During the long, unseasonably hot summer of 1824, New York City’s theretofore underground gang culture burst into the nation’s consciousness via a series of unusually bloody and unusually public skirmishes between rival cliques. While the Octo-boys and their sworn enemy squidstachers had previously seemed content to live-and-let stache, as various crews had previosuly coexisted with little problem, a perceived slight one night outside a West Village haberdashery sparked full blown gang warfare, events later made into a major motion picture by Martin Scorsese. (Not "Gangs of New York." A different one.) Regardless, the rival squid and octopus stachers fought all summer long, leaving a trail of firebombed buildings, orphaned children and countless singed tophats in their wakes.
Of course, the octopus 'stachers being limited to eight men per unit, the squidboys eventually prevailed, controlling New York City’s gritty underbelly for generations, eventually folding upon the advent of a particularly vicious group of pork belly stachers ("the gritty underbellies," they were called) came on the scene in the mid-1950s.
Although the octo-boys have not roamed the streets for 150 years or more, the octopus 'stache is still technically a gang symbol, and one should wear with caution.
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