The Burden - Bonus Episode | Coney Island of the Mind. Louie’s Mind

Published Jul 3, 2024, 7:00 AM

Louie Scarcella takes Steve to Coney Island where he moonlighted as a carnival barker and fixed games of chance. 

The Burden is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Co. No1

Hi, Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden, I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood, which reached number one on the charts when it debuted half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled to share this story of a man who fought the law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dax Devlin Ross and I'm Steve Fishman. Welcome to another special bonus episode of the Burden. Please keep those phone calls coming, we really enjoy them. Tell us what you think of this episode, in particular, have we gone too far? Not far enough? One? Eight three three eight Burden.

That's the number, and remember, subscribers get more bonus episodes and wait for it, add free just two ninety nine a month. Oh, it's so so worth it.

Now onto the episode.

There are many surprising things about Detective Louis Garcela, and I'm not talking about his questionable police work. But for me, probably the most surprising thing is this. At the same time that Louis Garcela was a first grade detective, the highest rank in Ny detective can achieve, he was also a carnie that's right, a barker and at Coney Island no less, the famous amusement park at the southern tip of Brooklyn.

Hey, come on in, come on over every game and winter, every winter. Lodge saw he's probably just got to be in it to win the Derby horse Race for first place.

Who's it going to be? Who's going to be the one?

And then there's for me this additional surprise. One day, Louis explained to us how he went about fixing games.

But first we're going to take a trip with Louie to Coney Island, the Coney Island where he grew up, the Coney Island he loved and that loved him back.

Louis never lay Louise like usually there with his thermist and his bagged lunch.

And they were at the right place.

It's at the ticket birth right. My producer and I are at the get booth for the stadium where the Cyclones play. Oh, Louis Scarcela, We're here, Are you here? Oh? Two minutes. I'm really looking forward to him in his native habitat here.

How are you good?

Good?

Here?

You are at home?

Yeah, you can't get more home than this one.

When my dad and my granddad or I would drive here, we come off the Bell Parkway and we come over the Cropsy Avenue Bridge then Canal, and my heart would start pound and I would get excited. And I'm sixty eight years old, and the same thing happened today. Every time I come, I just get excited.

When Louis Scarcela was a kid, Coney Island was in its prime, It's heyday. The amusement park featured the famous Cyclone roller coaster. It made such sharp sudden turns that passengers lost their wigs and their false teeth. There was Raven Hall, the largest salt water hole in the country, and then there were miles of wooden water wall under which lost kids waited to be retrieved by their parents. And the whole of it spilled into the White Sand Beach where tens of thousands of people a kid you not came to escape the heat.

Peep people people mostly minorities from the northern part of brook and h wanna come down to Coney Island to the water and on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday night in the summertime, it was all to all humanity. It was unbelievable.

For Louis. As we start walking, it seems like every place triggers a memory.

Wow.

Shatskins was right here on the corner of fifteenth Street where the Thunderbolt is, and it was one of the greatest kindishs in the world. Shatskins kindishes. They were round and they had skin on them with pepper on the inside, and for five cents they used to give you two broken ones. And my grandmother and I used to sit on the street right here, on this curb, right here, eating them, waiting for my grandfather to pick us up to take us home. We used to collect bottles because it was fifteen cents to take the train and it was two cents a bottle, and if we got twenty or thirty bottles.

We ate very good. We ate very good. We were like the streeting kids.

Well yeah, I guess. I mean it's Coney Island. You can't get the more street than that.

Louis started going to Coney Island as a kid back in the nineteen.

Fifties, when I was five and six years old running around Coney Island. I was addicted to the Bumper Cause. And when people would tell me what I would want to be when I grow up, I tell them a bumper card jumper. A bumper card jumper was a worker in the Bumper Cause.

By the eighties, he was a detective and a bumper car jumper at the El Dorado, the bumper car rink.

And that's another memory.

Mary Hood was an old burlesque queen at that time.

She was in her nineties and she.

Was the ticket taker of the El Dorado for the Bumper Cause. And we used to drink many nights at Eddie de Turk's bar around the corner. It was a sidewalk bar. They had a big picture of her on the wall.

She was one day, must have still been. In the eighties, Louis was called to Coney Island for a security job, as he was told they needed security, and after all, at the time, Coney Island's games were printing money.

Over a holiday weekend. The games took in so much money so fast that the carnies didn't have time to put the cash in the register. They tossed bills into bags on the floor.

They hired me to go to Coney Island for security. And I worked for a derby horse race game. And I was watching the guy on the microphone and I said, this is this is this is really something, this is this is this is Coney Island. I got the microphone. I got on the microphone.

As we know, Louie loved being the center of attention, but also he was good at it. He was good at joking with the crowd, making them feel welcome. Remember, Louis did love people. He developed that spiel.

Who's going to take that prize away? Electronic hoss racing for fun and large prizes. Hey, come on in, come on over every game a winner.

Others might have been getting rich, as Louis recalls, he was working for twelve dollars an hour.

I had a daughter in law school, I had a daughter in college, and another daughter in fashion school. But it wasn't the money. It was the action that I loved. I would work sixteen hours there. I would start it for a hot summer day or Friday or Saturday, and at eight or nine o'clock at night, I would start drinking mustu ka three ex'es. It was that Greek lecor and it got me strong and I went through the night. And I loved being with the people. I loved being with the people.

You were homicide detective at the time.

Okay, yes, I was, so how does that work? I was never home.

The game shut down at four, but that wasn't the end of Louise day.

Listen to this. My friend Jazz, he used to live in a trailer and we used to drink from four to five to six o'clock Canadian missed and diet coke. I used to go home. I used to sleep from seven to eleven, get up and run ten miles, then go to work. I was a long distant runner for many years.

It was a game on the Bowery, which is the central thoroughfare called the Derby horse Race, where he made his mark. He made a lot of money for the bosses, was great with the crowd. Only one real challenge if one of the contestants kept winning.

Eventually, as we walk around Coney Island with Louis up and down the bowery, we arrived at the one time site of the Derby horse Race, Louise Old Workplace.

We had seventeen We had seventeen seats and we had seventeen shoots.

It's one of those games where you shoot water at a target in order to make a toy racehorse run.

Now we had a problem. It was this Puerto Rican guy, that's Manny. He was very good.

He would win, he would win once, he would win twice, he would win three times, says man and then he would walk out and sell the prize. That's no good. So what we had to do is put a smice in. What it was was a mechanism that allowed anyone you wanted to win to win.

So I'm time to imagine, how's this miice work? Yeah?

Okay, if you want, yeah, exactly, something on the table. If you wanted number nine to win, you hit it nine times. If you wanted number seventeen to win, there was another. One would be ten and you'd hit six more. There were two and you'd hit six more and that's it. Took me a couple of minutes to figure it out to do it. So if Manny came in and he won twice, that was it. If you wanted a beautiful girl to win, she would win. If you wanted a sail on, you know, a salor to win, we had to put that in because Many was killing us.

Wow, he was rigging the game.

That's Coney Island, you know what I'm saying. There's nothing wrong for Louis.

It was part of the show.

No, no, we weren't hip anybody.

Well, he kind of was. I mean, let's be honest, that's exactly what he was doing. We move on. The tour continues, Louis deep into his Coney Island, past his happy place where the stakes for rigging the system were pretty low. Louis is looking for old friends. We poke in and out of a few restaurants, a few stands along the bowery. It's late afternoon, a few people are setting up, getting ready for the evening crowd.

And let me just seek my friend him and see, hi, am how you doing. Yeah, they're doing a little story here.

So you don't even remember Louis at the bar.

When he was a.

Carneye at the Derby horse Race.

Actually, Louis hoping to connect with someone who can revel in the old days with him, and Loui's got someone in mind, a carne named Raymond.

This is where I started.

Now now if it's for rent, I don't even know if the guy that I worked for owns it.

Louis hasn't been to the Bowery in years, but he remembers Raymond. He worked with Raymond on the basketball shooting game. They kept the winners in checking that game by overinflating the basketball.

Me and my friend Raymond. I worked with him and we had three high tension hoops and balls are pumped up to one hundred psiway.

Raymond was like Louis Carneie Yogi.

Raymond was a very hard worker and maybe down there, maybe down there, I don't know, but Raymond taught me a lot in Cornell And.

In search of Raymond, we stumble onto one of the first places Louis worked, the El Dorado Bumper Cars, which for some reason now calls itself the El Dorado Autos Scooters.

Let me ask this guy, young man, Can I ask you a question? Please? Hello? Thanks your question do you remember me? You know, were you here in the eighties?

You are Mama, Yes, Andy, Mama, She and Scott. You don't remember me, Louis, Yeah, you remember me, Louis, Louis the cop I used to work with Scotty. I used to run the game in the back. No luck here either, So we move along. Louie pushes on. Then like magic, Louie thinks he spots Raymond.

Oh, Raymond, Raymond. I'm sorry, is Raymond down the block at the basketball game? Can I ask you one question, sir? Does Jeff Piersley still own this? But you're just you're just working to join Thank you very much, Thanks a lot.

It's all a little disappointing for Louis.

It's like Louis is looking in Coney Island, for it's the same thing he's looking for in the rest of New York City and the rest of his life, some sign of the good old days when he felt like he understood the city and loved it, and the city embraced him back.

Those days are gone, long gone, and now Louis wanders from place to place asking if anyone remembers him, remembers the days when he owned this place, but it seems like there are no friendly familiar faces left.

And then where do I know you're from?

What's your name?

My name is Dina. Dina is behind a small stand selling soda and pretzels and assorted souvenirs. She's a carnie, very old school Louis.

I used to work for Jeff in the eight.

Yeah, I was out here back then. I just got older.

You didn't get old, of Holy Christ.

I'm actually fifty, so yeah, we were out of here alone sixty eight.

Yeah, we've been on here a long time.

I remember you. Dina is full of love in a Coney Island kind of way. You don't look that old either. Don't get it looking, don't get it fucking twisted. You don't you look great? You do your buffing shit? What the fuck did I looked at? I says, you said, only ship too. I've been here a long time. So did you ever go to the Derby horse Race? I actually did you remember this guy? I actually do. He's been out here a long time. He's like Coney Island staple this time. Did you remember, hear Louis on the microphone? Yeah, she had to Yeah, and just like that Louis and Dina. Are we living the best at times? Which is also a little like a roll call of the fallen Dina.

You know all of them like, I've just known him for so long season he's going now a shit.

But I was really close to Caesar, and they're prafectly raised.

Your girl like Charlie, Joe Balzamo, Jeff.

Lay, the Originals, Sandy Shoa, the Originals.

A lot of them have passed on, Sir, A lot of them are passed on. But how about Raymond?

Where's Raymonds there?

He's not Raymond's not there.

I know, I haven't seen it.

Really.

There's a lot of new people out here, all right.

You know what happened.

You moved spot to spot, people.

Died, all new people buy the properties you.

Moved from from location location. You're always in here somehow, you know.

But it's different, because it's in your blood.

It's different. I have to remember when the rides weren't ten dollars.

Yeah, I remember when the when the Wonder Where was twenty five cents.

It was just a quarter.

So it was the cyclone, the cyclone, it was a quarter.

First it was ten cents. It was a quarter it's been a while, so to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Taking easy, I'll.

Go. The legend lives on here.

Huh, Yeah, the legend lives on, but it's kind of also holding on by his fingertips. It all seems to point out how far away Louise's glory days are.

Yeah, it's kind of sad. Louis so full of energy, as if the great characters of his past might spring back to life, but they've passed on. And then. I don't know exactly why it occurred to me to ask this, but I wanted to know where Louis planned to be buried. Louis thought about having his ashes spread on the waters of Coney Island. What were your headstone saying?

Come on in, come on over where? Every game A winner?

A winner? Yeah, a winner. This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Sound designed by Bianca Salinas, Dax Devlin Ross and Me Steve Fishman are your hosts. The Burden is a production of Orbit Media. Season two of The Burden Empire on Blood will be available everywhere you get your podcasts on August seventh. All episodes will be available early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse, our subscription channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety nine a month.

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