It had been less than a week since I
left Los Angeles when the police officers accused of beating Rodney King were
acquitted by a jury mostly composed of whites. The date was April 29th 1992;
I was 18 at the time.
A couple of months earlier, my friend Fred and I had run away from home and bought a one-way bus ticket from Montreal to El-Paso, which we eventually extended to San-Diego. But our first stop in California was Los Angeles. After stepping out of the Greyhound bus station, we wandered south towards the Santa Monica freeway, and soon realized this was not a place for backpacking teenagers. Even as we walked towards the downtown area on 6th street, we could feel, and see, the presence of gangs everywhere. Those were really rough times.
After a few weeks of camping out on the beach in SoCal, we hitched a ride to San Francisco with a group of three Five-Percent Nation types who were heading to Eugene, Oregon. Brother B Wildflower was heading up there to reunite with his child's mother, trading away L.A's urban landscape for the lush greenery of the Northwest. The two other guys, Beau-Sage and Ko, were just tagging along for the ride. Fred stopped in San Francisco, but I pushed all the way to Eugene with the rest of the crew.
A day or two after we made it to our destination, Ko and I were invited to a house party with a couple friends, a native dreadlock named Corey and a wigger whose name I don't recall. This was April 29. Upon Corey's suggestion, we took a shortcut through an alley. Soon, we encountered a large black man who was washing his sports car and really looked like an NFL linebacker in his L.A. Raiders jacket. The wigger took it upon himself to strike a conversation with this man and bragged about his first hand experience of L.A.'s gang ridden neighbourhoods. The black man accused him of lying and, soon enough, started swinging at the wigger. He missed, pulled out a knife, and started chasing us down the alley. I don't think I ever ran as fast in my entire life. Not surprising so many talented athletes come from the inner city.
It was only later that night, on the
news, that I found out what had happened in Los Angeles. The repercussions of
the Rodney King Uprising were felt all over the West Coast, from San Diego to
Seattle.
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