Is this a realistic portrayal of 1970s NYC gangs?
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GunHillTrain — 10 years ago(September 15, 2015 06:34 AM)
Yes, many of those names appear to have connections to California, specifically Los Angeles gangs. I'm speculating that those may have come in during the crack cocaine era which would have been from the 1980s through the early 1990s.
Right now in the Bronx gangs seem to have a low profile again. They must be around but I generally am not aware of their presence. One exception may be in the Fordham area where drug sales have long been an issue on 194th Street between Valentine and Webster.
I never heard of skinheads in New York like the Turnbull ACs from the movie. (And definitely no "attack buses.") I see in the video games that they are also identified as "punks." There was a punk movement in New York but I don't recall it being involved in violence or criminal activities. -
northbay28 — 10 years ago(October 29, 2015 10:25 PM)
It's very real. I remember the Baseball Furies in and around the vicinity of the ball park. Whenever we went to see Yankees games, they would be there dressed in baseball uniforms and face makeup. They would beat the crap out of innocent people with their baseball bats.
One other gang not shown in the movie was the Pizza Brothers. This was an Italian gang who would dress like pizza makers, except with face paint. They would walk around twirling pizza dough in a threatening fashion. They were quite adept at twirling dough and would stand on the corner twirling, endlessly tossing and twirling dough on their home turf. If provoked, they would bake their pizzas and throw them at foes like frisbees. The combination of hard crust and hot ingredients was a formidable weapon.
Now when the Baseball Furies and the Pizza Brothers brawled THAT was a sight to see. -
FinalFight — 9 years ago(September 30, 2016 05:08 PM)
I was a witness to one of their brawls. A pizza brother threw a large deep dish pizza like a frisbee towards a baseball fury who caught it on the top of his bat with the pizza still spinning. I remember being caught up in the moment and not believing what I had just witnessed.
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handa-1 — 10 years ago(November 27, 2015 06:17 PM)
Some aspects of life for youth of that time frame are kind of accurate.
Like the DJ, radio DJs in the 70s/80s, particularly KTU and BLS did speak directly with the audiences as a whole. Way more than DJs do now.
Also the grafiti tagging, it was a big dis to tag someone elses grafiti back then. -
Knowby_Warrior — 10 years ago(December 28, 2015 11:57 AM)
The movie is set in a "near future".
No "Hollywood crap", this is a masterpiece. Dystopian fiction.
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therealman — 9 years ago(January 09, 2017 01:57 PM)
Other than wardrobe/theme, a big difference with the gangs in the film vs. in real life was how well most of the gangs were integrated. In the sixties when the novel was written and into the seventies when the movie was made gangs would be of a single race. You would have the black gangs vs. the mexican gangs vs. the white gangs. The producers didn't think (probably correctly) movie fans would go to see a picture that featured all Hispanic leads. So they integrated the gangs and made the lead white.