If you can
believe this back in the 1950s, maybe the 1960s too but they did a different
tact on the issues politicians, ministers, priests, school administrators and above
all the cops were fretting over what they saw as a dangerous trend that could have
threatened the very foundations of Western Civilization. They saw, particularly
among young men, teenagers and early twenties a certain alienation from the
main program laid out for everybody in society (the young women, fewer of them would
get the microscopic look later) and dare I say it, a certain rebellion. That rebellion
exhibited in various ways from total devotion to hot rods and midnight chicken runs,
endless pursuit of the perfect wave by West Coast surfers, an epidemic of armed
robberies and other acts of mayhem and murder among the outlaw motorcycle crowd
and a serious surliness among the Time Square hipsters and their junkie brethren.
Another manifestation
of that same trend would be the sullen and maybe surly guys, mostly guys although
some places had girls hanging around as eye candy who hung out on various
corners of their respective towns. In the days before malls totally displaced
these denizens it could have been a variety store, a drugstore, more likely a bowling
alley or pizza parlor, the primo spot of primo spots. The, ah, corner boys had that
same alienation and angst as those previously mentioned holy goofs except they
had no dough, no money ad no way, no legal way starting out at least to make money
and hence they hung and did the best they could.
But one look
at this photograph of young boys who would in a few years, some of them anyway,
become corner boys, read a sociologist’s juvenile delinquent nightmare and
society’s too and you can prove to your own satisfaction that corner boys are
made, not born.
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