Decline
The sets at Honore and Bloomingdale, and Sawyer and Altgeld were gone by 1985 due to immigration. Also adding to the damage of forfeiting these two important Jouster sets, the leader of the Honore and Bloomingdale set, Lil' Man, committed suicide. By this time the Jousters were fully gone from the Taylor Street area.
There was also turmoil for them at their set in Hanson Park. The Jousters were strongly in control of this area, until two murders in their park brought police attention to their organization. Two members of a rival gang, the Simon City Royals who were formerly allies, were found dead in Hanson Park.
By 1986, due to heavy police attention and arrests, the Jousters were going extinct, and very few members were seen actively on the streets. A few years later, members Bear and Omen attempted to resurrect the gang; Hanson Park at this time was their last set left. The rejuvenation however came to a stop as the ethnic and cultural make up of the neighborhood had changed. The Jousters would last up to around 1995, but after that their presence faded.
Read more about this topic: Jousters
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)