Gang Stories

September 6, 2003 9:41 PM

Gang Stories "The goal here is to tell some stories of what goes on behind the guns, drugs and crime in the headlines. These stories are the oral history of my old neighborhood. Figured it might do some good to write them."
posted by jdroth (9 comments total)

Wow. Whoever this person is is writing some very powerful stuff.

We lived in a world with literally no justice. And I guess whenever you judge the events of an unjust world by the moral standards of a just one, the result is always horrible. But having to live with that horror. That makes me think in the long run, maybe there really are no unpunished crimes.

I'm glad this guy made it out of the crazy life he lived.

Thanks, jdroth.
posted by ashbury at 10:37 PM on September 6, 2003

Credit where credit's due. I was digging around, trying to remember where I found this link, and now I see it came directly from Matt's site. Had I remembered the source, I wouldn't have posted the link here... :(

Gang Stories is a great site, though.
posted by jdroth at 11:35 PM on September 6, 2003

Very cool site! Thanks, jdroth!

Gratuitous self-link: If you like personal story sites like this, be sure to drop by Fray's Storyblog where we post stuff like this almost every day!
posted by fraying at 11:38 PM on September 6, 2003

good link
posted by lotsofno at 7:49 AM on September 7, 2003

[this is really good]
posted by majcher at 10:51 AM on September 7, 2003

yes, thanks jdroth. i first heard of this from matt's site also and thought, 'damn, he should post that on mefi!'. i'm glad somebody did.

It takes a special brand of crazyness to be willing to track someone down at their work a month after being robbed and club them down with a stick, or worse. You've got to have either nothing to lose, or a deeply pathological nature, or both.
posted by poopy at 12:21 PM on September 7, 2003

Great link. I'd like to know a little more about the author's life today, although I can certainly understand why he wouldn't be for that.
posted by GriffX at 1:50 PM on September 7, 2003

We got into it first by breaking in cars looking for money, stereos, CDs etc. We only broke in certain kinds of cars. Old Toyotas and Hondas had door locks you could pop with a screwdriver, so those were always targets. Otherwise we'd walk alleys looking for anything in a secluded area where we could bust a window without being seen. We learned you can shatter a car window silently -- take a spark plug, hammer off the white ceramic into pebbles, and throw one hard against the window, which crumbles the safety glass in "whoosh" sound -- and used that often. It's not that we needed the money. It's just that imposing costs on others let us prove ourselves to each other, and express our anti-social anger at the same time. So that became a regular weeknight activity.
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:03 PM on September 7, 2003

Probably all it would've taken to stop us was a couple more times getting caught and going to jail. Or at least knowing that if we did get caught there would be some real punishment. But the fact is that there wasn't. We always got away. And on the rare occasion when we'd get arrested, we'd get nailed with community service time or a day or two in the juvinile jail, which was like a boring day camp that gave us prestige when we'd get released.

It's a wonder any of us ever stopped, really.
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:06 PM on September 7, 2003