{"id":325,"date":"2009-06-05T10:53:50","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T14:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henryalford.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2009-06-19T15:30:41","modified_gmt":"2009-06-19T19:30:41","slug":"gang-side-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"How I Took a Former Gang Member to See the New Broadway Production of &#8220;West Side Story&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are few more amusing sights to me than that of gang members who erupt into a frenzy of Sondheim lyrics and precision choreography. So a couple months ago I had the somewhat nutty idea that it would be fun to take an actual gang member&#8211;or a former gang member&#8211;to see the new Broadway production of <em>West Side Story<\/em> to witness the reaction to same. I got in touch with the public radio show <a href=\"http:\/\/www.studio360.org\"><em>Studio 360<\/em><\/a> and, several thousand e-mails later, found myself at the Palace Theater with Bruce George, a former member of the Bronx gang, Kaos Krew. The piece airs this weekend&#8211;you can hear it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.studio360.org\/episodes\/2009\/06\/05\">here<\/a>, or find your local station <a href=\"http:\/\/www.studio360.org\/stations\">here<\/a>. I&#8217;m not sure which of Bruce&#8217;s reactions I like better&#8211;when he told me, &#8220;The people I&#8217;ve seen getting shot, they didn&#8217;t sing tunes,&#8221; or his reaction when I busted his chops for checking his e-mail during the Jets and Sharks&#8217;s rumble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are few more amusing sights to me than that of gang members who erupt into a frenzy of Sondheim lyrics and precision choreography. So a couple months ago I had the somewhat nutty idea that it would be fun to take an actual gang member&#8211;or a former gang member&#8211;to see the new Broadway production [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henryalford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}