Chino Cholos
The hero of this story is my friend Wanch. The year was 1975.
We had come from a wedding. Whose wedding it was has been forgotten. This is the time when all our friends were getting married. I had been a member of this wedding. After the reception Wanch and I went to Tommy's, with a bottle of Cutty Sark. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but I was dressed in a green tux with a salmon colored ruffled shirt. A real 70s East L A wedding.
After we killed off our Tommy burgers, and not a drop of chili on the tux, thank you, we were leaving the parking lot, out the exit, as one does, and here comes another car, in through the exit. The driver of the car aggressively pushes in, his window right outside Wanch's van window.
"David, watch this."
Conveniently, available on the dash of the van, a water gun.
The driver of the car, as were his passengers, was a Chinese gang member appropriately wearing a bandanna, with music blaring, and gold chains hanging. The driver showing severe aggressive attitude.
Wanch makes an exaggerated movement as if to fire a high-powered gun. The driver of the car interpreted that movement correctly, and his face went pale. Wanch shoots him in the face with the water gun a number of times...... squish squish squish squish, and speeds away. We hear their car burning their tires in reverse. Tires screeching. We turned down a street off of Beverly.
Wanch says, Don't worry about it, I can out run them.
Then we see and hear gunfire.
Wanch starts cleverly and expertly making many turns going down this street and that. All the while we're getting shot at. None of the bullets hit the van however, but there were sparks flying off the cars next to us and sparks on the pavement.
We went north up Alexandria from 6th Street, some distance between us and the gang through some clever Wanch driving. He turned down into an underground parking area of an apartment building. The van bounced when we hit the driveway. The top of the entrance to the garage was below my eye level. I was sure we were going to shear the top off the van on the garage ceiling, along with our heads.…… But we don't. It was one of those times I saw my life, my recent life, flash before my eyes. There were plans made. There were some intentions. People were met. Things to do. I remember thinking to myself, Well, none of that is gonna happen to me, even if I survive this.
But we did make it, the van slipped into the garage. We look at each other. About 5 seconds later the room turns red. A police car comes in behind us, with red lights flashing and a siren blast.
Cops jumped out of their car, pointing guns at us, “Get out of the car!” I'm tempted to dump the bottle of gin just to reduce the charges by one thing.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?!” Now I'm standing by my door and Wanch is standing at his door And we look silly, well I do anyway, in my green tux and frilly shirt. “What the fuck are you guys doing?”
In unison "Those guys were chasing us!"
"What guys!?"
Just at that instant, we see the car full of Chinese cholos with the passenger clearly, visibly, obviously holding a gun.
“THOSE GUYS!” says Wanch, with a hop, pointing in kind of a Charlie Brown pose.
The cops fully turn to look, the gang’s car is perfectly framed by the garage entrance, the driver had stopped for a fraction of a second, the passenger was leaning out the window with a gun clearly in his hand.
The cops look at each other, the cops look at us, the cops look at each other, the gang guys look at each other and speed off.
The cops say to us "Stay right here!”
They jump in the car, siren and lights blazing, chasing after.
We look at each other, and calmly get back in the van, and back down to Wilshire Boulevard, and go on our way.
I think we got to Santa Monica
before the adrenaline wore off.