Ep. 8 Safe Space

What does the party crew scene ultimately tell us about what it means to have a safe space - and how might that shape the way Emmery is remembered? Janice looks back and learns that the rosy memories are not the only ones worth remembering.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, thank you again for you know, fighting us and
being here with us showing us. Now I know where
the tree is. That's about a week away from the
sixteenth anniversary of Emory's death. I go to visit her
grave for the first time. It's about a twenty minute
drive east from where she used to live in City Terrace,

(00:22):
the sloping green lawns of Resurrection Catholic Cemetery. It's a
peaceful place, a pocket of pine trees and chirping ravens.
At the cemetery, we meet Crystal, Emory's little sister. She
tells us to meet her by the short but slanted
tree shaped like a lightning bolt. That's how to find

(00:45):
her sister's grave. Directions are really clear. It used to
be more like in a pine tree, and then they
cut it down and then it grew back like that.
It's her me, two producers from our team, and Brian Garcia,
also known as Pooky, Emory's former boyfriend. Pookie asked to

(01:06):
be reconnected with Crystal months ago when we interviewed him,
when you reached out and whatnot, and I had to ask,
you know, I had to ask, I was I was
excited that somebody you know was actually talking about Emory.
Like I had literally been looking for Crystal for years.

(01:27):
You're looking at me. I don't know if I was
afraid or whatnot, maybe that she wouldn't remember, you know,
who I was, or whatnot. We're in a somber place,
but this is a joyful meeting. The last time they
saw each other was at Emory's funeral when Pooky was

(01:48):
a teenager and Crystal was a little kid. I was
your first time seeing each other since like, yeah, she
was very young. Oh my god, is he exactly? Like
can you remember now? You're like odd, fifteen years exactly
at years that town. It's wild to see them connect

(02:13):
like this after so many years. They're kind of like
long lost siblings. Over the years, Pookie has come to
Emory's grave a lot. I find myself coming here as
well when I guess when I just need to get away,
you know, kinda just come out and vent, you know,

(02:41):
Canada find clarity, you know, answers signs. I don't know.
Her tombstone is a slab of granite on the ground
with an angel end an engraving of La There's an
oval picture of Emory above the world words in loving

(03:01):
memory of our little girl. Is she wearing a hat
and yeah, she had just got it for Christmas, knitted
hat and then it had like the little like the brim.
It was a little brim, but it was like knitted over. Yeah,
it was a cute little hot It's one of those

(03:23):
rare grade days in Los Angeles and as we talk,
it starts to drizzle. I'm just getting comfortable, I'm going
to cover the The rain reminds me of a story
Pooky told me on the phone the first time we talked.
Over the years, whenever he felt like he needed to
focus or things in his life weren't going right, he

(03:44):
would visit Emory's grave. One day, he was upset crying
at Emory's tombstone, and he asked her for a sign
that she heard him. The sun was out that day,
but as he was talking to her, the sky got
cloudy and then it started to drizzle. If you remember,
Emory's nickname was tears, So Brian took the sky crying

(04:08):
tears to mean that Emory was there watching out for
him like today. Yeah, this is the signs that I
talk about every time I'm here. Every time i'm here, Yeah,
I feel like I'm a big believer and you know
little things. Crystal, four year old daughter shows up. They're

(04:30):
going to get some food after this, this is Brooklyn.
They say, why she shy? Just like after her and
makeup alternat Right before we go, I was wondering, like,
you know, I know it's been sixteen years since Emory's staff,

(04:54):
and I was wondering, like, how does it feel too
like just be here after so much time has passed.
It feels weird because I expected us to grow up together,
like physically together, not viitually separate. I know Brian said
that he like this is a safe space and stuff,

(05:14):
But my safe space with her is like always in
my car all the time, or like in any enclosed
space where I have like a rosary and a picture
of her. I just feel like I can talk to her,
just like ask her for guidance and for signs, and
oddly enough I always get the signs that I ask
of her. A safe space can be so many things.

(05:38):
It can be standing in front of the tombstone of
a loved one, or that time you get a loan,
driving in your car, or even stepping out onto a
concrete dance floor with your best Friends for My Heart,

(06:16):
Fice and Elias Studios. This is Party Cruz, the Untold Story,
So I'm Janis Amalka. In our final episode, the Legacy
of Emory Story, the importance of safe Space, and what
it all means. Almost two decades later, Emory's case remains

(07:03):
unsolved to this day. Like we've mentioned before, it's part
of the Central Bureau's Cold Case Unit, which for an
area of about nine hundred thousand people, is a unit
of only two detectives. When we reach out to ask
LAPD for an update, they told us that the biggest
obstacle in her case it's a lack of witnesses and

(07:25):
that there still wasn't any match for the DNA evidence
in CODUS, the national DNA database, but they were still
hoping to get one. But after the family met with
the cold case detectives, it did seem like things were
moving a bit. We heard from various friends and family
of Emory that the Cold Case Unit had been knocking
on doors and searching for people they may have interviewed

(07:48):
in the original investigation, and in July of twenty twenty two,
the La City Council ended up reissuing a reward for
fifty thousand dollars for any information in her case. It
expired six months later, in January of twenty twenty three. Today,

(08:14):
Emory would have been in her early thirties. She might
have been a nurse, just like her aunt Becky told
me she wanted to be. She might have had kids,
but instead she is frozen in time. Her death is tragic,
and it's also a loss that is ambiguous without closure.

(08:34):
Besides that tremendous loss, what I see an Emory story
is the struggle of a young girl to come of
age in a world that wasn't made for her, A
struggle to come of age safely as a woman of
color in this country. Thanks for coming out Sunday Sundays

(09:02):
like my Monday. Have worked on Sundays. Oh yeah, so
Sunday's technically my Monday. I remember the first conversation I
had with Crystal, Emory's sister, who was now in her twenties.
I asked her what she knew of her older sister
and party crews. She was only six then. I remember,
actually when I was little, finding like the flyers and
my sister's stuff. But I remember just had like cartoons

(09:24):
on it, like it had like Tweetye or Betty Boob
or something like that. I was just like, Oh, like,
it's a picture we know with the cartoons on it.
I didn't think there was much more than than that.
She didn't really know about the party crew scene beyond
that one flyer, But as we chatted, I realized she
had her own version of a crew. I grew up
in the Sangabala Valley and Roland Heights. Um, it's off

(09:46):
to sixty. Yeah, that's why I like speeds on the mets.
Over there there's carts over and UM and Diamond Bar Plaza. Yeah.
Just like party crews. Car clubs in LA are tight
knit groups get together on the weekends or whenever there's
a car meet. Historically, they've had their own run ins

(10:06):
with the cops over car modifications or racing, but that's
only a fraction of what the car clubs are. More
than anything, they're a community. Your car club do you
have a name? Uh? Yeah, so we're so called sexism.
I had a TSX before I had my evil. I
got into a really bad accident back in February. Um,

(10:27):
but normally, you know you've crash your car, you get
kicked out of you know, the group or whatever. Crash
your car, you get kicked off. Well yeah, oh no,
oh no, But I mean like it's a it's a
it's a group with only one type of car. But yeah,
but these people, um, you know, I we became family

(10:47):
over time, over time, like I met them, so I
don't know, we're during the pandemic and we just we
got really really close. And so when I got in
my accident, one of my biggest fears was like, oh
my god, like they're gonna kick me out, you know,
like my friends. I'm not gonna have my friends anymore.
And they were like, no, dude, like you're a part
of us, you know. But when I heard Crystal talk
about our car club, to me, it sounded like its
own version of a party crew. Honestly, we became so close,

(11:10):
you know, with time, and we're not just car friends,
you know, we became like the biggest family ever. It's
more than just we're here for the cars. We're here
for each other, you know, Like half to Tug I said,
at the time we hang out, we forget that the
cars are even there, and we're just enjoying each other's company.
So I think that it ties in with my sister
because she had, you know, her group of people that

(11:31):
she felt like she could fall back on. I understand
what it's like to have a family outside your family.
While reporting this series, I've been thinking a lot about
how coming of age is all about finding who you
are outside of your family, expanding your sense of what
family and community even is. We all need those experiences,

(11:54):
especially as teams, that space away from parents and supervision,
to let loose, fuck up up, make mistakes, and learn
from them. It's how we grow into independent adults. But
what I'm also realizing is that as Latin X kids
growing up in LA, our options were always limited. They

(12:18):
are an all female party grew called Unpredictable Ladies or
upl and they're on their way to a Saturday night
party right now. This is a clip from an undercover
news special from nineteen ninety six, so a decade before
my time, but I feel like it captures my experience too.

(12:39):
Chris Blatchford, a TV news reporter at Fox eleven, the
local LA Fox news station, went to parties, captured footage
and interviewed teens in the scene. They walked down the
street like they own it. Life for sure. The camera
follows a group of girls and nineties outfits, little miniskirts
and crop tops, complete with that iconic shade of reddish

(13:02):
brown lipstick, and in a way they do admires, stop
to watch and move it but becomes predictable weight He's
just keep on going. They have a party to get.
Something else I want to point out is that the
vibe of these news clips is also very much like

(13:26):
look at these girls gone wild. The dancing is often provocative,
and these girls, the youngest fifteen say they don't worry
about what mom might think. She loves how we danced
and not how we like to get down and dirty,
how we danced, but she can't do nothing about it.
It's the same vibe I saw on the coverage of
party crews in the two thousands, like who is letting

(13:48):
these girls be out here like that? On the dance floor.
My friends and I were discovering how others responded to us.
We wanted to be lusted after and desired. We thought,
isn't that what it meant to be a woman? You
can look you, you can feel whatever, but you can
At the same time, we were learning that society saw

(14:11):
our bodies as dangerous, that being too free with them
made us bad. I think the fact that this is
how society saw us, how they saw the party crew
scene and Latin X teens who participated in it, as
part of why some people automatically assume that Emory's death
was connected to the scene and this part of the

(14:33):
news clip, the crowd at a party is channing take
it off as a party crew called Cutie's dances on stage.
The cuties eventually make it back on stage, eliciting shout
so take it off from the ground. They don't we
be pleasers. We get a reputation so rather teas that please.
But when I look back at this clip as an adult,

(14:55):
I don't see anyone doing anything surprising or wrong. What
I see is a group of young teens trying to
figure out an impossible balance. And I'm not the only
one who felt that tension. I feel like we were
just trying to explore. Like we were like, oh, what
does it like to be a sexy woman? We were

(15:16):
like kids, you know, I wouldn't like to get out
of guy's attention and walk into to a party with
a group of girls and everyone's looking at us, and
it was fun though it made me feel like I'm
a part of this world and I could be open
and free and noyone's gonna judge me here. I could
go kiss a girl right now and it's I'm not
gonna get in trouble. It was fun, but I don't know,

(15:40):
I just feel like maybe guys, like, looking back at
it now, guys probably just didn't respect us as much.
Girls would go and be dancing, and guys would go
and grab their butt, or they didn't look at you
like his candy and just be there. Like a few
years back, while traveling solo in Cuba, I met a

(16:00):
white girl from the East Coast who told me about
her time away from home at summer camps. She had
her first kiss, her first boyfriend, lots of firsts. But
from what I understood, there was supervision, mostly young adult counselors,
but it still felt like a world built for kids.

(16:20):
A lot of the teens and the crews were kids
of immigrants or kids from working class families, communities dealing
with poverty, domestic abuse, language barriers, immigration, families with packed homes,
no room to breathe or have a moment for yourself,
And when you don't have a place like summer camp

(16:41):
to go to the scene and its freedom just feel
more worth it. The reality was that we desensitize ourselves
to the violence happening around us, whether it was from
within the crew, scene, gang related, or police raiding parties.
Looking back, I feel guilt for potentially putting myself in

(17:01):
danger while my parents were just trying to keep us alive,
specifically my mom, which is a big part of why
I buried this time in my life deep down. But
as I've been reporting the series, I'm starting to understand
that maybe I want to bring this time and these
questions out in the open with my mom. That's after

(17:27):
the break, this is my mom, or just casually sitting

(17:59):
at the table with a couple of microphones in front
of us. My mom and I seem like total opposites,
but at the same time, we have a lot in common.
We have the same beauty mark on the right side
of our nose. People tell me I look exactly like her,
and one Christmas we were complete cry babies when we

(18:20):
watched Marley and Me at the movie theater. My mom
and I also have similar humor. We both like to
make fun of each other and we try not to
take ourselves too seriously, okay, just welcome to my precious daughter.

(18:48):
As I said before, my mom was born and raised
in Lima. She came to this country and settled in
La County when she was twenty one years old in
the mid eighties. I was born a few years later.
We both grew up in different places from our parents.
My grandparents are from rural towns and the Andes, and
they both spoke get One as the first language. They

(19:12):
later moved from their pueblos to produce capital in search
of a better future. And she was the oldest daughter,
just like me, and so when as the oldest she

(19:42):
took care of her two sisters Manda, she helped the
family only do all kinds of tasks. At ten years old,

(20:03):
she was running errands taking cash deposits to the bank.
She says that as a team, her parents weren't strict
with her because they didn't have to be. She didn't
stay out late, so Alitas weren't strict and if she

(20:24):
were to act up, her parents would have first sure
said something, but I'm not buying it, so you will
see perfect, not perfect at all, I wish at all.
It's m She says she navigated life as a team,

(20:47):
thinking about her parents so that they would never have
to worry about her. I know the feeling her parents
worked hard to keep us afloat and to provide us
with the opportunities they never had. The least you could
do as a kid was be good and stay out
of the way. I asked her when she felt the

(21:09):
most free as a teen. H She says it was
with her friends from church, who she laughed and joked
around with. I'm not surprised. My mom has always been

(21:40):
a prankster. Here she's telling me that as a teen,
she's stuff little firecrackers into the shoelaces of her guy
friend's shoes, and sometimes it would at the bottom of
their pants on fire. Yes, of course that's funny. Oh yeah,

(22:09):
like an adult, she still loves pranking people. I wanted
to share with my mom how it was for me
as a teen, so I started by asking her, do
you remember how I was dressed back then? Oh yeah,

(22:44):
come on, Cortos. Of course, she remembers. It was the
era of low rider gene and crop tops. I was sixteen,
and she tells me she remembers teasing me about it,

(23:07):
telling me I'm going to get sick because my stomach
was exposed, or pointing out that I forgot my pants
when I wore short skirts. But there's also so much
of that time that she didn't see. Yo Um. I

(23:33):
told her I had my first drink at fourteen. It
was what all the rebels drink, a bottle of Smirnoff ice,
and that I used to sneak out of the house. Clara,
my mom tells me she caught me once we see.

(24:09):
I point to the door behind us that leads the backyard.
I tell my mom, I sneak out the back WI see,
keep doing there? Yeah? Yeah, I tell her. At least

(24:37):
I got back in time for church. She's surprised, not mad,
maybe more so a little impressed. So that's why you'd
always fall asleep at church, she tells me, with a smirk.
When I'm nervous, I don't fully think in one language.

(24:59):
My would start weaving in and out of English and Spanish,
you know, like hurt anyone, you know, hoven Um, I

(25:22):
tell her that I was looking for a little freedom.
My mom sat across from me at the table, calmly.
She was nodding and listening. I was worried she wouldn't
understand my nervous Spanish. I was kind of expecting my
mom to blow up at me or cry or something

(25:45):
umsciento like normal and like scary. Was so scared. I
was like, oh my god, Mama, I know, it doesn't

(26:06):
seem like a big deal. Now, the weight of potentially
disappointing my parents weighs so heavy on me even today.
I tell her how scared I was to let her down.
She tells me, these are things that happened in the past.
What could I do now? I mean, I don't know.

(26:31):
I thought, you guys, oh my god, I'm gonna let
her down, you know, Like, is the pressure pressure instead,
like like Santo pressure. No. I tell her that I

(27:01):
feel this immense pressure from being the oldest daughter and
being the first born in this country. That pressure is
still with me today. When I was in my early twenties,
I was in a bad car accident coming home from
being out late at a bar. I broke my back

(27:23):
and other important bones. I was in the hospital for months.
I couldn't walk or sit up on my own. Then
I spent several months recovering at home. I had to
go to physical therapy to relearn how to do basic
shit like hold a water bottle with my left hand.
I even had to relearn how to walk. I'm not

(27:46):
a person that likes to ask for help, but I
had no choice, and my family helped me every step
of the way. I'm eternally grateful for them, but it's
still hard for me to talk about that time with them.
I sometimes feel like if I had been that proper daughter,
you know, maybe it wouldn't have happened to me in

(28:11):
the first place. Back then, it felt like I wasn't
allowed to make mistakes. Yeah, I thought, I think, no, sa,
I think like pressure, No, the pressure. My mom sounded surprised.

(28:47):
I tell her I've learned to deal with the pressures
as an adult, but growing up, I didn't have the
tools I have now, and I wanted to escape grades
best college. But to make you guys happy. All I
wanted to do was make them happy. So there's a

(29:08):
lot of pressure, I think, But I mean, come on.
So my mom tries to be comforting. She tells me
that both her and my dad are happy with the
way their kids have turned out, that even though there

(29:35):
have been hard times, we have gotten through it. I
just never wanted to hurt them. I mean, I'm saying.

(29:56):
My mom tells me she wished I had I had
opened up to her, that it could have trusted her
to listen. She says, as a parent, she never wanted

(30:19):
to see me suffer and would have loved to make
life easy for me. But kids, they don't always let
themselves be helped. Thank you, You're welcome, You're like. Before

(30:53):
I sat down with my mom, I also thought a
lot about Emery and her mom. How lucky I was
to have this moment, to have the chance to make
mistakes and grow and evolve our relationship. Someone took that
opportunity away from Emory and left her family without answers.

(31:15):
There isn't a class to teach you what adulthood is,
even if they wanted to. I don't think the insult
in your life can fully do that for you. So
we learned by following our feelings, our bodies, our instincts,
and for some of us, that space was the party
crew scene. When I close my eyes, I can still

(31:42):
feel the dew from the fog machine on my skin
and the heavy vibrations from the shady floor speaker. Standing
too close to teenage bodies. I can see groups of
girls and matching peak tops and hear them chanting their
crew names at the top of their lungs, the lights
bouncing off the laminated crew badges hanging around their necks.

(32:05):
We turned a muddy backyard into a magical playground, and
we imagined a future beyond what we could see at
home and in our neighborhoods. We built a world, at
least for one night. This episode was written, reported, and

(32:36):
hosted by me Janas Yamoka. Our show is produced and
reported by Sofia Polissa car, Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang,
and edited by Antonio Seihido. Additional editing by any Ables,
back checking by Nidia about these Steps. Sound design and
original music composition by Kyle Murdoch. Our supervising producer is

(33:02):
Janet Lee. Art by Julie Ruiz and Victoikion. Our executive
producer from Vice Audio is Kate Osborne. Our executive producers
from Elias Studios are Antonia Shido and leog Our Vice
President of Podcasts from Elias Studios is Shana Naomi Krocmam.

(33:23):
Special thanks to the UCLA Department of Communication Archive for
access to their news collection. In special thanks to therapist
and my good friend Joanna Flores for all her sport.
Extra special thanks to all the party crew people who
spoke to us. Pops from Infamous Ladies, Caramel Diva from

(33:43):
Lustful Ladies, Nssa from Clover Ladies, Wonders from the Dope Squad,
Armando from Losapos, Triple X from Huggy's Production, MiGs from
me hinthe Miss Sick from Lady Devotion, Chris from the
Hen Some Devils, Partygoer, Max from Alhambra, and Springles from

(34:05):
Code Read. Thank you for lending us your voice and hey,
were you and a party crew Senator, party flyers or photos?
I'd love to see them, even a voice message about
your memories anything. You can set up a message or
a picture at party Cruse at Elias Studios dot Com
Party Cruise. The Untold Story is a production of Elias

(34:27):
Studios and Vice Audio in partnership with Ihearts Michael Flura
podcast Networks. For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app,
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Elias dot Com is designed by Andy Tieflood and the
Digital and marketing teams at Elias Studios. Thanks to the

(34:48):
teams at Elias Studios, including Kristin Muller, Taylor Kaufman, Saber Brara,
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made possible by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that
quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.

(35:12):
This program is made possible in part by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.