Gang Violence

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Cheap thrills

The inky delights of Dr. Lakra
They say Dr. Lakra got his pen name from the doctor’s bag he carried around when he first began tattooing, two decades ago. “Lakra” puns on the Spanish word “lacra,” meaning scar or blemish, but it’s also slang for “delinquent” or “scumbag.”
By GREG COOK | April 21, 2010

Review: The Book of Eli

The Road not taken
In a post-Apocalyptic landscape of ash and destruction infested by slack-jawed cannibal gangs with carious grins, a man walks resolutely toward the sea, bearing with him the light of humanity.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 13, 2010

Photos: Bonnaroo 2009

Bruce Springsteen, Wilco, Elvis Costello, and more at Bonnaroo 2009
Bruce Springsteen, Wilco, Elvis Costello, and more at Bonnaroo 2009 in Manchester, Tennessee
By LEXY WINTER | June 17, 2009

Turkey Terror Tale

Tom Foolery
Violent crime, gang activity, and general thuggery are not recurring themes on the Brookline police blotter. But that civic paradise is plagued by another kind of scourge — one that manifests all three of those crimes in avian form. And it isn't bird flu.
By LANCE GOULD, WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY EMILY MELLO | May 13, 2009

Crips and Bloods: Made in America

The war at home
Stacy Peralta's new documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America suggests how frightening it is to be born black and eight miles off the Pacific coastline.
By CHRIS FARAONE | April 22, 2009

Ganging up on teens

Gang-member profiling in Somerville
On March 10, Somerville police, responding to reports of a large fight near Pearl Street and McGrath Highway, stopped six teenage boys walking in the area.
By DANIELLE DREILINGER | April 08, 2009

A living history

Twilight revists the King riots
Since Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is set in a specific place and time, some theatergoers will want to relegate its incidents and attitudes — which surround the Rodney King riots — to history.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | March 24, 2009

Downsizing the Mob

State Police superintendent Brendan Doherty discusses the fade of OC in RI
The arrest of 17 people last week as part of "Operation Mobbed Up" — as well as the subsequent discovery in East Providence of human remains thought to be those of Joseph "Joe Onions" Scanlon — put front and center the bygone days of the Rhode Island Mob.
By IAN DONNIS | November 26, 2008

Raising the Bar (Rock)

The Hold Steady + The Drive-By Truckers at the Orpheum, November 9, 2008
On the "Rock and Roll Means Well" tour, Drive-By Truckers and the Hold Steady upgraded their respective brands of quintessential American bar rock with a number of arena-rock trimmings.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | November 14, 2008

Call it a comeback

The Drive-By Truckers veer from the brink
Alabama offspring Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have been making raucous rock and roll together in one band or another for the past 23 years, about the same time it takes most offspring to grow up and get real jobs.
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | November 03, 2008

Death of a hoop dream

Mario Hornsby Jr. was senselessly gunned down in May. Now his father is trying to make sure his death was not in vain.
This past fall, Mario Hornsby Jr., then a senior at Springfield Central High School, wrote an essay for English class.
By MIKE MILIARD | August 28, 2008

Facebook follies

Letters to the Boston editor, August 8, 2008
I’d rather live with Facebook than without!
By LETTERS TO THE BOSTON EDITOR | August 06, 2008

Me and my tattoos

One Man’s Inky Voyage Toward Meaning
I know that most people get their first tattoo when they’re drunk, or infatuated, or when there’s a race war on their cellblock and they have to quickly join a gang — but not me.
By JAMES PARKER | July 23, 2008

Imprisoned facts

Will the truth escape from a break in the prison wall?
Although I had already written a lot about abuse in the prison, this May 21 interview with Dorney, a 28-year-old Portland man serving 20 years for assault, was what I had been waiting for.
By LANCE TAPLEY | May 28, 2008

Who gives a truth?

Augusten Burroughs and James Frey try to overcome authenticity scandals with grim new books
Both authors write largely about issues of addiction and abuse, but they couldn’t have more different styles.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | May 28, 2008

Pants afire

Fakeries and the faking fakers who fake them
The ratio of falsehood to truth in the universe has not, of course, altered one jot since the world began.
By JAMES PARKER | March 13, 2008

Cidade dos Homens|City of Men

A chilling gangland epic
Beneath the gunfire, Morelli captures the horror of drugs, poverty, and doomed lives, in particular the intergenerational turmoil of fathers and sons.
By TOM MEEK | February 27, 2008

Permanent

Body modification as art at the Peabody Essex Museum
As Massachusetts’s puritanical Blue Laws started to fade in the late 1990s, the kids on Comm Ave rejoiced.
By SALLY CRAGIN | February 20, 2008

Bettye’s business

The battles of a blues belter
The battles of a blues belter
By TED DROZDOWSKI | October 30, 2007

Shattered illusions

No, not the window!
This past weekend in Boston, nine people were shot, 13 stabbed, and feuding gangs used families at Roxbury’s annual Caribbean Festival as duck-and-cover props.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | August 29, 2007

Who's who?

West Side Story looks at the Others in America
Both tragedy and redemption happen when the real Americans stand up.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 20, 2007

Streets of sorrow

Boston's murder survivors: nine familes, nine stories
Two years ago, in one of the most concentrated bursts of deadly violence Boston had seen in years, nine victims were killed in 20 days.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | May 09, 2007

The painful truth

Boston’s murder crisis underscores the need to reform its police force
If it is painful to try to make sense of the ongoing plague of murders in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, try to imagine what it is like to live there.
By EDITORIAL | April 04, 2007

Portland scene report: March 2, 2007

Sibilance starts now
The Killing Moon (yes, formerly Animal Suit Drive-By, by gosh) have released a new EP with Fearless Records, A Message Through Your Teeth , as of last Tuesday.
By PORTLAND MUSIC STAFF | February 28, 2007

Freedom Writers

Classroom concentration camp
Based on a true story, this Dangerous Minds retread stars Hilary Swank as a naive teacher in Los Angeles who takes a misfit group of gangbangers and dealers and teaches them about poetry, life . . . and Anne Frank.
By BROOKE HOLGERSON | January 03, 2007

Too much information?

Revisiting the Globe ’s gang-truce scoop. Plus, Deval Patrick scolds the media, and the problem with Blue Mass Group’s success.
It’s not often that the Globe makes the Herald look restrained, but it happened earlier this month.
By ADAM REILLY | December 07, 2006

The Hold Steady

Boys And Girls In America | Vagrant
Like many of America’s smartest rock bands — from Fountains of Wayne to the Drive-By Truckers — this Minneapolis-to-Brooklyn quintet are an anomaly. The Hold Steady, "Killer Parties Remix"
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | November 13, 2006

Cop or drug dealer?

Roberto Pulido’s story shows how easily the divide between law-keepers and law-breakers can break down — if nobody is paying attention
Meet Roberto Pulido, 41.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | November 09, 2006

Once again, Boston’s police flub for the cameras

When they come for you
Filmmakers always seem to catch the Boston Police Department (BPD) on its bad days.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | October 04, 2006

Oh brother, where alt thou?

A popular cult genre searches for its lost highway
In the summer of 1995, Grant Alden was documenting “the tail end of the grunge years” as managing editor of a Seattle music weekly, the Rocket . Alejandro Escovedo, "Broken Bottle" (mp3 via MySpace) Drive-By Truckers, "Feb. 14" (mp3 via MySpace)
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | August 02, 2006