I saw finally "Jersey Boys, the spirited homage to one of the great groups of the 1960s, the Four Seasons.
This Jersey Boy was not moved to tears. It was full of "But it's for the neighborhood, Frankie, choo know what I mean?" My glowing memory of Hackensack is about going to court over a trumped-up marijuana charge as a kid. My poor mother. They dropped the case, which really was just harassment. Truth is, they happened to catch me on a night I really wasn't guilty. I was always guilty of harboring insurgent political ideas. There were too many right-wingers in my part of New Jersey. I couldn't wait to get free of it, and cross the river to New York, where I went to college -- for about ten minutes.
Though I moved to San Francisco as a teenager, I will never be a native San Franciscan. I will always be a Jersey Boy.
Still, Jersey Boys, which is a slick, high-energy show replete with Manasquan muscle music, doesn't depict the New Jersey I knew as a kid. Well, only peripherally. Frankie Valli and the Boys from Bergenfield lived a few towns and worlds away from my semi-rusticated childhood. There were farms in my little town. The farms are now. Now it looks like Bel-Air, and is just as pricey. I never talked in the dialect of hoodlum-speak, and I don't know anybody from New Jersey who does. As for the "mobbed-up" experience alluded to in the show, my oldest brother did date a lower-echelon Mafia Princess for a long time. How he got out of that alive, I'll never know. Actually, I do know. Over the years, I had wondered how brother Paul could mistreat Linda so badly and not be punished ruthlessly by her dad and brother, who were in the construction business. Or the deconstruction business. I was just a kid but even then I knew they were tough customers.
The Sopranos are too close to home, my former home. I have never seen The Sopranos. Why? I saw it as a kid.
There are great things about New Jersey. John Pizzarrelli, the great jazz guitarist/singer, played here the other night. He's a Jersey Boy. His wife, Jessica Molasky, a Connecticut girl, sang with him. John's Jersey Boy Brother, Martin, played the bass. It's family. Choo know what I mean? Pizzarelli's biggest hit is I Like New Jersey the Best. It's clever, it's witty. Dorothy Parker, the doyenne of rapier wit, was born in New Jersey. She never forgave her parents for it. And New Jersey's Thomas Edison could have been there to record her kvetching on one of his wax cylinders. She would never forgive me for saying that.
Yes, Jersey Boys takes me back, in an unsentimental way. (I'm more like the Bob Gaudio character, the Four Seasons' songwriter) in the show. He tells the audience: "I don't give a f--- about THE neighborhood. I didn't have a neighborhood. My neighborhood is where I am now.")
San Francisco is where I am now. It took some time but I, like most East Coast transplants, went through New York withdrawal. I was guilty of the obligatory complaints, "The pizza isn't as good here, where can you get a decent bagel in this town?" Whine, whine, whine. Other than that, I could not complain about anything in this once-sparkling, affordable city. San Francisco will be all right if the givers outnumber the takers. It's still a great town. And I'm loyal to my neighborhood, Nob Hill, even if it's a slum. Yes, that's a joke. I wouldn't say nothin' bad about the neighborhood. It's my neighborhood. I gotta stay loyal. Choo know what I mean?
Sure ya do. Bruce Bellingham has lived in San Francisco for 38 years, and is still getting the hang of the local lingo. Torment him at bellsf@mac.com
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