The Sopranos: Paterson Falls

By Joe Berk

Another one of the stops on my New Jersey Sopranos tour was Paterson Falls.  Although only about 40 miles or so from where I grew up, I’d never been there.

I knew of the town, though.  It’s an old industrial village with waterfalls, which meant that in the early days of our country it was perfect for industrial development. The falls provided hydraulic power, and that could be used to drive machinery.  Indeed, it’s where Samuel Colt built his first run of revolvers, which are known (not surprisingly) as Paterson Colts.  Paterson was established as the nation’s first planned industrial city in 1792, with its readily-available hydraulic power and close proximity to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean.  Paterson manufactured silk cloth, steam locomotives, textiles, paper, firearms, and aircraft engines.    It is centered on the Passaic River, which flows into Newark Bay and from there to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Passaic Falls are contained within the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, which is (as the name implies) part of the U.S. National Park system.  All this was news to me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that I grew up a short 40 miles to the south.  I’d never known any of this, and to learn about it at my age was surprising.  I’ll give the credit for that to David Chase (the guy who created The Sopranos).  Had that show not sparked my interest, I’d still be ignorant.

So, let’s move on to the scene in The Sopranos that caught my attention.  It’s the episode in which Mikey Palmici (Uncle Junior’s driver and bodyguard) throws a drug dealer off the bridge over the Passaic Falls:

That episode you see above occurred later in The Sopranos.  There was another scene in the very first Sopranos episode on the same bridge shown above in which Hesh Rabkin and Big Pussy Bompensiero (two of The Sopranos characters) threaten to throw a health insurance company executive (a guy named Alex Mahaffey, played by Michael Gaston) off the same bridge if he didn’t cooperate with a Sopranos scam to defraud the insurance company.

When threatened with a swan dive off the bridge, Mahaffey gave in to the Soprano family’s demands, but alas, his Sopranos career was over; Michael Gaston never appeared in another episode.  But that didn’t mean Sue and I wouldn’t see him again.  In one of our trips to New Jersey, we rode the Air Trans shuttle between the airport and the rental car facility.  Just before we boarded the shuttle, Michael Gaston was leaving the car we entered.  We didn’t bug him, but we made eye contact and he knew we knew who he was.

There’s a lot more to Paterson, though, then simply having been a location for a couple of The Sopranos scenes.  Here’s another video that describes Paterson’s history:

Today, Paterson is undergoing a renaissance, as the old factory buildings are being converted to loft apartments.  Yup, Paterson is being yuppified.  It looks like an interesting place to spend more time, but my schedule didn’t permit doing so on this visit.  For us it was roll into town, grab a few photos, and bail.

One thing I know for sure:   I’ll return to Paterson.  I’d like to explore the city, its museums, and more in greater detail.

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Want to see our other visits to The Sopranos locations?  Here they are:

The Sopranos Mansion

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