The Bowery Boys

Uncover fascinating, little-known histories of the five boroughs in The Bowery Boys’ official companion to their popular, award-winning podcast. It was 2007. Sitting at a kitchen table and speaking into an old karaoke microphone, Greg Young and Tom Meyers recorded their first podcast. They weren’t history professors or voice actors. They were just two guys living in the Bowery and possessing an unquenchable thirst for the fascinating stories from New York City’s past. Nearly 200 episodes later, The Bowery Boys podcast is a phenomenon, thrilling audiences each month with one amazing story after the next. Now, in their first-ever book, the duo gives you an exclusive personal tour through New York’s old cobblestone streets and gas-lit back alleyways. In their uniquely approachable style, the authors bring to life everything from makeshift forts of the early Dutch years to the opulent mansions of The Gilded Age. They weave tales that will reshape your view of famous sites like Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, and the High Line. Then they go even further to reveal notorious dens of vice, scandalous Jazz Age crime scenes, and park statues with strange pasts. Praise for The Bowery Boys “Among the best city-centric series.” —New York Times “Meyers and Young have become unofficial ambassadors of New York history.” —NPR “Breezy and informative, crowded with the finest grifters, knickerbockers, spiritualists, and city builders to stalk these streets since back when New Amsterdam was just some farms.” —Village Voice “Young and Meyers have an all-consuming curiosity to work out what happened in their city in years past, including the Newsboys Strike of 1899, the history of the Staten Island Ferry, and the real-life sites on which Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl is based.” —The Guardian

When his father is framed for murder, immigrant son Nikolaus McGovern rallies together a motley crew of street youths in a rip-roaring coming-of-age adventure based on the period history of antebellum New York City! Set against the backdrop of rampant political corruption, vicious street gangs, nascent labor reform and ardent xenophobia--can Niko and his friends triumph in a life-and-death battle against their oppressors, or will they succumb to the engines of socio-economic progress?

In the decades before the Civil War, the miserable living conditions of New York City's lower east side nurtured the gangs of New York. This book tells the story of the Bowery Boys, one gang that emerged as part urban legend and part street fighters for the city's legions of young workers. Poverty and despair led to a gang culture that was easily politicized, especially under the leadership of Mike Walsh who led a distinct faction of the Bowery Boys that engaged in the violent, almost anarchic, politics of the city during the 1840s and 1850s. Amid the toppled ballot boxes and battles for supremacy on the streets, many New Yorkers feared Walsh's gang was at the frontline of a European-style revolution. A radical and immensely popular voice in antebellum New York, Walsh spoke in the unvarnished language of class conflict. Admired by Walt Whitman and feared by Tammany Hall, Walsh was an original, wildly unstable character who directed his aptly named Spartan Band against the economic and political elite of New York City and New England. As a labor organizer, state legislator, and even U.S. Congressman, the leader of the Bowery Boys fought for shorter working hours, the right to strike, free land for settlers on the American frontier, against child labor, and to restore dignity to the city's growing number of industrial workers.

Meet and become friends with many of the actors from the Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys! Since he began collecting Movie Memorabilia on the Dead End Kids in 1964, author Richard Roat has had the great fortune to develop personal relationships with David Gorcey, Stanley Clements, Gabe Dell, Bernard Punsly, Huntz Hall, Billy Benedict, Frankie Thomas, Eddie Le Roy, Brandy Gorcey (daughter of Leo Gorcey), Gary Hall (son of Huntz Hall), and Leo Gorcey Jr. (son of Leo Gorcey). This book draws upon those acquaintances and his talking with Billy Halop, Bennie Bartlett, Johnny Duncan, Ward Wood, Dick Chandlee, Eugene Francis, Harris Berger, Charles Peck, Ronald Sinclair, and more! Lavished with many photos from the films from the author's personal collection, this is one book you'll need to have in your collection, tough guy!

In 1935 Sidney Kingsley's play about streetwise urban kids, Dead End, opened on Broadway featuring 14 adolescent actors. For two years on Broadway and then on tour, Kingsley's play delivered its social commentary contrasting affluent neighborhoods and tenement slums on New York City's East River. The film industry picked up the story and in 1937 released Dead End which spawned 23 more years of films and serials featuring the Dead End Kids and their offshoots, Little Tough Guys, East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys. This chronicle follows the street kids through the many assorted incarnations, shifting casts and studios. First the reader is introduced to how the original play and film came about. A cast list and analysis of each production follows. For the major players, the author provides a biography and filmography, and several of these entries include a tribute from a friend or family member. Brief biographical profiles are given for other actors. Sketches of the "Dead End" revivals of 1978 and 2005 follow.

Herbert Asbury presents here a vivid and startling account of New York gangdom from its beginning in Revolutionary times to comparatively recent days. Here are the stories of the great gangs which terrorized the city and at times menaced its very existence—from the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits to the Gophers and the Eastmans. Kid Dropper, Dopey Benny, Gyp the Blood and Owney Madden are a few of the gangster luminaries described, not to mention such female evildoers as Gallus Mag and Sadie the Goat. Nor have the underworld’s lesser lights been overlooked; for these pages are crowded with a host of gang warriors, pickpockets, tong leaders, murderers, politicians, gamblers, prostitutes, dive-keepers and a few would-be reformers. Mr. Asbury has created such a rich, factual background for this chronicle of crime and gangsterism that the book gains considerable stature as a revealing picture of New York City’s history through a century of frenzied growth and expansion. Whether you read it as such or merely for amusement, it is a swift, exciting experience.