Dynasty

The ABC renewed the bar's license anyway, agreeing with Jesse Jr.'s argument that he could not be held responsible for crimes in the vicinity of his business. Over the next decade, violence near 508 continued: three men wounded by bullets, one Haskell student disappearance and a drive-by shooting.

The neighborhood association continued to lobby the city commission to crack down on the bar, whose commercial zoning within a residential area is protected by a grandfather clause. In the late '90s, the city passed an ordinance singling out Los Amigos for an earlier closing time and stricter regulations on lights, parking and security. But neighborhood relations remained strained.

In 2001, Boyle told The Lawrence Journal-World that the bar attracted a "different kind of people." He was quoted as saying that Indians were the source of the problem.

Jesse Jr. accused him of racism, but Boyle told the paper that he was just stating facts: "It's not a racist deal. If they were red, white, black or yellow, it doesn't matter. If they were making these kind of problems, we'd still be mad."

Boyle now blames part of the problem on Topeka and Kansas City gang members. He also points to the Del Campos and their employees, claiming that the bar's own bouncers would "tell residents to shut up and go in their house."

"Del Campos weren't taking care of business. They were just going after the money, packing as many as they could in there and not getting them out of the neighborhood," Boyle says, recalling lingering packs of thugs and music that boomed from the bar until 4 a.m. (Lawrence bars must close by 2.) "It was kind of a letdown because the Del Campos are a North Lawrence family, and for them to be so disrespectful of the neighborhood was disappointing."

When city commission debates over the bar came to a head in 2001, Jesse Jr. changed its name from Los Amigos Saloon to Club 508 and painted the building purple.

"They were pretty mad about it," he says with a grin.

Today, Boyle says, the bar is much more tame.

Angelo says he tries to keep 508 in line — double-checking that trash is picked up, watching for underage drinkers.

"Nobody likes to live by a bar," Angelo says, looking out over three pool tables, two red-glass light fixtures and a wall of exposed limestone. "But it's definitely not as bad as it was. I used to know a lot of people who wouldn't even come in here. Like, white people."

Angelo plans to start taking business classes at Haskell this spring.

"My mom's always been pushing me to go to school," Angelo says. He plans to study business, in case he ends up taking the reins of his father's establishments.

A surly Slow Ride customer once mocked his plans, telling him, "Working in a bar is not a career, sweetheart."

This prompted Angelo to make an emotional speech about her mistake in disrespecting his father's lifetime of hard work.

"In high school, people would talk about how we were rich," he tells the Pitch. "My family works hard. That's why they have what they have. My grandma and grandpa had to work their ass off when they came here. My grandma — she's old, she still works her ass off. My grandpa is older and probably shouldn't be working. But he works."

People talked when he was in high school, and people talk now, about the root of the Del Campos' success. They whisper that Jesse Sr. runs a drug-and-weapons cartel from Mexico, that the family was under surveillance 20 years ago, that Severina's family made dirty money, that Jesse Sr. spent three years in a Mexican prison until the family paid a million-dollar bribe.

This, the Del Campos say, is the real family history.

Before it was a restaurant, La Tropicana was a bar by the same name, owned by Tomas Garcia, a North Lawrence farmer.

In the 1940s, Garcia's son-in-law, Manuel Gauna, a railroad worker, took his wife and Kansas-born children — the ones not yet grown, including Severina — to be with other family members in Mexico City.

Back in her native land, a teenage Severina met Jesus Del Campo — Jesse — at a dance. They married and had four children between 1955 and 1960: Maggie, Laura, Alma and Jesus Jr.

The next year, 1961, Severina and Jesse left Mexico to be with her siblings who had stayed in Kansas. The couple and their young children moved into the second-story apartment above La Tropicana.

"My dad had $11 in his pocket and spoke no English when they came here," says Laura, 49.

Severina and Jesse Sr. both took jobs on the other side of the Kansas River — Severina as a cook at Casa del Tacos on Massachusetts Street and Jesse Sr. down the road as a bellhop at the Eldridge Hotel.