But in his present-day fights, Caragianes constantly refers to his past, closely tied to the city of Cambridge.
His uncle's store, Felix's, ancestor of the current Linden St. shoe repair store, once stood where Gnomon Copy now stands on Mass Ave.
More than a shoe repair store, Felix's sold newspapers and magazines of every kind, and even offered hat-cleaning, "back in the days when people wore hats."
On the newsstands, the store carried The Daily Worker, the New Republic and the Irish Nation. "We were always listening to people who were furious about the left-leaning periodicals we sold," Caragianes explains.
As his uncle was the unofficial "mayor of Harvard Square," once feted by Harvard President Conant and the faculty, so Caragianes is the unofficial first citizen of the Cambridgeport neighborhood, recognized wherever he goes.
"Sometimes I talk too much," he ways. "I don't have any doctor's degrees, but I've gone through a lot."