any clues

[George Thompson]

My father used this expression frequently.  He was a Brooklyn Irisher -- or
semi-Irish, perhaps -- born in 1894, and worked in the 1910 & 1920s as a
merchant seaman, including sessions in Vannie Higgins' rum-fleet.  He was
not unacquainted with the low-life in NYC in that era.
Father associated the phrase with the Pier 6 on the New York City
waterfront, I suppose the Brooklyn side of the harbor, but perhaps the
Manhattan side.

GAT

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 6:27 PM, <sclements at neo.rr.com> wrote:

> Love to see your earliest hockey cite.
>
> Using newsperarchive quickly, 1928, boxing, pier 6.  From then until 1939,
> 132 hits, most boxing, some baseball.  but not all were pier 6.  I saw pier
> 8, pier 28,
>
> Sam Clements
> ---- David Barnhart <dbarnhart at HIGHLANDS.COM> wrote:
> > I'm looking for the origin of the expression _pier 6 brawl_.  It seems to
> > have originated in hockey in Canada.
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> > barnhart at highlands.com
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org