Two new Block Sections have been added to Mean Streets that guarantee new scenarios for your Gangster/P.I. RPGs. Two Irish businesses, Honest Paddy's Used Cars and O'Leary's Hardware Store, are now joined by another historical Chicago landmark, Colosimo's Italian Restaurant. On the opposite side of this block are Domenico's Italian Butcher Shop and Giacomo's Italian Bakery.
But of special interest is the space rented out above O'Leary's and Domenico's for the "Sons of Erin Social Club" and "Sons of Italy Fraternal Society," respectively. If you can't imagine the rivalry between these two fronts for their respective criminal pursuits, you've at least never seen Miller's Crossing!
"Big Jim" Colosimo was an old Blackhander and head of Chicago's South Side Mob, but was too satisfied with his successful restaurant and recent marriage to a lovely young woman to want to bother with bootlegging after the recent passage of the Volstead Act. But Johnny Torrio and his nephew, Al Capone, saw the fortune to be made, and "Big Jim" was assassinated in the restaurant's lobby in 1920. The rest, as they say, became bloody history in Chicago.
Closely modeled on the original building, Colosimo's is another authentic piece of Gangland architecture to become part of Mean Streets.
While themselves fictional, the other businesses on Block Section #36 are representative of those to be found in Little Italys everywhere. Honest, hardworking emigrant families offering services to their community, but as easily being prey to extortion and more by the criminal element who came also.
Going back to the Irish Block #35, "Honest Paddy's Used Cars" is a business providing inexpensive "wheels" for anyone with the price of a bargain - for any purpose.
Like all other Mean Streets Block Sections, each has businesses or services which can suggest any number of scenarios, including Pulp Fiction and Lovecraftian Horror besides (naturally enough!) TVAG's own We Only Kill Each Other.
Please follow this link to visit our page, and use the pull-down menus to visit each of these, and so many other, Block Sections, to see more photos of these newest additions.