Crew

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 specialities within a ship's crew, often organised 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 "Crewmember".

The first use of the term 'crew' in popular culture was to describe groups of organised, white punks in the 1980s. These punk crews would socialise, 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.

[edit] Other uses of the term

• For a specific sporting usage, see Rowing (sport).
• The word "crew" may also refer to a stage crew, which are the stage hands at such events as plays or any type of show related to a theater or theatrical production.
• The word can also refer to a film crew, which is the filmmaking equivalent of a stage crew.
• For the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) see Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington