Ep. 2 Welcome to the Party

Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, Janice saw the party crew scene as a little slice of freedom, a place to let loose, and a break from her religious, immigrant household. But the scene was also complicated for her and holds painful memories.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have this memory from my childhood. I'm at a
family party at an uncle's house in the Sangebriel Valley
where I grew up. I'm tall now, but in this memory,
the adults were still taller than me. Salsa, probably Joe
Royo or oscarre Leone, blasts through a bulgy speaker that

(00:21):
vibrated the entire living room. The adults were dancing, focusing
only on the music and the person in front of them.
Their moves felt unpredictable to me. They're swaying bodies and
pointy elbows formed a human obstacle course. I cut through
them to grab a cup of Inca cola and a

(00:43):
bowl of chips from a table in the kitchen. I
saw my mom sitting in one of the chairs lined
up against the wall, looking up at everyone. She's not dancing,
age Um, you know no. One of the reasons why

(01:25):
we had so many rules at home was because of
my mom. My mom grew up in a conservative evangelical
household in the seventies and Lima, Peru. My mom never
learned to dance as a teen. She said she didn't
go to parties when she was young. She never learned.

(01:58):
She says she go to parties kind of. They were
more like gatherings or hangouts. Friends would get together, eat
and laugh. There was no alcohol involved. At an early age,

(02:22):
she knew that her family was different. Her neighbors drank,
they danced, They threw loud parties. Sometimes the parties lasted
until five in the morning. My mom doesn't really remember this,
but as a kid at our family parties, she discouraged
me from dancing. Yeah, I don't know. When I asked

(02:54):
her about this, she said, but you didn't listen. You
love to dance now, and she's right, but it took
me a long time to get here. That memory of
my mom not dancing at a family party comes back
to me when I think about my own relationship to fun,

(03:16):
how I grew to love moving freely in my own body.

(03:58):
From my heart's Michael to a podcast network Vice and
Elias Studios. This is Party Cruise, the untold story. I'm
Jannis Amlca. I grew up in a place called Roland Heights.

(04:46):
It's east of downtown and La County, in the Sangerbolle Valley.
That's gb When people stare at me completely clueless, I
just tell them the other Valley. I remember growing up
with Chinese kids, Korean kids, Mexican kids. More than half

(05:07):
of the population was born in a different country, and
a lot of the kids were like me, kids of immigrants.
In school, we spoke to each other in English, and
at home we spoke in a different language to our parents.
High school for me was defined by music videos. We

(05:28):
had a black box, basically a rigged up black market
cable box, which mean I had access to every channel,
including MTV jams. It was hip hop music video heaven

(05:53):
in the early two thousands. Video vixens were queens. Buillip
She was models like Melissa Ford and Vita Gara. They
were the director's muses and completely outshined the rappers. I
was mesmerized by their power. But the video that blew

(06:14):
me away. It was Beyonce's Crazy and Love Yes. When
the video was jam of the Week, which meant it
played every hour all week, I watched it carefully and
copied base every danceman I even try to look like her.

(06:35):
I bought the white tank top, the denim shorts, and
red siletto slingbacks, whatever I could find it to swap me.
It gave me a glimpse into what being a young
woman could look like. It was sexy, fun and fashionable,
a type of freedom I hadn't seen in person. Rebellious

(06:57):
even so different from the modestly dressed women I'd see
at church, and I knew off a bit of that
freedom could rub off on me. I could do anything.
High school was also the time that I started to
help my parents out. My parents both worked a lot.
They cleaned houses for a living, so when I got

(07:18):
my license, my mom made me drive their cleaning crew
around On the weekends. I chuttle a team from house
to house in a big white astro van. It was
the car Elent you drive in. But at night I'd
have the van all to myself, and I have a
lot of memories in that van. I remember driving my

(07:42):
mom's astro van and packing girls in it. Yea our
little party crew. Yes, so many memories in that van. Yeah,
I can't believe I drove my mom was like cleaning
astro van and drove with girls to parties. That's Sammy
Selina's She was one of my best friends in high school.

(08:05):
We've lost touch over the years, but when we catch
up it's like we haven't missed a beat. We met
at her home in Morono Valley and gathered around the
dining table. Her kids watched us, but they probably had
no clue what we were talking about. Like I remember
like girls a whole like there was no seats because
there was like cleaning supplies and then like all the

(08:26):
chemicals for cleaning, and I was just like going around
the car. It was fun. So what are we here
to talk about? Um? Back then, I'm him the two
thousand parties going now snicking out. When Sammy and I

(08:47):
first met, we instantly hit it off. I felt like
we were closed. I felt like with you we could
top hours on the phone. Sometimes I couldn't express my
feelings because I was hiding it for so long. But
with you, she's like we could talk about boys and
what are we gonna do? And you know live. We're
both outgoing, both with religious immigrant parents, and we both

(09:09):
definitely felt the pressures from it. I couldn't do a
lot of stuff, like you know, watch TV. If he
was really protective. My dad, he had me a little
bit older, so he didn't understand, you know, a little
bit of teenage girl. I guess while saying, you know what,
we go through. At that time, I was going through

(09:31):
a lot because my parents had divorce, So I think
doing stuff was something that was using to kind of
like keep my mind out of it, you know. Together
we found an escape. On the weekends, Sammy and I
would think out of our homes and dance the night away.

(09:53):
Somehow we'd get back in our rooms before our families
woke up. I'd always be falling asleep the next day
at church. I guess you can say we were partners
in crime back then, like Thelma and Louise Oh with curfews.
I had friends catching me through my window to sneak out,
and I mean ten thirties. One of the parties. Third,

(10:14):
Sammy and I were part of an all girl party
crew called the Lustful Ladies. Ladies spelled lay d easy.
I know it's a little embarrassing and the details are
kind of blurry, but the way I remember it, back
in our day, if you wanted to join a party crew,

(10:37):
you needed to know someone or get recruited. And once
I was in for Sammy, it was a no brainer.
It's just like naturally with you guys, just you guys
doing it, I'm doing it too. Then would you ever
your nickname. I think it was like I wasn't wasn't
this Caramel. If you were in a party crew, chances

(10:59):
are you had a nickname like miss Caramel, Giggles or Flacca.
Sammy pulled out an old picture of us that she
had on her phone and zoomed in into a big
laminated card she was holding that was clipped on a
lanyard that she was wearing around her neck. It was
a badge, like a name badge, and it had her
nickname on it. I remember making that badge on Photoshop,

(11:22):
which I downloaded a flme wire. Oh yeah, this is
Caramel Diva. Oh Caramel Diva. Yeah it's a little bit
oh shure, Oh yeah, Caramel Diva. My nickname was Mocha,
just a short version of my last name, Yamocha. I
guess you can say I was the Mocha to her Caramel.

(11:46):
Can you describe the what you're holding? It's like a
sign that tells you pretty much who you are. And
I think it's a girl dress like a I don't know, laundry.
The girls. She's talking about dress and lagerie. That's our
logo for the lustful ladies. And then your name under

(12:07):
me pretty much, just like that's your entry sign, Like
this is my crew and this is my girls in
the back kind of way, you know. Yeah, it's how
we wrapped our crew. You know, just a bunch of
teams at a backyard party with lanyards and badges hanging
around our necks, looking like tech bros at a networking conference. Okay,

(12:27):
The easiest way to explain a crew is a group
of friends who are dedicated to throwing and going to
house parties on a good night. The parties cramped over
a hundred kids in a backyard. There were all girl
crews like ours, all guy crews, and co ed cruise
like Infamous Ladies three two three, Alcoholics and Huggies productions.

(12:50):
Some crews were about dancing. Some are really stylish, but
some are really competitive about throwing the best parties. And
in our world, the best parties had to have certain elements.
Imagine this. You get handed a flyer at school or
at the mall on a Friday. It's a glossy, baby
pink flyer. The all girl party crew, the Sweethearts is

(13:14):
throwing a party and you're invited. On the back, there's
a couple of phone numbers to call for the directions
to a secret location. Once you and your friends make
it to the location, which is usually an empty house
or a warehouse, you pay a few bucks to get in.
Immediately you're surrounded by fog and lights, and you're tingling

(13:35):
from excitement because you hear the DJ play the first
few notes of your current favorite song, Little John the
Side Boys didn't Yankee, You're a song that stand out

(14:01):
from that era. Yes, every party had the best music.
It's two thousand and four, so thaying early hip hop
music you can grind too. In the dark, fenced in

(14:22):
backyard was always just bodies and bodies just like you
don't think about anything. You just close your eyes and
just listen to the music and just dance away with
your friends. It's like, yeah, one of those feelings on
a concrete dance floor in the muddy backyard of someone's house.
We made the rules. Alcohol was provided for a fee,

(14:47):
and sometimes the cruise will get fancy and make jellowshots
or provide smernovices, and of course the party wasn't a
party without a nov tank in the corner, the big
old tank and balloons. It will sell those. I think
a dollar too, and then I don't remember how I
Gotama would just get them. No, it's nitrous oxide. It

(15:07):
gives you a quick head high when you inhale it.
I passed out a couple of times with that. But
it's hard to describe the feeling. But it was one
of those feelings that it felt good kind of way
at that time. But like my friend Sammy said, for us,
it was about showing up with our girls, the lustful ladies,
to let it all out on the dance floor. Yes,

(15:29):
lots of grinding and lasts of boody shakings twerking while
we were dancing. It was the first time I was
discovering how my body could move and see how others
reacted to me. It was the release I was yearning
for doing handstand twerking and I don't know freaking, I

(15:50):
don't know. I don't appropriate dancing. I remember the handstands
and literally I was like you guys had to be
there too to believe it. But I have no idea
how we were so limbered strong. How do the parties
like make you feel when you were like dancing, how

(16:10):
are you feeling? It's just like you're free, free, is
how I would describe it too. Free from parents, free
from judgment, free from expectations, free to move your body,
free to express yourself any way you wanted. But sometimes

(16:33):
that freedom came at a price. House parties UNSIL would
usually be broken up by the cops or by gunfire,
which was crazy to think about it now. These underground
parties move from site to site, and how all too
often they attract drugs, alcohol and jiang violence. The moment

(16:54):
where I thought safe for the shooting, when we were
just like in the house and we just didn't know,
like what was going to happen next, and we're just
like waiting for the cops to cop for one day
to the next, you just whispers you know, some mutual
friends and be like, damn so and so, gosh, no

(17:18):
longer here. That's after the break. So many memories of

(17:54):
my party crew days are blurred, but I do have
this picture in my head of some thing that happened
One night I was sixteen and a huge group of
us were going to a party that our friend's crew
was throwing. It was the party of the night because
everyone I knew from the scene was going to be there.
I remember the street was lined with cars. We had

(18:16):
a park a few blocks down. There was a line
in the front and you could feel the base bumping
from the speakers as you walked closer. I remember the
rush of excitement, and I remember walking in and there
was a thing that crews would do. They would call
their names when they would walk in a party. I

(18:42):
remember leading my friends through the crowd, who formed a line,
each one of us holding each other's hands. I led
them straight to the dance the blush. I felt like
we danced all night. My legs were sore in my
hair was drenched and sweat from all the moving and

(19:02):
shaking I was doing, and from all the body heat
surrounding me. Then suddenly my friend threw his body on us,
and that's how I realized something happened. Shots had been fired.
We all dropped to the floor. I can't exactly remember

(19:26):
if the music stopped, but in my head, the whole
place went quiet. Everyone scattered, the party was over. None
of my friends got hurt that night, and to be honest,

(19:46):
we were young, and we felt invincible, like nothing could
touch us. That wasn't the only time I was at
a party where someone got shot. Shootings did happen in
an instance, a party she can turn into a war tonight,
A look at a few casualties for them. The party's
over shootingstead have left a half dozen partygoers dead or

(20:09):
wounded in the past three months, and police raided these
parties often. Law enforcement officials say they're coordinating on every
level to attack the problem. It was very high on
our priority list. People drank and did drugs and then
sometimes got behind the wheel or got into fights. Despite

(20:31):
the dangers, I felt like my friends and I were invincible.
But then in two dozen and six I got a call.
I was told whee our good friends Hector got shot
at a party. Hector was tall and thin, with jet
black hair and thick eyebrows. I always thought he looked

(20:52):
like Kevin from the Backstreet Boys. He worked with a
small group of disabled adults, taking care of them for
the day. I'd see them at the court having lunch together,
or browsing books at the bookstore that used to be
inside the mall. I remember him being really proud of
his job. He was part of a crew called Wicked Productions,
and he went by the nickname Hectic. He died a

(21:15):
few days later. He was twenty one, and when I
look back at my teenage years, I realized I made
it out in one piece, and in some ways I
feel relief, but mostly I feel guilt, guilt for surviving

(21:36):
the scene when others didn't, like Hector and Emory. That's
why Emory's case hit close to home. I also felt
shame because I put myself in danger and hid it
all from the people who wanted to protect me the most.
My parents had no idea I was going out at night.

(21:59):
That's why for so long I haven't thought about my
party crew days. I stored those painful memories away, like
handwritten notes from high school in a box under my
childhood bed. For me as a teen, the party crewscene
was fun and exciting, but at the same time it

(22:21):
was scary and learning about Emory all these years later
it brought back all those memories. Emory's family told me
that when she died, they not only had to deal
with her loss, but also a kind of judgment that
she was involved with a party crew. Sine upset because
it's not what we were expecting. This is her aunt

(22:43):
Becky again. And then I started getting calls from France
or just people are saying, well, I didn't know Emory
attended those parties. I didn't know she was that kind
of person. So that made me very upset. So I
just told my husband when the phone rings, I said,

(23:03):
don't answer it or I'm not here. It irritates me.
Here's Crystal Emory's sister again, describing the news coverage. I
know under that video specifically, there's someone who commented, that's
what you get for going to those parties. And I
remember I commented the bag, and I was like, that's
my sister that you're talking about. You don't know who
she was, You don't know what's going on at the time.

(23:27):
Stay out of it. I mean, like I said, they
made it more about the parties than her actual murder
and disappearance. The thing is, Emory wasn't shot or found
dead at a party. She was found alone in an
abandoned warehouse days after disappearing. So this raises another question.

(23:52):
Did Emory's death actually have anything to do with the
party crew scene? We don't even know really where the
crime scene is. We're calling the crime scene where the
body was found. I think we couldn't even verify that
she even went to a rape party that night. We
had conflicting information on that So did she go or
didn't she go? That's next time. This episode was written, reported,

(24:27):
and hosted by me Janeyamoka. Our show is produced and
reported by Sofia Pelissa car, Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang
and edited by Antonio Shio. Additional editing by Any Abeless,
fact checking by Nidia Bautista, Sound design and original music

(24:48):
composition by Kyle Murdoch. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee,
Art by Julie Ruiz and Victoria Koon. Our executive producer
from Vice Audio is Kate Osborne. Our executive producers from
Elias Studios are Anthonia Sedihivo and leog Our Vice President

(25:08):
of Podcasts from Elias Studios is Shana Naomi Crocmail Special
thanks to the UCLA Department of Communication Archive for access
to their news collection Party Crews. The Untold Story is
a production of Elias Studios and Vice Audio in partnership
with Ihearts Michael Buddha podcast Network. From our podcasts, listen

(25:30):
to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows, and Hey, were you and a
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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

(25:50):
this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Donna Crawford,
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