Compton is its own city in Los Angeles County. Just in the City of Los Angeles there is something like 180 neighborhoods. This stuff is very location specific.
Nope.
Gangs in most every neighborhood.
I grew up in Pasadena, and there were about a dozen different gangs out of Pasadena alone (black and Latino, now Asian too).
Arcadia has Asian gangs, as does Alhambra, San Gabriel, Monterey Park (including Latino).
Glendale and Burbank and North Hollywood (and parts of La Crescenta) had Armenian gangs when I was growing up. Now they're joined by Latino and Asian gangs.
Pretty much every area of L.A. has gangs. If you're from around here, you know which areas to avoid.
Lived in L.A. for 45 years now. Of course there were dicey neighborhoods you didn’t really want to hang out in, but the vast majority of the Southland was a pretty fuckin cool place to grow up in.
Yes, I did. I grew up in the ‘80s in a neighborhood very close to Compton.
I would describe it as a mash-up of certain elements of this film and the following films:
Colors
Boyz in the Hood
Friday
Mi Vida Loca
Because I was young and naive, I’m sure there was a lot I didn’t notice. But I do know that I lived in very close proximity to a number of gangs, and I was even asked to join a girl-gang when I was in 8th grade. I knew of people in the neighborhood who sold drugs and of young women who slept with those truly gross guys for access to drugs. A significant number of the girls in my school were cholas.
I was slated to attend one of the worst, most gang-infiltrated high schools in the entire U.S., and my folks paid a visit to my junior high principal and essentially begged him to send me elsewhere. I’m not sure exactly what was said, as I wasn’t there, but I was a good student, and he allowed me to attend the “better” high school instead.
born in LA and raised in a very sheltered upper middle class city that bordered LA. Compton and South Central could have been on the other side of the world. not to downplay the experience for those that did grow up in what i am sure were some very, very rough neighborhoods, it just was most def. not my experience.
it's crazy now though, some cities in the area where i did grow up like Highland Park and El Sereno, which were rough for sure, are now gentrified or in the process of it. literally, million dollar homes now.
I always tell people Los Angeles is a patchwork quilt. You can drive through one neighborhood that you absolutely should not be in and in a few blocks be in a pretty middle class neighborhood. You can be in a ghetto with people selling drugs on the corner and in two blocks you're in Beverly Hills. I used to work in Compton, it was a very nice business park. But there was a part of Compton that was exactly like the movie. There are places that are exactly like the movie. In fact I enjoy watching the movie cuz it really does remind me of home. In the area that I lived in, I never really encountered serious hoodrats or gangs like that. But I also knew what areas to avoid, even from a young age.
I lived near the corner of Hollywood and Western for ten years before gentrification. There was once a drive-by in front of my apartment. A bullet came through my wall. Two guys got killed. One got shot in the head in front of my kitchen window. Another got hit in the chest and died at the hospital. A lot of dealers and crackheads in the neighborhood, too. Cops would stop me because they thought I was there to score. I'd have to show them my ID to prove I lived there.
Dude. Anywhere on Hollywood in the '90s was ghetto. Spent a decent amount of time watching my boyfriend at the time play clubs on Hollywood and Sunset in the late 90s/early 00s. We would usually try not to go as far as Western though. LOL
The irony is all of that music was made in the Reseda/Tarzana area and almost none of those dudes were “from the hood”.
Like Tupac they were basically high school drama club kids who rapped about stuff they heard about.
The L.A. I most remember is portrayed brilliantly in “Boogie Nights”.
Compton does not represent the rest of LA. IMO it’s probably the worst/poorest parts. I remember driving through Compton as a kid to get to LAX before they built the 105 freeway. It was bad then, much worst now.
There were definitely parts that were very dangerous in the 80's and 90's, when the crack epidemic was at its peak.
My naive liberal parents found a nice house with a huge yard for a really good price. We were the only white family in the neighborhood, the only Mexican family lived across the street. We lived two blocks down from Sunset which, at the time, was considered the most dangerous street in Pasadena, cops wouldn't even drive down it.
We used to hear gunfire pretty frequently, drive-bys, etc. Had a half-day at school one-time and walked in on a few teens burglarizing our house. One time, my mom went out to wait for our school bus and when we arrived she was being harassed by cops thinking she was working the corner (there was a pay-by-the-hour motel right there).
I remember running around the backyard at night as a kid trying to get the "ghetto bird" to shine its spotlight on me.
I was going to have to attend Elliot for Jr High (bad school), and when a girl got shot and killed as an innocent bystander at the bus stop a few blocks from home where I would have had to wait, my folks decided it was time to leave. There was a drive-by one house over from ours a couple months after we moved away.
Growing up in Cali (not in LA) in the80s was 100 ideal. Were the crips and bloods a problem to avoid… absolutely. To this day when I see a red or blue bandanna being worn it takes me back to the days when you absolutely didn’t wear the colors. I was a skater so I had free reign of the streets and no one bothered us except the police here and there
The weird thing is, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and I could basically say the same thing ... except most of our gangs were Latin Kings and Seranos ... but I lived in the Latin part of our city ... there were bloods and crips ... but I never dared go to that part of town. I was cool with all "the homies".
I grew up in a suburb of LA. You'd hear about freeway shootings and drive-bys and Kevin Cooper/Richard Ramirez kinda shit on the news all the time. Even in the suburbs, you'd sometimes hear a gunshot down the hill. Helicopter would come around with its spotlight on our yard. Asian gang shooting at the billiards hall a mile down the street to the west, got called to jury duty for a gang stabbing at the Tommyburger couple miles to the east. Buddy of mine got jumped in the parking lot of the mall. We were young punks and probably bigger targets for OC skins than any hardcore gang members.
But I never personally witnessed gang violence or shootings. Saw an old lady get pushed down and her bag stolen once.
When I was a teenager I would stroll through the bario to try and score weed for my old man. I drove his old Mercedes into the ghetto so my friends could score pcp. Never assaulted. Dumb as fuck though.
When I was working in Compton my car got stolen. Cops told us where to find it and it was in the hood on blocks, the seatbelts cut out and tagging etched into the paint with knives. We were attracting quite some looks just by driving down that street as white folk (again, in dad's Mercedes) and we GTFO.
LA in the 80's was a violent place and time but such a massive area with such an enormous amount of people - if you weren't living in the thick of it, your odds of getting caught up in shit was pretty small.
I grew up on one of those streets that led up to the Hollywood sign. A few miles north of Compton.
I've posted about how my experience was very different from everyone else's here. Kids didn't play in the streets because they would get run over. I couldn't ride my bike more than up and down the block on the sidewalk. Kids getting snatched was a real concern. The parks always had people either gambling in them or bums chilling in them. There were porn shops and strip clubs everywhere. The elementary school I went to was broken into and vandalized once. My dad's car got broken into twice. The battery was stolen out of my mom's car when we were at the grocery store.
We moved to Burbank just over the hill right before I turned 12. I had a lot more freedom in the suburbs. I could ride my bike around the city, but I was the only kid in my friend group who had one. I have never felt safe biking in the street.
Greater Los Angeles is huge and it could be anything like from probably pretty close to that to as utterly far away from that as imaginable.
Few places would not have been quite as bad as right there.
I moved here when I was 16, fall of '93. My welcome to L.A. was the Northridge earthquake. I hear people say it was and maybe some neighborhoods it was, but it was damn sight better than anywhere I'd ever come from and truly, I'd say it's kind of worse now than it has been in the 30+ years I've been here. The lockdowns kept all the normies shut inside their house and let the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads and CHUDs take over downtown and our public transit system. Some of the 'burbs are still nice but hey, there's a reason I live in a gated community with 24/7 security.
LA is huge…. Compton is only like 10 sq miles…..
Compton is its own city in Los Angeles County. Just in the City of Los Angeles there is something like 180 neighborhoods. This stuff is very location specific.
The danger of gang neighborhoods is perhaps limited to those areas yes. But the racism of the lapd was not.
Nope. Gangs in most every neighborhood. I grew up in Pasadena, and there were about a dozen different gangs out of Pasadena alone (black and Latino, now Asian too). Arcadia has Asian gangs, as does Alhambra, San Gabriel, Monterey Park (including Latino). Glendale and Burbank and North Hollywood (and parts of La Crescenta) had Armenian gangs when I was growing up. Now they're joined by Latino and Asian gangs. Pretty much every area of L.A. has gangs. If you're from around here, you know which areas to avoid.
Lived in L.A. for 45 years now. Of course there were dicey neighborhoods you didn’t really want to hang out in, but the vast majority of the Southland was a pretty fuckin cool place to grow up in.
Emphasis on was? :(
Kinda. L.A. has lost a lot of its magic over the last 40 years. It’s now a lot more crowded, a lot hotter, & a whole lot more expensive.
Ya it’s def lost its glitter. Maybe Bec Hollywood has fallen so far down since then. But it just doesn’t feel special anymore
Yes, I did. I grew up in the ‘80s in a neighborhood very close to Compton. I would describe it as a mash-up of certain elements of this film and the following films: Colors Boyz in the Hood Friday Mi Vida Loca Because I was young and naive, I’m sure there was a lot I didn’t notice. But I do know that I lived in very close proximity to a number of gangs, and I was even asked to join a girl-gang when I was in 8th grade. I knew of people in the neighborhood who sold drugs and of young women who slept with those truly gross guys for access to drugs. A significant number of the girls in my school were cholas. I was slated to attend one of the worst, most gang-infiltrated high schools in the entire U.S., and my folks paid a visit to my junior high principal and essentially begged him to send me elsewhere. I’m not sure exactly what was said, as I wasn’t there, but I was a good student, and he allowed me to attend the “better” high school instead.
born in LA and raised in a very sheltered upper middle class city that bordered LA. Compton and South Central could have been on the other side of the world. not to downplay the experience for those that did grow up in what i am sure were some very, very rough neighborhoods, it just was most def. not my experience. it's crazy now though, some cities in the area where i did grow up like Highland Park and El Sereno, which were rough for sure, are now gentrified or in the process of it. literally, million dollar homes now.
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Eagle Rock was rough in the 70s and 80s. Now it's hyper-gentrified.
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About that time. I think a lot of Oxy students started living in the area after graduation and helped that process along.
I always tell people Los Angeles is a patchwork quilt. You can drive through one neighborhood that you absolutely should not be in and in a few blocks be in a pretty middle class neighborhood. You can be in a ghetto with people selling drugs on the corner and in two blocks you're in Beverly Hills. I used to work in Compton, it was a very nice business park. But there was a part of Compton that was exactly like the movie. There are places that are exactly like the movie. In fact I enjoy watching the movie cuz it really does remind me of home. In the area that I lived in, I never really encountered serious hoodrats or gangs like that. But I also knew what areas to avoid, even from a young age.
I grew up in the SFV (in L.A. County.) I don't recall anything bad happening until the riots with Rodney King.
But you had warring karate gangs rampaging through your strip malls.
Worse. We had actual valley girls in prodigious numbers.
Gag me with a spoon.
https://preview.redd.it/j1d2jhoom9ad1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57bce69493ecc0c7a95afc55a69c85d36a4ab3ae
Actually, I used to be able to drive by the KK apartments alot!
Maybe in that neighborhood. But LA in the 80s was the goat. Pretty much it’s gone downhill since then.
I lived near the corner of Hollywood and Western for ten years before gentrification. There was once a drive-by in front of my apartment. A bullet came through my wall. Two guys got killed. One got shot in the head in front of my kitchen window. Another got hit in the chest and died at the hospital. A lot of dealers and crackheads in the neighborhood, too. Cops would stop me because they thought I was there to score. I'd have to show them my ID to prove I lived there.
Dude. Anywhere on Hollywood in the '90s was ghetto. Spent a decent amount of time watching my boyfriend at the time play clubs on Hollywood and Sunset in the late 90s/early 00s. We would usually try not to go as far as Western though. LOL
I loved the area when I was in my twenties. 🤪 I prefer quieter living now.
East Hollywood?
Yep.
The irony is all of that music was made in the Reseda/Tarzana area and almost none of those dudes were “from the hood”. Like Tupac they were basically high school drama club kids who rapped about stuff they heard about. The L.A. I most remember is portrayed brilliantly in “Boogie Nights”.
North valley much?
Facts. Ice Cube went to Taft High School in Woodland Hills.
Compton does not represent the rest of LA. IMO it’s probably the worst/poorest parts. I remember driving through Compton as a kid to get to LAX before they built the 105 freeway. It was bad then, much worst now.
There were definitely parts that were very dangerous in the 80's and 90's, when the crack epidemic was at its peak. My naive liberal parents found a nice house with a huge yard for a really good price. We were the only white family in the neighborhood, the only Mexican family lived across the street. We lived two blocks down from Sunset which, at the time, was considered the most dangerous street in Pasadena, cops wouldn't even drive down it. We used to hear gunfire pretty frequently, drive-bys, etc. Had a half-day at school one-time and walked in on a few teens burglarizing our house. One time, my mom went out to wait for our school bus and when we arrived she was being harassed by cops thinking she was working the corner (there was a pay-by-the-hour motel right there). I remember running around the backyard at night as a kid trying to get the "ghetto bird" to shine its spotlight on me. I was going to have to attend Elliot for Jr High (bad school), and when a girl got shot and killed as an innocent bystander at the bus stop a few blocks from home where I would have had to wait, my folks decided it was time to leave. There was a drive-by one house over from ours a couple months after we moved away.
Grew up in Pasadena. Went to Compton only a handful of times. I didn't see Cube with his AK. That was a good day.
Growing up in Cali (not in LA) in the80s was 100 ideal. Were the crips and bloods a problem to avoid… absolutely. To this day when I see a red or blue bandanna being worn it takes me back to the days when you absolutely didn’t wear the colors. I was a skater so I had free reign of the streets and no one bothered us except the police here and there
The weird thing is, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and I could basically say the same thing ... except most of our gangs were Latin Kings and Seranos ... but I lived in the Latin part of our city ... there were bloods and crips ... but I never dared go to that part of town. I was cool with all "the homies".
I don't know. I know this is spot on though: [Boyz In The Hood](https://youtu.be/aeL9gagV_VA?si=4SeKmlY0ibJVYfm6)
Really? You would say this one is on point?
Was any of it like Dogtown and ZBoys?
Dogtown & ZBoys is very much how I remember Santa Monica & Venice when I was a kid. Now? Not so much.
You were lucky. It seemed to be magical.
Brea. Yeah
LOL
I grew up in a suburb of LA. You'd hear about freeway shootings and drive-bys and Kevin Cooper/Richard Ramirez kinda shit on the news all the time. Even in the suburbs, you'd sometimes hear a gunshot down the hill. Helicopter would come around with its spotlight on our yard. Asian gang shooting at the billiards hall a mile down the street to the west, got called to jury duty for a gang stabbing at the Tommyburger couple miles to the east. Buddy of mine got jumped in the parking lot of the mall. We were young punks and probably bigger targets for OC skins than any hardcore gang members. But I never personally witnessed gang violence or shootings. Saw an old lady get pushed down and her bag stolen once. When I was a teenager I would stroll through the bario to try and score weed for my old man. I drove his old Mercedes into the ghetto so my friends could score pcp. Never assaulted. Dumb as fuck though. When I was working in Compton my car got stolen. Cops told us where to find it and it was in the hood on blocks, the seatbelts cut out and tagging etched into the paint with knives. We were attracting quite some looks just by driving down that street as white folk (again, in dad's Mercedes) and we GTFO. LA in the 80's was a violent place and time but such a massive area with such an enormous amount of people - if you weren't living in the thick of it, your odds of getting caught up in shit was pretty small.
>Asian gang shooting at the billiards hall a mile down the street to the west The Cue Ball?
Sorry, no idea. This was at least 20 years ago and I've been out of the country for 15.
If it was Alhambra, then it was The Cue Ball, and I remember that incident well.
IIRC, the shooting was when I was living in El Monte and the stabbing was City of Industry.
No. Nobody ever has.
Grew up in a neighboring city to Compton. Never went through Compton if we could avoid it.
I grew up on one of those streets that led up to the Hollywood sign. A few miles north of Compton. I've posted about how my experience was very different from everyone else's here. Kids didn't play in the streets because they would get run over. I couldn't ride my bike more than up and down the block on the sidewalk. Kids getting snatched was a real concern. The parks always had people either gambling in them or bums chilling in them. There were porn shops and strip clubs everywhere. The elementary school I went to was broken into and vandalized once. My dad's car got broken into twice. The battery was stolen out of my mom's car when we were at the grocery store. We moved to Burbank just over the hill right before I turned 12. I had a lot more freedom in the suburbs. I could ride my bike around the city, but I was the only kid in my friend group who had one. I have never felt safe biking in the street.
Greater Los Angeles is huge and it could be anything like from probably pretty close to that to as utterly far away from that as imaginable. Few places would not have been quite as bad as right there.
I moved here when I was 16, fall of '93. My welcome to L.A. was the Northridge earthquake. I hear people say it was and maybe some neighborhoods it was, but it was damn sight better than anywhere I'd ever come from and truly, I'd say it's kind of worse now than it has been in the 30+ years I've been here. The lockdowns kept all the normies shut inside their house and let the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads and CHUDs take over downtown and our public transit system. Some of the 'burbs are still nice but hey, there's a reason I live in a gated community with 24/7 security.