It had too have been a Friday night,Schurz high school had let out.Me and the fatman had decided too go out meet up with some Gaylords,We took the Cta bus back up too Schurz High School area.I was actually wearing a pair of Baby Blue Baggies,these were not of the Osh Kosh variety ,they were more of a style that the Latino bangers were wearing,I had purchased these baggies on Milwaukee ave. in the wicker park area.That was not a safe haven in the 80s as it is today.I was also wearing Black shoes that were referred to as Rockers,because it had a bottom too the shoe the sort of waved,and when you walked it was with motion. So me and Fatman had actually went too Aladdins Castle a game room on Irving Park and Keeler. Also this corner was being recognized as the IKPP Irving and Keeler Party People.
We meet up with Rook basically a Former Gaylord and Associate,A very good friend of mine, and perhaps even Doughboy of the Gaylords.Me Rook,Fatman and Doughboy proceeded too smoke some of the Marijuana I had brought with me.We got high played some games then Probably drank A twelve pack or case between us.The flashy lights outside the Game room were brightly lite.I was stoned and stole one of the light bulbs.
It was starting too get late so me and fatman said our farewells then preceded up too Addison n Pulaski,looking for a bus,I then flagged down a cab,At that precise moment 2 or 3 members of the ABOs spotted me sticking out like a sore thumb. They ran up on us and a fight issued.Fatman was struck over the head with a blackjack or bowling pin.I was fucked up but I preceded too fight off the attackers.The light bulb I stole from Alladins Castle i shoved in one of their faces.I then made them relinquish their weapon and i used it against them.They then fled.
We jumped into the cab that watched a mini gang fight happen before his very eyes. Fatman was bleeding the cab went straight too Belmont hospital.
Fatman got stitched up then the Doctors wanted too have a look at me.I said no during the altercation I got hit too.I think they wanted too call the Police.I started to fell dizzy then I ran down the hallway with Fatman and i started Puking throughout the hallway of the hospital.We reached the front doors of the Hospital being Melrose and Karlov,we ran out the doors up too Belmont ave. As soon as we reached the corner we spotted the east bound Belmont bus coming. 30 seconds later we were gone. JAKE.

Hi, my name is D. and i lived on Malden and Sunnyside from 1969 to 1978.i knew some of the Gaylord's. They took good care of the kids in the neighborhood. I remember one time the Gaylord's had a cook-out block party for the kids in the area and they had to stop it because some of the Latin Kings came over and attacked a little girl in the ally. well needless to say the party was over and they went after the ones who hurt the little girl. there was another time that one gang I'm not sure which one but the were looking for a Gaylord and when they found him, tied him to a tree in the park and cut him up real bad. it didn't kill him but not far from it. the guys i knew were really great guys. i dated a couple and babysat for some.to me i felt safer being in Uptown as a kid.there was another time i can remember where two guys wanted to join the Gaylord's and my sister and me were out side on the park, the one guy they were talking to pulled out a gun and started shooting. hope this helps a little.

http://wearesupervision.blogspot.com/2009/03/chicago-lesser-known-arts-history.html

Surfing around the web today, I crashed into this card display. http://wearesupervision.blogspot.com/2009/03/chicago-lesser-known-arts-history.html While gazing over it I thought to myself, "Damn, that fuckin' card again." Now, I don't know why but this whimsical card keeps getting lassoed in with rough-looking gang cards. Every time I see it, it sends an embarrassing zap through out my system. At the same time though, it is weird to see that the card has stood the test of time, whereas most of the individuals who are card-listed most likely have no memory of the thing.

The Stooge Bros was the concoction of my friend Robert and I. Actually, dopey Robert was always comically labeling our little hood fellowship in some fashion. Far from a rough-headed street gang, we were just young neighborhood guys, within the docile realm of Jefferson Park. Incidentally, the sneering-smile C-Notes were just starting to spring to life in the area at the time period, and I think our meager clique was hit with a bad case of the identity crises. We tossed around a few goofy ideals amongst ourselves of what to conform to, like "The Junior Klan of Lawrence and Lavergne." The nervy Junior Klan prospect had entered our foggy heads when we had to discard the Gaylord pipedream. Inwardly we were enticed by the reputed "Gaylords"; just seeing the name banner-scrawled across CTA bus seats, had Rob and I starry eyed. Admitingly, us pipsqueaks were inexperienced in the unfine art of gang warfare. The C-notes had leading all-stars within their crew. Plain and simple, we would have got shredded up by a stack of the green paper-labeled gang. Crazy Luke, alone, was a legendary C-Note around those parts. Maybe if some GL classic models would have resided in the area, things would have developed different. So, the dream child of the Lawrence and Lamon Gaylords never came about. Either did the Junior Klan idea; I thought it would just draw a lot of political attention to our misdemeanor hood.

The Stooge Bros. was a scatter-brain alternative to the more militant ideas. Truth was, we were just not that serious minded about things, misfit stooges if anything. Additionally, at the time we more concerned with trying to fondle up on the virginal group of girls that we had leached ourselves too. Hence the girlish names, and two mushy overtures, on this card. Additionally, A-B-C is as simple as 1-2-3; ABCS is the first initial of some of the girls' actual names. The girls’ porno-sounding nicknames were forced-pressed upon them. Never-the-less though, once they received the Stooge Bros cards, the girls were all giggles and smiles about the project being completed. Skipping off later, they probably thought us guys really were a bunch of stooges for making the cards.

The Stooge Bros card itself was made by me. Printed up at the compact print shop off of Milwaukee and Montrose, I believe the 500 embossed trinkets were my first trial run at making business cards. I don’t officially count it as my first gang-associated card, as the whole process felt more like the making up of a cheezy Hallmark card. The beer and leprechaun symbols were not thoroughly thought out either, but selected in minutes from a stock-image book. Beer was super-fucking-cool and some of us were Irish proud. Shit, one of the girls, Ann, was an Irish line dancer.

After the Stooge Bros card were printed up, and after tagging up the kiddie playlot and the rest of our hood with Stooge-a-rama, the glimmer of the Stooge Bros lasted for maybe a couple months, then it just fizzled out. My friend, dopey Rob, and I then brainstormed the "Knights." Infantile as it sounds, we thought we could create some new household-name gang. We even pulled off our first major heist; a copyright infringement, by using the Jousters’ helmet as our logo. After going on a wall-tagging crusade with the Knights fascination, for weeks, I, for one,was starting to crave some real action. Eventually, I got bit by the Gaylord bug and I splintered off from our hood of misfit stooges. Within months, I would be using the compact print shop to produce future GL masterpieces. But that is another short story which will come....

Old School Gang Perspective
People today have no perspective on gangs and drugs. The middle class, who have never had to worry for anything and have always had jobs and safety nets waiting for them to fall into, look at criminal activity and see people who aren't trying hard enough, because they believe the myth that anyone can make it in America. The gangs themselves are the results of poverty and class warfare - of a neighborhood that people have forgotten about.

Repping Gaylords
You can feel the animosity and see it posted on all the threads. What has it come to? Gaylord verses Gaylord. I think it's total bullshit. It doesn't matter what set you're from, You're still a GL. Yes, we didn't come to alot of sets and alot of sets didn't come to us.And why? Because of our colors and yours. Here's alittle something for you.

If we all would have got along as a nation, like it was supposed to be, the city could have been ours. I was dating this girl who lived on Kostner and Fullerton .Had already been up there a few times. SA didn't stray too far as did other sets so that whole hood was new to me. I didn't know where any of the gangways were to run through if anything happened or where the alleys led so I took a friend up with me. His name was Lil Wolf. He was just a rep for us, a new guy to the neighborhood. We get up there, off the final CTA and it's a total setup by the chick and her friends. Nothing but ALMIGHTY NORTHSIDE WHITE BOYS.And a few IG"S. Now we're screwed. Maybe 15. Maybe less. We lasted as long as we could. Took our beatings and gave some. Then decided to haul ass.It's late November of "86. Cold as shit. Nothing but my gray baggies on, black leather jacket and my black Rockers.And a bottle of "69 cognac.We must have ran for miles. Next thing we see are the railroad tracks. We stopped to take a breath, take in some of the "69 and try and stay warm.

As we see this car coming around, chasing the same crew that were still on our tail. So Lil Wolf and I take off again, duck down an alley, take a turn and there's that car again. The dude riding shotgun leans out the window and starts yelling " eagle killer". We repped back "SAGL Eagle Killer" He yells back "Gaylord Love"
.Just a car full of Gaylords, just different colors. Never so happy to see black and blue in my life. The passenger in that car saved my ass as well as my partners and I was more than happy to give up that bottle of "69 cognac to all the Gaylords, LA and KP. That nite will stay with me forever. I probably wouldn't be here with my kids, my family ,my girl without that passenger helping out a Black and Gray Gaylord. Who was NOT part of the unity. He didn't have to help the WPO SAGLN. And All I see on this site is a lot of bashing towards this guy who saved my ass because I was a fellow brother. He didn't know me, never met, but was a TRUE GAYLORD AND STILL IS
TALL THANKS TO Rocker FOR SAVING MY ASS.

SAGLN
WOLF
MAN

The war sweater shown on your site labeled "unknown" (royal blue with yellow chops and trim/belt,PR flag patch) is a Lawndale Boys sweater. L-Boys hung around Funston school back around 1984-85. From what I can remember,they were probably not really 'bangers. More like a club. As you know, that school was around Central Park & Armitage.

I'm sure some of those guys brothers were IG's. I had some friends from Armitage & K-Town back in the day that kept me up on happenings in the streets around those parts. That was around the same time as the short-lived Maniac Destroyers.
I was never affiliated with any gang,although I did have some friends that were retired "flakes" (ex-MLD's ). They saw the light and got the hell out,although they still kept up with what was happening in the street. That was kind of a weird neighborhood back in the early to mid-80's because it was in transition. There were Freaks and Gaylords and Cobras and Disciples living on the same blocks. Most of those guys went to Nixon school and Kelvyn Park H.S. so when they ran into each other it wasn't really a big deal because they knew each other from childhood. The folks in that neighborhood were mostly KK and guys like Chip hung out over by
Grand & Harlem. I do remember checking out some freshly painted walls over at Belden & Knox. You guys had that camp decked out big and bold. Me and a friend used to call ourselves the Muralmasters,because whenever a club had a really nice painting up,
we would take pictures of them. We never desecrated any walls and we had scrapbooks of all the pictures. We also took pictures of the New York style hip hop graffiti that was all the rage at the time. We actually risked life and limb taking some of those shots.

Sometimes my buddy actually had permission from some of those clubs to take pictures of their murals. To be safe we would always go super early on Saturday and Sunday mornings when nobody was around. I'm sorry to say that I no longer have any of
those pictures due to moving around so much over the years. I took the picture of the mural in the alley at L-A (the one that's in Rocker's book). That was an awesome little painting and I got up at the crack of dawn to take that picture. Hey,that was smart. I didn't want my ride to get bricked in that alley.LOL. Around that same time,give or take a year,there were alot of really cold walls up. The Kings had one on the roof at Division and Spaulding that was about the best. The Latin Brothers had a nice one on the roof at North Ave. & Latrobe. A knight's helmet with an old english LB. That was just before they moved all the way up Cicero Ave. The Latin Lovers had one over by Lyndale & Campbell with 3 hearts and the names of their deceased homeboys inside.

The Uptown Rebels had one on the roof at Wilson & Magnolia that was smoking. We even took pictures of walls down in Pilsen. The Gangsters had a huge gangster crown up at Drake & Armitage around '84. It had to be about 6 feet high and 12 feet wide.
Alot of guys back then (even non-gangbangers) collected gang cards too. You could go to Chicago Knitting Mills up on Montrose and have a sweater custom made. Plain war sweaters costed about 80 bucks. They had Latin King and Royal sweaters already
made,in the box. Probably because those were the 2 biggest clubs up there. That entire scene changed when drug dealing became an enterprise and the styles became more bling bling. Remember when the baggy work pants were more popular than jeans? You used to get those at the military surplus stores. They only came in a few colors. Gray (GL's/LE's),Green(SC's/ID's/CN's), Tan,Brown (Jivers/OA's),Dark Blue(SCR's/CW's/NK's),and Black(everybody else). Navy Pea Coats were popular. Leather jackets with the sweat hoods underneath. Casual straw shoes.Kung fu slippers. Army boots. Of course,Converse All-Stars. The canvas ones.
The official poor kids gymshoe. With no arch support whatsoever. Later on with the breaking craze,Puma suedes with the fat laces. They didn't wear bandanas like Tupac. They wore them pirate-style and aunt-jemima style if you were really ghetto. Then the stupid baseball caps came out. Tip to the left or right or whatever. Now they wear those big denim burlap sacks falling off their asses. They shoot their gats sideways because they saw somebody in a rap video do it like that. Then they wonder why innocent people get killed. I thought our generation was messed up. We look like elder statesmen compared to these kids now. Anyways, no use living in the past. Things were not all perfect back when Ronnie Reagan was prez,either.

Arrow (the Irish kid that hung out w/Ricans)

South Side Old School Times
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I really see no commonalities between anything I was involved with as a kid, and the clubs of today. The whole demographic changed; when we scorned people of a darker persuasion back then in the 80s, now it seems to be a staple of club life. When we would end up at parties, and there would be guys from other clubs showing up who were affiliated with the 5, everyone seemed to get along, though there was always that thought in the back of your head something might happen.

I remember cruising around the south side, everywhere from Marquette Park, through Stickney and Garfield Ridge; through Berwyn, Cicero and Summit, sometimes looking for trouble, other times just cruising on a Saturday night looking for chicks. Mixes from 102.7BMX would be blasting from the car, especially when the Hot Mix 5 came on.

I remember going to the teenage dance clubs on Wednesday and Sunday nights; Prime and Tender on 63rd and Harlem, Kicks on 66 on 66th Street, and the Fire Alarm on Ogden in Cicero. Their were club members everywhere, both allies and flakes. It was exciting times.

I remember when pagers were first becoming popular, and if you had one, you were the shit.

I remember stealing hood ornaments, Alpine car radios, and Cobra fuzz busters, and selling them to a gentlemen in Lyons for some much needed cash.

I remember not wearing blue jeans for years: black baggies, black Converse All Stars with the tongue flipped over and T-Ps scrawled across it, spider or ladder-laced, a white hoodie, and slicked back hair . That was the uniform of the times.

I remember selling the carp we caught in the Des Plaines River in Lyons by the water tower to the Blacks for a buck a piece.

I remember a time when you fought with fists, or whatever else you could get your hands on instead of guns. Yes, in the 80s guns were starting to become more the rule that the exception, but it took a little while longer before the negro influence took hold of white youth.

I remember seeing Colors when it came out at the Hillside Theater. Cops were both inside at outside the movies. Club members would just start yelling out their names during the film, kind of like that scene in "Cooley High".

I remember when NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" was released. That shit hit like a storm. Everyone was blasting "F_ck tha Police" on their ghetto blasters. It was something never heard before, and though I wasn't big on rap music, it was kinda cool. Nowadays, kids just take it for granted, gangsta rap, trying to emulate and propagate it.

I miss those times

Just feeling nostalgic today. :)