Invoke the word “gang” in a conversation about New York City, and any number of different names, pictures and associations might come up. Some might make allusions to films like Walter Hill’s classic “The Warriors,” Philip Kaufman’s “The Wanderers” (based on the Richard Price novel) or even Martin Scorsese’s flawed-but-entertaining “Gangs of New York.” Others will invariably cite the gritty, black-&-white photographs of 70’s-era organizations with ominous names like The Savage Skulls, The Black Assassins, and the Imperial Bachelors, their affiliations and colors boldly sported on the backs of their denim vests while standing amidst the rubble of the South Bronx. New York City obviously has a rich, robust history of this lower-tiered variant of organized crime. But one particular patch of the wide, varied tapestry of the five boroughs that will probably not be invoked is the Upper East Side.
To mention the Upper East Side is to immediately conjure images of palatial apartments, stately townhouses, leafy, tree-lined streets, posh shops, ritzy restaurants, haughty museums and snooty private schools. By all accounts, the U.E.S. is perceived as an exclusive enclave of affluence and privilege.
Fair enough, I suppose, but it should be remembered that not all of the entirety of the sizable plot of real estate that constitutes the Upper East Side is Carnegie Hill. Large swathes of the streets that make up this part of Manhattan (largely east of Lexington Avenue) were home to working-class families of largely Irish and German descent. As the jack-booked march of gentrification gradually encroached on the micro-neighborhoods their respective cultures and sensibilities had shaped, you can well imagine there was a sizable bit of resentment.
I should preface the rest of this post with what is probably an assertion of the very obvious, that being that I was never a street-fighting tough guy nor ever a member of any gang. I can count the instances wherein I was involved in fisticuffs on pretty much one hand with a few fingers to spare. By and large, while periodically opinionated and even needlessly argumentative, I have normally tended to strive for reasonable compromise and diplomacy as my go-to means of conflict-resolution. Any impressions I may have given to the contrary have been entirely unintentional.
I mentioned the organization in question in some detail in this sprawling, windy post from 2015, but I believe I *first* invoked their name back in 2008 on this post. I’m talking, of course, about the 84th Street Gang, mistakenly referred to in that afore-cited 2008 post as “the 86th Street Gang.” In the wake of that longer post from 2015, meanwhile, a former member thoughtfully wrote in to my blog to correct me that the actual name of the fearsome collective was the 84th Street Bombers, as I later addressed in this post.
In response to all those entries, meanwhile, I fielded several comments – both online and off – from fellow former Upper East Siders for whom those allusions resonated. While information about the 84th Street boys remains largely based in personal recollection, hearsay and neighborhood lore, as I repeatedly asserted, they were no joke. If you were a high schooler living in the U.E.S., or more specifically, Yorkville, at the time of their reign, you knew their name, and you knew to look out for them, ... or you learned the hard way.
But after hearing from (relatively) so many readers about it, I always meant to post a follow-up entry, sharing more information that I’d gleaned from that former member and from other ancillary characters who had more to share about them. But, for whatever reason, I kept having second thoughts -– not wanting to compromise the privacy of certain sources who’d reached out to me in confidence.
As such, that's pretty much where I'd left it, although I have kept an eye out for another reason to invoke them or find out more.
Well, this week, that reason arrived.
A few days back, I started noticing that the ridiculous name of my silly blog was being repeatedly tagged on Instagram by a pair of podcasters. I engaged with them and learned that the crux of their endeavor closely mirrors my own. Dubbed "Desperately Seeking the 80's," the podcast of Jessica and Meg deals primarily with all things NYC in the 1980s. I mean, HELLO!
In any case, these two somehow stumbled upon a few of the posts cited above and started discussing it all. If you're curious, you can hear that episode here. Tell them Flaming Pablum sent you.
In any case, as a result, I'm thinking it might be time to open the case files once again on the Bombers. Watch this space.
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