Crew History

A crew comprises a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. The word has particular nautical resonances: the tasks involved in operating a ship, particularly a sailing ship, providing numerous specialties within a ship's crew, often organized with a chain of command. Traditional nautical usage strongly distinguishes officers from crew, though the two groups combined form the ship's company. Members of a crew are often referred to by the title "Crewman" and as well as "Crewmember".

The first use of the term 'crew' in popular culture was to describe groups of organized, white punks in the 1980's. These punk crews would socialize, drink, attend punk shows and occasionally commit acts of violence together. Some punk crews lived in squats together. Punk crews are now almost non-existent, possibly due to the influence of ska and reggae music on modern punk, mostly removing the call to random hatred and violence of innocent people and therefore negating the need to form violent crews. Some still exist, but most do not operate as punk crews once did, and now simply identify themselves as a group of friends that are as close as brothers.

Occasionally, a crew may refer to a graffiti group / group of gangsters, sometimes, but not necessarily involved in some illicit activity (Prostitution, weapon handling, narcotics, fake IDs, etc.). Sometimes the crew is based on a common interest such as cars, or forms a neighborhood sports team, with a superficial resemblance to a street gang involved with crime.