Better to Reign in Hell

by Jim Miller

  And as Mychal explained, the myth of “South Central” spread with urban problems:Places that are South Central Los Angeles now weren’t South Central Los Angeles before crack cocaine and the whole crack epidemic and sprawl of gangs. I’ve seen parts of Long Beach referred to as South Central. Now everywhere is “South Central.” It’s like there are two Los Angeles’s. We have the south of [Interstate] 10 people and north of the 10 people and now all those people west of the 405 [freeway] want to separate off from the City of Los Angeles. That’s interesting.

  The Raiders for me always represented the people that at least live in Los Angeles County, the people who haven’t moved out of the core. You know eastward or to Orange County or to the north. The Rams were always a suburbs team once they moved to Anaheim. I remember growing up back home in the eighties the Raiders became synonymous with gangs and crime. In Long Beach, the Silver and Black was associated with, locally, the toughest street gangs. So Long Beach has a gang called the Insanes—Insane Crips. They’re probably the largest gang in Long Beach and the most criminally active. So they donned Raiders clothes. And up in Los Angeles, I think the Eight Treys (the 83rd Street Crips) wear Raiders clothes also. Monster Cody was an Eight Trey. So black and silver and the Raiders is closely associated with toughness in the streets and that’s one thing we picked off was the toughness of the Raiders. Gang members happened to like the Raiders, and I think that’s an interesting dynamic whether it’s sports or not. Back home, if something becomes synonymous with what gangs wear, you couldn’t wear it anymore.

  When people talk to me they say, “Well you’re not the typical Raiders fan, you’re not a thug.” The Oakland fans I’ve talked to said that that whole correlation comes out of the L.A. Raiders image. They’re located right in downtown Los Angeles, in the heart of L.A. and around the corner from South Central, where the fans fight other fans. But that image is not always accurate. What people don’t know is that Crips have other colors associated with them as well. Where I grew up gangs were associated with the Ducks and Cowboys. Snoop Dogg wears a lot of Steelers clothes because his gang, which is the Rolling 20s, wears black and gold. I can’t even wear a Raiders jersey in my neighborhood because my neighborhood is a Cowboys neighborhood. I have friends who are Raiders fans but they’re not going to wear Raiders jerseys. North Carolina is big, you know, baby blue for the neighborhood Crips. They wear North Carolina down in San Diego. The Crips wear Dodgers colors all the time, too. But it’s the Raiders image that got associated with the toughness of street gangs and the media ran with the idea.

  Why am I a Raider fan? To me the Raiders embodied professional football. And it was so cool because Art Shell became the first black coach and he had played for the Raiders. My uncle and dad remembered him from the seventies. To me the Raiders are solid and steadfast. I don’t buy throwbacks because the Raiders have had the same jersey for forty years. They were the one team that reached across to a bunch of people. You know working class, middle class. I have Cambodian friends who are Raiders fans, Vietnamese and Laotian. So across a lot of ethnic groups, they are all Raiders fans. One thing about the Raiders is that you either liked them or you didn’t like them. It’s just not one of those teams that you don’t care about. In L.A. you were either happy because the Raiders won or because they lost. The Raiders are the team of urban L.A. The logo alone is the toughest thing to me—the pirate, the eye patch, the knives. What I really noticed is upper-class Los Angeles fans, if they were Raiders fans, didn’t openly associate with being a Raiders fans because of what they looked like. Obviously not all of the people who bought tickets were from the ghettos of Los Angeles. The people who were proud of being a Raiders fan were proud of being from Los Angeles. Because you had to not be afraid to simply go to the Coliseum right in the middle of it. And really it meant you had to be comfortable with going into the inner city. [The fear of the Coliseum] was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you act like you know what you are doing, then you don’t get picked on. You don’t insult people by acting like you think they are going to do something to you. That’s one thing. Raiders fans weren’t all Latinos or all African American. There were Asian American Raiders fans, white fans. Outside of race, there were a lot of commonalities.

  What I always thought was cool is being proud to be a Raider fan because that means you can be proud of being from the ghetto, you know? That’s what it means to me, whether you are from South Central, East Oakland, or wherever. You can be proud of where you’re at. That’s what the Raiders are. Now working-class people of the eastern cities have been heralded by the conservatives in America as their heroes, but not Raiders fans. It’s a mask for white working-class conservatism. The Republicans’ working class is still less working class. I have yet to meet a person who is a staunch conservative and a Raiders fan. I’m pretty sure they’re out there, but I’ve never met one.

  I’m proud I’m not from San Diego. I’m from Los Angeles and I’m a Raiders fan, so you can’t beat me on much, no matter how much you want to try. I know when I don’t want to be messed with [here in San Diego] I put on my Raiders jersey, put on some baggy pants, and put on a do-rag and walk around town and people stay out of my way because I’m a Raiders fan. I just like to see people cower, because some people’s anti-Raiders sentiment is a mask for other stuff. That’s why I get mad sometimes because it’s not just football to them. It’s more class and race issues to the people who are anti-Raiders. When someone disses the Raiders and they’re one of those people who are really trying to step on where you come from, I take that sort of thing to heart. But I am proud of where I come from.

  One time I went to a Raiders–Chargers game and there were these religious fanatic people with bullhorns. And they had a little message for me, “Hey, eighty-one.” I was wearing my Tim Brown jersey and he says, “Hey, eighty-one, you’re a loser. How does it feel to be a loser?” I am like, “Hey man, apparently you don’t understand the stereotypes of the folks with the Raiders because if you think we are crazy, then why are you yelling at Raiders fans after they just lost?” So we were pretty mad. I think this is just because the Raiders are kind of the anti–San Diego team. These people make all these crazy comments and then try to hide behind, “Hey dude, it’s just football.” No, it’s not just football. It’s more than football, you know? You can insult me all this time, and I know you don’t insult other people this way. So that’s one thing. And with the Mexican Raiders fans, to some of these [San Diego] people it’s the Mexican invasion, like the Mexican killer bee or something. So it’s not just blacks. It’s blacks and Mexicans. Even though it’s close to the border, it’s such a conservative culture here in San Diego. That’s the biggest fear of conservatives in California—that blacks and Mexicans unite. So that’s how they look at it. Oh, it’s Raiders weekend, right? And it’s almost an invasion of San Diego.

  The Dumbest Team in America

  After the Raiders lost a heartbreaker 27–24 to the Chiefs in Kansas City and fell to 3–8, even the most optimistic adherents of the Silver and Black knew that the boys were finished. There would be no miracle run to squeak into the playoffs at 9–7 and shock the league by gritting it out all the way to the Super Bowl. Rick Mirer was no Jim Plunkett. Safety Rod Woodson was done for the season, joining defensive end Trace Armstrong, running back Justin Fargas, and linebacker Taravian Smith on the injured reserve list, and the only good news was that the misdemeanor vandalism and public drunkenness charges against kicker Sebastian Janikowski had been dropped and the league was delaying the penalties for the players who reportedly tested positive for THG, allowing center Barret Robbins as well as defensive tackles Chris Cooper and Dana Stubblefield to finish the season. When the best news in Raider Nation is that punter Shane Lechler’s 45.67-yard average leads the NFL’s all-time list, things are looking grim. Nonetheless, as our Nigerian cab driver sped my friend Hector and me from the airport to our hotel, there were still six cars and trucks already lined up to spend the night outside the Col
iseum gates in inclement weather nearly twenty-four hours before the kickoff in the Raiders–Broncos game.12

  That night Hector and I went searching for the ghosts of Raiders past, stopping in for a beer at Clancy’s, one of the old Raiders hangouts. It had been transformed into Clancy’s taqueria and was empty except for two cops sitting in the corner working on enchilada plates. There was still Raiders stuff on the walls along with Raiders pint glasses and a Budweiser Raiders dummy, but the place was dead and the woman was sweeping up, getting ready to close at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Back out on Broadway, we passed a homeless family heading toward the freeway underpass. The mother was wearing a Raiders AFC Champions t-shirt. We stopped for dinner at Everett and Jones Barbeque, outside of which was still a huge banner that read “Mayor Jerry Brown Bets Everett and Jones and Brothers Beer that the Raiders Beat the Bucs: Join us for the OFFICIAL SUPER BOWL PARTY. GO RAIDERS! JUST WIN, BABY!” Well, at least everyone had a good meal that night, I thought, as we sat down in the packed restaurant surrounded by roadhouse Americana and Raiders pennants to survey a menu that featured a host of fine dishes and a picture of the owner with Charles Woodson. As opposed to Clancy’s, this lively, black-owned business was humming with activity as the wait-staff delivered huge platters of brisket, ribs, and chicken and the sound of blues blared out of the lounge.

  After dinner, Hector and I walked by a wiry old guy in a sharp black suit and a stylish hat. It was Birdlegg of the Tight Fit Blues Band, who had stepped out to get some fresh air between sets. Hector and I made our way through Jack London Square passing by a bronze statue of the famed author of Iron Heel standing by the harbor and ended up in Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, one of Jack’s old hangouts, and whose bar was permanently tilted due to the great earthquake of 1906. We both teach at the same community college in San Diego and both grew up in Los Angeles as big Raiders fans. Hector, a stocky, red-headed, green-eyed Mexicano from El Monte, nursed a vodka and soda as we chased the ghosts of L.A. Raiders past:Growing up in a Mexican family, nobody in my family was into football. My dad was into baseball and boxing, and that’s what I grew up watching. He didn’t understand football too much. I remember watching the 1980 Super Bowl when the Raiders won it. I was ten years old, and I started to root for them after that. Then in 1982 they moved to L.A. and it was like my favorite team coming to L.A., and I loved it. I remember the Herald Examiner had a special feature, “Meet Your Los Angeles Raiders.” They had pictures of Cliff Branch and Jim Plunkett and I remember putting them up in my room. I really liked Cliff Branch—he was my favorite. Then Marcus Allen got drafted. He was an SC guy [USC Trojans]. Marcus Allen was big. So my friends in the schoolyard started rooting for the Raiders. You started seeing a lot of Raiders gear all over when they went to the Super Bowl.

  After the Super Bowl, especially, everybody became a Raiders fan. The Raiders homogenized a group of fans where everybody liked them. I think it was the toughness. By that time I think I was in junior high. The whole mystique and toughness of the team became associated with a lot of kids in the neighborhood. We had gang problems and stuff like that, so everybody wanted to be a little bit of a tough guy, and the Raiders were an easy fit for those kids. El Monte is definitely blue collar, definitely working class. I ended up going back there [after graduating from USC] and teaching high school. There was a certain drive that I would take (when I was staying with my parents) from my parent’s house to the high school where I was teaching, and it could have been [like driving through] a Midwestern blue-collar town. It kind of looked like the rust belt, you know, a rust belt kind of look. [El Monte] is a blue-collar town, about 85 percent Mexican. And it’s still run by Anglos, with 15 percent of the population. They have one major gang that they call El Monte Flores, which dates back to like the nineteenth century. It’s the name of a family and they were kind of like renegades. There were two or three gangs, but the Flores ended up defeating the other gangs in a gang war. Actually, the kids are a lot safer now that there is only one gang. Once everybody became unified, the Flores reestablished itself as the top gang and it kind of mellowed things out.

  In some ways it was a common experience among Latinos in L.A. for football to be part of the experience of becoming American. I think it is a generational thing, too. My parents, having immigrated from Mexico, really had no knowledge of the sport. If they had come from a bigger city perhaps they would have, but they came from a rural part of Mexico. It was like something they couldn’t understand. It was complicated trying to learn a new language; it was too uncomfortable for my dad, so he never got into it. As I got older, eventually football surpassed baseball as my favorite sport, and as we went to college, it was really interesting. I went to USC and became a big fan and I started to get my father into it and now my father watches every USC game. He also watches the Raiders games. He’s a big football fan now. He also speaks English a lot better, and he also became an American citizen. So it kind of corresponded.

  My dad really learned about football as he assimilated. You know he always brings up sports. He says he has a big memory of football—a Mexican coach [Tom Flores] went to the Super Bowl. My dad doesn’t know much about the history of California or anything like that, but he knows that [Flores] came from around Fresno, from a working family.

  I asked Hector what he made of the appropriation of the Raiders logo on the “Los Malosos de Aztlan” t-shirts and other hybrids of this sort:I think the Raiders shield and the Raiders emblem is something that a lot of people associate with the working class. I also think a lot of the Chicanos feel they are outside of the mainstream. They don’t feel like they are part of middle America, mainstream America. They feel like they are on the outskirts. I think it’s very easy to have the football tie-in with the Aztec symbols, which are very non-American. The Aztec calendar [which is on one popular shirt] is tied to the Raiders shield [in the case of this t-shirt the Raiders helmet is on the Aztec warrior at the center of the calendar], which is also something people see as outside of the mainstream. It’s the same way some people might feel about the rebel flag. You know in the South, the stars and bars have become a white working-class symbol. It’s a white working-class symbol, right? It’s like they feel they are being shit on by the mainstream, being marginalized, so they have to have a symbol of marginalization. A lot of Chicanos and Latinos are very much into the Raiders. That’s what they do.

  The term “Chicano” itself, was once seen as a derogatory term, one some older Mexicans still see as derogatory, but now people have taken it and feel a sense of ownership of it. So it’s easy for people to make the connection between the Raiders logo and the Aztec symbol. They both represent marginalized people and embody pride in identity. There is a commonality there. What does Al Davis stand for? Al Davis is the Raiders way. He’s not about doing it the way the other NFL teams do it. That’s the myth—we’re going to win, and we are going to do it our way.

  I think the Raiders have always been associated with gangs and tougher kids. A lot of it has to do with the colors, the black and silver, the whole bad-guys-wear-black type of phenomenon. And look at the logo [the pirate]—it’s a symbol of marginalization. So a lot of people like the image, like my friend Frank’s dad, who is a businessman, a former vice president of Tele Mundo, and was a season ticket holder. On the weekends he was being bad, kind of letting his hair down. He’d go to the Raiders game, watch the fights and get a lot out of it. It’s like the doctors and lawyers who ride Harleys. It’s a symbolism and a phenomenon that people connect with on a very different level than any other football team. It’s a connection with something wilder. It’s the wild west. It’s very American in that sense. There were a lot of fights [at the L.A. Coliseum] and people were saying, “I’m not going to take my kids to see people get their asses kicked” and stuff like that. And there were all these other factors in Exposition Park—the working-class presence, the drinking and violence. It all did scare off a lot of upper- and middle-class folks, but the one
s that stuck around were looking for some adventure on the weekend. They’d ride down the street on a Harley and live a more exciting life and it made them a little eccentric to the people back in the office to say, “Hey, I went to a Raiders game.” And the people in the office would say, “Oh my God, you did what?”

  If you are a Raiders fan, it’s like a code. Whenever people are wearing Raiders gear and you identify another Raiders fan, it’s more of a connection. It is more of a college-type thing. I’ve been wearing Raiders gear before, at a random event, and somebody else with Raiders gear yells out, “Raiders!” as a way of acknowledging me. I’ve done that to people, too. It’s not something that happens with other teams’ fans.

  Game day was cold and rainy and the prospect of standing in a damp, windy stadium for three hours was tempered only by the thought of beating the Broncos. As our waitress at breakfast said, “I just hope they beat the Broncos. If they beat the Broncos that would really make me happy. It would make the season okay.”