Graffiti Massive

Been talking to some of the local hopefuls lately and they have some good questions and concerns so I figured it may be good to drop a little bit of background on the way I came up in this vocation. Cats these days don’t seem to understand the whole world of experience that is involved in the history of the game and it leads to the mess we are seeing today. The availability offered by the internet mixed with the art-school graffiti fakers that use spray paint to paint huge legal murals everywhere make it very easy for kids to become confused and thus become fakers themselves. As I have said many times, there is no denying that technical prowess is essential to climbing the ranks in the graffiti world, but making pretty pictures isn’t the only thing that makes a writer. Not even almost. So maybe a little bit of history or insight is in order. I can only give you points from my perspective, but its more than alot of the old cats are offering so read on…

I guess the best place to start is a comparison. The scene is almost a total 180 today compared to what it was when I was growing up. When I was a kid, graffiti was a street thing done by street kids. There were a few of the richer kids that took an interest and some even carried it to better heights but the majority of us were not so well off and for us, writing meant alot more. Miami in the Reagan years was a crazy place. I swear it was just like the movies sometimes. Everything we did then was the only thing that mattered. Every day was an event, every love affair was the last and the breakups were pure doom. Our fights were earth shattering and world changing events. Latin freestyle was the music of choice and every song reflected the urgency of some situation or another. Every concert, every show, every piece just everything was….everything. These days we have a throwaway society. Everything is consumable and consumed. From the music to the movies to everyday social interactions. So much is accessible to us that we have no appreciation for any of it. We still have poor people, but even they have access to most of the accommodations needed to live life.

The comparison applies to the world of graffiti just as readily as it does everything else. In a way, its a good thing. It speaks of progress and of bountiful resources. It says that our country as a whole has evolved to another level but it serves as its own curse as well. Necessity is the mother of invention. As kids, we had to be resourceful. We were limited to the colours and brands of paint that we could find locally. The markers we used were as expensive as the paint. Even scoring a blackbook was an adventure in and of itself. and these are only physical resources. Miami is a very big and spread-out city. With only a handful of people bringing graffiti there from New York, there weren’t alot of mentors to go around so most of us ended up making it up as we went. There were minimal examples to learn from like TV and movies but there were no magazines or internet to reach out and suck up the latest styles and ideas. This was the best thing in the world because every region in South Florida had its own definitive style defined by whoever happened to be the best in their region. The guy that was up the most was the guy that everyone learned from, either directly or by example. That is why you HAD to get up or you were nothing. Blackbookers weren’t even considered writers back then…not even thought of at all. We didn’t have any disdain for those cats because in our eyes they didn’t exist. There were no muralists out there using cans to make a living doing legals. I mean, we scored legal walls sometimes, even some newspaper coverage from time to time but the base was still out there in the renegade work. The climbing of fences and scaling of whatever high surface we could reach to get to those heaven spots. Sure, we ended up meeting each other in school and usually in art classes but it was all based around those street associations we made while out performing our craft.

Back to resources. I was almost 20 before I could afford a working used camera, and developing pictures? Yeah, right. This is why all those pics that actually did make it out of that era are considered sacred and there are even people that will pay good money for them! When I say there was no money, I wasn’t kidding. From this comes the concept of racking. All the books on graffiti history will tell you that racking was done for sport and is considered a rite of passage for aspiring writers. Well I beg to differ in that we only ever did that shit because we couldn’t get stuff otherwise. Today, I really don’t see any reason for it. The same kid that will go out and pay 6 or 7 bucks for a pack of Newports or whatever can easily put that into cans. Back then it was a need, today it is a question of priority. Even the lowest paying part-time job pays for 2 cans an hour. That is, if you use store-bought cans instead of the specialty stuff you can get over the internet. I submit that the real rite of passage should be to use the shittiest cans with stock caps until you can do something worth looking at with them. That would prove alot more than stealing shit you can afford to buy. Even the more ethical of us would find ways to get paint back then. I figured out pretty quick that hitting up the local rich kids to do murals on their bedroom walls was a good way to get paint for free. I even managed a way to paint a legal for community service when I got caught scribbling one night. The leftover cans from that had me stocked up for months!

Social networking meant getting around back then. Getting to know real people…..talking to them face to face(it really happened, I swear it) and it was gold for those that mastered it. When all the kids from the neighbourhood started finding jobs, the places they worked became new places to get the things we needed. If I needed food, I’d hit up the girl I knew that worked at BK, for clothes, it was any of those stores in the mall that were good enough to hire people I knew. One girl I hooked up with lifted more than 100 markers from office depot for me….just because I wanted them! This sort of networking, though sometimes criminal, is why the majority of the still-living writers and musicians from those days are very well off these days. There is no replacement for making connections in real life. Get off the internet and go talk to people.

One of the questions these kids asked me was in reference to the social world on the writer side of things. He says(and I don’t really believe him but I dunno) that someone is pretending to be him and putting up all these wack pieces and crossing people out using his tag. This led me to reflect on the difference of today’s graffiti culture on a whole new level. As some of you may know, I am a moderator of the graffiti board at a pretty popular bboy site. I like the place and I dedicate more time than is healthy to it simply because it is unique in that its based around teaching the culture to people as opposed to just showing off and fronting like the other sites. Toys and potential writers are in there daily mixing it up with those of us who are more experienced in order to learn and grow(or decide that its too much work for them). If you know me you know that I am not really one to sugarcoat what I have to say. If I think it, you get it and that’s that. I’ll clean up the mess later. You learn to be that way growing up like I did. Political correctness won’t get you anywhere, you take your respect from people because they won’t give it to you otherwise and that’s what it really all comes down to isn’t it???? Respect is and was everything. I won’t give to you if you don’t earn it and I expect it from everyone I deal with or there arises a problem. Respect is the real currency of the street and well worth fighting over. Well, the people i deal with on that site are usually pretty put off by my criticism and it chases alot of them away. The others stick up for themselves or whatever but only a few have figured out how to improve from it and persevered long enough to earn actual cred and are among the most respected authorities on art at the site now.

Its the same out here in the real world. I met a kid awhile back that swore he was dedicated and wanted to learn so i took him under. Well that lasted all the way up until he started showing the signs of another faker. Dude would bite WHOLE PIECES from the internet and post them online when he did them. This at the same time as dropping my good name to everyone who would listen and telling them I was mentoring him…All well and good, kid has to learn the ropes so I told him what was wrong with what he was doing and told him to quit acting like a toy. Problem fixed, right? WRONG. This dude has to go and continue very publicly his reputation killing ways. First, he changes his tag from the one he found on the shitty video games to one that belongs to one of the best italian writers that ever lived. I am sure he has half-assed copies of this poor guy’s shit running all over town by now. Anyway, he posts some bullshit pic (after replying to every single post I had on that forum, thus riding the fame a little more) of his internet bought cans , a fake gun and a bag of weed right there on the site that I mod. What a blessing a photo of all the shit that the wannabes and toys THINK writing is all about. When confronted with this he comes off with all the same lame excuses every toy gives when confronted with their chronic wannabe-ism and then goes on about how he sells it more than uses it etc…. So now I find that not only is this herbert ruining my good name but he’s also a drug dealing cop-magnet. It gets worse, with all this money he buys the expensive cans off the internet and runs around this small town crossing everyone out and putting his lame-ass throw-ups all over the place.

So now, the point of this running tangent. Graffiti in my day was a violent sport. Hands down, you fuck up, you get fucked up. Stupid people got bloody, even some of the good people ended up dying. The reason the toys don’t learn the right way these days is that they can’t even deal with a harsh word or two. They would rather disassociate themselves from the people that can teach them and ride the fake fame of impressing their girlfriends or their other wannabe buddies than actually put in the work to learn the needed skills to gain real respect. I remember one kid that thought i would never find out he was running around his part of town saying he was me. My crew and I asked him very nicely to stop doing that and by the time we let him out of the van I assure you he saw our side of things pretty clearly. If not, he had a 20 mile walk(limp) home to reflect on it.

You can buy a successful graffiti career in the 21st century. All you need is an internet connection and a credit card and you can get all the supplies you need as well as a whole photo album of shit to bite. These people piss me off more than anything because they are the same ones that believe graffiti is gangsta or even hiphop. I will tell you first-hand that the gang and drug scenes in Miami in the mid to late 80′s almost killed graffiti and would have if half the artists weren’t smart enough to get out of it. I promise you it took 3 good years of learning art from my life that I wish I could have back.

The bottom line is, Take your respect don’t expect it to be given to you. Hold your own and use the resources you have available to you wisely. Find a real mentor that will show you the ropes and live the pain that it takes to be a real writer, you will thank him for it in the end. Graffiti is not about gangbanging, drugs, stealing or even hiphop. It’s about writing letters on public surfaces. No matter the medium, no matter the surface. All the expensive cans in the world won’t make you any better they will just make you poorer. Learn letters, study letters, live letters and art. Draw until you are the best you’ve seen and THEN try to hit walls. When you hit the walls hit them so that there is no mistaking who did it. Do it BIG and do it EVERYWHERE. These are the things that will make you real. These are the things that will get you respect. Anything else just makes you a sucker and no one respects a wannabe.

Nuff sed………back soon