by JOSEPH BERGER, The New York Times, April 3, 2013
Delroy Sampson breeds his own birds
Photo: Todd Heisler for The new York Times
Source: www.nytimes.com
When New Yorkers consider the subculture of people who raise pigeons on rooftops, many are likely to think of Terry Malloy, the longshoreman in the 1954 film “On the Waterfront” played by Marlon Brando. He was a classic rooftop breeder, rough-hewed, working-class and white ethnic to his toes.
But that image has long needed some alteration because in the dwindling world of rooftop fliers, as they are known, the men are as likely to be working-class blacks or Hispanics. Many were introduced to the hobby by Irish, Italian and other fliers of European descent, an unlikely camaraderie that evolved in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Canarsie and Ozone Park that were undergoing gradual racial shifts.
Ike Jones, an African-American who manages one of the last pigeon supply stores for its Italian-Jewish owner, Joey Scott, said he learned much of the craft when he was about 12. He then became a helper to George Coppola, an Italian rooftop breeder in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“I was amazed at his coop,” said Mr. Jones, now 65. “He had electricity and running water, and I only had a box made of scrap wood. On Sunday his wife would cook spaghetti and meatballs and I would eat with them because I was always there.”
A new book, “The Global Pigeon,” by Colin Jerolmack, an assistant professor of sociology at New York University who spent three years hanging out with pigeon fliers, makes the point that pigeon breeding brought Italian-Americans and other ethnic whites “into contact with people of a different ethnic and age cohort with whom they were not voluntarily associating before.” […]
The Global Pigeon, by Colin Jerolmack