My friend Dito was one of those dudes you meet and just hit it off with. There was a distinct air of arrogance about him, something you couldn’t help but pick up on. It was the result of him being the only child of rich parents who spoiled his ass rotten, but he was one of those rare individuals who always seemed to be enjoying life more than the rest of us. He was quick with a smile and a joke and filled the room with laughter. He never took anything too seriously and was always up for a good time, so people made allowances.
His Calvin Klein model good looks and chiseled body, combined with an unshakable confidence in himself, was a powerful magnet that drew the attention of women left and right, making Dito a coveted running partner for nights on the town. Tales of our libertine exploits in the early 1990s approached legendary status among our small circle of friends.
One of our earliest and scariest adventures, I recall, went down on a Saturday night. We were out barhopping and wound up at The Holy Cow, a no-cover dance club in the South of Market (SOMA) district of San Francisco. We started the night running the streets with a dozen cohorts, but well before midnight, it was down to just me and Dito, as per usual.
Her scrappy sawed-off boyfriend, the one with prison tattoos on his neck, pulled out a knife. I instinctively lifted my fists, ready to go out swinging. Dito snapped into a martial arts fighting stance, “Let’s go, assholes.”
The Cow was at capacity, and the resident DJ was killing it, reading the room perfectly. As I made my way back to the bar to grab the next round of drinks, some random asshole shoved me hard from behind. I spun around to find five cholos clocking me hard. I had no idea why they zeroed in on me, but I wasn’t looking for a fight. I figured I’d ignore them, and they’d lose interest.
When I leaned over and gave the bartender my order, he said, “Listen, after I get your drinks, I want you to walk back by that group. If they so much as touch you, I’m going to have security toss them out of here.”
I agreed to do it because I had to walk past them anyway to get back to the dance floor. I had a good buzz going and didn’t think it through. If I had, I would have realized that this was only going to make things worse.
The one who shoved me and gave me the stinkeye a few minutes earlier allowed me to pass by without incident. He had serious anger issues, but he wasn’t stupid. He and his friends saw the bartender say something to me and then glance over at them. They didn’t need to read lips to know they were being set up.
About two hours went by, and I had forgotten all about the drama that went down. It was getting close to last call, and I glanced over at the bar to see how crowded it was. I was taken aback when I noticed the five gang-bangers huddled in a far corner, along with two cholas, staring directly at me with violent intent in their eyes.
As I tried to come up with some sort of game plan in my head, I watched them pull their jackets on and cut out of the front door, eyeing me the whole time. I pulled Dito aside and told him what had been going down.
“Don’t worry about it. They ain’t gonna do shit,” he said in his usual nonchalant manner, which did nothing to alleviate my sense of impending doom.
The girls we had been dancing with left just as they had arrived; in a large group. We tossed their phone numbers in a trashcan and polished off our drinks. We wound up being the last stragglers out of the club.
The door swung shut and locked hard behind us. We found ourselves standing on the sidewalk without a soul in sight. I pulled out a pack of smokes and offered one to Dito, but he declined. I lit one up, and we started our long hike back to my car.
“Hey, white boy!” a voice rang out from the shadows.
“Is this fucking happening?” I said to Dito.
“It’s going down, dude,” he responded. “Hope you’re ready.”
We stopped in our tracks and turned around. The gang swarmed up on us like hornets, attempting to get us surrounded, but we kept backing up so no one could get behind us. I felt myself slowly slipping into a panic, ready to make a break and try to outrun them.
I looked over at Dito. He wasn’t scared at all. I tried my best to steel myself.
“They’re fuckin’ scared! Look at these punk-ass bitches,” the prettier of the two cholas sneered. I was thinking, oh fuck, they know I’m scared… I’m dead.
“Kill these putos!” the bitch screeched loudly, then started cackling like a crazy old witch. I got the distinct impression that this little group might have done some evil shit in the not-too-distant past.
Her scrappy sawed-off boyfriend, the one with prison tattoos on his neck, pulled out a sizable knife. I instinctively lifted my fists, ready to go out swinging. Dito snapped into a martial arts fighting stance, “Let’s go, assholes,” he said, looking each of them in the eye for half-a-second, as if he was locking targets on them.
“You’re gonna need more than that blade to stop me from stomping your heads into this sidewalk,” Dito announced. “And I’m gonna enjoy doing it!”
I was about the same age my dad was when he got murdered with a knife in San Francisco on a Saturday night, and I was having a hard time not believing that a similar fate was now closing in on me.
I prepared myself mentally for the real possibility that I was gonna die on a Saturday night, South of Market. I was unaware at the time that Dito had a 3rd degree black belt in Karate. I remember thinking that he was taking his over-the-top cockiness to an entirely new level and that it was going to get us killed.
The cholo with the knife squared off with Dito, tossing the blade from hand to hand like he had watched too many knife fights in movies. They danced side to side once, then twice, and then Dito spun and kicked, just missing an attempt to knock the knife out of his dance partner’s hand.
Dito locked back in a fighting stance and warned, “If I get that knife out of your hand, you’re dead meat, you little bitch.”
I tried hard not to show how terrified I was, but I didn’t think it was working. I was about the same age my dad was when he got murdered with a knife in San Francisco on a Saturday night, and I was having a hard time not believing that a similar fate was now closing in on me.
Dito addressed our other assailants, “I’ll take you on one at a time or all at once; it’s up to you.”
“Fuck these maricóns!” the 6-foot-something cholo said, “I’m bored with this shit. Can we go now?”
“No way, we ain’t tuckin' tail and runnin'! Let’s kill these fuckers!” the instigating chola taunted. “There are seven of us, and only two of them!”
“Shut the fuck up, puta!” her knife-wielding boyfriend yelled at her, and just like that; she promptly shut the fuck up.
The guy turned and gave me the evil eye, then said slowly and deliberately, as if he was putting some sort of black magic hex on me, “¡Me cago en tu puta madre!”
And with that, he folded up his knife and they all turned and walked away.
I don’t know what spooked them, but I was impressed by their lack of commitment; they obviously weren’t team players. If they had rushed us all at once, we would have been finished. I thanked our dumb luck.
As we resumed our trek back to my car, I confessed to Dito, “You know what, it’s scary; not too long ago, I was thinking about always carrying my gun on me.”
“What’s so scary about that?”
“If I was packing, I would have shot those fuckers. They’d all be dead right now.”
“And it would have been self-defense,” Dito said.
“No. I would have done it long before the knife came out,” I confessed. “I would have taken those scumbags into the alley, lined them up, and executed them, one after another.”
“Yeah,” he said, adding a short dramatic pause, “maybe you should leave conflict resolution to me.”
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking." - Amazon review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!" - Amazon review