Chicago Gang Business Cards? A New Book Documents The Strange True History
By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 9, 2017 4:37PM
It seems almost too odd to be true: business cards for Chicago gangs? But during very different times, such a thing did exist, when the likes of the Insane Unknowns, the Insane Popes and countless other gangs repped so-called “compliment cards”—dozens of which are documented in a recent book from a Chicagoland native.
In Thee Almighty & Insane: Chicago Gang Business Cards from the 1970s & 1980s, Brandon Johnson reprints some some 60-plus cards from his own larger collection. The book captures a relatively unknown subcultural phenomenon, when, as Johnson describes it, "greaser gangs" were just beginning to transition into the modern street gang.
The cards—which often included gang information such as territories and nicknames—alternately served as “prestige” markers and recruitment tools.
“Some of the gangs came out of social clubs, athletic clubs, motorcycle clubs, even softball teams,” Johnson, managing editor of zingmagazine, told Chicagoist, so they ended up employing the same membership-card concept that those societies did.
The phenomenon of gang business cards—of which Johnson became aware when he found a Royal Capris card in his father's keepsake box in the attic of Brandon's Downers Grove childhood home—appears to be an almost exclusively Chicago one, Johnson found in his research.
As quaint as the concept may seem in 2017, the social dynamic they portray is anything but. Although Thee Almighty & Insane largely captures the pre-crack era, before gang violence ratcheted up, they show a deep racial animus and nativist streak that sadly continues to resonate.
“I first became interested in the cards for the aesthetics,” Johnson said, but then the social issues became more thought-provoking. “The Gaylord cards”—a white gang—“have racist imagery: swastikas and anti-immigration sentiment. The Latino and white gangs were at odds with the migration that was happening in the city."
Thee Almighty & Insane is available now for purchase here. It was also stocked locally at Quimby's.