Word: corneres
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Philadelphia, a gang is called a "corner," and a gang leader is a "runner" or a "checkholder." Smokey, aged 19, dressed in a flaming red shirt and matching narrow-brimmed hat, is the runner of the Montgomery corner, and he is expecting trouble from the Norris Avenue corner, whose turf is just across Berks Street. "I keep everybody together, plan any action we might take," he explains coolly. Just then a corner member, who looks to be no more than nine or ten, points a finger and yells: "Three dudes coming up. Looks like warrin' time." As the three...
...Montgomerys and the Norrises are among the estimated 100 to 200 gangs that roam the black neighborhoods of West and North Philadelphia. Most of the gangs have memberships of no more than 30 or 40 teenagers, and in some cases their territory is quite literally no more than a corner or a block at best. The rules of sovereignty-and survival-are strict. The difference between life and death can often depend on whether a boy walks on one side of a street or the other. Forays by an individual or a group into the territory of another gang...
Some gangs, like the Twelfth and Wallace corner and the Twelfth and Poplar, are perpetual enemies simply because they are immediate neighbors. Other gangs "pull with" each other, living in peace side by side and making common cause against more distant gangs. North Philadelphia's Valley gang is in fact a giant entente of corners boasting nearly 1,000 members...
Some gangs are simply natural aggressors. The Norris Avenue corner is such a group of "crazies." Though the gang is small in number, each Norris is reputed to have two or three "bodies" under his belt. "Getting a body"-shooting someone in another gang-is the surest way a younger member has of "getting a rep" and climbing in the corner hierarchy. If he survives, by age 17 he is already an elder in the gang world and can gracefully step down from active combat in order to permit those coming up to do the corner's fighting...
...ghetto institution in Philadelphia; indeed some of them claim an identity that goes back 40 years, and some have been at war with the same opponent for as long as 30 years. But the advent of guns in large quantities in the late '60s changed the character of corner warfare and sent the hazards and the casualties zooming. Oddly enough, the guns have also served to reduce the scale of the actual combat, and all out melees between two gangs-West Side Story style-are now rare...