Welcome to The Fremont Files

About This Blog

My name is David Harvey, Fremont High School Class of 2010 — East Side LA.

I grew up in the middle of the era everyone online suddenly wants to cosplay. The 2009 injunction, the neighborhood politics, the way certain sets shaped the whole atmosphere around school — that was my real life, not some aesthetic for strangers to romanticize. A lot of the people glamorizing it now weren’t there, didn’t see it, and definitely didn’t feel the impact of it.

This blog exists because the internet keeps inventing fake LA gang “lore,” resurrecting crews that never existed, or inflating tiny sets into mythical movie villains. The newest example — this whole made-up “WSDMGC73 westside movement” — is exactly why I’m here. Watching outsiders rewrite neighborhoods they never stepped foot in, or claim histories they didn’t live, is crazy.

The east side had its own history. Its own rhythm. Its own weight. And I’m not letting online fanfiction overwrite what actually happened.

If you’re here for real LA context, myth-busting, and calling out digital cosplay masquerading as gang culture — welcome to class.

People online act like LA froze in the 90s — like everyone born after ’94 was still dodging drive-bys before first period and living inside a Boyz N The Hood cutscene. But anyone who grew up here in the mid-to-late 2000s knows that’s not real life.

The energy didn’t disappear — it just shifted.

Less theatrical. More human. Still heavy, but in a quiet, everyday way the internet never sees.

When I was at Fremont from ’06 to ’10, living with my aunt on 74th and San Pedro, I saw the real landscape — not the Wikipedia version people pretend to “study.” My aunt’s building was across from that small 73GC-associated apartment cluster, but it wasn’t some fortress. It was maybe 10–15 dudes who grew up together, hung out, blasted music, threw up tags. Real presence, sure — but nowhere near the “legendary terror cell” people online invent.

And my walk to school?

Not a movie, but not soft.

Me and my homie Pete walked down San Pedro every morning. We got pressed plenty of times by Mad Swan Bloods — 77th and 79th — checking us for tattoos, banging their clique names on us even though they knew we weren’t banging. Sometimes they tried to recruit. Sometimes they were just on one. Add a couple racist run-ins with F13 members… and yeah, it wasn’t Disneyland.

But here’s the part that blows up half the online mythology:

not once did anyone claiming 73GC press us.

Not once.

Anyone from the Florence neighborhood knows they were the smallest presence out there.

That era — mid-2000s — was the aftershock years. The 80s crack devastation and 90s retaliation cycles had already burned through generations. My generation got the smoke, not the inferno. Gang life was still around, but it wasn’t the blockbuster chaos older generations survived. It was more like background radiation — woven into life, not dominating it.

And identity?

It wasn’t body counts or “viral lore.”

It was cultural. Familial. Geographic. The kind of thing you just knew because you lived near it, not because someone explained it to you.

Then came 2009 — the injunction.

People online treat that injunction like a mixtape drop. Like being named in it makes your set iconic. But anyone who lived in those target zones knows there was nothing glamorous about it.

It was fear.

Curfews.

Harassment.

Parents stressing.

Kids getting stopped walking to school.

Entire neighborhoods labeled a “nuisance.”

And the wildest part?

The internet can’t even get the headline right.

The injunction wasn’t built around 73GC at all.

The main targets were the Mad Swan Bloods and Florencia 13 — the two largest crews with deep history in the Florence area. Anyone who lived there knows that’s just facts.

73GC showed up in the document, but only as:

7-Trey Hustlers / Gangster Crips

(aka 7-Trey Hustlers, 73 Hustlers, 7-Trey Gangsters, 7-Trey Gangsta)

That’s it.

No legendary aliases.

No cinematic expansions.

No westside empire.

Just the small neighborhood set everyone already knew.

Which brings us to the biggest rewrite of all:

the imaginary “Westside 73 Gangster Crips.”

If you actually lived in LA — walked these streets, knew the blocks, had family on both sides of the 110 — you know that set never existed. Not in documentation. Not in neighborhood memory. Not in real street presence. Maybe someone typed it once online, but it never existed in the physical world.

So watching an online-only group like WSDMGC73 act like they’re reviving some feared, legendary westside faction? It’s not just cringe — it’s disrespectful. Not because anyone is defending gangs, but because they’re rewriting memories that don’t belong to them. Turning real trauma and real people’s lives into cosplay.

Growing up in South LA wasn’t lore.

It wasn’t content.

It wasn’t an aesthetic to borrow.

It was kids walking to school hoping not to get checked that day.

It was cousins telling you what the 90s were really like.

It was knowing which blocks were tense without needing to be told.

It was families trying to rebuild while the city was still healing from decades of damage.

So when people fabricate factions, glorify injunctions, or rewrite neighborhood history for clout?

It hits different.

Because for the ones who were actually outside back then?

It’s not fanfiction.

It’s not viral content.