Only in New York (Part 1)

In the unforgettable song “New York, New York,” made famous by Frank Sinatra, there is a line that goes: “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere...”

Having grown up on the sometimes-tough streets of the “Big Apple,” I have always subscribed to that belief.

My neighborhood, Corona Queens, was considered a working-class, blue-collar, Italian section of New York City. This area of Queens was also the home of the legendary Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong; the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair; and, to this day, the home of the amazin’ New York Mets baseball team.

Coming from a poor family, I couldn’t afford to pay to see the Mets play ball back in the ’60s, so I quickly learned how to sneak into Shea Stadium for free. (Some people would say the Mets were so bad back then they should have paid us to see them).
My companions were mostly Italian kids, but I do remember “Teddy,” who was Chinese, and later there was a Spanish kid named “Omar.” But Omar doesn’t have to sneak into Shea Stadium anymore. Today Omar Minaya is the General Manager of the New York Mets. (And neither do I; I’m a season ticket holder.)

As a teenager, I worked in a neighborhood A&P that was routinely held up, sometimes at gunpoint. I had my nose broken once when trying to prevent a robber from stealing cash out of my register.

To supplement my income, I worked Sunday afternoons in my brother-in-law’s bar, whose clientele would make the characters on The Sopranos look like choirboys.

I felt somewhat protected by the police; however, this was just prior to the Knapp Commission, and paying “tribute” to the NYPD would, shall we say, earn us some favors and preferential treatment from New York’s Finest. The Knapp Commission in 1970 ended this practice, when police officer Frank Serpico reported to appropriate officials evidence of widespread police corruption. An award-winning movie called Serpico, starring Al Pacino, was later made about this era.

I attended college at CCNY up in Harlem; drove a yellow cab in NYC for a while, picking up drunks, “working girls” and kooks. But when I was trying to sneak into the cab line at Kennedy Airport and another cabbie started pounding his fist on my hood, I knew it was time to quit and find a real job. Besides, I never could figure out how to cross Central Park from the West side to the East.

I got into the tape industry in 1975 and, as a salesman, worked my way up and became a Regional Manager for Maxell in 1981, covering about 26 states from Maine to Montana.

The “neighborhood” was now finally behind me. Suit and tie, company car, business cards, and expense account—Corona Queens, schemes, scams, hacking, hookers, hoodlums and hi-jinks were, thankfully, all a distant memory.

Or so I thought.

As Michael Corleone, also played by Al Pacino, said in The Godfather, Part 3: “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in!”

Back in October 1981, my very first sales call as Maxell’s Regional Manager was to what appeared to be a nondescript converted supermarket on Coney Island Ave in Brooklyn. There were no signs on the walls, as I remember it, and security seemed pretty intense. Today this would seem fairly routine, but 25 years ago, it was quite odd.

The customer we were seeing was the #1 Maxell account for blank tape in my 26-state territory. It went by the name of Ultra Linear, but everyone in the New York metro area—and likely throughout the US—knew it by a different name.

Before Circuit City or even Best Buy dominated the consumer electronics market in the US, there was a New York retailer named Crazy Eddie.

The Crazy Eddie chain of consumer electronics stores began in the early 1970s, with a modest single store located on Kings Highway in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn.

Within a fairly short time, the Crazy Eddie chain grew into the largest consumer electronics chain in the New York area, with 43 stores covering four states, and sales exceeding 300 million dollars.

The chain made great strides into the music business as well, competing against established record store giants like Sam Goody, J&R Music World and Tower Records. Appropriately named the Crazy Eddie Record and Tape Asylum, the chain also had a significant impact on the metro NY music business.

Most people knew of the chain through the screaming television campaign, which proclaimed that Crazy Eddie’s prices were so low they were insane. The pitchman, though, was only an actor named Jerry Carroll.

Carroll, usually dressed in a turtleneck and sport jacket, delivered his lines rapid-fire, proclaiming in a loud voice that “Crazy Eddie will beat any price you find,” and always concluded his rant with the declaration that “Crazy Eddie’s prices are in-saaane!” Sometimes Carroll would dress in a Santa hat, announcing the Crazy Eddie “July” Christmas sale. (click here).

The colorful Jerry Carroll became so identified with the company that many viewers assumed that he was actually Crazy Eddie himself.

Not even close!

The real Crazy Eddie was an interesting character with an enormous ego, by the name of Eddie Antar.

Antar, nicknamed “Kelso” after the racehorse, was “quick on his feet” and about as “crazy as a fox.”

He was a sales and marketing genius who started with a small store at the age of 21 and built the Crazy Eddie chain through a brilliant advertising campaign and extremely well-run and well-stocked stores, usually managed by one of his relatives.

Eddie was the company’s President and Chairman of the Board, and maintained an active role in every facet of the operation.
Antar was a feisty 5’8” body builder, often thought of as a Jewish version of the character “The Fonz” (Henry Winkler), from the comedy series Happy Days.

With an ego as big as the Brooklyn Bridge, the brash, tough, work-hard, play-hard Eddie, though, would one day meet his match on the hard streets of New York City.

Stabbed several times by two men outside a NY disco in 1977, Eddie should have added “Morris the Cat” to his nicknames. He needed all nine lives as well as six operations to recover from this attack. From then on, Eddie decided to be more obscure; this, as I understood it, was the reason he opted for the nondescript converted supermarket. After the stabbing he became, understandably, very security-conscious. I recall he would prefer to ride in the front seat rather than the back of his chauffeur-driven limo so as not to attract attention to himself.

When making a sales call to Crazy Eddie’s, you usually had to wait two hours in a waiting room about the size of a closet.

Once inside, you’d go through a series of offices, first meeting his brother, Mitch; perhaps his father, Sam; and the only key person not related by blood: his buyer, Dave Pardo.

If you needed to pick up a check for past-due invoices—which was quite common—you then waited about another hour to see “Uncle Eddie.” If it was still daylight out and you were important or lucky enough, you would get to see the self-described king of New York, Crazy Eddie Antar himself.

Only you had to tilt your head sideways, because 34-year-old Eddie, a fitness enthusiast, would likely be conducting the meeting flat on his back, bench-pressing over 200 lbs in his office/gym.

The security-conscious (some might say obsessed) Eddie would usually conduct these meetings with a rather stern, menacing-looking bodyguard—albeit with a very sweet name—right alongside.

Literally!

Just try saying “no” to the intimidating Eddie, sweating, pumping iron with his German Shepherd (inappropriately named “Sugar”) staring menacingly and growling whenever you moved. Sugar was not very sweet, however. Eddie had trained the dog himself, wrapping his arm in a towel and teaching it to attack.

Added to all that, the Crazy Eddie Chain was the premier consumer electronics retailer and my biggest account, so, needless to say, Eddie got whatever terms he deemed appropriate.

By the mid-1980s, the genius, brash Antar had almost single-handedly built Crazy Eddie into one of the largest and most successful consumer electronics chains, not only in the New York area but in the US as well. So now it was time to “share the wealth” and take the company public.

However, Crazy Eddie was about to earn one more nickname: “Greedy Eddie.”

Despite all the wealth, the fame, the fortune, in one of the biggest scams of the 1980s, Eddie swindled investors out of 146 million dollars, skimmed off millions in cash, changed his name, left the US and became a fugitive from justice.

“Kelso” was now on the run, but the stubborn mule from Brooklyn, NY, who made jackasses out of investors and vendors too, would eventually be corralled and locked away in 9’ x 12’ “stall"…

…A “stall” behind iron bars, that is.

(To be continued)