girls dancing and entertaining the patrons.

One of my employees was a young girl by the name of Tiffany Bresciani. Tiffany was a petite, 22 year old girl from Metairie, Louisiana who came to New York City with dreams of acting and dancing. Instead, she quickly fell into a life of degradation, drugs and prostitution. She became hooked on heroin, resorting to performing in strips clubs and doing private shows, most often in cars, to support her habit.

At the time there was a man by the name of Joel David Rifkin from East Meadow, New York who was creating havoc in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Riftin, known as New York’s most prolific serial killer, was on a murder spree and his victims of choice were street prostitutes. He would cruise lower Manhattan’s major “street walker” areas, such as lower Houston Street, Allen Street and downtown Lexington Avenue, and take a girl into his van with the intention of having sex with her for money. Like a scene out of Dexter, Riftin would then kill, dismember her and dump the parts. Between 1989 and 1993 her murdered seventeen women; most of them were drug addicted prostitutes.

On June 24th, 1993, Tiffany became this sicko’s 17th and final victim. She was on Allen Street trying to turn tricks for drug money when she got into Joel Rifkin’s van in the predawn hours of the morning. The bastard drove her to the parking lot of the New York Post, where he strangled her around 5:30 a.m. After murdering her, he drove towards his mother’s home in East Meadow where he was living at the time. Reportedly, he left the body in the garage for three days while he worked on his pickup truck. The powers that be finally had enough of him and he was arrested on his way to dump the body somewhere near Melville’s Republic Airport, located about 15 miles north of his home. His reign of terror was ended when police him over due to a missing rear license plate on the truck.

At this time, the Feds were leaning hard on all adult businesses in Manhattan. And because of Show World’s link to Tiffany and the negative press her story had been receiving, we took a really good beating. So once again, I decided it was time for a change.

A COMIC

I had always been interested in comedy and entertainment and would watch hours upon hours of stand-up, live and on film. I figured this could be my new profession; I would be a stand-up comic. How difficult could it be? The overhead was low and there were dozens of venues in the city to work. However, I quickly learned that it was not as easy as it looked.

I began going to open mic nights at all the major clubs in the city, such as The Improvisation; Catch a Rising Star and The Comic Strip. Hundreds of people would show up each night and enter a fishbowl raffle, in hopes of winning three to five minutes of stage time. If you were lucky enough to get up on the stage, you would find that it was almost impossible to make the audience laugh because of the negative assumption that it was amateur night and everyone probably sucked.

I decided to sign up for a couple of improvisation and technique classes and studied with Martin Freedberg, who was one of the founders of the famous 2nd City Comedy Troup in Chicago. After about a year I began to come around; I had about ten minutes of somewhat entertaining material to perform with. Armed with the ten minutes and a renewed sense of confidence, I then proceeded to entertain only the few, lucky chosen ones that saw my set. I realized that my fat jokes were competing against thousands of other Belzer and Seinfeld wannabe’s and I was going nowhere fast. I needed an edge and I did what any successful businessman would do, I bought my way in. I decided to purchase my own comedy club and showcase MYSELF on a nightly basis. The Manhattan price range was way out of my league, so I headed north and ended up buying into the TryOut Comedy Club in upper Westchester.

At the time there were only three successful clubs in Westchester County; the largest one being Shooting Stars, which was owned by Michael Clavi and members of the Gambino crime family. Michael Clavi was the Yonkers” City Planning Commissioner, who decided to steal 10 million dollars from the state education and construction fund. The judge decided to reward him with a prison term that was one year per million that he stole. Shooting Stars...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.12.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-13: 9781667803401 / 9781667803401