BORN X RAISED VS LAPD
When people talk about gang wars in Los Angeles, they think of South Central, not the sunny environs of Venice Beach and the famed Oakwood neighborhood.
In ‘93, Venice Beach saw the most violent and deadly gang war in the history of LA. The war left 17 African-American and Latino residents dead & 50 injured. Most incidents occurred within a one mile radius.
The war involved three different gangs, the Culver City Boys, the Venice-13, and the Venice Shoreline Crips. The Shoreline Crips an African-American gang went to war against the Culver City Boys, a Latino gang, many innocent lives were lost, and it transformed the Venice neighborhood and boardwalk.
Within this violence, a group of young teenagers started an LA streetwear revolution. The founding members called the label Born X Raised, which still exists as a fashion leader.
This cultural collision reveals the complexities of contemporary urban American conflict. It also is a story about the gentrification, and real estate development of modern Venice Beach.
With access to the gang members
who
went to war, neighborhood residents, business leaders, police officers and gang intervention workers, complexities
about
LA
in the
90’s
are revealed, with
the added narrative of LA based streetwear culture.
Fueled by the frustration of watching the fabric of his Venice neighborhood get ripped to shreds, Spanto started BornxRaised local families, including his own. They however, were targeted by gang injunctions, enabling harassment and taken into custody by police for anything seen as an effort to change the demographic of the neighborhood for outof-towners attracted to Venice’s location. “It’s not about drugs and gang violence,” Spanto explains, “It’s about property value.”
is a four part documentary series that tells two parallel narratives that converged in a defining story about the history of LA — part true crime thriller, part pop culture and part streetwear epic. BORN X RAISED VS LAPD