The Global Pigeon

Colin Jerolmack

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226002088, 9780226001890
• eBook ISBN: 9780226001920
• Subtopic: Environmental Science

The pigeon is the quintessential city bird. Domesticated thousands of years ago as a messenger and a source of food, its presence on our sidewalks is so common that people consider the bird a nuisance—if they notice it at all. Yet pigeons are also kept for pleasure, sport, and profit by people all over the world, from the "pigeon wars" waged by breeding enthusiasts in the skies over Brooklyn to the Million Dollar Pigeon Race held every year in South Africa.

Drawing on more than three years of fieldwork across three continents, Colin Jerolmack traces our complex and often contradictory relationship with these versatile animals in public spaces such as Venice's Piazza San Marco and London's Trafalgar Square and in working-class and immigrant communities of pigeon breeders in New York and Berlin. By exploring what he calls "the social experience of animals," Jerolmack shows how our interactions with pigeons offer surprising insights into city life, community, culture, and politics. Theoretically understated and accessible to interested readers of all stripes, The Global Pigeon is one of the best and most original ethnographies to be published in decades.

II

The Totemic Pigeon

THREE

New York’s Rooftop Pigeon Flyers

Crafting Nature and Anchoring the Self

While I began my research looking at the place of feral pigeons in public space, I became curious about the huge stocks of domesticated pigeons I saw swarming in tight bundles over the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn, where I lived. From my roof, I could regularly discern six or seven men on top of tenements trying to choreograph their birds’ movements by whistling and waving long poles. To get to know these “pigeon flyers,” in April 2005 I started making regular visits to a nearby pet shop named Broadway Pigeons and Pet Supplies. Joey Scott, the affable Jewish Italian owner, agreed to introduce me to his regular customers. Over the next three years, I spent almost every Sunday at Joey’s store, getting acquainted with 44 regulars and visiting the coops of half of them. The flyer I got to know best was Carmine Gangone, an old-timer who had been flying pigeons for 75 years and whose coop was located by the 80th Street stop of the A train in Queens.

The five boroughs’ once ubiquitous rooftop coops are now as scarce as the Italian longshoremen known for building them, portrayed in iconic representations of working-class New York like the 1954 film On the Waterfront—where Marlon Brando was either working on the docks or flying pigeons on his roof. Where once, Carmine lamented, his block hosted five or six coops, he now needed binoculars to spot other flyers. And while Carmine viscerally recalled the days when the area, known as Ozone Park, was an Italian enclave where generations of a family lived on the same block, Puerto Ricans and immigrants from places like India and Guyana had taken their place.¹ Though Carmine was apt to eulogize his neighborhood’s blue-collar Italian character, he chose to age in place rather than follow his family to the suburbs.

Because pigeon flying was historically the domain of working-class white men who passed on the practice, and their coops, to their sons, the number of flyers declined precipitously over the second half of the 20th century as many upwardly mobile whites migrated from New York’s outer boroughs to the suburbs. But pigeon flying is not dead yet, and by making the four-mile trip to Joey’s pet shop, Carmine got to socialize with other elderly and middle-aged Italians who commuted in from more genteel neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens and Bensonhurst. Carmine also mixed with young and middle-aged Hispanic and black men who flew pigeons in the immediate vicinity of the pet shop. These men reflected a newer cohort of flyers that picked up the hobby from ethnic whites as kids when they moved into neighborhoods in transition such as Bushwick and East New York. The most famous New York flyer of them all is in fact black: Mike Tyson. On my first visit to the pet shop, Joey was quick to flash a picture of himself with the former boxing champion and brag to me in his thick Brooklyn accent, ‘We’re friends!’²

The racial composition of the men who frequented Joey’s pet shop was about two-fifths white, two-fifths Hispanic, and one-fifth black; flyers from more varied backgrounds did pass through, including Middle Eastern men. The whites were overwhelmingly of Italian origin (though American born) and were retired (their mean age was about 70). Most of the Hispanics were Puerto Rican, and most of the blacks were African American. Nearly every man of color was middle-aged or younger and labored for a wage (their mean age was about 45).

While chapter 5 documents pet shop interactions, this chapter depicts the rooftop experience. The flyers intensely enjoyed breeding, raising, and handling their birds and watching them in flight. Though some environmental scholars view such intimate relations as resulting from an innate human drive to associate with other species, or as enabling the transcendence of social life, I saw how flyers’ appreciation for their pigeons was given impetus by their social relations: they crafted “purebreds” and evaluated their performance based on established group customs, and they measured their birds’ worth and their own status as a flyer against each other. Additionally, their coops were nodes through which they experienced and connected to their neighborhood. For the younger men of color living in areas still heavily populated with coops, they interacted with each other daily through their birds, coordinating times to fly their stocks and catching each other’s pigeons. For the older white men, their coops were like time capsules, linking them to their long-gone romanticized ethnic neighborhoods and mitigating the impact of the changes around them. Flyers also spent hours each day doing gritty work like “scraping shit” off their coop floors. Instead of complaining about this labor, I found that most men accepted and took pride in it because it was a way to affirm and perform their working-class sensibilities.

Rather than cultivating a sense of connection to nature, the flyers’ relations with pigeons embedded them in a distinct social world. And because each flyer sculpted a unique bloodline of pigeons and was granted or denied status by his peers based on his birds’ appearance and performance, his stock became an extension of himself. This shows one way that the social self can be constituted through interactions with animals. The men also illustrate how people’s relations with nonhumans are shaped by social categories like class and gender. These observations are a caveat to sociological perspectives that assume nonhumans do not play a consequential role in organizing the social realm, and to sociobiological or ecological theories that emphasize the presocial determinants and asocial rewards of humans’ relationships with animals.

Carmine and the Old Guard

I met Carmine, a sturdy Italian American World War II vet in his mid-80s with tousled gray hair and blue eyes, on my second visit to Joey’s store, when he came in with his “partners” Frankie and Charlie. “Partner” was the label flyers used to formalize the working role of someone who shared rooftop responsibilities, as Frankie did with Carmine. Men sometimes also used the term simply to signal a close friendship with another flyer, as Carmine did with Charlie. The men’s jointly shared bands that they placed around their pigeons’ legs, which read “c.f.c. 80th street ozone park,” inscribed their relationship. As Joey placed four sacks of feed on a dolly at the direction of Frankie, a stout balding Italian American man of Carmine’s vintage with sunken brown eyes who chain-smoked in the store, Carmine and Charlie headed to the back of the shop to inspect the pigeons for sale. As Carmine entered one of the pens and the panicked birds flitted around him, he focused his attention on a brown speckled pigeon. He then quickly extended his right hand and snatched it from above, pinning its wings with his strong stubby fingers. Carmine held the bird to the chicken wire while splaying its wing and said, ‘That’s a nice pigeon, isn’t it, Charlie?’ Then he turned the head of the now docile pigeon so he could examine its eyes and nose. He ran his fingers down the tail and signaled to Charlie to put it in the holding pen. It was a good bird. As he scrutinized the other pigeons one by one, Carmine complained about how they had “bulleyes” or “splashed beaks,” imperfections that fell short of his strict standards. Charlie seemed to be trying to absorb it all, asking, ‘What about that one?’

The pigeon was going home with Charlie, a gentle and stocky Puerto Rican man in his early 50s with short curly hair and glasses. He lived, and flew pigeons, near Carmine and routinely gave him a ride to the store. Carmine appeared to be his mentor, whether Charlie liked it or not. When Charlie showed interest in a brown and white pigeon, Carmine groaned, ‘That bird is no good!’ Charlie protested, but Carmine shot back, ‘Don’t tell me about birds! For Christ’s sake, look at the wings! See this feather? It’s supposed to be all white! This bird is a cross [breed]!’ Smiling wryly, Carmine added, ‘Take it, it fits right in with the garbage you got!’

After Joey introduced us, Carmine immediately began teasing me. I had long, unkempt hair (dreadlocks) at the time, and Carmine grabbed it as he berated me with his unmistakable Italian-infused Brooklyn accent, ‘Jesus, how did you let this happen?’³ Joey (thankfully) interceded, ‘He’s writing about the birds. I told him you’re one of the oldest flyers around here.’ Joey turned to me, ‘Carmine’s the best.’ Carmine invited me to his roof right away. For the next three years, I would go to his house every few weeks and spend half the day on his roof and in his kitchen. Carmine treated me in an affectionately paternalistic way, sometimes asking if I needed money and chiding, ‘When are you gonna start eating meat? You’re too skinny!’ Frankie, a bachelor who moved in with Carmine in 2003, ensured that I was well fed.

Carmine shared the first floor of his two-story townhouse with Frankie and rented out the top floor. A dark hallway with old fake-wood paneling—hardly lit by a bare bulb—led to his modest home, which to me felt untouched since the 1950s. His kitchen walls featured pictures of his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons (most of whom lived in Long Island), as well as a hand-colored photograph of him and his now deceased wife on their wedding day.

On my first visit with Carmine, a sunny spring day in May 2005, we immediately went to his roof. After climbing the stairs to the landing, Carmine led the way up a metal-rung ladder and though a hatch. The screeching elevated A train, just a half block away, assaulted our eardrums. From the flat tar roof, I could see for miles in every direction. Planes descended into JFK airport, steeples peeked out above treetops, and satellite dishes adorned the uniform homes. After the train left, I could make out the squeaky cries and bass-heavy coos of baby birds and their parents emanating from two simple coops, made of plywood and two-by-fours, spaced about 15 feet apart. Small windows and screen doors made the coops look like mini houses. Attached to the right side of one coop was a small rectangular box known as the “prisoner’s pen,” in case Carmine caught any “stray” pigeons from other flyers. The dozen or so colored leg bands curled around the screen were little trophies of an occasional score.

As Carmine filled up the water canisters, he recounted his introduction to pigeons. “I had birds since I’m five years old. I had one pigeon my older brother brought me. He found it in the street. I didn’t know nothin’ about birds.” Carmine laughed, “I liked it. I put it in a cardboard box—in the house. My mother went crazy. Then the next morning my brother’s down in the yard, building a coop for me. When he got paid, every Friday he’d go to Maspeth [Queens] and buy birds. And before you know it I got a stock down there. This was in Brooklyn. I’ve had them ever since. The only time I didn’t have them was three and half years I was in the service.”

Both coops were lined with wooden one-foot-square cubbyholes. When I entered the cramped “breeder’s coop,” dozens of pigeons jumped out of their tiny homes and circled me franticly. These prized birds, which existed solely to beget offspring, were never allowed out. About half of the three dozen or so boxes had cardboard bowls in them, some containing bald, awkward-looking babies with prickly quills that would become feathers. Carmine explained that the larger coop was where his “flying stock” was kept. “These birds are out every day, winter or summer.” He flew his “young ones,” pigeons bred that year, separately from the older birds so that he could train them to fly as a stock and compare their performance to previous generations.

As we peered into the coops and dozens of beady eyes peered back, Carmine explained the breed of pigeon that he kept. “These are all flights. A flight is a solid [colored] bird with white tips, see?” Carmine’s birds varied widely in color: white, black, chocolate, dun (light brown, silver accented), strawberry (dilute red), and yellow. They were slightly smaller and nimbler than feral pigeons, their eyes were pure white, and their beaks were flesh colored and thin. Traditionally, flights should be a single color except for white wing tips. The ideal standards for the flight, which is an official exhibition breed, have changed remarkably little since they were codified a century ago. But, among the New York flyers, a checkerboard-patterned variety called a “teager” and a barred-wing variety known as an “Isabella” had become accepted subtypes. Other agreeable local modifications included “caps,” in which the feathers on the back of the head turn upward, and “beards,” in which a splash of white hides under the beak. The subtle genetic markers that produce variations in color and pattern were the building blocks with which flyers constructed their own signature stock of pigeons.

By keeping flights, Carmine situated himself within both an Italian and a New York tradition. “The American Domestic Flight,” pigeon expert Wendell Levi wrote, “is an American creation, which has been . . . almost exclusively bred in the City of New York” since the mid- to late 1800s. It is also known as the New York flight. Levi expounded, “Breeders vied with each other in capturing other fellows’ birds. The underlying principle was the same as that of the triganieri in Modena [Italy].”⁴ This thieving competition dates back to the 1300s in Modena, but when Italian immigrants brought the game to New York, they created a new foot soldier by crossing several German breeds.

While most flyers I met kept flights, a minority favored tiplets, an English breed created for endurance contests. Carmine said he preferred flights to tiplets because “they do more for you.” That is, they can be trained to “route,” or fly long distances and return. “See, a tiplet won’t do this. They don’t have that instinct to move out. They want to fly just over the coop. But these things [flights], I let ’em out and all of a sudden they take off. Either they go to Jamaica [Queens] or go way into Brooklyn. And you don’t see them! That’s my pleasure. And to see them come back, without losing one—it’s amazing! A lot of guys are afraid to do it! [They] tried routing and they lost too many birds.”

Carmine’s enthusiasm for flights was also a moral matter. For instance, he regularly berated Charlie for having “garbage” birds. Yet in this context, “garbage” did not mean birds that failed to live up to institutionalized standards of a breed. “Garbage” meant any birds that were not flights. One afternoon in Carmine’s kitchen, Charlie explained to me that he did not like to keep the same birds around, and that he enjoyed the challenge of training various types of pigeons—such as tiplets and German owls—to fly as one stock. Charlie added, ‘It should be a matter of taste, the kinds of birds you keep . . . ,’ but Carmine cut him off and exclaimed, ‘Those birds should not be in the city! This is New York for Christ’s sake, we keep flights!’

Carmine adhered to a strict schedule with his birds, from which he seemed to derive particular pride. On a chilly September morning, I arrived at his house while it was still pitch black. The stale coffee he served me at 5:50 indicated that he had already been up for some time. On the roof, Carmine opened the flyers’ coop and chased the birds out by walking inside. Simply by whistling, he made the 150 or so “young ones” simultaneously take off into the dark blue morning sky. They went high, and Carmine remarked how much energy they had. They made sharp turns in unison, looking like a tornado. Occasionally they would circle low and fly between us on the roof, their flapping wings emitting a squeaking sound. Carmine shouted, ‘Come on, climb you bastards!’ Then he whistled, picked up his bamboo rod with a trash bag attached to the end, and began waving it. In teaching his birds to stick together, Carmine built on pigeons’ natural inclination to fly as a group, which makes it harder for predators to hone in on one bird. The bamboo rod startles pigeons, triggering this collective response. At first, the birds rose but split into two groups. When they merged again after he whistled, Carmine shouted ‘Yes!’ The sun finally emerged, catching the pigeons’ white tips as they swirled.

After “chasing” the birds until they finally moved out in the direction of downtown Brooklyn, Carmine got to work. He dumped the watering cans down the gutter, hosed off the feces, and refilled the cans. He checked on the pigeons in the breeders’ coop. Then he took a metal hoe and went into the flyers’ coop to scrape off the feces while the birds were still in the air. ‘I want you to be honest with me,’ Carmine pleaded. ‘Have you been able to see the floor of the coops you’ve visited? My God! Some guys let their coops get so filthy!’ By the time Carmine hosed hundreds of dried fecal stains off the roof, it was 9:00 and had turned into a warm sunny day. Carmine remarked, ‘These are the kind of days that would make me want to stay on the roof all day, boy. I would miss appointments sometimes! And my wife would bring me lunch.’ He complained, as he often did, about the lack of “action” nowadays. ‘I wish I had stocks around here to tangle with, but they’re all gone.’ The lack of action stimulated Carmine to train his birds to route. This way, he could still ‘have some fun’ even though he did not get to “crash” other stocks. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Series Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction. Experiencing the City through the Quintessential Urban Bird
• I. The Pedestrian Pigeon
• II. The Totemic Pigeon
• III. Deep Play
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Color Gallery