Was LA really that bad in the 1990s?

Downtown was for sure. No man's land after lights out.

The Hispanics have crowded out the blacks, and that's made it safer.

Mexicans work hard. They are the back bone of LA from restaurants to landscape to construction. They have improved LA life, in my opinion. Riots are out, work ethic is in.

Legalizing weed helped take the edge off of things a bit. Some also believe the phaseout of leaded gasoline also helped.

Except for the Latino gangs. MS-13 being one of them, r3.

Well, LA does have the lowest crime statistics since the late 1960s..

And blacks have their gangs and whites have their KKK white supremacist and the mafia and Micronesia gangs. What's your point?

I look at the positive. Hispanics have greatly improved life in LA compared to the 90s.

Rodney King riots, OJ, and drive-bys. Yes, LA is better.

LA is way safer, but at the same time, the homeless problem has grown.

Consider - all over the U.S. the 1990's were the last hurrah for really violent gangs. Now we're in the era of drug pushing but that will end when a) Recreational Marijuana is legalized at the fed level and b) We start really addressing mental health issues.

But up to the 1970's recall we were putting tetraethyl lead in gasoline to prevent engine knock. And we've done very well with engine tech since then too - I can recall a 4 cylinder engine was a dog. Now with a turbocharger or blower you can get 300 horsepower out of a 4 cylinder. Not bad.

But in the 1970's they banned lead in gasoline - then the madness started tailing off. Took about 20 years for it to do so. It's a little secret the cops don't want us to know.

It was that bad. But it was also exciting as hell. Like NYC in the 70s.

The bravest people in 90s LA took a risk and bought downtown lofts back then. People thought they were crazy. And they stuck it out and are now getting the last laugh.

The traffic has definitely gotten worse since the 90s.

Yes, LA was scary back then.

It also fucking rocked because you could live all over the city for pennies.

The 70s and 80s were much worse than the 90s.

I do love that OP has photos of 1990s LA cholas though

Nice.

Crazy.

Greg and Marsha Brady didn't think it was too bad!!

The second half of the 90s were a great time. Tower Records everywhere, Virgin music, bookstores, could actually move a little bit in Santa Monica and West LA during the afternoon.

9/11 changed everyplace that had lax security. It was fairly easy to crash parties, awards shows, premieres, hotel events, etc.

The intersection that reminds me of how much LA has changed since the 90s is La Brea and Santa Monica Blvd. It was surprisingly low-key for being in the center of Hollywood, with the Formosa, Jones, No Life records. The Formosa was surrounded and swallowed by Target/Best Buy.

Of course there are other gangs, r7. I take by your replies you're Hispanic?

LA in the 90s was my teenage life.

Tiger Heat at the Hollywood Athletic Club, Rage, sneaking into Circus Disco, pre-drained Echo Park

^ how do teenagers get around LA before they get drivers licenses?

Fake IDs from MacArthur Park, baby ^^

R23 - you find an older guy, like someone who is 16 or 17!

I got massive amounts of hot dick in LA in the 90s, so for me it was a ok.

I moved to West Hollywood in '93, and had a fabulous time.- we still would have the occasional hustler at the corner. Now my quiet little part of Melrose has become Robertson 2.0, Urth caffe has become a mecca for the hip Middle Eastern crowd, hordes of millennials are IGing every damn building with a painted wall, and some asshole developer is buying all the single family homes and putting up soulless concrete boxes.

LA in the 90s was fun WeHo was actually gay and not gentrified. There were great clubs like the Roxbury on Sunset. Micky's, Rage, the Apache in the valley...

I was also there in the 90's too r28 and there was a wave of str8 people {mostly couples} that started I'd say 1995. People really started to notice it by 1997.

[quote]how do teenagers get around LA before they get drivers licenses?

Uber or Lyft

Chola heartache from gang violence plagued 90s LA

R31, boy she's from San Antonio! And we are all about her. However, she hasn't done much in a minute.

I think that music video was filmed in Houston though. She was very active in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. In fact, I thought only Texans knew of her.

R16, aren't they hot!

I liked that movie, OP.

[quote]But in the 1970's they banned lead in gasoline - then the madness started tailing off.

Leaded gas makes people violent?

There was this bar called Numbers on Sunset that had mirrors everywhere. Very 1960's. This is where hustlers came to meet wealthy older men. I think it was sorta subterranean in that once you walked through the door you walked down stairs.

She was also popular in Miami, her songs were played a lot on the radio.

R19, I loved the Brady Bunch movie - an excellent satire about the Brady family meeting '90s LA life.

Well, lead poisoning can cause depression and irritability in addition to brain damage. It would be easy to argue that that leads to violent behavior.

r34 Yes, leaded gas makes people violent.

This thread reminds me of the old RTD buses.

The Pismo Beach disaster!

LA was definitely more gang-y back then.

Come to think about it, gangs were SO 90s.

R12, back in the 80s and 90s, real artists used to live in the Arts District and downtown lofts. Japanese people used to live in Little Tokyo. This was before hipsterization started to change things slowly around the late 90s.

It was fine. She sent her love.

Marsha? oh dear..

[quote]whites have their KKK white supremacist

Bullshit, where do you get the idea that whites in California are KKK

The legalization of abortion allowed unwanted babies to be murdered, these babies were the most likely to grow up to be criminals.

R46 has never been to Modesto.

My favorite thing in 90s LA was the Probe.

....

I certainly enjoyed the lower rents. I now struggle a bit to pay them.

R27 So true. All the fun of West Hollywood is gone. I'm just curious how all these millennials can afford the rent there.

R46 has never been to the entire Northern California valley

Dear Lord in Heaven!

Detroit is where it’s at now!

Mi Vida Loca! I love Allison Anders. GAS FOOD LODGING fucking ruled as well.

R24 that' where I got my fake ID! I was from Lubbock Texas! haha

LA has more foreskins now that it has in decades. Yes, things have improved.

bump

LA was bad back then, but it was also fun.

Car jackings were a real concern.

I remember when Rod Steward got carjacked in the middle of the day on Melrose Avenue. A Porsche 911.

You can all thank LA in the 90s for this meme.

r63 mmm, Cube.

Mmmm, Cube. I still think he's hot.

I moved to Koreatown in 1992 right before the riots. My rent controlled place remains $850.

Lucky bitch, R66.

Wow, nobody could suck the cock like Corbin! Good times.

The North Hollywood shootout.

A hooker was stabbed in the driveway of my apartment complex on Winona not too far from Jumbo's Clown Room. The hooker survived, but the blood stain lasted for months. I consider the multi-tone car alarm to be the soundtrack of Hollywood in the 90s. It was everywhere, you couldn't escape this sound:

It was bad, but that made it affordable.

My bro lived in Venice and worked at USC the only time I visited LA back in the late 90's. His Russian co-workers thought it was about as bad as Moscow at the time. Pavel always bought second hand bicycles to get around, because it didn't matter what he used for transport it was always gonna get stolen. Using Russian logic it was better to lose $50 on a bike than $5000 on a second hand casr My bro used Australian logic and decided on safety in numbers, so he caught busses everywhere and talked loudly with a thick accent to cover why he was the only white person on the bus.

Venice was a safe, if slightly psychotic, enclave. But once you went four blocks back from the beach it all changed. That's when the gangs and gunfire started.

The homeless camped overnight in those market stalls that ran along the beachfront. It was better than sleeping totally rough and it gave the stall holders a bit of security o'night.

The CBD of LA barely existed and come 5pm the metal roller shutters came uo

Lots of cheap drugs. You could get real high off $5 bucks and into parties by saying you know a friend of a friend.

Still the same, R74.

.

The beach at Venice still the same after sundown

bump

And you had that crazy was so called Doctor Kimberly Shaw blowing up MY apartment building back in the 90s!

Well, R46, the KKK is yesterday's news, but there are many white supremacy groups that have taken its place --

[quote]California ranks No. 1 in the nation with 79 active hate groups, six of which operate in Sacramento area, according to a new report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and extremists in the U.S. In the Sacramento area, the report cited six active hate groups: Golden State Skinheads, a racist skinhead group, the Traditionalist Worker Party, a white nationalist group, the Pacific Justice Institute and Verity Baptist Church, both anti-LGBT groups, and As-Sabiqun and European-American Evangelistic Crusades, general hate groups.

Florida ranks second.

90s LA was pretty bad.

LA back then was gang infested. Tagging everywhere. High crime. Drive bys. Pretty bad times.

It was still inexpensive.

You could live in Hollywood and downtown for peanuts.

[quote] Was LA really that bad in the 1990s?

Yes.

Crazy.

Silver Lake was still affordable back then, imagine that!

WHET to carjackings?

Op that’s one of my favourite movies of all time

This movie reminds me of then.

[quote]WHET to carjackings?

I think it’s still up on XTube.

The precursor to the Rodney King riots.

West Hollywood was still 100% gay, so there was that.

Cruising Griffith Park was easier then.

The city was much more of a mess back then. It's still a mess in some respects, but not like then.

Los Angeles was full of gay trade and gay sex.

Crime is down; homelessness is up. One would think that the latter would drive up the former, but well, there you have it. My older co-workers complain about how many more homeless patients we see compared to before, but truth be told, they are some of the least demanding patients around.

I lived in LA in the 90's and yes there was a lot of bad, especially gangs, but it was also a lot of fun.

On TV, it always seemed like a city of extreme contrasts then. On one hand, Beverly Hills 90210 and Clueless, and on the other hand, the riots and gangs. Was it really like that?

R98, you forgot the wild gay life. Gay life in Los Angeles has actually been tamed a bit as assimilation and inclusion have taken place. We were at the cusp of major civil rights gains (little did we know Bush Jr was coming) so the gays were bolder and there was a sense of freedom that electrified the city.

I had just moved to LA from a tiny podunk town and had just settled into a fleabag apartment in East Hollywood two months before the riots hit. I remember the curfews and the helicopters, and my roommate dragging me up to the roof of the apartment building where we sat with neighbors and just watched the city burn, and I remember thinking, did I really just move here?

This video of 1998 Los Angeles gave me nostalgia. I remember being a teenager in 1998 and thinking that gay marriage was coming "any day now" and then Bush won and in many ways our progress was delayed for a whole decade.

Are you still in LA, r100?

LA in the 90s reminds me of sneaking in underage into gay clubs, losing my virginity, smoking my first joint, doing E. Stupid, fun, and reckless times.

As another transplant, the Northridge earthquake really scared the hell out of me.

Some would argue that LA has more of an 'edge' now because of the grit and homeless crisis. It certainly is not a playground for the reach the way a few other cities are.

I stayed on the 18th floor of a hotel in Montreal, and had to start running my shower an hour or two before I wanted to take it since it took that long for the hot water to reach my suite.

LA was wild and insane in the 90s. I was a teen. It was constant fun. And, yeah, a little scary. But that was fun too.

I remember being 17, going to the roof of my building, and watch two guys go at it while I jerked off. I had spied them all Summer and I would follow these two guys at night when they would go to the roof.

El Lay was hawt and fun in the 90's. Of course so was I. And I didn't cost $2500 a month for 400 sq ft studio in Venice

Mi Vida Loca

I blew some guy outside a gay bar in WeHo. To be young and daring in the 90’s.

Moved to LA in 1993 and I was 22. Pre Grindr days and cruising was so much fun. Circus of Books and Tomkat Theater!

^I prefer bathhouses— Hollywood Spa.

My perception is, with all the homeless, it's worse now, in a way.

The Abbey was much smaller and more intimate then— no dance floor. Much easier to meet guys there. That’s where I met my partner now of more than 10 years.

I grew up going to LA to visit family in the '90s and was always aware of the supposed gang presence, though I have no distinct memories of witnessing it firsthand. I do remember my aunt not wanting us to go to Six Flags because she claimed there was all kinds of gang-related violence that happened there, mainly in the parking lot. My dad was born in LA in the '60s and lived there until he was around middle-school aged. My grandfather worked downtown and vividly recounted his experiences during the Watts Riots to me. After that and the Manson murders, they left.

Lived in South Central L.A. in the Crenshaw area. Got used to choppers at night looking for suspects in the neighborhood but never actually witnessed crimes personally. Only got the car broken in. News tend to exaggerate stuff for ratings.

LA in the 90's was dangerous only in certain parts of town. Just like when DC was considered the murder capital..yes murders happened every night but in a very small part of town that was notorious for drug deals.