Los Angeles during the early 1990's was soooo KRAZY!!!!!!!

[jmac1]

Originally Posted by Astral_Weeks

Yeah, that was a cool post Jmac. I liked the reference to the RTD. You can't fake it with a reference like that. You were there no doubt.

That bus use to stop what seemed to be every five feet! I was liberated when I bought my first car at 19.

[jmac1]

Originally Posted by HB2HSV

Jmac1, I echo others in thanking you for sharing. It is great to hear what it was like from your experience.

I was around in the 90s but I lived way out in Thousand Oaks. I can tell you everyone I know were armed and ready for the riot to spread to their neighborhoods. I worked in the SF Valley and almost every mall has armed National Guards on its rooftop ready for any sign of trouble. People were carrying guns in their cars because none of us wanted to be another Reginald Denny!

On that day earlier in the afternoon I could tell something was going to happen as every PD car on the 101 were traveling at high speed with a purpose and each cars were full with 4 Officers in each car. My folks lived in W. LA and I was fully prepared to go & protect them. Good thing that Beverly Hills PD did not choose to back down from the rioters and stopped the riot by BH.

LAPD was nowhere to be found. Law enforcement was none existent. Rioters burned buildings and when the Fire Fighters come, they would shoot them to get the Fire Fighters to back off & let buildings burn. It was a complete chaos and lawlessness.

In the following week, I was going on a business trip flying out of LAX. You should see LA from the air at night, it was a war zone with several fires going on in different places, others places with thick black smokes filling the sky.

It was a different time. I was lucky to have live in good neighborhood but being at the wrong place at the wrong time can easily get you killed. I was stucked on traffic on Inglewood Ave with gang in one side wearing red and the other side wearing blue, and they were starring at each other angrily. If they were to start shooting my car would have been exactly in the line of fire. I've driven into East LA and Compton by mistakes (was lost both time, days before GPS) and people on the street would look at me angrily because I don't look like them. It may still be this way I don't know.

Crazy days & crazy times for sure!

The riots and that Northridge quake rocked LA in the early 90's, no pun intended.

[the topper]

They all went to Tuscon, Ariz.

[whoisjongalt]

Ah the good old days! I moved away for a year after the riots and came back just in time for the earthquake...and then O.J. I could hear the gunshots and police helicopters almost daily in Venice. It was a great time. But not great enough to make me stay there.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Another early 90s memory no doubt shared with various water men and women ...

The Golden Doubloon, out of the 22nd Street Landing.

I recently stumbled onto something from 2009 or so stating it had been scrapped out.

More recently I read how lots of Dive Boats and Fishing Charters have left 22nd Street.

Anyhow, good memories about that old rust bucket.

[sgvkev]

Originally Posted by MordinSolus

There's nowhere for the gangs to return to. The areas they used to control have been reduced so much. They could terrorize surrounding areas, but they have to be able to actually live nearby. With rent prices and gentrification on a steady incline the gangs would have to commute to reach areas they're not already effecting. People always complain about gentrification but minimizing violent crime and gang violence is an inevitable effect of gentrifying bad neighborhoods.

Umm, the worst part of LA, South Central LA, is not gentrifying, and many of the areas that are still look bad (Highland Park, Cypress Park, Glassell Park, Frogtown, El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, Pico Union, the non hilly parts of Echo Park, East Hollywood, etc.). It takes a long time for an area to truly clean up, and the reason Downtown transformed so fast is because not many lived there to begin with, and the same goes for Old Town Pasadena (though in 2000 the northern part of Old Town north of Colorado was STILL around 65% Hispanic and around 60% didn't have a high school diploma, only in the last few years did the stats show it as desirable, with only 10% not having a high school diploma in that area in 2013, despite it being a major destination by the mid-late 90s). The reason people complain about gentrification is that it's just pushing the problem elsewhere (and if all of LA gentrifies, will the likes of Rosemead, El Monte, and Baldwin Park off the 10 freeway be next? Or Azusa and southern Duarte and Monrovia off the Gold Line extension? Then if they gentrify, then will the likes of Pomona, Ontario, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, and San Bernardino gentrify? If that happens, then the high desert will be next... there are limits), and it's a bit unethical as it is the reason for most gang injunctions, protecting the new demographic rather than the existing demographic (which can be considered racist and classist). Nothing wrong with hip neighborhoods, though there does need to be more protection for low income residents, like Universal Basic Income, universal rent control, or fixed rents because sooner or later there will be no affordable places if gentrification isn't controlled.

As for why crime was so bad in the late 80s and early 90s? It may be an effect of Pluto in Scorpio, as it entered the sign in 1983 and left in 1995, and crime has been declining ever since.

[orionstars]

I was a kid during this time. It's the reason my parents moved me out because they were afraid of us growing up into gang bangers. I came back as an adult for college.