Yesterday, I headed to Bicycle Habitat, my favorite NYC bike shop, for a minor repair. One of the repair guys, as he worked, regaled me and his coworkers with a Christmas story specific to NYC, something that he had been told as a kid in the 1950’s in his very Italian neighborhood of Brooklyn:

Sure, everybody knows Santa Claus. And if you’re good, then Santa comes to bring you presents.

But if you’re bad? Well, in Brooklyn, you get Joe Fatinazzi.

Joe’s as fat as Santa, but he drives a green garbage truck, wears a dirty wife-beater, and slicks back his long greasy hair.

And if you’ve been bad, then late Christmas Eve, Joe pulls up, and leaves an old couch on your front lawn.

The whole time he was growing up, the repair guy said, each Christmas morning, before running out to look at what was under the tree, he’d peek out the window first, just to make sure he hadn’t gotten a couch.

Only in New York.