Mean Streets: The Warriors & More (High Hats)

[FramFramson]

Agree, agree, great work on those tiger patches. 

[Cat]

A few nights ago I was up late and didn't have enough eyeball focus to paint, but I did have enough to do some figure prep.  So I pulled out the figures that had been stashed away for the High Hats gang from The Warriors and got started on those.  All prepped and primed now.
 
Started with Ainsty hooligans (and 1 street thug in braces from Killer B), did a little carving to remove scarfs and reduce their bulk a bit, and carve suspenders in where needed.  Head swaps or chapeau grafts came from Great Escape Games' plastic Gunfighters (and 1 from the WA Partisans).
 
Also 4 affiliates, the art squad, informally known as the 'Flat Hats' — figures from the stash with beret heads and holsters for their spray paint from Wargames Atlantic's Partisans.  They can also frighten away the unaware by miming getting ready to draw!

Also judging from a lot of their faces, these mimes like to scream silently when fighting.  It helps to freak out their opponents.
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The warchief and lieutenants are good at giving hand-signals to the crew:

[mikedemana]

Those look great! I can't wait to see them painted up. I hadn't thought about using late 1800s/early 1900s hooligans for that gang. Great idea!

Mike Demana

[Cat]

Thanks Mike!
 
But these are the more modern Football Hooligans from the Aintsy's Aggro Range.  Most of them start out with braces.  Just a little trimming of the brim on the Western Gunslinger hats did the tophat trick.
 
TVAG's B'Hoys figures were in the running for consideration because of their great hats, but it would have taken more work to give them all suspenders than to give this lot hats.

[CapnJim]

Your converts look good so far.  Looking forward to seeing them painted!

[Cat]

Well, the High Hats join the in-progress cliques, we'll see which way the Muse leads from here. 

Current status of additional Warriors gangs:
*  Orphans (double sized gang of wimps), partially painted and bases textured.
*  Boppers partially painted.
*  Alley Cats, primed and bases textured.
*  High Hats, primed.
 
The Last Dragon:
*  Leroy's Dojo, primed.
*  Shogunate of Harlem, partially converted.

Tonight's activity log:
*  Re-assembling the last few 1/64 diecast vehicles that were disassembled for weathering and some detail painting.  Photos to come this week.
 
Likely next step:
*  A bit more paint on the Boppers, then texturing their bases and the High Hats.
 
Soonish:
*  Cops, need pose conversions.  70s-ish style US cop uniforms are surpisingly hard to come by.  I've got a bunch from Crooked Dice, but they're all 30mm giants, grumble, grumble.  I may get some Killer B ones from the Geezers Shut It range and adjust their hats.  Their cruisers are ready!

[Cat]

Really good news on the cop front — chatting with Killer B Games on Facebook, they will definitely be expanding their range of 1970s American Cops with NYPD types.  Sending brief to the sculptor now!
 
Last night I was poking at their shop more and discovered they do have American cops in their Invasion X range, but they would take some work to modify for NYPD — need to remove shoulder straps, add batons swap out shotguns (NYPD does not deploy many long arms, although someone might be dispatched with a shotgun if a gang riot is really getting out of hand).
 
I think I'll grab some of these to get started, but at least I don't have to go crazy on difficult to swap out shotgun poses since there will be baton-swingers coming.

[mikedemana]

Your dedication to accuracy is inspiring! 

Mike Demana

[Cat]

Well Mike, here's some more details to help set the scene.  I'm not exactly a rivet-counter, but I do enjoy the research part of this hobby!
 
Just finished a bit of detailing work on a small fleet of diecast cars to populate a 4' x 6' board with tactical obstacles, some mission targets, and scenic period dressing.  I stuck with cars labelled 1/64.  Even that isn't always trustworthy.  The ones labelled "True Scale 1/64" are good and also belie the potential hazard of ones merely labelled "1/64.  Johnny Lightning schoolbus, I'm looking at you ya wee liar!  But overall, these are more reliably close to 1/64 than generic Matchbox/Hotwheels size.

I took them apart for detailing and varnishing, then put the windshields back in and re-assembled.  A few of them had screws and were easy to take apart.  Most were riveted and had to be drilled.
 
I put them in the bench vice with a bit of foam to protect the paint and drilled in just enough to break the rivet's bond.
 
Many of the windshield pieces are also riveted to the roof.  I discovered it's not a good idea to drill those.  It's easy to slip and drill clean through the roof.  Whoops.  Readily fixed with a bit of green putty, a lick of paint, and a bit of weathering to blend the colours.  After that discovery, I switched to using my trusty #16 XActo blade to cut around the rivet to free the windshield.
 
During re-assembly, I glued the windshield back in place and added a bit of putty to re-lock the hold around the rivet post.  Also learned not to use too much glue which can lead to fogging the windows on the inside.  Whoops.  Correctable by lightly scraping the fog away.  That leaves light scratch marks, and those are corrected by applying a very thin layer of Testor's clear canopy cement.  This melts the ridge lines of the scratches and it hardens up with a smoother finish.
 
For the interior pieces, I added a bit of secondary colour to the steering wheels and/or seat covers, then sprayed the whole piece with Dullcote.  This is one of those details that would be more noticeable by its absence.  A monochrome glossy plastic insert can jump out and look toy-like.  A bit of paint avoids that hazard.
 
The biggest detailing work was adding license plates.  Most diecast cars do not include a front plate.  New York, New Jersey, and others in the neighborhood required 2 plates in 1979.  So plates got added to the front as needed.  Some of the rear plates areas that are modelled in were way oversized, so I glued a plate onto those.
 
US plates are a standard 6" x 12".  The plate areas that are cast in are not consistent sizes.  Working from what they do have, I settled on cutting new plates from a strip of 4mm wide .020 plastic and cut 8mm lengths.  Cast on plates that were close to that, I left as-is.
 
A few cars came with plate decals; those got left on and gave a nice smattering of foreign plates from around the country.  The bulk of the cars, I gave New York plates.  A handful got New Jersey.  And I tossed in one each from neighboring Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts.  Mass is an outlier and only required 1 rear plate, so the Bug has a smiley face plate on the front.
 
Thanks to Wikipedia, they are all in the correct colour combos for 1979.  The '64 VW Bug from Massachusetts, and most of the cars from New Jersey have older registrations and sport the older colour plates that had been recently changed.
 
The lettering isn't particularly legible, but I took care to get a good impressionistic representation of the layout of plate number and state lettering.  The ones that got done with white paint are distinctly impressionistic.  For the ones I could use Micron Art pen colours, the plate number/letter combos are legit and slightly readable. 
 
And because Wikipedia knows all, the letter part of New York plates are issued by county, and these cars now represent all 5 boroughs (a bit heavier on Brooklyn), plus a few from Westchester county and Nassau county on Long Island.  It's rather esoteric, and not particularly visible even, but makes me happy.
 
The other little detail that was fun to do was painting a little inspection sticker inside the front windshield.  And praise be to the internets, the sticker colours and window placement are correct by state for 1979.
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Most of the cars are 1970s; not too many late models, those are targets for very saleable hubcaps and wheels.  A goodly number of 1960s ones that survive the city.  And even a few 1950s.

That '57 Ford Fairlane with Connecticut plates is probably stolen to start with and a prime target.  You shouldn't oughta mess with the beat up '67 Impala with Jersey plates, you easily can fit a couple of bodies into that trunk.  The '79 Continental from Jersey might also be risky...
 

[Cat]

The two beer trucks are Mack BM models, last produced in '41.  Alas, no one makes diecasts of the ED that started production in '42 with the more roundy snout.  But good local beers here — Schaefer from Brooklyn and Ballantine's from Newark.  Grabbing some cartons of beer off the trucks might be a good plan, unless there are some mob mooks at the bar checking up on payments for delivery...  The flatbed had a 555- phone number on it that I changed to 855-, a Brooklyn exchange.
 
For the civic vehicles, the police cruisers came marked for the 27th Precinct, a fictional precinct used in a number of TV shows.  In the precinct numbering sequence though, that would be a Manhattan squad.  I changed it to 65th, a fictional Brooklyn number.  The real 65th became the 73rd in 1929 re-organising, but the old building still said 65th above the door.  The cars of course all came with the same cruiser number, 1247.  So I changed one to 1245 and one to 1267.  These are also technically the 1982 Plymouth Fury, slightly smaller than the 1977 Fury, but hey it came in NYPD markings for the win.

[edit: the 65th became the 73rd, which serves the Brownsville area, including Broadway Junction, aka Fort Zinderneu, not the 79th Pct. as previously noted.]
 
They also came with the ski-rack light bar on the roof, not the older bubble-gum machines as seen in The Warriors.  So I picked up a trio of 1974 Dallas Police Matadors so I could swap the lights.  Scraped the markings off one of the Dallas cars, plugged the holes in the roof, and now it's a civilian car.  Had to adjust the spacing on the supports of the bubble-gum machines; fortunately, the holes in the roof made a good jig for gluing them back together.
 
It's extremely unlikely to see yellow cabs outside of downtown Manhattan or the airport, but hey there are two different 1970s ones available.  One has markings from the movie Taxi Driver and one from the TV show Taxi.  Sunshine Cab Company has the correct rates on the door for 1977–1979.  Taxi Driver's had the older rates, so I had to change that.
 
The orange cab is modelled on a barn find in Binghamton, but the phone number on the door is also a Manhattan exchange.  In NYC, medallion cabs are yellow and can technically pick up fares anywhere; borough cabs are green and can pick up fares in their borough; livery cabs are any colour but yellow and technically cannot pick up fares that hail them from the street (in reality, no one complains if they pick up fares where the yellow cabs will not roam).

The USPS Delivery Jeeps were great finds, both the blue and the white liveries were used throughout the 70s.

[CapnJim]

Nice!  They look great!  I have a buttload of Matchbox/Hot Wheels/Johnny Lightning/Marjorie/etc, that I use for my 20mm/1-72 stuff.  And you're right - scale can vary, especially the larger vehicles...

[Cat]

Nice!  They look great!  I have a buttload of Matchbox/Hot Wheels/Johnny Lightning/Marjorie/etc, that I use for my 20mm/1-72 stuff.  And you're right - scale can vary, especially the larger vehicles...

Thanks!
 
If you want some buses that would work well with 20mm (but not 25s!), the Johnny Lightning short bus is ~1/78, and I've got a pair of pull-back GM Fishbowl city buses that are ~1/76. 
 
The wheelbase on the the city buses would have been ~1/64 if it was the 35' bus.  But with the width and the height of the models, they're definitely the 40' ones, and too small for 25s.

[FramFramson]

Damn, you went bananas on your motor pool. Huge respect!

[Cat]

Thanks, Fram!
 
One more thing on the varnishing, I didn't want the super high-gloss look, everything gets grungy quick in the smog of a 70s city:

* The interior pieces, wheels/chasses, and the really beat up bodies got sprayed with Testor's Dullcoat.

* Most of the older car bodies got Krylon Matte spray (which is kinda satiny).
 
* Fancier cars got Rustoleum Satin spray.

[mikedemana]

Amazing.  I am even more impressed now with your project! I mostly use my vehicles as scatter scenery in my games, but you make them part of the cast. Very interesting reading your run-down on the project.

Would you mind if I ported your post on here over to the First Command Wargames Facebook page? Or maybe even the FCW website? I think other folks would be fascinated and inspired by what you've done. I would essentially be copying and pasting your text and photos and giving your credit.

Incredible work!

Mike Demana