Piece by Piece Page #2

I walk around town with my head

held high.

They don't know nothing' about

that.They don't know anything about it.

It's none oftheir business, that's

my business.

I'm a writer, a graffiti writer.

I write the Nom' de plume of my

alter ego, all over the place.

I've written on everything and

chances are

you most likely seen me

up in the streets.

I love letters

I'm a letter fiend.

I was a normal kid. Yeah

right!

I was a bit of a wild child!

I was always into something, some

kind of mischief, some kind of trouble.

I picked up on writing at an early

age though, probably fourth grade.

And ever since then I've

dedicated myself to the craft.

At first it was fun and games, and

then the addiction kinda grew.

At this point, it's kinda' like a

religion to me.

I know it might sound strange, but

it's my way of prayer.

It's like a meditation in a way, a

release.

It's a praise to the good, and

a sacrifice to the bad.

It's creative destruction really; you're

creating, and at the same time, you're destroying.

I figure I've gone this far,there's

no real reason to turn back now.

The first writing styles to influence

all of us,

were the styles ofthe Spanish

neighborhoods, known as Cholo writing.

These were neighborhood nicknames

announcing their affiliations to blocks

and certain hoods.

I came here in '82 the first time.

There was nothing New York style.

There was the local graf

from the Latin boys.

There were a lot of the Cholos

doing a lot of the taggin stuff.

Then they got into the Roman numerals.

Then after they got into the Roman numerals,

they started making their letters

bigger and their numbers bigger,

and they started putting 3Ds on it. Then

they start fading them from the bottom.

At that point, that was '81,

'82, early '83.

This style has sharp rigid lines,

usually a block-type font.

Not the graffiti we know today,

that was just a little neighborhood

oriented, kinda Cholo homeboy hit up.

I think that everyone in San

Francisco saw it,

and it's a permanently entrenched

part of California's history.

Early on, I think that the firstwriter that

we had met, out here, that was from here,

but he was already really knew what was

going on, he had been somewhat traveled,

and seen things, and under the

concept of graffiti as it is today,

and his name was Rif.

Rif, Rif, Rif, Rif was kinda my style.

The Dug, then Slim, then Bizzare;

Riftaught them all.

Picture real graffiti, then picture Cholo,

then something inthe middle. That was Rif.

Everything that Rif was doing,

that's how I wanted to be.

He would go to the store

and rack fifty cans of paint,

and I would wantto rack fifty cans of paint,

so he was definitely at that point an influence.

And his styleswere just off the

wall backthen.

We were creating a lot of stuff based on

what we thought stuff should look like,

and not really knowing, and so it was

really coming original and coming creative,

because we didn't know what was

going on.

You look back at it know, it's like,

"what the f*** were we doing,"

but at that point, it was all new.

Things began to change. Influences from

outside of the Bay Area began to appear.

There was CUBA from Baltimore,

Zepherfrom New York, bringing with

them the new aesthetic, the tag.

The purpose of thetag is getting your

signature up on as many surfaces as possible,

quickly and efficiently without

being seen or caught.

Us not having a subway system,

we focused onthe bus lines, MUNl

getting as many lines as possible.

I use to ridethe 52 line. And I use to

see these two tags on the back of the bus.

Everytime I would get on the bus,

I would say, "Damn,

there's that name again, there's that

name again, there's that name again."

We would ride on buses in Daly City,

and they would go downtown and come back,

and when they would come back, they would have

all these new names on it, in the same day.

You know, maybe a couple of

hours later.

Bus hopper styles is a totally

different style.

Frisco hand styles are infamous.

I went to Paris, and there are Frisco

hand-styles in Paris, directly from Frisco.

It's up there with Philly's

Yeah, we got our own style, and as long as

people respect that and nottryto down it,

I don't got a problem. At the same

time, stay off my block.

This isthe first cat I ever seen, destroy

the bus, ran up to the bus, told me,

"Get out of the way," he just threw

me to the side.

He just crushed the 14! He's was

the sh*t!

But what we'd use to do, we'd just find

a place where we could all get together,

and we would just go bomb buses.

The first person get in front of the

bus, and everybody just kill it.

Everything's been cleaned up. Back in

the days, every one of them was bombed,

throw ups on them, tags, the trains

back in the days were layer upon layer.

It was

as bad as New York!

I bombed your bus, b*tch!

Once I was on a 15, 3rd Street bus, and a

young man was marking with a funky marker,

they stink as well, and I told him it was

making me sick and giving me a stomach ache,

and he said, "l don't give a f***."

It's our bus, you know!

Man, we own this sh*t, man!

People say, "Oh, we hate the city," we

don't hate the city, we love the city,

this is our city. We hate the buses

though.

We hate the bus drivers.

That's why we crush, because it's

our city.

The kids who are writing on the

buses, they definitely have something

thatthey marketed as, that's their

own way of writing.

I don't always particularly agree

with the look,

but it's theirs, and they do it their

way.

This style of tag has remained a staple

in SF's history for over 20 years,

and remains a vital link to our past.

I first became aware of it in 1983

when the book "Subway Art" came out.

I didn't really think much of it, then

I saw "Style Wars" and actually recorded

it on TV

when I was in high school in '84.

In 1983, PBS nationally broadcasted a

documentary, which showcased New York's

graffiti culture to

the masses. Everyone saw it.

Now, I watched it with my brother and cousin, and

I thought that we were the only ones that seen it.

But as time goes on, I realize that, I

wasn't the only one watching that night.

VOUGE was watching that night. CRASH was watching

that night. SCHMOE was watching that night.

The things that we saw were always train

pieces, so a lot of style that we kind of

looked up to were a lot of the train

writers in New York.

We never had subway cars like NewYork,

so, we gravitated towards walls,

but walls that were off the train tracks, because

it made you feel like you were in the subway yard,

you know, even though you

weren't.

Around this time, the media began to

take notice of the hip-hop movement.

And with this, a media explosion

occurred, in the form of books, such as

"Spray Can Art," "Subway Art," movies

like "Wild Style," "Beat Street."

It took America by storm, inspiring the

craze that is now referred to as hip-hop.

I think the connection with graffiti, and

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