Contents - Beth Lesser

Lone Ranger & the
Eastern Kingston Artists
The social environment in Kingston, played out like a tale of two cities.
Kingston contained sharp divisions, not only between the upper (newer)
areas and the lower (original city) area but also between the east and the west.
The division that has received the most attention is the one marked by the
Torrington Bridge, between uptown and downtown. Above the bridge rest
the more well off neighborhoods like Barbican, Lingueanea and Jamaica’s own
Beverly Hills. Below the bridge sit the ghettos and the garrison communities.
The division between the east and the west was more subtle. Although
there were no checkpoints, and no one was preventing easterners from setting
foot in the west, there were unwritten rules that people respected.
“It was just a big divide,” Carlton Livingston explains. “I have a friend that
always say to me that the thought process in the west is different than in the
east. There were more sound systems in the west, more deejays definitely in
the west. A lot of the eastern Kingston guys couldn’t get along with the western
Kingston guys. They were always in war. They were saying the same thing
politically * , but for some reason, they couldn’t get along. Rockfort man don’t
deal with the west man, Dunkirk man don’t deal with the west.”
The east and the west were worlds apart, even when it came to style and
fashion. “The western guys back in those days, we call ‘modelers’”, Carlton
remembers. “And the eastern guys were more laid back, very old school. The
first time I saw a dreadlocks wearing a ‘bell foot’ ** jeans was in the west – bad
boys in the west. In those days, bad man was dreadlocks, to be feared. It
wasn’t about Rasta in the ‘70s. Bad man and them all wore dreadlocks and
riding these big bikes. But the eastern guys were more laid back – Clarks
* They supported the same parties. Both the east and the west had both PNP and JLP garrison
communities. “In the west you’d have Mathews Lane, you had Payneland, you had Concrete Jungleall
PNP areas. In the east you have Dunkirk, Rockfort - all PNP,” Reports Zaggaloo, Arrows’ selector.
“But for some reason, apart from politics, badman has a mentality - so they supported the same
political party but at the same time, they want to come out on top, who is the baddest of the baddest.
So, based on that, they were always proving on each other.”
** Bell Bottom
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