She lived the ‘90s LA party crew scene. Now she’s making sure it’s remembered

In the '90s, Guadalupe Rosales was a teenager in Los Angeles, part of the party crew scene. She remembers it as beautiful and empowering — but that’s not what she saw years later when she searched for stories about the scene online.

“I noticed that anything that was about Latino culture, '90s culture in L.A. specifically, [focused on] gang violence, everything that was mostly criminalizing,” Rosales said.

Rosales’ new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood, is her effort to correct the absence of personal histories of people who were a key part of that scene.

The book is part historical archive, and part personal narrative. It’s also a log of her efforts to bring the scene to life for people in the 21st century, using her training as an artist and a scholar, three decades after the scene’s heyday.

Street Beat magazine documented the California party crew scene in the '90s.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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Rosales's artistic work today is in demand. Her most recent solo show was "Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo" in 2025 at the Palm Springs Art Museum. The Broad acquired a piece by Rosales that it's including in a group show titled "Has the myth been shattered" opening in November.

Her pieces are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Hammer, LACMA and others. Rosales has taught at UCLA and UC Riverside.

She brings that sensibility to the book. “I really wanted to think about something that could live on hundreds of years from now, something that could be studied, something that could feel empowering, especially for women,” she said.

A recent photo of artist and scholar Guadalupe Rosales.

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Fabian Guerrero

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is about the 1990s party crew scene in L.A.

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The party crew scene in a nutshell

The ‘90s party crew scene was a multi-faceted movement that involved mostly Latino youth in Southern California. The center of the phenomenon was the party, which could take place in small backyards or large empty warehouses.

Photos from the scene.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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The music was variations of underground techno far from the pop mainstream. DJs played and mixed records on analog turntables, from people like DJ Irene and DJ Attack.

The scene also generated a lot of business activity. Partygoers paid entrance fees, and for alcohol, party organizers paid venues to hold the party and for the DJs to keep people dancing.

It was common to go out with the same group of people. The groups came up with names for their crews, such as Chicanos With Pride, Firme Hinas, Aztek Nation, Frek Show Tribe, Hispanics Causing Panic, and Playerz Cauzin’ Pleazure, among many, many others.

It was all covered by Street Beat, an independent publication loaded with photos of party crews and parties, while individuals honed graphic design styles for the fliers used to promote each party.

Fashion was another essential component of the scene.

Photos from Street Beat magazine in 1992 show the party crew scene in Southern California.

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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection

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In the book, Rosales describes the mesmerized feeling she had when she saw her first house party. She was about 13 years old and watched the young women show off their style through the window of her house in East L.A.

“They wore tank tops and baggy pants with puffed-out front pockets or overalls. Their sneakers — Adidas or Converse Chuck Taylors,” she said. “Two of the girls wore oversized shirts that hung loosely on their frames, and they had short hair like Demi Moore in the movie Ghost. The others wore their hair longer, styled in that wet, wavy look that was so popular, half pulled up with a clip. One took out a travel-size Aqua Net hairspray and mousse, then scrunched up her hair with one hand while spraying her hair with the other.”

The style and dance moves wowed her, she said, but what captivated her then, and to this day, was these young women’s confidence in who they were. It was magnetic, pointed her in a direction she wanted to go.

A photo of Guadalupe Rosales on her 15th birthday, her quinceañera.

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Guadalupe Rosales collection

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The stories

For photos, Rosales drew on her online archive Veteranas and Rucas, (which roughly translates as “experienced ladies and broads“) which she’d kept going through the years, a repository of her own photos from the scene, and other photos from the time, largely from women. She began the project while earning an MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A photo from Guadalupe Rosales' collection of 1990s ephemera.

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Credit: Guadalupe Rosales collection

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Courtesy Penguin Random House

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The book includes CD covers from popular bands at the time, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, as well as photos of youth at protests against Prop. 187, the anti-immigrant California ballot measure.

“Youth culture exists for everyone. It might look different depending on where you live and who you are. And for us, as teenagers, we're living in that moment,” she said.

In the book Rosales connects a student walkout at her high school in Montebello with memories of her mother taking her and her sister to protests years before.

“Being an adult, working on this book, being an artist is also about reflecting back and also learning a lot of things that I wasn't aware of,” she said.

East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is published by One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House and is available Sept. 8.