Fulton Fish Market in the context of Fulton Street (Manhattan)

The Genovese crime family (pronounced [dʒenoˈveːze, -eːse]), also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American Mafia. The Genovese family has generally maintained a varying degree of influence over many of the smaller mob families outside New York, including ties with the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Patriarca, and Buffalo crime families.

The modern family was founded by Charles "Lucky" Luciano and was known as the Luciano crime family from 1931 to 1957, when Vito Genovese became boss. Genovese was head of the family during the McClellan hearings in 1963, which gave the Five Families their current names. Originally in control of the waterfront on the West Side of Manhattan as well as the docks and the Fulton Fish Market on the East River waterfront, the family was run between 1981 and 2005 by "The Oddfather", Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who feigned insanity by shuffling unshaven through New York's Greenwich Village wearing a tattered bath robe and muttering to himself incoherently to avoid prosecution.

South Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, located immediately adjacent to the East River. It runs from Whitehall Street near the southern tip of Manhattan to Jackson Street near the Williamsburg Bridge. An elevated portion of FDR Drive, known as the South Street Viaduct, runs along the entire length of the street.

The street is noted for the South Street Seaport, south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and is the former site of the Fulton Fish Market, which was located just to the north of the seaport. Knickerbocker Village, a municipal housing project, fronts on South Street between the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge in the Two Bridges neighborhood. West of the seaport, South Street is the location of a number of buildings, including 55 Water Street and the New York City Police Museum.