0:00 me and him would be eating and there's like a group of Asian thugs would like tatted down they got the ████ rat tails they're whispering and ████ they keep looking at us and we're like yo I don't know who those ████ guys are I don't recognize them man I think they're we're gonna get down dude and we're about to leave right and they're like hey and we're like hey what's up and then they're like and you guys that that Uncle Sam Uncle Tim and I'm like oh they're fans they're just fats [Music] welcome back to another great episode of the careful boys we are lucky enough to have with us today Mr Johnny Chang crazy so like during the break I mean we just gone back and forth and as things unfold we're like you know this guy you
0:50 know this guy and then yeah I feel so comfortable with Johnny because he's just like you mentioned earlier that dude that we grew up with in sgv you cut out just a a general idea of who this guy is yeah yeah yeah it's Johnny we said that we said you look like an AI version of everyone we remember oh like all in one yeah but there is a weird like familiarity I have with Johnny where it just feels like the same areas we know the same streets the same groups the same gangs like the same people and that just blows my mind because it's like almost meeting someone from my past that I feel like I met before and it's kind of coming together like you did this and this oh I heard of you guys and it's like ████ such a trip you feel like I've met Joe somewhere
1:42 before yeah yeah like for real yeah you look hella familiar for real yeah I'm 33. and I'm 38 but it's still the same that she's one generation above basically you know but and I know all the guys of his generation that he's talking about yeah yeah that's crazy bro because they were the I mean we're not ogs but they were like the youngsters that looked it was like you know we were looking at guys like let's say if we were 19 right they were probably in high school and then we were looking at guys in their mid-20s as ogs yeah and in the mid-20s guys we're looking at like the 30s right so like that was that kind of role where like where like the guys were like five years younger than us yeah yeah when you might have met Joe in the past did he have a pacifier in his mouth it could have been in a rave bro no that was that wasn't that life yeah okay that
2:33 I was like that was after that life just trying to jog his memory just other things did you ever play mama oh you might have spent too much time behind the bars to enjoy the festivity yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the Rave era that kind of died out by the time we were yeah oh yeah then I got out that was yeah it was pretty much dead you know what was interesting to me is like we were just getting into your um you're like kind of touch with God like you just it was it was at that point where you were in your life of like your mom was telling you yeah we weren't sure you didn't like the whole Christianity like Hood hopping whatever it was and then um what happened to where you started to like do it so there was a thing that I
3:24 always felt was like this emptiness inside of my heart right like even when I was young like joining a gang and going to prison I thought like oh it's because I'm in jail that I feel empty and depressed right um but when I got out like you know I had done anger management counseling got my GED so everything looked like it was on the up but I had this like void like this hole in my heart and I it didn't matter I was I was also selling drugs and stuff like that trying to make money and nothing filled that you know and my mom actually was like oh you have that emptiness because you don't have God and I was like Mom like shut up you know like I was like I didn't want to hear that right um but after that happened I had planned something you know to basically Rob like a well-known drug dealer in Roland Heights area where all the rich you know back then was where all the rich Asians was at you know Hacienda Roland and um
4:15 you know I was supposed to go to like the ride of this car and then the homie was supposed to go to the left of the car but when I went to the right he stepped in front of me so I just naturally went to the left and then you know these three gunshots rang out and I was like damn I thought my homie was blasting him actually but he was getting shot and then the car sped off you know so he was shooting at your buddy who was in the driver yeah so they had a dude in the back in the back seat ready oh like they knew we were setting up like just in case I don't think they knew we were gonna basically Rob him and take all their their work right but basically like my homie got shot in the stomach basically and chest stomach area and then I remember vividly like the sounds all of that so basically died in front of me died you know and then I was like
5:05 it was just a mix of emotions I remember like getting angry like feeling scared feeling confused and then and then it hit me like like when I got to the hospital basically with him uh essentially like that was supposed to be me basically oh wow if I was if he didn't step in front of me I would have probably I wouldn't be here you know so from then on I felt that like okay and and again I brushed it off being you know a gang member you know you can't show that right yeah so three days after that um I get this letter from one of my homies he was a he was a like a well-known graffiti artist back then there used to be tigers and stuff like that right so he was a really well-known graffiti artist out out in LA and you know I grew up with him too and he he wrote me like this really eerie letter it was like you know when you go to the
5:56 when you you know when you when you're at in the mountains like think about me you know I'm always there with you homie this and I was like what the hell and I realized it was a suicide letter oh damn three days after that I found out that he hung himself in County Jail so so it was like death death and then there was another you know shooting that that happened on the freeway basically it was like a car to car shooting my homie was an innocent bystander he was really young he was like a Young Homie a little homie he's 17 shot in the head oh okay so this was all within like a one week span and so I felt death like what the heck is going on you know and then that was on top of my depression and everything else and my mom was like you know you should try coming to church and again I was like no but her car broke down and then you know I I wanted to be good to my mom so this is when you're out already yeah when I'm out so I took
6:47 my mom took her to church and then it kind of unfolds with the sofa and her belly story basically wow that's cool so that's how I kind of fell with God basically wow what what next after you found God though like um yeah like what made you want to also become like a minister yeah did you begin your own Ministry no so so I didn't ever want to become a like I don't think people just wake up like and be like who lived our lives and was like you know what I'm gonna be a pastor today you know like that doesn't happen right um I never wanted to go to prisons I never like I spent all my life after getting out like I'm never gonna go back to this place but the pastor at the time who was kind of like my mentor he explained to me that there's a lot of people who felt that emptiness and void that you felt and like it's a spiritual aspect of things you know so you gotta you gotta like go in there and kind of
7:38 like lace these people up which means share with them like your story and they're gonna it's better than like if he went in there with the suit nice Cut like people are not gonna understand yeah yeah they don't relate exactly so um I was like but again I had all these thoughts like bro we don't talk on camera I don't open you know our culture is just not like that bro we don't talk about stuff like this if I was in my teens and I had someone like you like talk to me straight about like get the ████ out of this stupid thing like I probably would have changed way quicker yeah but so like versus a square and a suit that doesn't even know the life trying to tell you you know what you gotta change and it's like of course you're gonna say that you don't know ████ exactly but you'll listen to some OG that came out of prison and you're just like yes sir I ████ up sir laughs
8:29 so when I go to these prisons basically I talk to these lifers and and you know just people who are are going through it you know and and they can relate to everything even though we're different races because we have we have like it's it's not just Christians right in there there's Buddhists Muslims the one thing that risks that we're all interconnected with is the struggle so like they can understand that like that emptiness that void like I think a lot of people feel that especially prisoners you know so yeah it's it's doing really good you know they they they like the fact that I'm there I go every week I go three times a week basically to different different prisons Channel Norco Lancaster you know all these different spots and um yeah we're just trying to like help each person one by one that's tight man I mean someone's got to go out there and reach out because like it's just a never-ending pit but you were
9:20 inside and you had to like you know you can't be soft at all and you kind of have to like create your own monster did you ever like um is there any space in your like bandwidth to make friends or even connect with anyone else on a human level at all or it's just always I'm just gonna be in here and people are gonna try to kill me I gotta make sure I have my Garza so when you're in prison you actually have a lot of surface level relationships like it's it's all good you know it but nothing is ever deep like and and the good thing about prison was that it made me not from watching so we had enemies like Asian boys and black dragon and whoever but when you go in there you have to drop all of you have to click up yeah because it's nothing but Asians exactly so when you go in there it's there's no more gang banging there's no more you could have shot at my homie killed it killed my homie but we have to be cool because it's like us against the whole like it's race against
10:11 race type yeah you know on that note which is ████ crazy so um you just brought back a memory and a rumor where um so so our our guys had beef with one of your other factions not your group but we heard um that that group paid your group to assassinate one of our dudes they drove up and they shot somebody in front of my buddy's house which ended up being a guy from your own Camp you heard about that yes so it did happen uh well okay I don't know so so it that's that's a oh my God you cleared up a rumor in my mind that's been in my head for like ever and so the thing is that special day we were supposed to have a rumble and and solve ████ so they
11:02 knew we were all at this house and uh the guys that came which is a different side fraction of their gang he didn't even know that this was gonna go down he was smoking weed at the doorsteps and when they came up and and did the drive-by they ended up shooting their own side damn yeah and it was a it was a whole ████ mess wow oh ████ that's crazy damn it's a rumor yeah but it's a crazy rumor but but the thing is what's crazy is that when you're when you're in jail when you get older like all those things it doesn't ████ matter it just doesn't matter at all you just it's almost like I feel bad that everyone had to go through that at that age and you thought that you were like
11:53 in war it's like you're you're like stupid little soldiers like being told what to do and by the way we left our whole group because when that incident happened our rogs we you know they say we need some money so we could go get some straps and retaliate this and that they took our money and smoked crack with all of it we didn't get anything we didn't have anything to protect ourselves with allegedly right allegedly so we were like what are we gonna do like we got abandoned by our own group and then we started questioning that whole gang ████ and it was like these guys aren't our brothers and taking care of us and like they're not doing ████ and then they wanted us to put in the work after you know that thing happened to us so I was like man I'm in a group that's just not really taking care of each other it's just all talk and and and I think that was the biggest reality check for me because I thought we were like I
12:43 really believed it like amen like we go get them back so we're gonna go get you know what we have to do like we're gonna get guns and ████ and it didn't happen I'm like damn wow that was a crazy uh moment there yeah so like you also mentioned that um you know maybe there's like Asian gangs here Asian gangs here and you guys are like Rivals and stuff but then you're going to prison and then it's like everybody just clicks up because it's race Wars and stuff um what happens for example like after y'all like come back out is it like all right back to our tribalism and that type of it's honestly dependent on the person I mean like you could go back to gang banging but I mean you broke down spreads with people you shared like food with them like you know you guys went a
13:33 war together like it's really kind of looked down upon so like me like I when I go back I don't have issues with those people and when I see them I'm like hey it's all love because even if it's somebody representing them like I was locked up with one of their big homies or whatever it is so you kind of it's not like you give each other a pass but like like Joe was saying you just start to realize like this is all ████ yeah there's like a there's like a bigger picture a bigger place exactly and and I I honestly I tell my homies all the time I tell everybody like whoever enemies or whatever I really wish that it was like this from the jump like we were we were all cool and we were just trying to like break bread and just better Our Lives you know what I mean versus like running up and shooting people and doing stuff like that you know so that and they're like yeah we agree because it's much more peaceful it's much more better nowadays you know
14:23 like in our era like it was just it was crazy bro like I always thought too I was like all right why you have so much Asian pride but you're just out here killing other Asians so and then there there was beef with Mexicans or whatever little bit but that wasn't the main enemy the main enemy was you're like ████ asian brothers and ████ like from other groups that's what blew my mind I mean certain areas it was me it was like you know certain gangs were really like on that kill Asian type of thing but for the most part yeah which I was saying is great yeah because when you saw um like Mexican thugs or or black you didn't really hit them up they you they were just invisible they're like they're just doing their thing we're doing our thing and when you see an Asian kid with Cortez's on it was on yeah right remember oh yeah yeah you have Cortez is
15:15 okay like what's crazy it's like when you see it take them off bro it's weird how you like you like form friendships because you're like oh he's 18th Street that's cool but then it's like wait shouldn't it be like if it was about your race it would be like no no 18th Street's not cool no mas is not cool but it's like you have all these Asian gangs being cool with all these other Hispanic gangs but then it's just Asians fighting Asians and the Hispanics fighting Hispanics too man but I think that was really something about the SUV in general the dynamic is like all hoods if you notice in our era didn't get along nobody was cool like whoever the Mexican hoods like they all beefed it with each other and then even Asian hoods too like no I mean dubs were not cool with it even doves within dubs were not yeah it's called said tripping we was said trip and stuff like it's it was crazy
16:05 bro and now it's like people are all like you know Long Beach is like there's like a lot of clicks where they click up and then they go against people or they go with blacks and go against whoever it was never like that in the same game you know yeah but I feel like gang banging was our generation because before that they were just doing Mafia stuff yeah that's right and then our generation wanted to be cooler so I saw the transition from Asians dressing like GQ and Hong Kong style and more like like Mafia style to like looking like cholos and street thugs and and like our generation adopted that they did away with the Dilo Silo system like the you know because there were Chinese gangs that were starting to recruit multiculturally like by my generation it
16:55 was mostly Japanese Chinese and cambodians in in my group and then and then so they weren't even honoring the Cantonese system and then we started changing the names we started using words like oh that's my OG and then so I think that's where kind of yeah yeah for sure and then they weren't doing the the hitting up and like game like they were pulling up on people saying where you from like they're trying to stay low-key do the extortion stuff and or you know like they're doing that stuff I mean they would get tats but it would it wouldn't be like me well I would they would just look at me like you're dumb you know blasted and like big old Target on your back they get mad because they had like dragons and stuff like Yakuza style under the suit yeah it's in the shape of only a t-shirt so the T-shirt
17:45 what do you think of uh what do you think of the responsive we always wondered about this but like when you see certain chinatowns and certain like Asian communities in California when there's attacks and there's elderly people getting hurt uh a popular response to that from our generations to be like oh man when if Asian gangs were active it wouldn't happen as easily do you think that's true I think um I think so in certain areas honestly because although we fought a lot like kind of Joe was mentioning I had a lot of issues with Hispanics when I was growing up just in my area and um a lot of the work we put in kind of made them realize that we can't do this to these people you know what I mean like even though we we fought each other as well but it kind of set the trend that like okay we can't beat up on grandmas and Rob you know what I mean
18:35 and that kind of set the tone for for them you know and I feel like it's the same way like if there was let's say that like Our Generations they just went back to that and it was like in Oakland or whatever I don't think they would be that yeah like you know what I mean like I think we would band together and actually you know do something about it but again we also it's it's hard to say that because I could play the other side of the fence too like we also would do home invasion robberies on ourselves like so it's it's really hard to say but personally like from just speaking from my my experience the type of person that I am that's how I would I would what people don't know about that era is like if they didn't recognize you in the neighborhood and you're just walking around with a basketball just minding your own business three four guys are
19:25 going to walk up to you and ask you where you're from and stuff and if you're not from that area they don't recognize you some even if you say like I'm not a gangster whatever don't just beat you for fun so that was why people just stayed in their own communities like people didn't go out and I think that was Chinatown like I remember Chinatown was like actually they had gangs but they were hidden like they were like chilling and then like if someone caused the Ruckus out of shop an old man would pop out and he's armed or like whatever yeah yeah but like now it's not like that it's just a safe tourist place and security guards or a bunch of kids that come out and jump the ████ out of whatever is causing trouble yeah yeah but it's not like that no more that's another uh another question that we kind of run into a lot as well as like since you still live in this area
20:17 um we were talking about how back in the day it was like you couldn't I can't remember being able to just walk around and pass a group of other Asians that I didn't know without them ████ with me in some way like they would just I just wanted to get some boba dude yeah they would just have something to say like no matter what yeah but like and I was trying to ask some young people that live in the sgv now like does that happen to you and some of them say yeah like that happens but then what that they're still Asian gangs yeah some of them say that that's not even gangs it's just people like bowling not even yeah they're not they're not banging banging or anything they're just like you know just to punk them but like I don't I don't see that really anymore yeah yeah I don't see that back then yeah like you said it you would have to like walk around like we would fight like even when like kids would fight
21:07 when they're not even from gangs yeah people would just roll up on them like I've seen kids who would go to like like Alhambra high school or something and they would just get beat up like on on Third Street or whatever and they're not even gang members they play basketball yeah you know like and so yeah I but I don't see that honestly I don't see that around I don't even hear that really happening like that yeah maybe it's more of like a school thing or like a yeah there were even non-gangsters that loved just fist fight yeah exactly like they would go to different schools just to look for someone a fist fight with yeah it was a I just think it was a different time with like more aggression because now people bring it back yeah it's not just that too I remember like when meth hit like there was a point where I don't know if you guys remember that but every they would have like groups of people and just like passing
21:59 pookies around you know and they were and that really messed up a lot it cracked out a lot of people it made Armani the way that it was you know what I mean like and it just everyone was just crazy after that because they were actually basically come either on the come down or you know or like that so people don't realize that but that that hit the SUV hard I didn't think about that um damn dude that's crazy um one thing you know is just talking to you just feels like a different life but it's just all these emotions and memories coming back but I think um you might relate with this but like when you get out or like just when people are looking at you and you're at a cafe I used to get those feelings of like who are they what do they want but did they come up to you and say can I get a picture because I saw you on
22:49 Spotify it happens all the time right yeah that was you know where JJ's is at right me and him would be eating and it was like a group of Asian thugs with like tatted down they got the ████ rat tails they're whispering and ████ they keep looking at us and we're like yo I don't know who those ████ guys are I don't recognize them man I think they're we're gonna get down dude I just want to go to elac and ████ bro I don't want to fight no more and then we we get up and we're like and we're about to leave right and they're like hey and we're like hey what's up another light are you guys that that Uncle Sam Uncle Jim and I'm like oh they're fans they're just remember that dude bro do you get do you get that kind of feeling still yeah oh man I don't get
23:40 scared you know you have like we're observing naturally living that lifestyle so I'll see people stare at me like Double Take and I'm like please God no it's gonna be like you know what I mean today there's like a layer of I think like PTSD that doesn't go away at the show yeah can I have a photo yeah they're like are you here are you a Johnny yeah I'm like I sometimes I just want to ████ with them like no okay now my homie who doesn't look like me like that's Johnny right there foreign
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