Entries by TJ Forlenza

A Beginner’s Guide to Newark Slang

Francesco Castelluccio, better known by his stage name, Frankie Valli, was born in the First Ward of Newark, New Jersey in 1934. A working-class neighborhood filled with immigrants, the world in which Frankie Valli grew up would have been a mashup of Italian and American culture.   The colorful language that has become synonymous with North […]