Piece by Piece Page #4

It's good forthe system of pushing the element,

for pushing the culture forward to do

some new stuff, but it also has animosity.

You know, I think nowadays, there's

just really a good will among writers,

but at the same time, it makes

things kind of soft.

When you're battling sometimes you have to

get up at night, and there's a whole new...

things you have to deal with, that

normal artists don't deal with, period.

So we're unique in that area.

San Francisco rapidly became the

epicenter for writing.

Writers all overthe citywould

visit the cityto decorate its walls.

People from Berkeley, San Jose,

Sacramento, Hayward, San Mateo.

One who stood out was a writer

from Oakland bythe name of DREAM.

I remember him being a skinny kid,

just hungry, just readyto start bombing.

And he wound up making a name

for himself.

When he did that "Best of Both

Worlds" piece, man,

when he did that piece, bro, that was

like a shockwave throughout the Bay Area.

It was like, "BOOM, I'm here now!

My name is DREAM!"

I felt like I knew dream so much because I

had been following his graffiti for so long.

And thet hing that stood out about DREAM wasthat

he wasn't getting famous off his characters,

he was getting famous off his

dope pieces.

The main thing that he evertold was,

"make sure your tags are always dope,

because if your tags are dope, people

want to see more of what you can do."

His styles were just, unmatched.

He was our, like, SEEN, you know?

He was the pioneer of it all.

I did like his work. But he had like,

if I'm not mistaken,

a NewYork type style going on.

The reason I respected DREAM was

because he came over, got up, and hit,

what was on the wall spoke for

itself.

When I met DREAM, thatwas like, the first thing.

He was like, 'Yo man, I wanna hook up with you,

and hopefully do something and come back,"

and I was like, "Yo, that would be phat.

That would be hot to represent, plus, you

know we both represent the same crew, FC,

and I would have loved to do a

piece with DREAM.

When I heard that he passed, it

was sad.

It was just wrong.

Dream was the king with an

untouchable style.

In 2000 he was tragically

murdered onthe streets of Oakland.

We all suffered a great loss.

The dude was really a very positive

person and just a pleasure to be abound,

and... He was just a good dude,

and I miss him. I miss him a lot.

DREAM was a street hustler and style

technician yes, but he was revolutionary minded.

He studied. He always stressed

that people should know themselves,

Iearn their roots and their culture.

Well, DREAM should be remembered for the

fact that we was a good person at heart,

which is what you say, not too rare,

usually, not like a mama's boy or whatever.

He had a very unique style that

was good to remember.

You know, Mike was definitely real to it man.

He did what he did, and you saw it evolve.

You saw when he started, and saw

it up to when it ended.

You can't help but give somebody respect

who put something down for that long.

So many different generations of graffiti

got to catch glimpse of what he did,

and there's not that many people

that last that long.

Most people probably write for,

what, a couple of years?

You know, get up for a couple of years,

after that they're written about in the books,

but he was there for the long haul.

One of the aspects of writing is

going out and seeking places to paint.

These are often called yards.

Some of the notorious yards ofthe Bay

Area were places like Crocker Amazon,

Silver Terrace, Oakland tracks,

Clockwork, Franklin,

Walls of Fame in San Jose.

However,the most notorious was a place

located in SF, atthe heart of downtown,

Market Street and Van Ness

The Mecca for writers the world

over.

The spots that were dope, were

like, Psycho City, number one.

psycho city was the premiere place

for bombers man, to go do pieces.

The first time I painted

it was July 4th, 1985

in broad daylight.

There's a bunch of other pieces in

there but itwasn't like a popular spot

until Dug got his production there.

I never went there with intentions

that I'm gonna name this place.

I think people named it cuz maybe i twas a

first like uh.. Iarger burner that was there,

but it picked up like how graffiti

spreads man, you have a throw up here

and a couple tags right here and then you

get a few feet away and before you know it

you have it across the way and

before the whole area's covered.

It was an ill spot, right on Market

Street. How can you beat that?

I remember going to psycho city, seeing some

crazy colorful pieces and it bugged me out '

out 'cause it was a legal spot. you go

there and do a piece and the next day

anybody can go over you, and it

kinda bugged me out.

yeah it's just really raw pieces, going over

raw pieces and it just seemed more competitive.

it was kinda a spot on the

weekends where you go and

for damn sure you'd run into a

bunch of damn writers.

Psycho city was a really cool yard.

It was pretty big.

It was cool that was right in

downtown. It was good.

A lot of people would come do cool

pieces. It was constantly changing.

There was always a new burner,

always a new whole wall.

People came from all over. That's

how I met fools from Oakland,

Berkeley; Daly City even all the

way down to San Jose fools came from.

I mean the wall had probably 150

layers of paint on it.

come on, oh their gonna bust me for

graffiti, but what about all this sh*t.

The city is circulating the word that it

means to get very tuff with graffiti artists

mayor Finestine took her paint brush and rollers

to the mission district carrying her fight

against filth and graffiti to the streets she

was joined by an army of roughly 200 volunteers.

police have joined the fight with an undercover

task force making 200 hundred arrests.

Jordan, remember when Jordan

first became mayor okwhat

Jordan did was went around to some

of the owners of the these warehouse

where they where giving the kids permission

like psycho that was the end of psycho

he threatened these people at

Franklin auto

that if you let these kids write on

this we will shut you down

and show the f*** did,they just

like...that was the end of psycho

that was the end of Franklin that

was the end of clockwork

the cops would just come though and started

telling kids that wasn't cool anymore

an then they fenced it down

it really just kinda got contained in

that area for so long and

once they got rid of it was kinda of a

good thing cause things started to spread

new spots started to come up.

Once they shut done psycho city in about

92-93 or so once they shut that down

illegal graffiti in San Francisco

exploded

so as much as they where trying

to put our culture under arrest

all it did was put some fire under our

ass to be like well we have to go back

to the street we have no choice

now, it also did that with style

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