The STONER Gangs and Cliques
- Lonewolf
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The STONER Gangs and Cliques
LIST
SAN PEDRO STONERS
BELL PARK STONERS (Gardena Dog Town)
DOG TOWN STONERS (West Side Longo)
LELAND PARK STONERS
SAN PEDRO STONERS
BELL PARK STONERS (Gardena Dog Town)
DOG TOWN STONERS (West Side Longo)
LELAND PARK STONERS
- Lonewolf
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
MARA SALVATRUCHA STONERS
MORTON TOWN STONERS
THE HOLE STONERS
THE LOTT STONERS
MID CITY STONERS
STONERS 13
MORTON TOWN STONERS
THE HOLE STONERS
THE LOTT STONERS
MID CITY STONERS
STONERS 13
- bgcasper
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
kbs king blvd stoners
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Hight Time Stoners MV
Fuck the World Stoners MV ?
Fuck the World Stoners MV ?
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
off the top of my head
Hicks Boys 13
Stoners 13 Locos
The Hill 13
F.T.W. Stoners
The Rascals 13
Gage Boys
Townsend St Locos
Folsom St. Locos
Evergreen Boys
Gardena Dog Town Stoners
Mid City Stoners
Morton Town Stoners
Clarence St Stoners
King Blvd Stoners
The Slowz 13
High Times Stoners
The Crazy Stoners
Mara Salvatrucha Stoners
Hole Stoners
The Midnight Stoners
Sadler Boys
the Humprys Stoners
Pomeroy Party Boys
Radical Boys
ES Stoners
Pico Gardens Stoners
ES Hang Out Boyz
and the biggest and baddest of them all...
THE LOTT STONERS GANG
Hicks Boys 13
Stoners 13 Locos
The Hill 13
F.T.W. Stoners
The Rascals 13
Gage Boys
Townsend St Locos
Folsom St. Locos
Evergreen Boys
Gardena Dog Town Stoners
Mid City Stoners
Morton Town Stoners
Clarence St Stoners
King Blvd Stoners
The Slowz 13
High Times Stoners
The Crazy Stoners
Mara Salvatrucha Stoners
Hole Stoners
The Midnight Stoners
Sadler Boys
the Humprys Stoners
Pomeroy Party Boys
Radical Boys
ES Stoners
Pico Gardens Stoners
ES Hang Out Boyz
and the biggest and baddest of them all...
THE LOTT STONERS GANG
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
THE LOTT STONERS GANG
aka
VARRIO ~ LOTT TRECE
aka
EAST SIDE LOTT x GANG
clikas
Locos
Chicos Malos
Dukes
The Boys
T.I.K.s
Tiny Dukes
Diablos
homegirls
Locas
Baby Locas
LIVING ON THE TOP
~ East Los Angeles ~
aka
VARRIO ~ LOTT TRECE
aka
EAST SIDE LOTT x GANG
clikas
Locos
Chicos Malos
Dukes
The Boys
T.I.K.s
Tiny Dukes
Diablos
homegirls
Locas
Baby Locas
LIVING ON THE TOP
~ East Los Angeles ~
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Martinez, these are a people with a passion who you refuse to understand:
That's how you get things done and change to happen. Do you want to live with more prisons built and new laws passed? That's the Polak passion.
That's how you get things done and change to happen. Do you want to live with more prisons built and new laws passed? That's the Polak passion.
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
How can you as a person of struggle not understand the Polak passion?
- Lonewolf
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
ahh que pinche sanson
why don't you go fight david with a slingshot or something
instead of trashing every topic
why don't you go fight david with a slingshot or something
instead of trashing every topic
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
[quote="elOriginalMartinez"]off the top of my head :P
Hicks Boys 13
Stoners 13 Locos
The Hill 13
F.T.W. Stoners
The Rascals 13
Gage Boys
Townsend St Locos
Folsom St. Locos
Evergreen Boys
Gardena Dog Town Stoners
Mid City Stoners
Morton Town Stoners
Clarence St Stoners
King Blvd Stoners
The Slowz 13
High Times Stoners
The Crazy Stoners
Mara Salvatrucha Stoners
Hole Stoners
The Midnight Stoners
Sadler Boys
the Humprys Stoners
Pomeroy Party Boys
Radical Boys
ES Stoners
Pico Gardens Stoners
ES Hang Out Boyz
and the biggest and baddest of them all... 8)
[size=200]
THE LOTT STONERS GANG[/size][/quote]
ey guey no se vale
you're throwing in there a bunch of "locos" cliques
we're talking straight "stoner" names
.. if you want to get into the "locos" cliques
well then, you have to throw in there a lot o old good ones
like..
calle sichel
cyril street
thomas street
chevy chase
montecito boys
ricardo street
and i'm sure que un chingo mas
but we're talking "stoners"
unless you got something to add to the ones you threw up as stoners
Hicks Boys 13
Stoners 13 Locos
The Hill 13
F.T.W. Stoners
The Rascals 13
Gage Boys
Townsend St Locos
Folsom St. Locos
Evergreen Boys
Gardena Dog Town Stoners
Mid City Stoners
Morton Town Stoners
Clarence St Stoners
King Blvd Stoners
The Slowz 13
High Times Stoners
The Crazy Stoners
Mara Salvatrucha Stoners
Hole Stoners
The Midnight Stoners
Sadler Boys
the Humprys Stoners
Pomeroy Party Boys
Radical Boys
ES Stoners
Pico Gardens Stoners
ES Hang Out Boyz
and the biggest and baddest of them all... 8)
[size=200]
THE LOTT STONERS GANG[/size][/quote]
ey guey no se vale
you're throwing in there a bunch of "locos" cliques
we're talking straight "stoner" names
.. if you want to get into the "locos" cliques
well then, you have to throw in there a lot o old good ones
like..
calle sichel
cyril street
thomas street
chevy chase
montecito boys
ricardo street
and i'm sure que un chingo mas
but we're talking "stoners"
unless you got something to add to the ones you threw up as stoners
- AztecNinja
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Martinez, you mentioned The Radical Boys. I remember there was one in High Scool, he end up getting his butt handed to him by some fool from White Fence, but he always stayed down. Do you have some info/history on them?
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
yes ^AztecNinja wrote:Martinez, you mentioned The Radical Boys. I remember there was one in High Scool, he end up getting his butt handed to him by some fool from White Fence, but he always stayed down. Do you have some info/history on them?
The Radical Boys were in between THE LOTT and Lopez Maravilla
there were more on crew status but since lonewolf put <cliques> I decided to add them
most ended up getting into THE LOTT ... all their older heads
some of their younger heads ened up getting into ES Rockwood ~ Geraghty Loma like Travieso, Chucky and Stranger
Stranger is the one that got killed after getting out of Pelican Bay, theres a story about him somewhere on this site (this is where I read it)
I think maybe one of em got into Lopez Mara
they ending up dying out since 90% of their vatos got into the bigger gangs
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Lonewolf wrote:ey guey no se valeelOriginalMartinez wrote:
and the biggest and baddest of them all...
THE LOTT STONERS GANG
you're throwing in there a bunch of "locos" cliques
we're talking straight "stoner" names
.. if you want to get into the "locos" cliques
well then, you have to throw in there a lot o old good ones
like..
calle sichel
cyril street
thomas street
chevy chase
montecito boys
ricardo street
and i'm sure que un chingo mas
but we're talking "stoners"
unless you got something to add to the ones you threw up as stoners
I added them cus you titled the thread Stoner Gangs,
so I put all the ones I knew about where started as Chicano Stoneros,
with the only exception of EG Boys ~ but I added them cus of this
even tho, Evergreen is an old varrio, they had pretty much died out, It was their Stoner generation, which was named Evergreen Boys that brought them back up and all the vato i knew from EG in the 1980s were Stoneros
every other gang i mentioned, even tho their name ended in BOYS or LOCOS, i assure you they started 100% as a Stoner gang during the Stoner generation... example Hicks Boys, Sadler Boys, Gage Boys, Folsom St locos, Townsend St locos, Pomeroy St locos aka PPB
Even tho almost every single one is an enemy to THE LOTT since the Stoner Era, they absolutely belong on this list
- bgcasper
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
dont know shit about it but read an article were a vatos from evergreen was killed by stoner 13 ...i think eg beefed with stoners may be because like 18 they was close to them
- AztecNinja
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Do you consider Rascals MV stoners? I don't know much about them. How bout The Posse in the RMV PJ's?
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
absolutely ... Rascals 13 were the young stoners out of the Maravilla projectsAztecNinja wrote:Do you consider Rascals MV stoners? I don't know much about them. How bout The Posse in the RMV PJ's?
the older stonero vatos were the High Times Stoners
them along with Rock Maravilla fall under the MV projects gang
plus other little crew or clika like you mentioned would automatically fall under Maravilla PJs gang
like KAOS MV, Homeboys MV, Fisher St Locos MV ect
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
it goes with out saying the Rock Maravilla is the oldest out of all of these gangs ^^
- Lonewolf
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
orale pues Martinez, "define a stoner?"
i think maybe you and me have a diff feel as to who or what a stoner is / was !!! ?
i don't include "locos" as stoners
pure and simple, the locos of my times were straight cholos without having been jumped into a varrio but hanging out and doing things
the stoners on the other hand, were other than cholos "locos"
i think maybe you and me have a diff feel as to who or what a stoner is / was !!! ?
i don't include "locos" as stoners
pure and simple, the locos of my times were straight cholos without having been jumped into a varrio but hanging out and doing things
the stoners on the other hand, were other than cholos "locos"
Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Sounds like these Projects were divided up like Aliso VillageelOriginalMartinez wrote:it goes with out saying the Rock Maravilla is the oldest out of all of these gangs ^^
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I think everyone in the RMV PJ's got along. In the AV we were all hated eachother, some beefs were shoot on sight, some were fight onsite but there was nothing but hatred.
- bgcasper
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
[quote="xxx"][quote="elOriginalMartinez"]it goes with out saying the Rock Maravilla is the oldest out of all of these gangs ^^[/quote]
Sounds like these Projects were divided up like Aliso Village[/quote]i dont think ... u had crips bloods pf clarence cf al capone elos in the same perimeter even the same flat like pf and ecc all those east los pj seems maravilla nada mas i mean a gang of different maravilla clicc but it aint like pico garden aliso village were all had nothing in comon exept the pj and all were at war with a parking lot as separation the shit seemed hard and totally at war the mv side seems more harmonious
Sounds like these Projects were divided up like Aliso Village[/quote]i dont think ... u had crips bloods pf clarence cf al capone elos in the same perimeter even the same flat like pf and ecc all those east los pj seems maravilla nada mas i mean a gang of different maravilla clicc but it aint like pico garden aliso village were all had nothing in comon exept the pj and all were at war with a parking lot as separation the shit seemed hard and totally at war the mv side seems more harmonious
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
The RMV PJ's #1 rival was Arizona MV which was a few city blocks away, and if TLS went MV hunting. We had TMC literally acroos the street with rooftop snipers, we had a playground and parking lot seperating Us from ALCP, ECC was half a paarking lot away, ELA13 was a parking lot away and CSL across the street and a block in, and CF roughly 2 small city blocks. With Pecan park in the middle where ELA and TMC hung out mostly but on certain days we would go in force to let them know whats up. It was insane. Shooting everyday. TMC had their own store Moons Liquor, we shared a store with ELA so alot of fights and stabbings there. Shots would ring from anywhere anytime. We had a nighttime curfew for shooting but it was still nuts. Even during peace treaties we would cross the street into TMC or into ELA and throw blows with them. ELA prolly had the best fighters, TMC, CF the best shooters but when it came to just having pure bravado and walking into the enemies hood blasting or looking for fights we had the most balls. PCP was our drug of choice so we would do some pretty fearless things. We had a invading in your face style, while the others were far more tactical.
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
AztecNinja wrote:The RMV PJ's #1 rival was Arizona MV which was a few city blocks away, and if TLS went MV hunting. We had TMC literally acroos the street with rooftop snipers, we had a playground and parking lot seperating Us from ALCP, ECC was half a paarking lot away, ELA13 was a parking lot away and CSL across the street and a block in, and CF roughly 2 small city blocks. With Pecan park in the middle where ELA and TMC hung out mostly but on certain days we would go in force to let them know whats up. It was insane. Shooting everyday. TMC had their own store Moons Liquor, we shared a store with ELA so alot of fights and stabbings there. Shots would ring from anywhere anytime. We had a nighttime curfew for shooting but it was still nuts. Even during peace treaties we would cross the street into TMC or into ELA and throw blows with them. ELA prolly had the best fighters, TMC, CF the best shooters but when it came to just having pure bravado and walking into the enemies hood blasting or looking for fights we had the most balls. PCP was our drug of choice so we would do some pretty fearless things. We had a invading in your face style, while the others were far more tactical.
damn... I thought we had our enemigos close by
THE LOTT 13 just had to cross Brooklyn/Cesar Chavez ave, or Eastern ave or Gage ave and boom... we're in Maravilla territories
we overlapped with Geraghty Loma up in the hills too ... so it was constant running /bumpin into rivals...
but u vatos were even closer!!
Thats insane to have all those varrios /gangs so damn close together in Aliso Village / Pico Gardens
I believe you when you said ELA 13 Dukes had some of the best fighters.... I know for a fact that just like Primera Flats
they (ELA Dukes) had many boxers, some semi and some professional boxers so it had to be a mad house up in those Projects
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Ill keep it real Martinez we had some good scrappers, something we prided ourselves on, but them ELA could fight and they had weights in their patio, so while we were getting yermed out they were lifting weights. Them fool were pretty bad ass in one on one situations.
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
check it out old home footage from the projects...
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
Nice video. Kinda made me feel warm and fuzzy inside...lol
- bgcasper
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
3 store pj you can clearly c that was the crip side we can see the first dude throwin the e and a other dude throwin the ace for 1st what year you reckon ? so bad the guy had shakky hands
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u knew new york ?? i found this :n was into this climate that the verdicts were delivered.
At the time, I was spending most of my working hours reporting on gangs in the Pico Aliso housing projects of East Los Angeles, where I was researching a book on Father Greg Boyle, and on the six active street gangs who claimed territory within the mile-square boundaries of Pico-Aliso. This meant I was often in the projects late at night when shootings erupted, and I had frequently seen first hand the aftermath of an LAPD beat down that resulted in no arrest.
I had also been to an unhealthy number of funerals of kids I’d gotten to know and like.
On April 29, 1992, the afternoon that the verdicts in the Rodney King beating case were announced, I was on my way to the projects to talk to some homeboys whose lives I’d been tracking for the book, after which time I was going to pick up Father Greg at his office inside Dolores Mission Church, which was situated between the twinned housing projects, and then I’d accompany him on a series of errands, as I often did during the four years I all but bungee-corded myself to the priest’s ankle.
Entirely apart from the citywide storm that would break with staggering force before the day was out, it was already a perilous week in the Pico-Aliso projects: A few days before, a member of the East Coast Crips,—a smallish Crip set that was one of the six projects gangs—had been shot and killed by a member of one of the other projects gangs, The Mob Crew, or TMC, and retaliation was expected to be imminent.
The murder itself was already round two of a deadly game of tit-for-tat. It seemed that in the midst of an argument over some territorial issue or other, the dead boy, who had the unlikely street name of New York, had pulled out a gun and shot a TMC homeboy in the foot. Rumor had it that a second TMC homeboy had a gun trained on New York from a nearby apartment roof and fired a couple of warning shots, thus discouraging the Crip from shooting a second time. It was assumed that the foot-shot gangster, a baby-faced 16-year-old who would later go to work for Power 106 radio, or one of his homeboys, most likely the roof shooter, had tragically upped the ante by killing New York.
By this time, I’d been reporting on Father Greg and the various clusters of gang members for nearly two years, so I knew most all of the significant players in the gang world of Pico-Aliso, and had come to care about many of them, and their mothers, sisters, cousins, and little brothers, some of whom regularly tumbled in an out of my car like rowdy puppies. In other words, I had long ago lost most of my reportorial distance. In this case, although I had not known New York, who was just out of prison, I did know the two TMC teenagers in question, either one of whom I realized with dread could easily be New York’s killer, and could therefore also easily become the next victim in the projects’ latest escalating cycle of gang madness.
Thus it was that this other, much closer-to-hand threat of violence was most on my mind when, at 3:16 pm on Wednesday, April 29, I listened as KFWB all-news radio announced each one of the Simi Valley verdicts separately: Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. I remember that the content of the announcement was momentarily confusing. How can one be found not guilty of something that the whole country saw one do over and over again on video? The radio announcer said that there might be unrest, which anybody living or working in South or East LA already knew. Yet, as I drove toward Dolores Mission to meet Greg, the likelihood of citywide violence still seemed a distant concern with the shadow of Pico/Aliso’s own potential unrest looming much nearer.
By the time I arrived at the church, a group of community mothers were gathered with the idea of marching to Parker Center to protest the King verdicts and asked if I would come with them. I declined explaining that I’d already promised to accompany the priest to the Dorothy Kirby Center, a therapeutic juvenile facility run by LA County probation in which around 70 kids were housed, and where Greg went to say mass every first Wednesday of the month.
I’d been to Kirby with Greg multiple times before, but this visit was markedly different. During the mass, the kids were oddly agitated. After the service ended, Greg made a habit of visiting various “cottages” in order to talk to kids individually. It was just before 7 pm when we reached the first cottage where we found all its occupants gathered in a single, jittery clump around the cottage’s television. Hearing us enter, the kids looked up briefly and seemed glad to see Greg, but their gazes were drawn quickly back to the TV where a news clip of a white man being pulled from the cab of a semi truck and horribly beaten by a bunch of young black men, was being replayed over and over in a violent, balletic series of images that careened across the screen in an eerie visual reverse of the tape of the King beating. Greg attempted conversation at each cottage, but the point of diminishing returns was reached quickly; the kids were too agitated, unable to light anywhere for long, even for him.
After Kirby we drove to a Jesuit retreat house in Azusa where Greg had managed to wangle temporary employment for two Pico/Aliso homeboys. Their work as assistant groundskeepers had reportedly gone well, but they were both dreadfully homesick so Greg promised to pick up the two and bring them back to L.A. for a short visit.
Once homeboys and priest were safely stashed in my car for the trip back to the projects it was nearly 9:00 p.m. As we neared Los Angeles, we were surprised when we hit a colossal traffic jam, which was our first inkling that something might truly have gone terribly wrong in the city. Squinting ahead, I saw that the sky was bright to the northeast of us and also to the south, with veils of smoke wafting across the night’s waning crescent moon. I hurriedly flipped on the radio and we learned what the rest of Los Angeles already knew.
When I finally dropped Greg and the two homies at the church parking lot, Pico/Aliso was quiet and dark, a seeming haven from the storm that was quickening everywhere else else. I would not learn until the next morning that, after I left the church, Greg and the homies had remained trapped inside the sanctuary after cars full of Crips showed up and proceeded to drive up and down Gless Street for hours, the dull shine of gun barrels visible out open car windows.
Ignorant of the soon-to-be menacing Crips, I occupied myself with the task of trying to figure out some kind of safe route home. To my right was Hollywood, where the palm trees had become fantastic torches lining the freeway with furious light, and causing the shutdown of the 101, which would have been my usual path back to Topanga Canyon, where I lived with my then-six year old son. To my left was South Los Angeles, which still seemed to be the epicenter. Plus an hour before, Mayor Tom Bradley had ordered the closing of many of the exit ramps on the Harbor Freeway and maybe some on the 10, so going south seemed unwise. Using the radio news as a guide, I decided to head west across the First Street Bridge, straight through the middle of downtown.
I saw the first sign of trouble at what was then the New Otani Hotel at First and Los Angeles Streets. Nearly all of its ground floor windows were smashed and there was fire damage—although, by the time I passed it, the rioters had moved on. Hoping for more up-to-date information than the radio was able to provide, I veered north on Los Angeles Street to the LAPD headquarters at Parker Center, which was protectively surrounded by a shoulder-to-shoulder string of two hundred or more police officers top-heavy with riot helmets, their order to guard the building while the rest of downtown LA was evidently on its own.
I pulled to the curb and yelled that I was looking for a route west. “Get over to Third Street,” one of the cops yelled back. Relieved, I took his suggestion and raced back along Los Angeles Street toward third. But the insurrection was a live thing now, which no one could track or predict. After swerving around first one and then a second set of street barricades, I rounded yet one more corner and ran smack into everything I was trying to avoid.
Up and down the intersecting streets in front of me as far as I was able to see, several hundred people raced and twirled in zigzag patterns across streets like whole teams of football running backs suddenly seized by mania.
The craziness was auditory as well as visual. Glass erupted in a musical clatter seemingly from every angle, sometimes close, sometimes father away. Some of the people had guns in their hands, and I heard gunfire, close by, but sporadic, the bullets spent, I remember hoping absently, more for effect than for injury. Lots of stores were extravagantly on fire, while flames only barely sequined the facades of others. Every single trashcan on the street was burning, which caused me to think stupidly of the only sensory analogue I had for what I was seeing, the movie Blade Runner.
I crept my car cautiously forward into the darting crowd hoping that, although I seemed to be the only vehicle on the road, if I kept moving steadily, I would simply become another part of the cacophonous wallpaper. As I drove, my hands clinging with white knuckled correctness to the ten and two o’clock positions on my steering wheel, my eyes the size of dinner plates, I wished desperately for a camera.
Now, of course, I always carry a camera with me, in the form of a cell phone, if nothing else. But then I was a narrative journalist, not a hard news reporter. Plus in those years, reporters didn’t usually take pictures. That was left up to the photo pros. Yet, that night as I threaded and swerved around the runners, I longed for some method other than memory with which to capture what I was witnessing.
I also longed to get home safely, a goal it still wasn’t yet clear I could accomplish. I didn’t feel frightened exactly. The intensity of the moment didn’t leave room for fear. But I wondered in passing if I should be afraid. After all, that Reginald Denny guy had been in a truck, and look what good it did him.
With that thought still lingering, I braked to a halt at one last downtown intersection clogged by running, shooting looters, and my gaze locked with that of a thirty-ish black man who was one of the gun-holding runners. The moment occurred as he passed in front of my car and stared curiously in at me through the windshield. Then, evidently seeing something in my expression of which I still refused to be cognizant, in a silent exchange that could have taken no more than a millisecond, the man communicated as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud to me with brief but consummate kindness: Keep going, his gaze said. You’re okay. This is not about you.
A minute or two later, I did make it through the chaos of downtown, then over to Olympic Blvd. to La Brea, south to the 10, then west to PCH, and north to Topanga, where I sent the baby sitter home and hugged my son longer than he thought was seemly.
For the next forty-eight hours in Los Angeles, everything stopped and everything was in motion. However, in Pico/Aliso, and most of the rest of East LA, there was no rioting, no looting. Although I knew that some people made forays into other areas of the city, most of the projects residents huddled together like a family riding out a hurricane. The gun toting, church-circling Crips of Wednesday night, stayed at home too, their grief and fury subsumed for a while by the larger collective grief and fury. More gang violence and more heartbreak was to visit the projects in the months to come, but for now anyway, there was pause.
On Thursday, I stayed close to home, checking in with Greg a couple of times during the day. But by Friday I could no longer bear what felt like the psychological remove of the West Side. I went back to the projects. The dusk ‘till dawn curfew that Mayor Tom Bradley had called was still in place, and the violence and destruction would continue in shuddering fits for a few more days. But by Friday night, everyone knew that the worst of the fever had broken and spontaneous barbecues bloomed like sudden wildflowers in front yards all over the projects. I made a big salad and, at the invitation of some of the projects mothers I knew the best, joined in one of them, grateful that I had a place that would welcome me for the much needed communal ritual.
At the time, I was spending most of my working hours reporting on gangs in the Pico Aliso housing projects of East Los Angeles, where I was researching a book on Father Greg Boyle, and on the six active street gangs who claimed territory within the mile-square boundaries of Pico-Aliso. This meant I was often in the projects late at night when shootings erupted, and I had frequently seen first hand the aftermath of an LAPD beat down that resulted in no arrest.
I had also been to an unhealthy number of funerals of kids I’d gotten to know and like.
On April 29, 1992, the afternoon that the verdicts in the Rodney King beating case were announced, I was on my way to the projects to talk to some homeboys whose lives I’d been tracking for the book, after which time I was going to pick up Father Greg at his office inside Dolores Mission Church, which was situated between the twinned housing projects, and then I’d accompany him on a series of errands, as I often did during the four years I all but bungee-corded myself to the priest’s ankle.
Entirely apart from the citywide storm that would break with staggering force before the day was out, it was already a perilous week in the Pico-Aliso projects: A few days before, a member of the East Coast Crips,—a smallish Crip set that was one of the six projects gangs—had been shot and killed by a member of one of the other projects gangs, The Mob Crew, or TMC, and retaliation was expected to be imminent.
The murder itself was already round two of a deadly game of tit-for-tat. It seemed that in the midst of an argument over some territorial issue or other, the dead boy, who had the unlikely street name of New York, had pulled out a gun and shot a TMC homeboy in the foot. Rumor had it that a second TMC homeboy had a gun trained on New York from a nearby apartment roof and fired a couple of warning shots, thus discouraging the Crip from shooting a second time. It was assumed that the foot-shot gangster, a baby-faced 16-year-old who would later go to work for Power 106 radio, or one of his homeboys, most likely the roof shooter, had tragically upped the ante by killing New York.
By this time, I’d been reporting on Father Greg and the various clusters of gang members for nearly two years, so I knew most all of the significant players in the gang world of Pico-Aliso, and had come to care about many of them, and their mothers, sisters, cousins, and little brothers, some of whom regularly tumbled in an out of my car like rowdy puppies. In other words, I had long ago lost most of my reportorial distance. In this case, although I had not known New York, who was just out of prison, I did know the two TMC teenagers in question, either one of whom I realized with dread could easily be New York’s killer, and could therefore also easily become the next victim in the projects’ latest escalating cycle of gang madness.
Thus it was that this other, much closer-to-hand threat of violence was most on my mind when, at 3:16 pm on Wednesday, April 29, I listened as KFWB all-news radio announced each one of the Simi Valley verdicts separately: Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. I remember that the content of the announcement was momentarily confusing. How can one be found not guilty of something that the whole country saw one do over and over again on video? The radio announcer said that there might be unrest, which anybody living or working in South or East LA already knew. Yet, as I drove toward Dolores Mission to meet Greg, the likelihood of citywide violence still seemed a distant concern with the shadow of Pico/Aliso’s own potential unrest looming much nearer.
By the time I arrived at the church, a group of community mothers were gathered with the idea of marching to Parker Center to protest the King verdicts and asked if I would come with them. I declined explaining that I’d already promised to accompany the priest to the Dorothy Kirby Center, a therapeutic juvenile facility run by LA County probation in which around 70 kids were housed, and where Greg went to say mass every first Wednesday of the month.
I’d been to Kirby with Greg multiple times before, but this visit was markedly different. During the mass, the kids were oddly agitated. After the service ended, Greg made a habit of visiting various “cottages” in order to talk to kids individually. It was just before 7 pm when we reached the first cottage where we found all its occupants gathered in a single, jittery clump around the cottage’s television. Hearing us enter, the kids looked up briefly and seemed glad to see Greg, but their gazes were drawn quickly back to the TV where a news clip of a white man being pulled from the cab of a semi truck and horribly beaten by a bunch of young black men, was being replayed over and over in a violent, balletic series of images that careened across the screen in an eerie visual reverse of the tape of the King beating. Greg attempted conversation at each cottage, but the point of diminishing returns was reached quickly; the kids were too agitated, unable to light anywhere for long, even for him.
After Kirby we drove to a Jesuit retreat house in Azusa where Greg had managed to wangle temporary employment for two Pico/Aliso homeboys. Their work as assistant groundskeepers had reportedly gone well, but they were both dreadfully homesick so Greg promised to pick up the two and bring them back to L.A. for a short visit.
Once homeboys and priest were safely stashed in my car for the trip back to the projects it was nearly 9:00 p.m. As we neared Los Angeles, we were surprised when we hit a colossal traffic jam, which was our first inkling that something might truly have gone terribly wrong in the city. Squinting ahead, I saw that the sky was bright to the northeast of us and also to the south, with veils of smoke wafting across the night’s waning crescent moon. I hurriedly flipped on the radio and we learned what the rest of Los Angeles already knew.
When I finally dropped Greg and the two homies at the church parking lot, Pico/Aliso was quiet and dark, a seeming haven from the storm that was quickening everywhere else else. I would not learn until the next morning that, after I left the church, Greg and the homies had remained trapped inside the sanctuary after cars full of Crips showed up and proceeded to drive up and down Gless Street for hours, the dull shine of gun barrels visible out open car windows.
Ignorant of the soon-to-be menacing Crips, I occupied myself with the task of trying to figure out some kind of safe route home. To my right was Hollywood, where the palm trees had become fantastic torches lining the freeway with furious light, and causing the shutdown of the 101, which would have been my usual path back to Topanga Canyon, where I lived with my then-six year old son. To my left was South Los Angeles, which still seemed to be the epicenter. Plus an hour before, Mayor Tom Bradley had ordered the closing of many of the exit ramps on the Harbor Freeway and maybe some on the 10, so going south seemed unwise. Using the radio news as a guide, I decided to head west across the First Street Bridge, straight through the middle of downtown.
I saw the first sign of trouble at what was then the New Otani Hotel at First and Los Angeles Streets. Nearly all of its ground floor windows were smashed and there was fire damage—although, by the time I passed it, the rioters had moved on. Hoping for more up-to-date information than the radio was able to provide, I veered north on Los Angeles Street to the LAPD headquarters at Parker Center, which was protectively surrounded by a shoulder-to-shoulder string of two hundred or more police officers top-heavy with riot helmets, their order to guard the building while the rest of downtown LA was evidently on its own.
I pulled to the curb and yelled that I was looking for a route west. “Get over to Third Street,” one of the cops yelled back. Relieved, I took his suggestion and raced back along Los Angeles Street toward third. But the insurrection was a live thing now, which no one could track or predict. After swerving around first one and then a second set of street barricades, I rounded yet one more corner and ran smack into everything I was trying to avoid.
Up and down the intersecting streets in front of me as far as I was able to see, several hundred people raced and twirled in zigzag patterns across streets like whole teams of football running backs suddenly seized by mania.
The craziness was auditory as well as visual. Glass erupted in a musical clatter seemingly from every angle, sometimes close, sometimes father away. Some of the people had guns in their hands, and I heard gunfire, close by, but sporadic, the bullets spent, I remember hoping absently, more for effect than for injury. Lots of stores were extravagantly on fire, while flames only barely sequined the facades of others. Every single trashcan on the street was burning, which caused me to think stupidly of the only sensory analogue I had for what I was seeing, the movie Blade Runner.
I crept my car cautiously forward into the darting crowd hoping that, although I seemed to be the only vehicle on the road, if I kept moving steadily, I would simply become another part of the cacophonous wallpaper. As I drove, my hands clinging with white knuckled correctness to the ten and two o’clock positions on my steering wheel, my eyes the size of dinner plates, I wished desperately for a camera.
Now, of course, I always carry a camera with me, in the form of a cell phone, if nothing else. But then I was a narrative journalist, not a hard news reporter. Plus in those years, reporters didn’t usually take pictures. That was left up to the photo pros. Yet, that night as I threaded and swerved around the runners, I longed for some method other than memory with which to capture what I was witnessing.
I also longed to get home safely, a goal it still wasn’t yet clear I could accomplish. I didn’t feel frightened exactly. The intensity of the moment didn’t leave room for fear. But I wondered in passing if I should be afraid. After all, that Reginald Denny guy had been in a truck, and look what good it did him.
With that thought still lingering, I braked to a halt at one last downtown intersection clogged by running, shooting looters, and my gaze locked with that of a thirty-ish black man who was one of the gun-holding runners. The moment occurred as he passed in front of my car and stared curiously in at me through the windshield. Then, evidently seeing something in my expression of which I still refused to be cognizant, in a silent exchange that could have taken no more than a millisecond, the man communicated as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud to me with brief but consummate kindness: Keep going, his gaze said. You’re okay. This is not about you.
A minute or two later, I did make it through the chaos of downtown, then over to Olympic Blvd. to La Brea, south to the 10, then west to PCH, and north to Topanga, where I sent the baby sitter home and hugged my son longer than he thought was seemly.
For the next forty-eight hours in Los Angeles, everything stopped and everything was in motion. However, in Pico/Aliso, and most of the rest of East LA, there was no rioting, no looting. Although I knew that some people made forays into other areas of the city, most of the projects residents huddled together like a family riding out a hurricane. The gun toting, church-circling Crips of Wednesday night, stayed at home too, their grief and fury subsumed for a while by the larger collective grief and fury. More gang violence and more heartbreak was to visit the projects in the months to come, but for now anyway, there was pause.
On Thursday, I stayed close to home, checking in with Greg a couple of times during the day. But by Friday I could no longer bear what felt like the psychological remove of the West Side. I went back to the projects. The dusk ‘till dawn curfew that Mayor Tom Bradley had called was still in place, and the violence and destruction would continue in shuddering fits for a few more days. But by Friday night, everyone knew that the worst of the fever had broken and spontaneous barbecues bloomed like sudden wildflowers in front yards all over the projects. I made a big salad and, at the invitation of some of the projects mothers I knew the best, joined in one of them, grateful that I had a place that would welcome me for the much needed communal ritual.
- CUETLACHTLI
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- Joined: March 21st, 2007, 4:41 pm
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
god dam my biy....you mustve been on a good one when you wrote that novel...haha
- bgcasper
- Super Heavy Weight
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Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
[quote="CUETLACHTLI"]god dam my biy....you mustve been on a good one when you wrote that novel...haha[/quote]no i pasted it from a web page its not my post i ont write english like that lolol
- CUETLACHTLI
- Middle Weight
- Posts: 215
- Joined: March 21st, 2007, 4:41 pm
- Location: Los Angeles
Re: The STONER Gangs and Cliques
spensa..