"Tales From Bradley's Nite Club"

                          "The Night Bullets Flew at Bradley's"
  
By kiki

 One night back in the late '50s, I and some friends were at Bradley's Nite Club on Whittier Blvd in East Los Angeles, having drinks and listening to live music. As couples were swaying to the slow romantic music, a guy walked in and went straight to a couple dancing cheek to cheek. He yanked the girl away from her dancing partner's arms, pulled a gun, and proceeded to shoot the dancing fool. As we drove for cover under the tables, we noticed the dancing fool looking at his right hand, which was bleeding. But he was not going to go down easy. Bleeding as he was, he grabbed the gun away from the shooter and shot him in the arm; he then dropped the weapon on the dance floor. Now the first shooter noticed he, too, was bleeding. They both looked at each other, then bolted to the front door leaving the girl and gun on the dance floor. We flew too, after them, to see what they were going to do next or where they were going. They ran, we ran! Half a block west to the corner of Whittier Blvd. and Arizona Ave. They turned south on Arizona, ran across the avenue, and entered the Angelus Emergency Hospital! With the cowboys having their wounds attended to, we went back to Bradley's to find the girl dancing with some other fool. 

                              
                                                 Part II

                                           "Chingaderas"

A friend, Coy, and I were at Bradley's Nite Club on Whittier Blvd in East Los Angeles one winter night circa 1960. We were sitting at a table nursing our drinks because we were broke. And sitting at the following table was a couple that seemed madly in love. Around midnight a guy walked in and made a beeline to the couple's table; he exchanged words with the woman, words her Lover didn't take kindly to. The Lover then jumped up and said something to the guy; the guy then told the guy who was madly in love, "that's my wife you're with, but sit down, Sancho, I don't fight over chingadera's" (trash). At that, people that overheard him call his wife a "chingadera" stood up and gave him a standing ovation. Coy and I were standing up too, and I thought I heard Coy saying, "hear, hear!"