March 28, 2023 • 23 mins
Photographer Eddie Ruvalcaba started his professional career capturing snapshots of party crews for Street Beat Magazine, an indie magazine for party crew teens of the ‘90s. His photographs have become part of an archive of ‘90s LA Latinx teen life. Thirty years later, Eddie reflects on his beginnings with Street Beat and how photography became a staple in his life.
*A note that Eddie was the staff photographer at Homeboy Industries from 2016-2021, and this interview was recorded in 2021 when he was still on staff. You’ll hear him mention it in the interview. He continues to work as an independent contractor for Homeboy Industries.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you guys are recording, Oh yeah, all right, all
recording club one two three. So my name is Eddie,
lifelong photographer and Boyle Heights. He's Los Angeles covering the
East party scene, backyard party scene from the nineties. Eddie
is showing me around Homeboy Art Academy, an art studio,
(00:22):
and Boyle Heights. He's currently the main photographer at Homeboy Industries,
a nonprofit that offers services and support for formerly incarcerated
or getting involved people. Eddie is showing me a series
of framed photographs, all photos he's taken. Well, that's the
girls party crew. You know they knew me as the
(00:43):
streetbeat photographer. And there is your friends from high school.
Many are of childhood friends he grew up with or
people he met in the party crew scene in East
LA in the nineties. He shows me a black and
white picture that he took of a party crew simply
called the Girls. The girls are posed around a motorcycle.
This was a photo shoot for their party crew going
(01:06):
down Melrose in Hollywood. The Harley Davidson was another like
style that comes with the bike riding. You know, the
biker boots and the leather bass. Some of them are smiling,
some are more serious, and everyone's wearing a dark shade
of lipsticks. About nine other photos with this series of pictures,
(01:26):
but the girls are wearing their muscle shirt. They're they're
like biker pants or like boot cut le by jeans
with big belt buckles. They're all wearing high waisted jeans
with their teas and tanktops tucked in to show off
their black leather belts. It's a very nineties look, the
kind that never goes out of style. Eddie tells me
(01:47):
that he didn't even have copies of a lot of
these pictures until a few years ago when a friend
passed along some negatives. He found like this girl right
here in the man I forgot her name, but she
was like the other one with some kind of sexy
little jumpsuit. I love saying images of women just like
super you know, powerful like they look so they look
so like you know, It's like in the picture the
(02:09):
women are frozen in time at seventeen or eighteen high schoolers.
There's something about seeing them at this moment in their
lives and knowing they are in their late forties with
probably so many stories to tell from my hearts Michael
(02:48):
Duda Podcast Network, Vice and Elias Studios. This is Party Cruise,
the Untold Story. I'm Janis Yamoka. In this bonus episode,
I talk to photographer Eddie Rubagaba. Part of why I
(03:33):
wanted to talk to Eddie in this bonus episode was
that he was a documentar of the scene. His work
represents a link to the past that helps me understand
the history of the underground party scene I was a
part of was street Beat. The first publication that you
were published in. Street Beat Magazine was a magazine that
(03:53):
was made for party crews, maybe the only one ever.
It was a big deal in the nineties and it
was the first place that Eddie had one of his
photographs published. In those days, you know, one out of
a thousand people might have had a camera in society.
It was more for me to be able to shoot
(04:13):
for Screebee was like my backstage pass to anywhere. The
earliest issues were black and white, xerox and Staple together
very DIY. Each issue of street Beat featured local party crews,
their fashion, their music, stories about their neighborhoods, and lots
of post pictures like the one Eddie tug I was
like I'm just having fun and taking pictures at the
(04:36):
same time at parting, drinking, dancing with the girls and
all that stuff where you're just showing your camera and
you're like press Yeah. I mean like so if I
had my camera and big flash and all whatever, and
the reputation that carried me was like, Oh, there's Eddie
Street Eddie Beat. Eddie and Street Beat Magazine were part
of the party crew scene a decade before my time.
(05:00):
The party crew scene has had several generations, each with
its own unique flair, which, according to Eddie, goes all
the way back to the seventies and eighties. My older sister,
she was class of eighty eight. What was your sister's crew.
She was from Dynasty Desires. Yeah, Dynasty Desires. Yeah. Did
she have a nickname? I think they had nicknames for
(05:22):
each other, but I don't recall her having one. Um
they recently got back together. I was of them. You
guys are Dynasty Desires. You guys are Dynosaur Desires. The
music of the time, the fashion and pop culture really
(05:45):
defined the cruise from my era, and I imagine it
was that way for every era. The party scenes that
that exploded during the nineties were basically deriving from what
evolved originally coming from, like the disco era of the
eight in Los Angeles. He's Los Angeles. Our fashion and
style was different, So the disco era was more like
(06:08):
influenced by Madonna the big hair, and other girls had
the big what they called Chaca hair, and that's where
the AquaNet influence or style of hair came from. You
might hear Parawana six has a disco flashback session they
called the aquante set. Yeah, because that relates to the
(06:29):
disco hair of that time. Women would douse their hair
with AquaNet hairspray and would tease their hair into a
fluffy wave rising half a foot above their heads. And
then the guys had the disco mullets, so papadoor in
the front, shaved on the sides along the back. That
was like a disco mullet for the guys in those
(06:51):
mid to late eighties. The eighties disco vibes gave way
to a retro greaser style in the nineties or what
was known rebel style. I think James Dean in Rebel
without a Cause, you're tearing me up by what you say.
One thing he says that doesn't. Everybody changes back again,
(07:13):
leather jackets and slick back, shiny hair. The party crew
that I hung out with was the Ruthless Ones less Ones,
and they they had their first party in my mom's backyard.
Really yeah, that was a great party. But did you
ever join them? No, I can't say that. They were
all my friends. That's who I hung out all right.
(07:34):
The images on those flowers were like of James Dean,
Betty Page, Mary n Roll, the Outsiders, the Outsiders movie
kind of images, These classic Hollywood iconic images of greasers
(07:54):
and rebels and those kind of characters. The first time
Eddie picked up a camera was as a student at
Roosevelt High School when he was asked to photograph a
baseball tournament. So I played baseball Roosevelt. Roosevelt High School
(08:16):
in Boyle Heights is a high school with a lot
of history. Students in the sixties participated in the ESLA Walkouts.
The boy Heights Giants was a traveling baseball league. Our
team in a traveling league. They had a tournament for
the spring break of eighty nine up in San Francisco,
and I was invited to come along as long as
(08:37):
I took pictures. I'm like, oh, hell yeah, I was
all out two sports. So I was working at a
pharmacy on soda and first that's gone now. And every
time these magazines would go up out of date, they
would throw them out or like, hey, let me take them.
So take all these sports pictures out, cut them out,
(08:59):
and I made like a bail collage on my room
wall of sports images. After he graduated in nineteen ninety one,
he enrolled in eLAC East Los Angeles College to take
my first photographer class there, and I'm taking pictures in
these backyards. I learn how to use flash on the camera.
(09:21):
I get my own camera. I'm shooting black and white film.
Eddie started taking his camera everywhere with him, even a
parties two and one day at a party in nineteen
ninety one, someone stopped him and then I get recruited
by Marty Beat from STREEV magazine. Marty Beat, whose real
name was Martin Casado, was the brain and the soul
(09:43):
behind Street Beat magazine. This is a new issue of
Strev magazine Augusteptember issue. He since passed away. Here he
is in a commercial from the early nineties. You can
hear his enthusiasm for the magazine. Yeah, the number one
thing me, Marty Bet is most proud of the first
oh the state party rave scene. As you get, Street
Beats started when Marty xerox and distributed DIY copies of
(10:07):
it himself with party crew, culture and fashion as the
main focus. Street Beat magazine the news stands now brass
it loves you Street Beat Magazine while it's hot. What
was the encounter Like, you were just like partying. Yeah,
(10:28):
we were just at a party and they're like, hey,
see you got your camera man on Marty Beat from
streetb Magazine and I'm like, oh, okay, what's up. Yeah,
I heard about this magazine and it's just started getting out.
A few years later, Streetby would get noticed and acquired
by a big magazine publisher, the same one that published
(10:51):
Lowrider Magazine, a top selling automagazine at the time dedicated
to candy colored low rider cars, legit stuff. As it
started to get in more popularity and momentum, it started
getting wider distribution. Wherever Lowrider was distributed, street Beat would
go as well. So before you know it, that rebel
(11:12):
scene that you're seen out of this area was in
the valley in Orange County and there were rebel crews everywhere.
He didn't have social media influence back then. He had
screet Beat, though, and street Beat got out and its
distribution got wider and wider, and the party cruise that
you're seen here in the style that it expanded because
(11:34):
of that magazine. So like that whole James Dean thing
was something that came out of here that ended up
going everywhere in southern California. Wherever that magazine was at,
it was an influence. Street Beat wouldn't last long. By
the mid nineties, it was out of print, but while
the magazine was coming out, it reflected Latin exteen lives,
(11:56):
shining a bright positive light on party cruise at a
moment that was also one of the most tumultuous times
in LA history. That's after the break. As Eddie moved
(12:33):
into party photography, he says he saw the scene change
as gang violence, which was guy rocketing in LA in
the late eighties and early nineties, started affecting parties. Some
of these crews lived in certain areas that were connected
to the gangs of those areas, and so some of
these party crews brought in homies from their neighborhood to
(12:57):
go party with them, and there would be other crews
with their homes from their neighborlads that would be rivals
at the same party and before another, big shootings happening
at these these parties, and I believe because of the
gang violence, it kind of like helped to take down
this backyard party scene. It's a certain extent, people were
(13:20):
still partying, but it was always more risky. In this
time frame from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety eight,
we call it the Decade of Death. The Decade of
Death was a ten year period where gang homicides in
the County of Los Angeles peaked. And that same period
was the Ronney King beating and the La uprising that
came after. You can hear them now. I mean LA
(13:44):
was tense, you know, so I was kind of wondering,
like how did you experience it? Yeah, that was one
of the big events of that era. In that time frame,
it was those riots of Ronney King riots. It was
crazy because it went on for about a week and
a half and the whole city was on fire, the
smoke everywhere. I got pictures of that as well, like
(14:06):
being a high point and just seeing all the dark
smugg year in East Los Angeles, cruising around and looking
at the National Guard in every corner. I have pictures
of that still. It was around that time that Eddie
(14:27):
told me he started experiencing his own challenges with substance
abuse after graduating high school. When I went to high school,
football and baseball pulled me away from the street so
that I survived, and I graduated high school because of
the sports. When I got out, you know, I was
making a little bit of money, and it was all
(14:48):
about partying my addiction. And seeing the Hamma side rate
explode and everybody just getting killed and gang violence is exploding.
Seeing everybody going down, it was like, who cares, We're
gonna die anyway, so it might as well party as
much as we can before we go. It got so
bad where one day we were having a little baptism
(15:10):
party it my mom's and some of the guys from
the neighborhood that we're friends that were like the rowdy
ones were there and we're like, all right, sided to
go get some more beer. And so as we're walking
outside as a car creeps up, the lights are on,
like hits up, It's up it's up. We look, it's
(15:31):
close at the corner, and it start blasting bloom boom boom.
We all hit the floor and they take off. Check
on everybody. Everybody, okay, everybody, okay, all right, let's go
get that beer. If nothing happened, we were so desensitized
from all that where it was like nothing. In nineteen
ninety four, Eddie says he got a wake up call.
(15:54):
So I just was waking up every day looking for drugs.
My mom got fed up with me and threw me
out of the house. It was a tough love that
I needed to wake up and step out of it.
And she also throughout my negative books and the rain
Tarma negative. So I have some surviving images. The pictures
(16:19):
you see, I've shown and shared with you guys, some
of the pictures that survived. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. In the
midst of the things that Eddie and his friends were
going through and the decade of death, street Beat was
trying to send a positive message. I looked through an
(16:43):
old issue of Street Beat from October November of nineteen
ninety three. There was a glossy purple page with a
headline in bold orange letters that said pump it up.
It's a little article about party crews nels Aino and
Highland Park. The Articho praises the crews x Clan Latins
above villains, modern men and suicide kings for quote throwing
(17:08):
undergrounds and raves in peaceful fashion, and it encourages the
crews to quote show the police and the establishment that
the Rassa can get it together. After losing his pictures,
Eddie at that point focus on other things besides photography.
He started working for the US Force Service while still
(17:31):
dealing with his addiction, but he would eventually get sober
in early two thousand and then in two thousand and
two he joined the Marines. It was a long road,
but Eddie eventually found his way back to photography. Well,
I think about what would have happened if I never
partied and so get out of the Marine Corps to
(17:53):
go back and learned all the digital stuff. I'm getting
published again, sports Illus created ESPN the magazine. It's like
this was my path the whole time. I fell off
track though, and I and it's like confirmed to me
because I picked up where I left off and I'm
right back in it. And Eddie would find that even
(18:17):
years later, his work documenting Party Cruise would live on.
So um Now I'm the photographer at Homeboy Industries, and
I meet some of these guys that were in the
Party Cruise from back in the days that got more
into the gang life and got in trouble and doing
(18:40):
the only stretches of jail time. And some of them
remember the magazine. Oh my god, you shot for the magazine. Wow,
I remember that magazine. So we reminiscee and we shared
pictures and we remember some of the same people, and
some of these pictures that we're still up there. No
Mala Lupa's page shows a lot of those friends from
(19:00):
Macado's days. Eddie is talking about Gadupa Rosales. She runs
an account called Rucas and she has been archiving the
nineties party crew scene for years. Her popular Instagram profiles
Etana Santrucas and Matt Points have become a space where
people share their memories of their party crew days. As
(19:27):
we're nearing the end of the interview, he shows me
two other pictures that have a lot of meaning for him.
So this is the picture from nineteen ninety two. The
first is a photograph of five young men on the
steps of a chapel. That's me in the middle, all
skinny two standing and the rest of them sitting. They're
(19:47):
all looking proudly into the camera. The casual guy O
what a nineteen two? Eddie shows me the second picture,
and then twenty seventeen, same spot, all those guys has dyed.
(20:09):
It's the same shot, same place, but decades later. This
was his friend group and aside from him, only one
is still alive. The skills and passion for photography Eddie
(20:32):
built up in his youth in the party crew scene
are still with him today. But it's not just his job.
It's also how he's documented the changes in his life.
It's how he remembers the good and the bad. And
you know, I look back and think, Banna, I'm still here.
(20:54):
Some I survived, and so that's why I'm at home
where I feel for me, it's like fulfilling to be there.
I can't help those that are gone, and where I
can help those that are still here. And I share
my experience my my sobriety now twenty one years shoulder. Um.
(21:14):
You know, father Greg, they found your homeboy. Industry talks
about this community that you know, kids planned their funerals
before they planned their life. That was me. I didn't
think I was going to live to see your two thousand,
but I was one of the lucky ones. I guess
um I am, I am, I know, I am. I'm
(21:37):
still alive. I'm here to tell thank you so much
for this conversation and for you know, opening up and
sharing your story. Thank you, Oh my pleasure. That was
photographer Eddie Rubaba. This episode was written, reported, and hosted
(22:03):
by me Jennis Yamoka. It was produced by Maria Pea,
Victoria Lejandro, Kyle Chang, and Sophia Pelissa car. It was
edited by Antonia Seihido. Sound design in original music composition
by Kyle Murdock. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee, Art
by Julie Ruiz and Victoria Koyon. Our executive producer from
(22:27):
Vice Audio is Kate Osbourne. Our executive producers from Elias
Studios are Antonia Seedihido and Leo g Additional editing by
Annie Ablis. Our Vice President of Podcasts from Elias Studios
is Shanea Naomi Krocmo Party Cruz. The Untold Story is
a production of Elias Studios in Vice Audio. In partnership
(22:51):
with Ihearts Michael Thura podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen
to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you list
send to your favorite shows. Special thanks to the UCLA
Department of Communication Archive for access to their news collection.
Subscribe to our show anywhere you listen to podcasts and Hey,
(23:15):
were you and a party crew? Send it your party
flyers or photos. I'd love to see them, even a
voice message about your memories. Anything. You can send us
a message or a picture at party crews at Elias
Studios dot com. Support for this podcast is made possible
by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality journalism
makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program
(23:38):
is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
a private corporation funded by the American people.
If you guys are recording, Oh yeah, all right, all
recording club one two three. So my name is Eddie,
lifelong photographer and Boyle Heights. He's Los Angeles covering the
East party scene, backyard party scene from the nineties. Eddie
is showing me around Homeboy Art Academy, an art studio,
(00:22):
and Boyle Heights. He's currently the main photographer at Homeboy Industries,
a nonprofit that offers services and support for formerly incarcerated
or getting involved people. Eddie is showing me a series
of framed photographs, all photos he's taken. Well, that's the
girls party crew. You know they knew me as the
(00:43):
streetbeat photographer. And there is your friends from high school.
Many are of childhood friends he grew up with or
people he met in the party crew scene in East
LA in the nineties. He shows me a black and
white picture that he took of a party crew simply
called the Girls. The girls are posed around a motorcycle.
This was a photo shoot for their party crew going
(01:06):
down Melrose in Hollywood. The Harley Davidson was another like
style that comes with the bike riding. You know, the
biker boots and the leather bass. Some of them are smiling,
some are more serious, and everyone's wearing a dark shade
of lipsticks. About nine other photos with this series of pictures,
(01:26):
but the girls are wearing their muscle shirt. They're they're
like biker pants or like boot cut le by jeans
with big belt buckles. They're all wearing high waisted jeans
with their teas and tanktops tucked in to show off
their black leather belts. It's a very nineties look, the
kind that never goes out of style. Eddie tells me
(01:47):
that he didn't even have copies of a lot of
these pictures until a few years ago when a friend
passed along some negatives. He found like this girl right
here in the man I forgot her name, but she
was like the other one with some kind of sexy
little jumpsuit. I love saying images of women just like
super you know, powerful like they look so they look
so like you know, It's like in the picture the
(02:09):
women are frozen in time at seventeen or eighteen high schoolers.
There's something about seeing them at this moment in their
lives and knowing they are in their late forties with
probably so many stories to tell from my hearts Michael
(02:48):
Duda Podcast Network, Vice and Elias Studios. This is Party Cruise,
the Untold Story. I'm Janis Yamoka. In this bonus episode,
I talk to photographer Eddie Rubagaba. Part of why I
(03:33):
wanted to talk to Eddie in this bonus episode was
that he was a documentar of the scene. His work
represents a link to the past that helps me understand
the history of the underground party scene I was a
part of was street Beat. The first publication that you
were published in. Street Beat Magazine was a magazine that
(03:53):
was made for party crews, maybe the only one ever.
It was a big deal in the nineties and it
was the first place that Eddie had one of his
photographs published. In those days, you know, one out of
a thousand people might have had a camera in society.
It was more for me to be able to shoot
(04:13):
for Screebee was like my backstage pass to anywhere. The
earliest issues were black and white, xerox and Staple together
very DIY. Each issue of street Beat featured local party crews,
their fashion, their music, stories about their neighborhoods, and lots
of post pictures like the one Eddie tug I was
like I'm just having fun and taking pictures at the
(04:36):
same time at parting, drinking, dancing with the girls and
all that stuff where you're just showing your camera and
you're like press Yeah. I mean like so if I
had my camera and big flash and all whatever, and
the reputation that carried me was like, Oh, there's Eddie
Street Eddie Beat. Eddie and Street Beat Magazine were part
of the party crew scene a decade before my time.
(05:00):
The party crew scene has had several generations, each with
its own unique flair, which, according to Eddie, goes all
the way back to the seventies and eighties. My older sister,
she was class of eighty eight. What was your sister's crew.
She was from Dynasty Desires. Yeah, Dynasty Desires. Yeah. Did
she have a nickname? I think they had nicknames for
(05:22):
each other, but I don't recall her having one. Um
they recently got back together. I was of them. You
guys are Dynasty Desires. You guys are Dynosaur Desires. The
music of the time, the fashion and pop culture really
(05:45):
defined the cruise from my era, and I imagine it
was that way for every era. The party scenes that
that exploded during the nineties were basically deriving from what
evolved originally coming from, like the disco era of the
eight in Los Angeles. He's Los Angeles. Our fashion and
style was different, So the disco era was more like
(06:08):
influenced by Madonna the big hair, and other girls had
the big what they called Chaca hair, and that's where
the AquaNet influence or style of hair came from. You
might hear Parawana six has a disco flashback session they
called the aquante set. Yeah, because that relates to the
(06:29):
disco hair of that time. Women would douse their hair
with AquaNet hairspray and would tease their hair into a
fluffy wave rising half a foot above their heads. And
then the guys had the disco mullets, so papadoor in
the front, shaved on the sides along the back. That
was like a disco mullet for the guys in those
(06:51):
mid to late eighties. The eighties disco vibes gave way
to a retro greaser style in the nineties or what
was known rebel style. I think James Dean in Rebel
without a Cause, you're tearing me up by what you say.
One thing he says that doesn't. Everybody changes back again,
(07:13):
leather jackets and slick back, shiny hair. The party crew
that I hung out with was the Ruthless Ones less Ones,
and they they had their first party in my mom's backyard.
Really yeah, that was a great party. But did you
ever join them? No, I can't say that. They were
all my friends. That's who I hung out all right.
(07:34):
The images on those flowers were like of James Dean,
Betty Page, Mary n Roll, the Outsiders, the Outsiders movie
kind of images, These classic Hollywood iconic images of greasers
(07:54):
and rebels and those kind of characters. The first time
Eddie picked up a camera was as a student at
Roosevelt High School when he was asked to photograph a
baseball tournament. So I played baseball Roosevelt. Roosevelt High School
(08:16):
in Boyle Heights is a high school with a lot
of history. Students in the sixties participated in the ESLA Walkouts.
The boy Heights Giants was a traveling baseball league. Our
team in a traveling league. They had a tournament for
the spring break of eighty nine up in San Francisco,
and I was invited to come along as long as
(08:37):
I took pictures. I'm like, oh, hell yeah, I was
all out two sports. So I was working at a
pharmacy on soda and first that's gone now. And every
time these magazines would go up out of date, they
would throw them out or like, hey, let me take them.
So take all these sports pictures out, cut them out,
(08:59):
and I made like a bail collage on my room
wall of sports images. After he graduated in nineteen ninety one,
he enrolled in eLAC East Los Angeles College to take
my first photographer class there, and I'm taking pictures in
these backyards. I learn how to use flash on the camera.
(09:21):
I get my own camera. I'm shooting black and white film.
Eddie started taking his camera everywhere with him, even a
parties two and one day at a party in nineteen
ninety one, someone stopped him and then I get recruited
by Marty Beat from STREEV magazine. Marty Beat, whose real
name was Martin Casado, was the brain and the soul
(09:43):
behind Street Beat magazine. This is a new issue of
Strev magazine Augusteptember issue. He since passed away. Here he
is in a commercial from the early nineties. You can
hear his enthusiasm for the magazine. Yeah, the number one
thing me, Marty Bet is most proud of the first
oh the state party rave scene. As you get, Street
Beats started when Marty xerox and distributed DIY copies of
(10:07):
it himself with party crew, culture and fashion as the
main focus. Street Beat magazine the news stands now brass
it loves you Street Beat Magazine while it's hot. What
was the encounter Like, you were just like partying. Yeah,
(10:28):
we were just at a party and they're like, hey,
see you got your camera man on Marty Beat from
streetb Magazine and I'm like, oh, okay, what's up. Yeah,
I heard about this magazine and it's just started getting out.
A few years later, Streetby would get noticed and acquired
by a big magazine publisher, the same one that published
(10:51):
Lowrider Magazine, a top selling automagazine at the time dedicated
to candy colored low rider cars, legit stuff. As it
started to get in more popularity and momentum, it started
getting wider distribution. Wherever Lowrider was distributed, street Beat would
go as well. So before you know it, that rebel
(11:12):
scene that you're seen out of this area was in
the valley in Orange County and there were rebel crews everywhere.
He didn't have social media influence back then. He had
screet Beat, though, and street Beat got out and its
distribution got wider and wider, and the party cruise that
you're seen here in the style that it expanded because
(11:34):
of that magazine. So like that whole James Dean thing
was something that came out of here that ended up
going everywhere in southern California. Wherever that magazine was at,
it was an influence. Street Beat wouldn't last long. By
the mid nineties, it was out of print, but while
the magazine was coming out, it reflected Latin exteen lives,
(11:56):
shining a bright positive light on party cruise at a
moment that was also one of the most tumultuous times
in LA history. That's after the break. As Eddie moved
(12:33):
into party photography, he says he saw the scene change
as gang violence, which was guy rocketing in LA in
the late eighties and early nineties, started affecting parties. Some
of these crews lived in certain areas that were connected
to the gangs of those areas, and so some of
these party crews brought in homies from their neighborhood to
(12:57):
go party with them, and there would be other crews
with their homes from their neighborlads that would be rivals
at the same party and before another, big shootings happening
at these these parties, and I believe because of the
gang violence, it kind of like helped to take down
this backyard party scene. It's a certain extent, people were
(13:20):
still partying, but it was always more risky. In this
time frame from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety eight,
we call it the Decade of Death. The Decade of
Death was a ten year period where gang homicides in
the County of Los Angeles peaked. And that same period
was the Ronney King beating and the La uprising that
came after. You can hear them now. I mean LA
(13:44):
was tense, you know, so I was kind of wondering,
like how did you experience it? Yeah, that was one
of the big events of that era. In that time frame,
it was those riots of Ronney King riots. It was
crazy because it went on for about a week and
a half and the whole city was on fire, the
smoke everywhere. I got pictures of that as well, like
(14:06):
being a high point and just seeing all the dark
smugg year in East Los Angeles, cruising around and looking
at the National Guard in every corner. I have pictures
of that still. It was around that time that Eddie
(14:27):
told me he started experiencing his own challenges with substance
abuse after graduating high school. When I went to high school,
football and baseball pulled me away from the street so
that I survived, and I graduated high school because of
the sports. When I got out, you know, I was
making a little bit of money, and it was all
(14:48):
about partying my addiction. And seeing the Hamma side rate
explode and everybody just getting killed and gang violence is exploding.
Seeing everybody going down, it was like, who cares, We're
gonna die anyway, so it might as well party as
much as we can before we go. It got so
bad where one day we were having a little baptism
(15:10):
party it my mom's and some of the guys from
the neighborhood that we're friends that were like the rowdy
ones were there and we're like, all right, sided to
go get some more beer. And so as we're walking
outside as a car creeps up, the lights are on,
like hits up, It's up it's up. We look, it's
(15:31):
close at the corner, and it start blasting bloom boom boom.
We all hit the floor and they take off. Check
on everybody. Everybody, okay, everybody, okay, all right, let's go
get that beer. If nothing happened, we were so desensitized
from all that where it was like nothing. In nineteen
ninety four, Eddie says he got a wake up call.
(15:54):
So I just was waking up every day looking for drugs.
My mom got fed up with me and threw me
out of the house. It was a tough love that
I needed to wake up and step out of it.
And she also throughout my negative books and the rain
Tarma negative. So I have some surviving images. The pictures
(16:19):
you see, I've shown and shared with you guys, some
of the pictures that survived. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. In the
midst of the things that Eddie and his friends were
going through and the decade of death, street Beat was
trying to send a positive message. I looked through an
(16:43):
old issue of Street Beat from October November of nineteen
ninety three. There was a glossy purple page with a
headline in bold orange letters that said pump it up.
It's a little article about party crews nels Aino and
Highland Park. The Articho praises the crews x Clan Latins
above villains, modern men and suicide kings for quote throwing
(17:08):
undergrounds and raves in peaceful fashion, and it encourages the
crews to quote show the police and the establishment that
the Rassa can get it together. After losing his pictures,
Eddie at that point focus on other things besides photography.
He started working for the US Force Service while still
(17:31):
dealing with his addiction, but he would eventually get sober
in early two thousand and then in two thousand and
two he joined the Marines. It was a long road,
but Eddie eventually found his way back to photography. Well,
I think about what would have happened if I never
partied and so get out of the Marine Corps to
(17:53):
go back and learned all the digital stuff. I'm getting
published again, sports Illus created ESPN the magazine. It's like
this was my path the whole time. I fell off
track though, and I and it's like confirmed to me
because I picked up where I left off and I'm
right back in it. And Eddie would find that even
(18:17):
years later, his work documenting Party Cruise would live on.
So um Now I'm the photographer at Homeboy Industries, and
I meet some of these guys that were in the
Party Cruise from back in the days that got more
into the gang life and got in trouble and doing
(18:40):
the only stretches of jail time. And some of them
remember the magazine. Oh my god, you shot for the magazine. Wow,
I remember that magazine. So we reminiscee and we shared
pictures and we remember some of the same people, and
some of these pictures that we're still up there. No
Mala Lupa's page shows a lot of those friends from
(19:00):
Macado's days. Eddie is talking about Gadupa Rosales. She runs
an account called Rucas and she has been archiving the
nineties party crew scene for years. Her popular Instagram profiles
Etana Santrucas and Matt Points have become a space where
people share their memories of their party crew days. As
(19:27):
we're nearing the end of the interview, he shows me
two other pictures that have a lot of meaning for him.
So this is the picture from nineteen ninety two. The
first is a photograph of five young men on the
steps of a chapel. That's me in the middle, all
skinny two standing and the rest of them sitting. They're
(19:47):
all looking proudly into the camera. The casual guy O
what a nineteen two? Eddie shows me the second picture,
and then twenty seventeen, same spot, all those guys has dyed.
(20:09):
It's the same shot, same place, but decades later. This
was his friend group and aside from him, only one
is still alive. The skills and passion for photography Eddie
(20:32):
built up in his youth in the party crew scene
are still with him today. But it's not just his job.
It's also how he's documented the changes in his life.
It's how he remembers the good and the bad. And
you know, I look back and think, Banna, I'm still here.
(20:54):
Some I survived, and so that's why I'm at home
where I feel for me, it's like fulfilling to be there.
I can't help those that are gone, and where I
can help those that are still here. And I share
my experience my my sobriety now twenty one years shoulder. Um.
(21:14):
You know, father Greg, they found your homeboy. Industry talks
about this community that you know, kids planned their funerals
before they planned their life. That was me. I didn't
think I was going to live to see your two thousand,
but I was one of the lucky ones. I guess
um I am, I am, I know, I am. I'm
(21:37):
still alive. I'm here to tell thank you so much
for this conversation and for you know, opening up and
sharing your story. Thank you, Oh my pleasure. That was
photographer Eddie Rubaba. This episode was written, reported, and hosted
(22:03):
by me Jennis Yamoka. It was produced by Maria Pea,
Victoria Lejandro, Kyle Chang, and Sophia Pelissa car. It was
edited by Antonia Seihido. Sound design in original music composition
by Kyle Murdock. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee, Art
by Julie Ruiz and Victoria Koyon. Our executive producer from
(22:27):
Vice Audio is Kate Osbourne. Our executive producers from Elias
Studios are Antonia Seedihido and Leo g Additional editing by
Annie Ablis. Our Vice President of Podcasts from Elias Studios
is Shanea Naomi Krocmo Party Cruz. The Untold Story is
a production of Elias Studios in Vice Audio. In partnership
(22:51):
with Ihearts Michael Thura podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen
to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you list
send to your favorite shows. Special thanks to the UCLA
Department of Communication Archive for access to their news collection.
Subscribe to our show anywhere you listen to podcasts and Hey,
(23:15):
were you and a party crew? Send it your party
flyers or photos. I'd love to see them, even a
voice message about your memories. Anything. You can send us
a message or a picture at party crews at Elias
Studios dot com. Support for this podcast is made possible
by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality journalism
makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program
(23:38):
is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
a private corporation funded by the American people.
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