Escaping the 90's in style

Dim lights on the river

It is funny how just a few degrees can change everything.  For example, in temperature or trajectory, a differential of just a degree can decide the beauty of a city or the final destination of a bullet.

October evenings in the Pacific Northwest are typically cold and commonly wet, but this particular night was especially frigid and drenched.  If the temperature had been just few degrees lower, the rain would have converted to snow, yielding a pristine winter wonderland to cover the  graffiti deco bridges and riverside shooting galleries with a Disney inspired facade.  Not only would it have appeared peaceful, but in fact likely would have kept the young boys of the east side in their houses that night, and at least for the evening, violence would have been abated.

But no, not on this night.  There would be no snow to hide the repercussions of soaring unemployment rates and a drug epidemic that had ravaged this once proud, blue collar small town on the river.  Adding insult to injury, the wind seemed to be barreling down Mt. Rainer, rolling over the Washington plains, and funneling through the alleyways of the foreclosed shops that littered the edge of the east side of the river.  The sharp windchill seemed to work in tandem with the depressing drizzle to castigate all who dared to brave the elements of Friday night.

At least if it were snowing, it would have been aesthetic, but as the sun began to go down on the edge of Tacoma, Washington, the elements conspired to cast a dreary aura on the city and anyone with intuition could tell that violence loomed large.

On the very edge of town, a river and a bridge above it marked the end of  the county and the beginning of a long stretch of empty highways leading into the mountains and onto the sunny orchards of eastern Washington.

But here, under the bridge, the underpass of the highway was littered with used syringes, spray-painted murals, and a group of my friends and I, ready to settle some bad blood with LBT from the other side of the bridge.

LBT was a gang from summer, or so it claimed to be.  A bunch of white and Mexican boys from a suburb who had formed a gang of small fish from a tiny pond and had, in my opinion, bitten off more than they could chew, this time.

Curtis and Mac, two members of LBT had wandered across the bridge one night in a drunken search for girls that had led them to the edge of the river.  Underneath the bridge on the sandy banks,  both hoodlums from the projects of Tacoma and the rich brats from the gated communities of South Hill converged for all of the vices the river had to offer.  The poor kids would sell ecstasy, pot, and acid to the rich kids, perhaps some forbidden and unspoken affairs between rich and poor, and the all too often outbreak of violence. 

While I was away in Seattle on the weekend visiting my father, a fight had broken out on sandy banks when Mac and Curtis had inadvertently insulted Zeus and D-Gil, two of my closest friends.   Threats were exchanged, shoving matches ensued, weapons were flashed, and just like that, not two months into high school, the river had given birth to the school year's greatest gift, a cross river rivalry.

Friday nights for juvenile delinquents in a town consumed by depression featured very little to do.  The farms weren't bringing on help and small businesses had either cut back on hiring or were defunct altogether.  The only enterprise that seemed to flourish this year was the business of vice that occurred in the shadows under the bridge.

I had called home over the weekend and heard the good news, rumors abounded, there was finally an outside enemy to oppose and multiple gangs from my side of the river were itching to get in on the action. Because my divorced parents lived nearly 100 miles apart, I missed every encounter. I would live with my mother in Tacoma on the weekdays and then with my father on the weekends. My mother did her best to keep me in check, but while working two jobs to make the ends meet, she rarely knew if I was even attending school, which i was not.

My father ran a tight ship, an immigrant worker from the Philippines, he was very strict and often tried to convince me to avoid the same path he had followed in the mean streets of Manila and in the barrios of Maguindanao as a young man. But because I lived so far away most of the time, and my mother worked so much, it was a lost cause, the streets wanted me and the feeling was mutual.

There had yet to be a full head on clash yet. LBT would wander over the bridge and jump a local kid and then quickly withdraw back to their side of the river.  The occasional one-on-one fist fights had been escalating for weeks, with the most recent clash sending two young men to the hospital. So far, it had been a draw, a fact that had irked every would be combatant.

Tonight was different, though.  My father had crossed to picket line at work and had officially become a scab.  The labour strike at the plant had taken its toll, and with the cupboards empty and the bills piling up, my father began working weekends and had alienated himself among his peers.   He called my mother to tell her that I should stay in Tacoma for the weekend, but because she was currently working two jobs, the answering machine relayed the wonderful news to me.

Now, with my father and mother both unaware of my intentions, and both thinking i was safely in the custody of the other, I deleted the message, grabbed the fishing knife from my closet, and walked out the front door and into the rain with the river on my mind.

Of course, I was too young to understand the burdens of my parents.  The only thing I truly understood was that this Friday night, I would indeed be at the fights. 

The town was darker than normal, as the thunderstorm had knocked out a couple electrical poles, and the power to the streetlights had become a casualty.  As I rode the city bus north into the valley, I caressed the knife in my pocket and fantasised about what I would do to the first crip that dared pick me as their dance partner in the scheduled Friday night festivities.  The long metro bus bumped up and down the dark highway and my blood quickened, and it was easy to tell that murder hung in the air, a tangle presence of evil, excitement, and finality.

With the bold feelings of immortality pulsing through my veins, I had no idea that within hours I would be surrounded by rival gangsters, armed to the teeth, and that it was my friends and I who had actually bitten off more than we could chew.