Paul Durica
speaker
288 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 27 Jul
Paul Durica’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Well, I would say that was true, but only if you considered your great-grandmother a hoodlum.
What I mean is when we think about the Prohibition era, not just in the United States, but across Chicago, we tend to focus on figures like Al Capone.
He still remains probably one of the most famous people associated with the city of Chicago, like Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey.
But when you really kind of look at this history and what was going on on the street level, it's a little bit more complicated.
And
In terms of people violating the Volstead Act, that is, you know, making beer and spirits and selling them and so forth, you had the organized crime element, but you also had a lot of everyday Chicagoans as scofflaws as well.
In fact, we get that during this era.
To some extent.
I mean, I think what you see happening in Chicago really during this era, so national prohibition starts in January of 1920, extends to 1933, is crime gets organized, right?
So before prohibition goes into effect, I mean, you had...
you know, groups of criminals, gangs, but they were kind of like only like a step up above like a street gang.
And then prohibition goes into effect and they become almost like small businesses.
They started to adopt a kind of structure and you see that play out in different parts of the city.
And so you get a really powerful gang that emerges on the North side, ostensibly led by a guy named Dino Banyan.
You get a gang that emerges on the South side of the city.
Originally there was a,
a longtime criminal named Big Jim Colosimo, who was in charge of that.
He brings in some people from New York, including John Torrio, and Torrio's sidekick, Al Capone.
And they really kind of take control of the South Side.
And they also start expanding west as well, where there's other criminal elements.
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