[BrooklynGOP]

Those "Russian" mafiosi are really nasty, I hear. Growing up in Odessa must have screwed many people up.

Has nothing to do with Odessa. Most of these criminals are not from Odessa, either. Just because brighton is called little Odessa, doen't mean that everyone who lives there is from Odessa, or that everyone who is a criminal lives on brighton beach. Nathan wasn't from Odessa. Growing up in Odessa has nothing to do with being a criminal or not. Check crime statistics of the soviet Odessa and Moscow, or any other major city.

[BrooklynGOP]

I remember an exchange with a poster who took grace offence when I used the word "ghetto" when refering to the place where Jewish "refugees" live in San Francisco. People have no idea, LOL!

*shrug*
Ghetto is from yiddish.. but it doesn't just apply to Jews.. Brooklyn is ghetto.. You have blacks living together, latinos in a different section... Italians/Jews get a long quite well.

[madrussian]

You mean the fame that Odessa had for being a gangster city, was undeserved? Or that it was cleaned up as of the late Soviet period?

Yeah, I'd like to see the stats, but whenever a story breaks out about "Russian" mafia, most of the time there are Jewish names. But they could be not from Odessa, LOL!