My Personal Change
Growing up in the city of Pasadena and my high school years of rialto changed the sense of who I was in certain situations. From my opinion there were almost parties every weekend in Pasadena and rialto, and I went to damn near a party every weekend.
Since I was little I lived in Pasadena, California for a while because my parents lived out there. I went to Audubon Preschool for a little and then my mom moved to north Hollywood and as a young kid I followed my mom. Living in north Hollywood was a different experience because the school I went to didn’t have many black people and it felt weird for me because I was always around my race. So I moved back to Pasadena with my dad and I felt more comfortable knowing that I was home in my city. I felt like during the weekends, Pasadena was the place to be because of all the parties they had and I was always with my friends going out chilling and meeting new people. If you saw the movie “Boyz in the Hood” then that is a good example of how me and my friends were. We all were close and always had each other’s back.
Living in the city of Pasadena was where many shootings and gang activities would happen and this happens on a daily basis. The place where most people can get away with shootings and killing is at parties because it’s dark and there are tons of people, so nobody knows who did it. The most popular gang in Pasadena is PDL (Pasadena Denver lanes) and ABC (Altadena Block Crips) .The parties in Pasadena were always fun but when the shootings start to happen it would ruin everything because at most parties some of both of those gangs would be there and it would end up real bad. Most of the time I would be with the people from PDL because my family is from there on my dad side of the family. At parties they would have the guns to shoot and clear out the party or to shoot at their enemies. My friends would always tell us when they would clear out the party before they did it to give us a warning and also to be ready to fight if anything else happened. Similar to the house parties in Rialto, if somebodies enemy was there then you knew for a fact that it was going to be some shootings. In Rialto, where I moved to start my first year of high school was no different from the house parties in Pasadena. There were always many gangs in rialto but the most that went to parties were Hustle Squad, Ramona Block, and NAW gang. Most likely when there is a party in Rialto mostly hustle squad is there and sometimes NAW gang and when they both are at the same party, there’s going to be a problem. All of the parties I went to I didn’t really pay no attention to the shootings because sometimes I knew who it was and they weren’t shooting at me or none of my friends so I thought I was good.
When I was a freshman in high school the parties I went to wasn’t really no shootings or fights at all. My parents would let me go every weekend and didn’t hesitate to say no about going. I went every Friday and Saturday to different cities and would have fun and turn up with the homies drinking liquor, smoking, dancing, etc. Then came sophomore year where we did the same thing at parties until people starting acting ignorant ad shooting for no reason just to be cool. That would happen at almost every party I went to, for example I went to a party in a city called Fontana and that’s where NAW gang is usually located. The party was going well and it was about 12:30. In the party I heard two people talking about how they was going to air the party out because they saw somebody they didn’t like walk in. I couldn’t tell them to stop because we didn’t know each other and knowing they were some black people, I knew they weren’t going to listen to me. So I just hurried up and told the people I came with and we got out that party real fast. Right before getting in the car we heard the gun shots and saw everybody running around the corner. Good thing I heard what I heard because if I