Killers

Speedbag

Tradition of tolerance keeps violence at bay

By Steve Janoski

Elections are like wars: they have the capacity to bring out either the best or the worst in people — but mostly, they bring out the worst.

And when it’s a presidential election, things get even uglier as candidates of all sides illuminate the crevasses that divide our political spectrum, and often their own words drive wider the chasm that exists between the Left and the Right.

It becomes far too easy to become bitter and jaded when the other side wins, and all we can see is what irreparable damage they’ll do to our fragile country over the next four years, but it’s during those times especially that we must sit back, take a breath, and widen our view.

News from across the globe has been bleak over the last few months, and makes me thankful that in this nation, the most maniacal fringes of both parties are (generally) kept at bay; every day, in other parts of the world, it seems the Black Hundreds gather strength.

In Greece, the New York Times reported in early July, an influx of Arabic immigrants has led to the rise of the right-wing group “Golden Dawn,” which seems to be fine with using violence to deliver on its promises to “rid the land of filth.”

Just one week after the extremist party gained what the paper called an “electoral foothold” in Greece’s Parliament this summer, 50 of its members, riding motorcycles and armed with “heavy wooden poles” and shields emblazoned with swastika-like symbols, delivered an ultimatum to immigrant business owners in one Athens suburb: shut down and move out within a week, or your business burns. As the xenophobic attacks escalate, police have been reportedly looking the other way.

In the same week, that paper also reported that Russia’s upper house of Parliament passed bills that have criminalized slander, allowed the government to block websites deemed “dangerous to children,” imposed “draconian fines” on people who participate in unsanctioned protests, and required politically-driven nonprofits that receive money from outside the country to be identified as “foreign agents.”

And, in China, the Rev. Thaddeus Ma Daqin, ordained as next in line to take over as bishop of Shanghai, stunned the masses by announcing that he would not work for the government-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which oversees that country’s Catholics.

He wanted to focus more on pastoral work and evangelization, he said, and as a result was renouncing his membership to the association. He has not been heard from since. Chinese officials say he is “on retreat.”

It is likely that these types of stories could be pulled from any newspaper at any time of any year; indeed, there is always some government somewhere trying to keep its people bound and blindfolded. But these are not just any countries — one is the world’s most populous rising power, while the other, although faded, still has enough nuclear weapons to end life on the planet. And Greece (ironically) is the vaunted “birthplace of democracy.”

So I admit, things in America are bad, and they could become worse — no people are immune to being subtly (and then forcefully) oppressed just because they were born on this patch of land instead of that one.

But we are not there yet. In fact, we’re a long, long way away. And, for all of the breaches of democracy that things like the PATRIOT Act contain, Americans still retain a sense of what is right, what is wrong, and what is evil.

So through all of the bickering and arguing, all of the out-of-context campaign ads about Obama being a Muslim communist and Romney being an outsourcing blue-blood,  we must remember that politics in America are like fistfights between sailors at a bar — no matter how bruising it was, if the shooting starts, we’re all still on the same side.

We must remind ourselves of that when the sun dawns over America on Nov. 7…no matter how difficult or painful it may seem.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Loner by the water

Freedom Tower from Hoboken

Pequannock resident prepares for Friday amateur boxing bout

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012
By Steve Janoski

When 22-year-old Sean Cogavin straps on the headgear, puts in his mouthpiece, and steps between the ring ropes, he's all in — full bore, no letting up.

Round after round the young Pequannock resident goes, bobbing, weaving, ducking and hooking, always preferring to spar only the toughest, most experienced opponents at Aces Boxing Club inBoonton. When he steps out, his eye is blackened and his nose faces a little further west, but he has no complaints.

Just a few weeks later, and he's already had two bouts across the Hudson after only four months in the gym, and he's given club owner and coach Joe Zabry the green light to put him on as many cards as possible. Put plainly, he loves to fight.

His personality outside of the ring is a sharp departure from his rough ring manners, however. Standing a lean 6 feet tall, he is exceedingly polite and affable, the kind of guy every trainer wants in his gym.

Once the bell rings, though, that mood changes, and there's no doubt that as he looks out the window of the sweltering third-floor gym on a Sunday afternoon, the tattooed, gray-eyed fighter is ready for his New Jersey debut and hopes to notch his first victory in front of a crowd of family and friends this Friday night.

He gets asked questions about why he picked this sport all the time, but he doesn't expect those who've never fought to understand.

"You don't realize it until you step in the ring and you actually move with somebody and yeah, you take a few hits you give a few hits…but it's therapy, you know what I mean?" he said.

And reflecting on his short but intense amateur career, the Lincoln Tech graduate said that boxing has become an escape from the daily grind of working in the labor-intensive HVAC field, one that he approaches with a blue-collar attitude that involves few words, lots of sweat, and a little blood.

He's found it's a different game than basketball, which he played during his four years at PequannockTownship High School, and the pressure of being alone in the ring, with no one to depend on when his lungs falter, is startling.

Family ties

One might say that the sport runs thick in his family's blood; besides an Irish cousin who fights overseas, his grandfather on his mother's side was a boxer in the Navy, while his father's father fought in the Marines. So maybe it was fate that the Ryan Lane resident, who always had heavy bags and speed bags in his home, found his way into Aces on the advice of a friend and to the chagrin of his mother, who never told him about the family hobby so as to not encourage him to take up the brutal pursuit.

Cogavin, however, called his mother "a trooper" who just greeted the notion of her son fighting with a shake of her head.

And that's what it's all about, after all — the fighting. Every workout, all the dieting, every minute of jumping rope and pad work, and endless miserable heavy bag drills, all aimed at performing flawlessly for just one night. Cogavin said the sport's rhythms are deceptively difficult, even for someone who prides himself on being in shape.

"Even that first day jumping rope, it just blows your mind….it's like, 'Damn, I can't even jump rope that good,'" he said.

When he does get in the ring, Cogavin fights in what historically could be called the Irish manner: in his zeal to exchange, his fists (and sometimes his face) lead the way.

"With a guy like Sean, you gotta hold him back enough to where he's not dangerous or a detriment to himself in that ring…you've got to save him from himself initially," said Coach Zabry, who is working on improving Cogavin's skills and patience.

However, the coach said that it can be difficult to rein in a born brawler's inherent recklessness, even when it's absolutely necessary, and teaching him, to use his height, footwork, and long arms to position an opponent before unleashing the lion is sometimes a struggle that can only be learned through experience.

"What Sean didn't realize is that it's easy to get into a fight, but it's not easy to win a boxing bout," he said. "Unfortunately, Sean is one of those hard-headed Irish kids that … you have to beat 'boxing' into."

In general though, a fighter's most important attributes are invisible to the naked eye, and Cogavin has two of the most crucial: the ability to take a punch (a "chin"), and a steadfast work ethic, both of which were on display last Saturday after a particularly bad loss in a Long Island bout.

"He took a beating, he felt like [expletive]," Zabry said. "But the next day, he was right back in the gym. And that says a lot about a boxer's character."

And the fighter looks at it the same way. Every bout is a lesson, no matter if he wins or loses. That's why he told Zabry that he wants rack up as many amateur fights as possible over the next year with an eye toward turning pro.

"Right now, man, I'll fight a guy that's 30-0. I'll fight anybody, 'cause it's only gonna make me better," he said.

Olympic dreams?

Cogavin admits he caught the Olympic buzz a bit and considered training for four more years in order to shoot for 2016, but his clock is ticking in a sport where a pugilist's "prime" is considered to be between the ages of 26 to 30. Right now, he's playing catch-up.

And of course, he can't look past this Friday. There's a lot on the line, and it will be his first time fighting in front of his family, friends, and – perhaps most importantly – his mother.

"I don't want to get beat up (in front of her). I don't want to get to where…every night I come home, she's like, 'Really? This is really what you're doing still?' So hopefully it's a blowout," he said with a laugh.

However, Zabry believes that the crowd will see a more cautious boxer instead of a face-first, Rocky-style southpaw brawler. Even if they don't, though, both coach and boxer know it will be just another lesson.

"Sean's one of these guy's that's just like, '[Expletive] it, let's fight. I'll fight everyone in front of me,'" Zabry said.

Full bore. As always.

For tickets, call Aces Boxing Club at 973-794-6509.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/165537906_Pequannock_resident_prepares_for_Friday_amateur_boxing_bout_boxing_is_in_his_family_s_blood_.html?page=all

Hoboken is decadent and depraved

By Steve Janoski

It’s on River Street that Hoboken’s past and present converge in a restless tidal pool of characters sauntering past one another in the steam bath air of a July night.

I had been covering amateur fights at one of the city’s most opulent hotels before finding myself out on the streets afterward fumbling with a new camera that I had yet to get the hang of.

Looking toward Manhattan, it’s no wonder this is referred to as the “Gold Coast” — New York Harbor yawns out from the shores, and the eruption of lights from that city of islands and towers creates an oppressive presence even from across the river.

But while I’ve always loved New York, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Hoboken. The nights I’ve spent in its finer (and not-so-fine) drinking establishments never ended early enough, and the preponderance of yuppies and aging frat boys makes my stomach turn.

Still, there’s always a drama playing out against the draping backdrop of row houses and storefronts, and I love this city as I love all cities, mostly because of their peculiar ability to be the axis around which not only history, but “right now,” revolves.

It was in Weehawken Cove that Henry Hudson anchored the Halve Maen (Half Moon) in 1609 before going on to explore the river that now bears his name. And, just a mile or so away, is Sybil’s Cave, which houses a natural spring whose waters were once sold because it was said they had medicinal powers; an 1841 murder there would become the inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”

And then there’s the middle of the twentieth century, that golden age of Terry Malloy’s rough-and-tumble waterfront dominated by the Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants that had come swarming off the boats during the 1920s and 1930s.

Being born in 1984, I remember Hoboken only at the very tail end of its hardscrabble existence, just before gentrification came in and gouged out its violent heart.

But the grit is still there. It’s harder to find, like a roach that’s scampered away from Washington Street’s glittering lights and crawled into the shadowy nooks of the boulevards — but it survives.

I walk down Frank Sinatra Drive, catching bits and pieces of the conversations as I snaked through the soul of the city while stories en media res were written around me.

“Stop, stop, JUST STOP! There’s no one like you,” a young, perplexed-looking man with glasses and a blue polo tells his cross-armed girlfriend before he realizes how loud he’s being and drops his tone. She’s breaking up with him, I think.

On one bench, a college-age girl in New Balances talks on her cell phone about how a guy she met looked so much older than he really was; on another, two young, attractive women talk about what sounds like a boyfriend’s drinking problem.

Definitely Hoboken.

Right behind them though, an older black man with naked feet and a bald spot the size of a half-dollar on the crown of his head lays sprawled out on a cold concrete slab, all his belongings stuffed into bags next to him. Across the street, the plate-glass windows of a bar reveal young guys wearing plaid-shirts and khaki shorts drinking beer and watching sports on wall-mounted flat-screens.

Down on Pier A, the lawn is crowded with those escaping stuffy apartments, and a group of shirtless black men sit on the ledges, bursting with laughter before exploding into curses. The situation, for a second, grows tense.

 “You disrespect me? I don’t want to hear you!” one man yells in a thick island accent into the face of another, the striations in his muscles showing sharply under the lights. “I don’t want to hear you!”

Further down, an ample middle-aged white woman wearing baggy jeans and a billowing white t-shirt walks by, talking loudly into her cell phone and assuring her man that she’s not coming back to him.

“Yo, you lost me, yo. You lost me foreva! I’m puttin’ a restrainin’ order on yo’ ass,” she says.

Other itinerants gather under a pavilion near the water’s edge, their shopping cart lives now sheltered from rain.

And all the while, a willowy blonde wanders up and down the pier clad in an extraordinarily sheer yellow summer dress — with very little underneath — stopping at intervals to pose for an imaginary photographer, her haunting, dilated pupils boring into the darkness.

The city’s still here. Sometimes closer than we think.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com