These boys look like trouble. You can tell by the way they grease back their hair, toke their smokes and snap their fingers… Legendary New York photographer Bruce Davidson documented a gang of “troubled teenagers coming of age” in 1959 Brooklyn, capturing the young almost-underbelly of a conservative, “innocent” society. They called themselves the Jokers. See them look tough, get tattoos, get into fights, dance to records, nuzzle with their gal pals and loiter cinematically. Spotted by the Retronaut, indulge yourself with this look back in time, with a tinge of glamorous masculinity and teenage angst.
Image credit: Bruce Davidson
Comments (52)
Badass.
This is awesome!
Very Homoerotic.
they look like they are drinking out of what Farrell’s used to call tube’s ,by prospect park west.
I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley! Amazing pics.
Incredible photos!
Bet the Brooklyn police wish this was their biggest problem to-day!
michael murphy
- those same guys are probably are still drinkin’ at Farrell’s!
I’m 3,000 miles and years away but I can smell and taste the tubes from Farrell’s when I look at these photographs.
ugh
Wow! They look even tougher than Adam Levine.
Didn’t #7 become The Jesus & Mary Chain?
@mwynn13 Ha, I was thinking Suicide, but that’s too far “in the future.”
Someone alert John Waters ..
Where are the zip guns @ car aerials?
Would love to see what these kids were like all grown up. Cool photos!
Yes! Let’s all dress, act and look exactly the same! We’re so cool!
Hipsters have always existed. The “non-conformists” are just as conformist as the rest. $20 says most of these people “lived” and are now either dead, incarcerated or fat and sad. Or your dad.
Where are they now?
HOW IN THE HECK THESE PHOTOS BE AWESOME??? THEY’RE CRIMINALS
GOOD TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA!!
MIKE-
How in the heck to you expect people to take you seriously when you type in all caps with faulty grammar?
Captivating!
losers then … probably losers now
(if they’re still alive)
I do not think it is fair to describe these kids as troubled – they were just working class Brooklyn teenagers doing the best they could, trying to find their way. There did not carry guns and were not criminals – there was nothing sinister about them. Many of them ended up productive citizens. Unfortunately, however, shortly after these photos were taken, heroin arrived on the scene and wracked devastation on the neighborhood where these photos were taken and some, but not all of the kids, ended up dying young as junkies.
I was one of many others. There were “good, bad and uglies”. I was “good”, went to college, got Master’s, taught school. I’m knocking on the door on my eightieth year and still learning. Like in all groups there were many “goodies and uglies”.
HOW IN THE HECK THESE PHOTOS BE AWESOME??? THEY’RE CRIMINALS
GOOD TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA!!
Mike – Care to tell me what you see that is against the law? Way to jump to conclusions. Have a little “white envy” Mikey?
“Dig yourself the whole neighborhood is talkin bout ya”
Just what are the guys on the ground in #6 going?
The papers and popular magazines then when I was a literate child were full of exposes of the terrible things “tough hoods” were doing. there were even a few I saw around Des Moines. I doubt that most of them were as casually mean and vicious as their current successor are. A line was crossed some time ago, when the look of Rebellion became genuinely Revolting.
although the equivalent teens now have bodies olympic athletes would envy, thus was my adolescent sexuality formed.
No FATTIES back then
What a crack up. Neighborhood kids pictured here, nothing more. Often called a “crew.”
Wanna see the real criminals? In the day they were the greasers. Scumbags all.
Photo # 6 – 8th Ave and 17th St in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Google street view it. That building’s still there but looks a lot better then. Covered in vinyl siding now. Interesting to see though.
Is that digital or film?
Oh, there’s trouble there with these young people, I tell you…
I look at these and appreciate the work that the photographer put into taking these beautiful shots!! Let me tell you that to have so many people discussing the subject of his work means that he accomplished his goal!! oh and yes I feel like getting an eggcream!!
Lots of beer and smokes in those days. Hardly anybody overweight. Sunglasses mandatory… white t-shirts, sleeves rolled-up, and LEVIS. If you had a car and the aforementioned list of items, you were set!!
what would be super intersting is how they turned out
Went to Bishop Ford…and Farrell’s quite a bit.
Miss those days. I was a bit younger than these guys. Why are/were we all characterized as hoods and criminals? Guess what?…not all of us. Most of us turned out to be law abiding respectable and productive citizens that have done well and have helped others.
It’s 1959 and by 1964 if they couldn’t get deferments and they are fighting and dying in Vietnam. If they are alive, they are 68-plus.
they’re all white and no one’s fat. never seen anything like it in my lifetime!
Rock and Roll is to Blame !!
Damm hooligans!!!
Now these folks are running the Democrat party.
I remember going to Manual Training High School(presently called John Jay, Class of ’64. Never graduated—joined the Navy. The greater portion of the school was on dope. Park Slope, Sunset Park, Kensington, and Greenwood Heights were all full of working class junkies. These kids could have been members of the Saxons, Huns, or Saints.
not Park Slope – Windsor Terrace, really
Interesting comments. Well, as Johnny Cash once wrote, “I was there when it happened, so I guess I ought to know.” In their heart of hearts, most of the guys and the girls who appear in the Windsor Terrace Brooklyn Gang pictures, were really good people.
I was very close to Junior Rice, and Bengie, and Lefty Jensen who appear in much of the pictures, and on the cover of Bruce Davidson’s book. When I was young, I stayed over at Junior’s house almost as much as my own. His older brother Bob Rice and I are still as close as brothers.
Junior used to tell me that one of the shots of someone breaking up an argument under the boardwalk in Coney Island was me. Although it certainly looks like me in the picture at the time, and I remember going down to Coney Island with him, I don’t remember that day or that picture. But as the writer Tobias Wolfe once said, “Memory has it’s own story to tell.”
Unfortunately for them, they got lost somewhere between the violent culture that existed in the 50′s in parts of our Windsor Terrace neighborhood, and the sweet innocence which I think really represented it. Junior passed away recently,and so did Lefty Jensen, Bengie has managed to turn his life around.
This I remember about Lefty Jensen, who I once went out to a shoe store in Bay Ridge with in the 50′s, a place that sold motorcycle boots, he had this sort of James Dean sensitivity to him. sadly, it probably helped to destroy him. He died way too young. The only good thing I walk away with is, the three of them, Junior, Lefty, and Bengie will live on, forever young together, on the cover of Bruce’s book, “Brooklyn Gang.”
Lately I have been reading in New York from a play I wrote called “Stoopdreamer”, which brings back some of those memories. For those who wonder what happened to all the people in Bruce Davidson’s book, just copy and paste the words, With Brass Knuckled Tales, 50′s Street Gang Looks Back. It’s a New York Times story about a reunion that Bengie set up.
Pat Fenton
Funny how the gangs back then were white, all the fights were handled with fist not guns. Sadly today’s gangs are mainly blacks, and they all use guns.
Why is there an assumption these kids are troubled or in gangs? Ok, they have cigarettes hanging out of their mouths – who over the age of 16 didn’t have a cigarette hanging out of their mouth in the 50′s? And as shocking as it may be, NYC was predominately white back in the 50′s.
jake for your information ms 13 are latinos and so are the latin kings all gangs are not black stop using color and yes in other states white gangs still exist. in the times we are living in all gangs carry guns.
looks like obama, typical.
Jake you are a sad case, you see a picture and make stupid racist assumption. Gangs came (come) in all colors. If you’re on the white side of town then the gang would be white, if you’re in hispanic neighborhood then it would be hispanic, etc.
By the way Jake, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you; not much wear and tear and only used by white people.
Where in Brooklyn?
Mike
There were guns back then but it was not as wide spread. If you can recall Joe Pepitone (the Yankee player) was shot in Mr. W. shop class. This happened at Manual Training High School in the 3rd. floor wood shop class. The bullet went thru him just missing his heart. This happened in 1959.
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