Gang Leader For a Day

Venkatesh wakes up at 7:30 AM in apartment 1603, in a building at the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago: the apartment is a crack den known as “the roof” because you can get high there. The den is run by a gang called the Black Kings. Venkatesh is not a gang member, however; he’s a graduate student of sociology at the University of Chicago. He leaves the apartment and goes to visit the Patton family on the 10th floor, telling us that this is “Just another day as an outsider looking at life from the inside” (11).

The book opens during Venkatesh’s first week as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. During orientation lectures, students are warned repeatedly to stay in the safe areas of the city and not to venture outside them: “It turned out that the ivory tower was also an ivory fortress” (12). Venkatesh lives on the edge of one of these safe zones, on the border between the university campus and a poor, black neighborhood. He has recently moved to Chicago from California and spends his time exploring the city. He is especially interested in the poor black neighborhoods; when he walks in these areas he is the subject of intense scrutiny but feels perfectly safe.