Thursday, December 18, 2014
Williamsburg History
This picture from the New York Times, August 1, 1974, charting out the
various turfs of northern Brooklyn street gangs. It's not a souvenir from
the film The Warriors, but an actual list of the many violent gangs which
kept Brooklyn a dangerous place to walk around in during the 1970s.
By the 1970s, Williamsburg was best known for its steeply rising crime
rate, harboring both violent street-gang activity and organized crime.
various turfs of northern Brooklyn street gangs. It's not a souvenir from
the film The Warriors, but an actual list of the many violent gangs which
kept Brooklyn a dangerous place to walk around in during the 1970s.
By the 1970s, Williamsburg was best known for its steeply rising crime
rate, harboring both violent street-gang activity and organized crime.
The New York Times ran of list of several notorious
Williamsburg gangs,
including the Dirty Ones, the Driggs Boys Of
Justice, the Tomahawks,
the Devils Rebels and the Screaming Phantoms. In
1981 Luis Garden
Acosta, a prominent community leader, called northern
Brooklyn
(Williamsburg, with its neighbors Bushwick and Greenpoint) the
“killing fields” for the number of teenagers killed in bloody gang
conflicts.
There is a nice little article on Brooklyn in 1981 here.