Members of a juvenile gang (“Jack’s Gang”) wait outside of the Valley Municipal Building, August 14, 1951. They were charged with possession of numerous weapons.
Gang members in the early 1950s were quite different from our modern gangsters.
Thin, lanky, well-groomed, they wore argyle socks, dress trousers with cuffs, or, like one young man, dark jeans with graphic t-shirt (“Hollywood and Vine”). Another sports a Hawaiian shirt and rolled up denim jeans.
Their parents seem perversely proud and non-plussed by their boys, as if the young men were just going through another male rite of passage.
Photos: USC Digital Archives
This blog’s current entry does made me think of the following image:
The distant past, including the 1950s, wasn’t ideal and had more than its share of flaws. Nonetheless, in the 2000s, it does seem like this nation has become more and more like George Bailey’s nightmarish “Potterville.”
LikeLike
Yes we now live openly inside lives once regarded as shameful.
LikeLike