Crime, murder, filth, and tension. These are all aspects and feelings that play into the photograph that creates Bandit’s Roost, figure 1. This photograph was taken by the infamous Jacob Riis in 1888 for his studies, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. While this photo rests within a compressed, dirty alley on the lower East Side of New York City, the alley itself is set within “the Bend”, the slum of Mulberry Street. Mulberry Street is historically known as the center Little Italy, and includes many family owned shops and residences. The slum which is known as “the Bend” can be described as a “vast human pig-sty”. Riis made the explanation of “the Bend” very clear by stating, ““There is but one “Bend” in the …show more content…
Due to this book Riis took great fame, his name spread largely across New York and there is even a beach named after him. In fact, western photographer Ansel Adams marveled over Riis’ work and exclaimed, “I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. And they in turn seem to be aware of me.” Another image that relates to that of Bandit’s Roost also comes from Riis’ book and is entitled The Tramp, figure 3. Similar to Bandit’s Roost, this photo depicts an older man wearing baggy, torn clothes, sitting on the stairs of a building in what looks to be a dark, dirty alley. There are puddles on the group, torn rooftops, and dirty doorways that show the same filth as in Bandit’s Roost that these people endure. Additionally, in his book, the man in the photo is described to be “a tramp” which Riis explains as a homeless thief and in the winter “the sanitary police corral the tramps here and in their lodging-houses and vaccinate them.” Another fascination of Riis’ were slum children, whom he also called “Street Arabs”. In his photograph The Growler Gang in Session (Robbing a Lush), figure 4, Riis intended to show how these young children can take after bad examples they see on the street, such as pick-pocketing and stealing, and are thus known as “future thugs”. …show more content…
Specifically, Riis’ photos speak to the overwhelming violence and crime that took place in the Lower East Side in the 1880s. To put it simply, Riis made the decision to publish this book in order to document crime in this area as well as bring attention to the horrible living conditions. As stated by the Tenement Museum, “Rather than blame the poor for these deplorable conditions, he asserted that the environment itself contributed to poverty.” Additionally, the prior theory to Riis’ was that the poor were to blame for their own suffering. However, the Progressive Era soon challenged this notion by examining the economic structure at the time. Author Clayton Patterson comments on the issue of the time: “Two decades ago New York’s loss of housing and jobs, and increase in violence and drugs, created an unforeseen crisis in the Lower East Side, setting the stage for political, social and artistic upheaval.” All of this corruption and turmoil for the citizens eventually affected New York greatly in later years to come. However, focusing on the 1880s and 1890s, lots of gangs were emerging partially due to the influx of immigrants. Cultures clung and stuck together, traveling as one and competing with one another for territory. The tension was prominent, especially among gangs such as the Jewish gang, the Black Hand, and an Italian gang also known as the
As time went by, J.T. and Venkatesh met less and less and in the year 1998, most of the Robert Taylor buildings would be demolished. As their encounters were coming to an end, J.T. offers Venkatesh names of gang members in Newark and in New York, to enable Venkatesh to pursue his research elsewhere since his dissertation had long ago been finished which was written on the ways that people living in poverty made a living to get them by day-to-day.
1-The story tells, Real facts occurred in the 1940s, where it was a racist society. Gangs were scattered throughout the cities, and regions, and the streets. To live, you have full get away, or belonging to one of them. You should help the gang members that they were right or on falsehood. Also, it is a kind of bigotry, not much different from intolerance, national, ethnic, and sectarian That were prevalent in American society. in fact, it is the inevitable result of this society. When the corruption becomes prevails, injustice and lawless prevails too, and justice will disappear.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh is the ideologies rooted in the African American community. The ideal facts cannot be denied here. The idea of being black and poor is not a simple answer of, very bad, somewhat bad, neither, somewhat good or very good. Being black and poor is a lifestyle. Being black and poor is a community. This book will give you understanding how structural racism among blacks is installed throughout history. The system is created to make sure the subject matter, blacks, in this case are subjected to fail. The crack epidemic in a Chicago neighborhood was only the beginning.
Anderson may seem like a travel novelist in his writing, but far more is being critiqued in his research. Notably, he is using the ethnographic methodology of research, in which he, through observation, describes a “conceptual picture” (Anderson, 1998, 65). Anderson is analyzing the effect of violence in the social structure of the neighborhoods along Germantown Avenue, and how its effects are visible in the actions of individuals on the street. For one to understand violence it is necessary to understand where violence occurs and, specifically, what in the environment allows violence to occur. Anderson is successfully explaining the transitions of one neighborhood to another, at the same time he is evaluating the normative behavior of the people interacting with the environment of the neighborhood.
Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto paints a grim picture of inevitability for the once-exclusive neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Ososfky’s timeframe is set in 1890-1930 and his study is split up into three parts. His analysis is convincing in explaining the social and economic reasons why Harlem became the slum that it is widely infamous for today, but he fails to highlight many of the positive aspects of the enduring neighborhood, and the lack of political analysis in the book is troubling.
from the country’s interior. The adolescents came to compete for work in the recently industrialized world. In New York the large influx of youths produced a new adolescent subculture that promoted deviant and licentious behavior throughout the city. The book
The novel How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis shocked middle and upper class Americans when it was published in 1890. Riis created a sensation when he revealed to the world, combining detailed written descriptions with graphic photographs, the horrific conditions of New York City’s tenement housing. How the Other Half Lives raises many questions, such as how and why the poor are subjected to such terrible living conditions and how that environment affects them. Riis also reveals his fears and prejudices toward certain ethnic groups as he investigates each tenement in order to find some kind of solution. The miserable surroundings Riis discusses throughout the length of his entire document focus on the tenement.
Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives is a detailed description on the poor and the destitute in the inner realms of New York City. Riis tries to portray the living conditions through the ‘eyes’ of his camera. He sneaks up on the people flashes a picture and then tells the rest of the city how the ‘other half’ is living. As shocking as the truth was without seeing such poverty and horrible conditions with their own eyes or taking in the experience with all their senses it still seemed like a million miles away or even just a fairy tale.
For centuries now, gangs have been all over America, causing violence and ruining the youths opportunities. Children's lives can be ruined joining a gang leading into violence and substance abuse. From the earlier 20th Century, to now, gangs have been an issue in low income cities and neighborhoods. In Jacob Saenz’s poem, “Evolution of My Block”, written in 1982, Saenz describes to the readers how the gang life was in his neighborhood and on his block. Throughout the poem, he talks about the pressure of gangs and how they functioned. His poem speaks more than what is actually said and hides many of his thoughts through the words and rhymes. The poem conveys many messages and specific aspects which have to deal with culture and race. The narrator
Alger, Horatio. Ragged Dick, Or, Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks. Boston: Loring, 1868. Print.
Surprisingly, little has been written about the historical significance of black gangs in Los Angeles (LA). Literature and firsthand interviews with Los Angeles residents seem to point to three significant periods relevant to the development of the contemporary black gangs. The first period, which followed WWII and significant black migrations from the South, is when the first major black clubs formed. After the Watts rebellion of 1965, the second period gave way to the civil rights period of Los Angeles where blacks, including those who where former club members who became politically active for the remainder of the 1960s. By the early 1970s black street gangs began to reemerge. By 1972, the Crips were firmly established and the Bloods were beginning to organize. This period saw the rise of LA’s newest gangs, which continued to grow during the 1970s, and later formed in several other cities throughout the United States by the 1990s. While black gangs do not make up the largest or most active gang population in Los Angeles today, their influence on street gang culture nationally has been profound.
"This is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth... Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of going on all fours, and why they talk instead of grunting?" (Dickens 61) The outlandish filth described by Charles Dickens was a first hand account of the intersection of Orange Street, Cross Street, Anthony Street, and Little Water Street, better known as Five Points New York. It became the setting for many of 17th century gangs, but the most prominent were the Bowery Boys and The Dead Rabbits. This wicked part of town was known for its depravity the crimes that flooded the streets, from mugging to murder. Clearly, the slums were the place for v...
Chapter 3 and chapter 16 “da joint and beyond” really caught my eye. Chapter 3 “gangsters-real and unreal” summarized the image of the “hood” and crime filled areas where people are regularly being robbed, shot, and killed. It also told how drugs came about and became a new indusry. It also became popular among musicians and soon became a way to employ young poor teens who lived in these “hoods”. As many ...
The book asks two questions; first, why the changes that have taken place on the sidewalk over the past 40 years have occurred? Focusing on the concentration of poverty in some areas, people movement from one place to the other and how the people working/or living on Sixth Avenue come from such neighborhoods. Second, How the sidewalk life works today? By looking at the mainly poor black men, who work as book and magazine vendors, and/or live on the sidewalk of an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The book follows the lives of several men who work as book and magazine vendors in Greenwich Village during the 1990s, where mos...
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict themselves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified by the character of the prostitute.