Ep. 2 Welcome to the Party

pointy elbows formed a human obstacle course. I cut through them to grab a cup of Inca cola and a 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 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. 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, 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 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, how I grew to love moving freely in my own body. 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

longer here. That's after the break. So many memories of 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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

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 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.

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 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 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, 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. 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. 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, 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 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 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 to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and Hey, 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 is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.