What generation of children in America weren’t gun kids, as it probably becomes more ingrained and widespread with each generation.
This kid had a toy gun. It’s 1983 in front of an abandoned apartment building on his block along East 68th Street in Cleveland. At this time most of the buildings, all residential, were still standing with pockets of abandonment. By 1990 half the homes were gone and by 2006 there were only four original homes left. Easily predictable because many of the homes were run-down by 1980.
If this guy survived, he would be close to fifty years old today in 2020, and if he grew up here, he would soon never carry a toy gun again. How many know what it’s like to be from a place that saw the outrageous levels of murder, beginning in the sixties and still ongoing in places like East 68th Street? Sadly its been greatly mitigated by the fact that the population loss is staggering, but it and the neighboring streets are still tough as shit, and i always wondered if this one made it.