You guys ever run around with any bad dudes?

[fastfredracing]

I was a relatively good kid, but liked to smoke pot, and drink in my late teens early 20's I always held a job, had a gf, and for the most part stayed out of too much trouble. I would go out on a limb and say, that I was a nice guy . I was usually a good worker at my job, and never wanted to harm anyone, just liked to goof off a little.
There was a period in time , right after high school, where we got wrapped up with a group of guys who were bad news. We would buy weed from them, and ended up hanging around with them all the time . We partied with them a lot, but they never really tried to include us in any other illegal activities. They would sometimes brag about their conquests. I will always remember the one guys orange 455 4 speed trans am.
They were all super cool to us, we hung out most every weekend, getting into some sort of mischief, and never really hurt anyone, but we all knew of their reputation. In my head, I always sort of felt sorry for them, they all came from broken homes , and had generally ****ty lives
I had not heard of these guys in 20 years, but just this morning, reading a FB post, found out one of them slit a guys throat, one was killed in a drive by shooting, one shot someone else, and another one got run over by a drunk driver and killed . I always wondered what happens to guys who live their lives like this long term?
Guess I got my answer

[Baz]

Yes.....and feel very fortunate to have survived that era.

[svandamme]

I've hung out with some Italians back in the housemusic heavy clubbing days.
And at some point went to a party for one of the dudes, and asked if it was his Bday.
he went, no, it's my going away party..

Oh wherey ou going?
Jail, for armed robbery !

Apparantly I was best buds with one of the Capo regimes because he was dating a girl that had come to the club in our car, she worked for my mother's snackbar.. and ultimately he married her, became a respectable citizen (which is typical at 26-28 they either become lifers or switch over.)
And since I was his best friends, in the club, i was basically untouchable, nobody could mess with me.
2 moroccan hoodlems tried to rip me off one day.
And were evacuated from the scene.

I later read in the news paper that they were found seriously beaten up and not entirely sure what had happened.
(I think some racism between the italians and moroccans and especially the gangs did not really help them)

Went to the wedding.. was slow dancing with an italian girl.. Noticed old dude looking at me like I had just called his misses something bad.

Went to the friend, asked him, what's up with him.

He goes (in french) , aah,"c'est le parent".
I'm like, what do you mean, what is the parent..

well le parent, michele corleone, the godfather.. that's him in our family.
You were dancing with his daughter
At school nobody even dares to talk to her.

Gulp.

No worries , will introduce you.

Sits me down with the old man. 2 younger dudes within arms length.. not drinking, not smoking, looking around all the time.


He starts asking me questions
what do you do
IT , computers
good, what does your father do
import export
good good, what does your mother do,
snackbar
good,
etc etc etc

in the end, he just said, good boy, go dance with my daughter.


I can assure you no moves were made by me.
And plenty of distance was kept , arms straight, ballroom dancing style .

[craigster59]

I used to socialize with George Christie (Prez of the Ventura chapter of the Hell's Angels) back in the day. Nice guy, owned the tattoo shop on Main St. Funny, I have never owned a Harley and don't have any tattoos.

[sc_rufctr]

I always avoided bad dudes. The neighborhood I grew up in was rough and a lot of the guys ended up in a bad place.
Drugs, booze, trouble with the law was the norm. Poofter bashing was the local sport!

I barely made it through high school. At 19 I joined the Army and never looked back.

Thankfully my parents sold their house and moved to a better area.

[CalPersFatCat]

Only one.

Donnie Montemarano. Multiple other nicknames but this is how he introduced himself to me and what I called him during the years that I knew him.

Shared a dozen or so meals with him and never once did the conversation touch upon organized crime.

Friendship ended when my employer gently informed me that the FBI had inquired about my vehicle being parked at Montemarano's residence in Beverly Hills. Was "asked" to terminate the friendship. I complied.

Dominic Montemarano | Mafia Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

DL

[Don Ro]

My pattern was cut early on.
12 years in a Catholic Academy taught by nuns, altar boy, sports-minded, a good neighborhood kid with a respectable reputation. So I never was presented with the opportunity to hang with bad dudes...and I was never inclined to do so.
.
Early '70s and the '80s I smoked pot now/then, dropped acid a few times, and bought $2,000 worth of Cocaine once...to snort.
Right around that time a co-worker friend got big into drugs. As most of us, he started with pot, but he went up the drug ladder...and then down the life ladder.
He'd call me now/then and offer one of his possessions at a fire sale price. One time he wanted $25 for his new Winchester .22 mag rifle.
Needless to say, he became an ex co-worker.
.
We were all sitting around my place one night, spittin', swearin', and telling lies to each other,
The friend (ex co-worker) was telling us all about Heroin and its effects, etc., and suggesting that we all never start.
I said, "Because it's so bad?"
He said, "No. Because it's so good."
At some point that night he pulled out a syringe and began to tie himself off.
I joked that it must be a hybrid of Aqua Velva and Draino...given what we all knew that he'd be willing to shoot.
He was eventually carried out to one of the cars and driven home.
.
A couple of years later, I got a call from a mutual friend...our co-worker friend died on a hospital gurney...28 years old.

[livi]

During my teens we had a reggae band. Marley, Toots etc were idols. We played a lot of gigs and local festivals and came into caracter smoking weed. We wanted dreadlocks too but our mothers wouldn´t have it.

[GH85Carrera]

Back in my younger days I would go to a buddy’s house and drink his beer. He owned a liquor store where I bought beer. We had a lot in common and got along great. One evening some other guys came over and I heard some serious tone talking. They left and my friend showed me a shoebox full to the top of Quaudes. He asked if I wanted to buy any and I declined. He mentioned he has a good supply. I casually finished my beer, and left. I quit hanging out over there. I have never taken illicit drugs in my life. Beer is my drug of choice.
Not a real bad dude, but that is as close as I have been.

[RANDY P]

Not so much 'bad' per se, but bad happens as a result of habits.

Drugs, OTOH got lots of experience being around. Why I'm staunch anti these days.

(looks over at NOTA)

rjp

[LWJ]

Nobody famous. I knew many sketchy people in various ways back many years ago. They mostly didn't fare too well

Except for the coke dealer who had a famous politician father. Got busted by the DEA and is an MD today.

[BeyGon]

Yes.

[Superman]

Altar Boy, yes. Drugs, yes. There was a period in which I got into quite a few fist fights, but that was more of a recreational pursuit than what I would call "bad boy." Today, I pay a lot of taxes and mind my own business.

[Seahawk]

California in the 60's and 70's was a show.

Because I played sports I was friends with, competed with and against every ethnic group, every social strata possible in those days in Cali.

Summer leagues I would play against Crespi one day, Mater Dei the next, Centennial and Oxnard to finish out the week.

A lot of the guys I played with died young and violently - drugs and gangs - after high school. They were, in the vernacular of the day, "hard"...without a lot of opportunity and unwilling to find it.

I was a ranch kid: smoking pot, drinking beer and driving fast were the excesses of my youth.

A good friend of mine, T. Vasquez, was a very good athlete and we had played sports together since we were 11/12. His older brother was in a gang in the Valley. His brother tried to keep T out of the life. It worked for a while.

They are both dead. Same ****, different day.

[JeremyD]

yes, absolutely - one of my motivations for checking myself into Military School to start college. Had a group of friends that liked to "get ass or kick ass" ... couple of them ended up in the pokey, I just ended up with some great stories

[vash]

One of the worst people I’ve hung out with in my youth was a female. We almost landed in a Juarez jail because of her.

I plumbed up soon afterwards. I’m too pretty for prison.

[Crowbob]

The really bad dudes hung with me, if there was an opening. Out of strategic necessity, I had to keep my entourage small.

[look 171]

Growing up in the middle of LA, Echo Park, the bad will find ya. The Hispanic street gangs were all over. We grew up in a dead end street with a park at the end, with normal folks. Our friends and I were drawn to these two kids on our street because they had everything, and their parents would let em' run wild and never have to go home. Cool for a 14 year old. Their older brothers were into some heavy international gang activities so all the adults told us to stop hanging out with them. Of course, we never listen. One day, I see his older brothers carried a bunch of guns and threw them in the trunk along with sags of stuff and a bunch of pretty scary looking 20 something year olds in a van. Eventually, these two younger kids got involved too and they started stealing cars out of the Dodger Stadium parking lot for joy riding. I tagged along not thinking this was going to happen. They went on to stealing cars out of the dealership. This was about high school, so my friend and I decided it was time to stop hanging out with them. His older brother managed to keep the younger ones our of it. The other brother's in jail somewhere put away for a long time. These two younger guys did ok. One is a LA county Sheriff and the other is a crime scene finger print guy for the LAPD. What a complete turn around.

[scottmandue]

Not really, like some of you being a child of the 70's I was a huge pot head.
By no plan of my own I started working my way up the ladder from the guy with the small bags to the guy with the big bags to the guy with a bedroom full... I slowly fazed out of that relationship.

I was never a big fan of the Peruvian marching powder but several of my friends who were are no longer with us. Watched one go in the hospital.... very, very bad way to go... etched in my mind forever.

[herr_oberst]

Jeez, I went to Catholic schools for 12 years. Of course I ended up hanging out with some bad dudes.

Lucky to make it out alive...