In1988, Los Angeles was in hysterics over the mounting visibility of its homegrown street gangs. Public shootouts and innocent victims in affluent neighborhoods were making national headlines, and all of a sudden local gangs hailing from discrete pockets of South Central and East L.A. were coming up in cameo appearances in Hollywood films and pop music. The Los Angeles Police Department dubbed it “The Year of the Gang.”
Attention on this scale may have been unprecedented for L.A.’s network of loosely affiliated neighborhood “sets.” But in many ways, grabbing for visibility was embedded in gang identity. Graffiti, clothing, and tattoos constitute a layered vocabulary for members to communicate with one another. Complex hand symbols, or “stacking,” are also a gestural code to be brandished at will.