The Party Line : Dance Crews Say It’s All in Fun, but Some Fear Violence, Gang Ties

Standing outside a Sylmar nightclub during a recent dance bash, 19-year-old party promoter “Clover” said he can’t understand what all the fuss is about. The Canoga Park teen, whose real name is Peter Ramirez, thinks the underground party scene in the San Fernando Valley is pretty safe.

Witness the phalanx of large security guards at the party he helped promote on a recent weekend, dubbed “Lucky Charms II.” The party is named and themed, as are most underground parties, to convey a certain aura. The concept behind Lucky Charms isn’t hard to guess: “It’s magically delicious,” another promoter explained.

As Clover looked on, the muscle at the door milled about, regulating the flow of party-goers--most of whom were 15 to 19 years old--confiscating pens (to prevent tagging) and bottles (no alcohol allowed) and communicating via walkie-talkie with members of Low Profile Network, the “party crew” coordinating the event.

Party crews, sometimes called dance crews, have been around since the early 1980s, but drew recent attention after administrators at a Catholic high school in Mission Hills pressured 10 boys to leave the school because of their apparent involvement in a crew. Four girls at Alemany High School, run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, also were suspended and placed on probation for their alleged participation.

Parents have filed an appeal with the archdiocese, but so far, administrators are sticking by their decision. Alemany officials say they equate dance-crew membership with gang activity, and note that such behavior is prohibited in the student handbook.

But some students and crew members say the school’s actions were unfair, the result of misguided suspicions of a sinister alliance between party crews and street gangs. They say crews are just groups of loosely affiliated friends who give themselves catchy names, attend parties together and sometimes sponsor their own sonic hoedowns.

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Police and school administrators acknowledge a distinction between crews and hard-core street gangs, but note that sometimes crews can get embroiled in conflicts where blood is spilled.

“We’re still working on an unsolved murder from a year ago at a crew party in Arleta,” said Los Angeles Police Det. Gordon Boling, of the Foothill Division’s anti-gang task force. “Crews don’t arm themselves and go around looking to do injury to each other, but sometimes things escalate.”

Over the past few years, police said, at least a dozen violent incidents in Los Angeles and Orange counties have been linked to crew events. As a result, some school administrators started tracking crew activity.

Dennis Clancy, dean of students at Monroe High School in North Hills, said the school prohibits any kind of crew visibility on campus. “No crew T-shirts, hats, logos, symbols, signs, tags, whatever. Kids’ intentions when they start [crews] is just to enjoy themselves,” Clancy said. “But what’s happening is similar to what happened with tagger crews. One group has a conflict with another and it degenerates. They’re not gangs, but if there’s an argument and they find themselves facing each other 12 deep, how is that different from a gang fight?”

Clover and others maintain there’s a big difference. Crews are about partying, dancing, having a good time on a Friday night for a couple of dollars. The groups appeal to kids who don’t have much money and are too young to get into nightclubs.

And lately, party promoters said, Valley party crews are staging well-organized, legitimate dance events at rented halls or nightclubs, complete with hired security and dress codes designed to dissuade gang attendance.

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At Lucky Charms, crews lined up quietly behind a window to purchase $7 admission tickets. Hard-core dancers--also known as “groovers”--some of whom belong to crews, came decked out in bright-colored V-neck sweaters, vintage athletic jerseys with bell-bottom or corduroy pants, knit caps and plastic backpacks emblazoned with cartoon characters.

The first crew to show in numbers was Metro Events, whose members got in line at about 10 p.m., when most parties start getting busy. Wearing plastic necklaces with the capital letter “M,” about 20 Metro Events members--all male--were frisked and passed into the cavernous space at Sylmar’s El Palacio--rented for the night by the party’s promoters.

Inside, a nuclear beat blasted from towers of black speakers near a raised stage manned by a half-dozen deejays. A wood dance floor the size of two basketball courts was empty, except for a few groovers hunched together at a go-go box near the edge of the dance floor. Their median age: 16. Most other kids--about 100 in all, mostly Latino--were conservatively dressed in clean jeans or pants, collared shirts or pressed T-shirts.

A bartender stood, looking bored, at the end of a long, well-lighted bar. The only beverages for sale: bottled water and soda.

It was early, and nobody was dancing. Deejays played “flashback” oldies by bands including the Eurythmics and Oingo Boingo.

“Look, we kick it with everybody,” said an 18-year-old Metro Events crew member who called himself “Mask,” as he entered. “No problems. We get along with everybody. Crews don’t cause the problems. It’s the cholos [gangsters].”

About 11 p.m., the party began to flesh out, with about 250 tickets sold and a line 20-people deep outside--the makings of a successful event, promoters said.

Soon, a ring of people formed on one side of the dance floor, and a Metro Events crew member slid into the middle and began “battling”--performing a brief, freestyle dance routine, combining break-dance-style spins and slides, robotic arm movements and mime-like gestures and maneuvers.

The next battler entered the ring with a smile, attempting to outdo his predecessor. The dance was similar--neither particularly better or worse. When he finished, the crowd just nodded and waited for the next dancer. And so on, all evening long.

Around midnight, shouting was heard over the music. Then the music stopped.

About 30 members of a Pacoima-area crew called In Your Face were jumping up and down on the dance floor, chanting their crew initials over and over: “IYF! IYF! IYF!” Another crew also began shouting its name.

“All right!” a deejay yelled into a mike. “Stop! Or we’re outta here. I’m serious. I did it before and I’ll do it again.”

The shouts petered out, and the deejay started up the music again.

“That was like the only little mishap during the whole night,” said Louis Ayala, 26, of North Hollywood, who helped promote the party.

“We got real good feedback,” added Ayala, who uses the name “Louis Hyp.” “A few gang members got in, but we had to let them in or they’d cause problems outside. And they stayed cool.”

But things might have turned out differently, said an IYF member nicknamed “Hefty,” if members of a rival crew had shown up.

Both sides say the other started the problems, and the only thing either side agrees on is that, a couple of months ago, someone was stabbed in the ear with a shank--a short blade or piece of a screwdriver. Who stabbed whom is a matter of contention. But for now, IYF has declared open season on the other crew, called In The Mood.

“They disrespected my homeboy,” said Hefty. “They pulled a shank on him. And we’re a crew that handles our business, you know what I’m saying?” If ITM had shown up at Lucky Charms, Hefty said, “We’d end up fighting with them. We’re not a gang, though. We don’t use guns--we use our fists.”

ITM members say they’ve tried to talk through their differences with IYF, but haven’t gotten far.

“Right now, we’re just, like, trying to stay lo-pro [low profile],” said a female leader of ITM. “We don’t want no trouble with them, and we won’t go to parties where they go. They don’t like us for some reason. We think they’re jealous.”

Despite the problems, the ITM leader said she thinks the crew life is generally safe. And if things got too out of hand, ITM leaders said, they’d consider disbanding the crew: “It ain’t worth getting killed over,” one leader said.

But a few days later, ITM members said a rumble had been scheduled between the crews.

Promoters said the “beef” between ITM and IYF is mostly just talk and bad attitude--on both sides. But those kinds of conflicts have convinced some that crews aren’t worth joining.

“It’s sad to say this, and it gets me mad, but we can’t have fun without worrying about our lives,” said Francis Agulto, a senior at Alemany who said he understands administrators’ decision to banish crew members. “A lot of my friends just don’t get it. They’re putting themselves in danger.”

Even so, there are a few party crew success stories, said Carl Gilkey, a 26-year-old break dancer, deejay, rapper and Arista recording artist from San Fernando.

Gilkey’s crew, One Big Posse, got started in 1980, “just like these other guys today, but we’ve grown to be the biggest around,” said Gilkey, better known by either of his two nicknames, “DJ Hazze” or “Hamburger Helper.”

The secret to the Posse’s longevity: staying out of conflicts and carefully scouting out potential events--researching the reputation of crews sponsoring parties and ensuring that there will be adequate security, Gilkey said.

“We’re an example of an organized party crew that grew up,” Gilkey said. “We’re putting our people out on records. We’re working on a [World Wide] Web site. . . . Our goal is to promote dancing, promote the Valley, and to show the rest of the crews out there you can be something better.”