Piece by Piece Page #5

because now that your out on the

street you know you have to get up quick

it made people go back to their

straight letters

if the city was smart, at that point

they probably would have left it cause

it would have kept the problem to

a minimum

but you know they don't always

see these things. ha-ha.

this is Psycho City today, there's

nothing left,

it's a vacant parking lot

you can actually go to the wall

and chip away at it

you can reveal the history that lies

hidden in there.

it's sad in away thousands of

layers of stores gone

white washed forever.

Rest in pieces.

With the closure of psycho city SF

became a playground for illegal works

what is commonly referred to as

bombing.

TMF had slowed down TWS l think had

called it quits who else was painting.

It really got to that point that when

psycho city was closed

it was all about finding the ill spot

it has nothing to do with how fresh

you are how dope your styles is

or how many styles you have

running.

its you make one throw up and you

just get it up everywhere in town.

Twist throw-ups everywhere Jase

throw-ups everywhere

this whole city got pretty crushed

during 93 and I think most of 94.

there where kinda more the

taggers, taggin you know.

twist was capable obviously of

doing what ever he wanted really,

but thatw as just what he chose to

do.

Yeah they definitely set it off for a

lot of kids.

I remember one time when l was 15 or

something I was in an abandon building downtown

cause I ran away from home or

whatever got kicked out ofthe house,

and that night when I was

sleeping there Kr and Twist came

and I watched them do the throw

- ups on the fire escape at 6th and Howard.

Kr brought "Krink" to San

Francisco and him and twist

where like the ones wrecking sh*t

with mop tags.

and when we started seeing Kr and Shok

and you know we new twist the whole time

but he was bombing with them and these

guys where going all over the place

doing these beautiful throw-ups

you know it really inspired us.

I think that you know I was just

coming from New York

that was just the kind of graffiti

that I knew at the time.

I mean throw-ups, caught tags, hit spots,

and that's just how your supposed to do it

you like graffiti?

ahhh, so-so

depends on what it is right?

yeah if it's artwork then it's cool,

you know.

Man I saw something really cool once,

there's some guy who does like a horse...

oh that's a girl. Reminisce that's

her name.

I remember walking around a

corner and just seeing this

horse grazing in the middle of

some street in the tender loin.

Going what the f*** is this?

its like a throw up its like 2 colors you

got your white your black, but its a horse.

And I was like yo this is bugged

out

cause it's like a throw up but its

not it's a character.

back in the daythe big difference

was people like twist and reminisce

where really focused on the imagery of

symbols and what not the screws the faces

and horses and there was other

people doing similar stuff

ratherthen focusing strictly on

letters.

there's a lot of people painting

sort of off beat stuff.

I was interested in that kind of

style.

Back in 1989 San Francisco was struck

by a major earthquake an obvious tragedy

with the loss of life and demolition

of buildings

but at the same time it opened up

vacant foundations,

which would become writer's

subterranean art galleries.

people just started taking it to the pits where

they where building all these new buildings

and the area around what is now

Pac Bell Parkwas being bombed.

I mean it was destroyed at the time

cause they knocked down so many buildings

you would have thought that parts

of it looked like the south Bronx.

And like the pits where really like

the place you'd go to see

the galleries and like where it's

really at.

A vacant lot won't sit for more than a week before

it's filled in and there's a building there where

as before the same sort of little pit

yards and stuff would run forever

I started doing a bunch of pits around town like

pits where they where aboutto do construction

on and stuff but those things

would run a long time

so we started doing pits just because

I could do a pit basically an hour

or two after it got dark I could

paint and be f***ing done with a piece

by like 11 or 12 at night and go

home.

the biggest change in bay area

graffiti is that there are not

that many kids from the bay area

doing it.

A lot of people have moved to the

bay area form various other places

and I mean it's not the hardest

place to paint in

then in my day when we where coming

up there where a lot more people

coming in the city filtering in people

form out of town trying to represent

Bless camethere, Jase,

Giant, Some, Cycle, Felon, Sope,

San Francisco has had a lot of

influence from other people

its a small city so people come there

they do sh*t and everyone sees it

so it kinda of expands that little

gene pool.

at that time 93 is what really got

me to want to move to San Francisco.

San Francisco was really dope then. Then

I moved up there in 95 when I was 18.

And coming up here when I first got here

I saw a lot of creative people doing things

that I had never really seen or l didn't

think would be accepted in graffiti.

I was in San Francisco for graduated

school academy Art College downtown

I came here cause of skate

boarding at first cause embarcadero.

I wanted to goto a big city and

f***in really rock sh*t.

It's almost like San Francisco

history in general

there has always been so many influences

coming here and once they leave

something here it becomes San Francisco

so its like a microcosm for that.

a lot of people want to call this

vandalism.

Vandalism is throwing a brick though a window

this is a study it's a craft it's a science.

Every piece has a structure to it

has a form.

It's got movement, it's got colors

it's got a flow

it's got arrows, bits little do dads

here and there.

These are the elements that make

up a piece

but to have style is a whole

'nother ball game.

to me having style means you have

your certain esthetic or your certain

type of graffiti that you work on

and try to perfect.

When people look at your stuff

they can identify it as yours

even if you write a different name

or something else

they'll know you did it cause they

know your style.

to have style means a lot man it

goes a long way in this game.

and id say our style is based on funk, traditional

funk but everyone has their own interpretation of it.

Check bizzaro and dug their styles

or twist tags,

they just have this style and this flow

and they're beautiful and very precise

but they're still very readable and

almost simple in a sense.

Each person in our crew has their

own individual style.

The burners developed and developed and every

one had a burner style it was a great time

I mean if you, look around there's letters

everywhere there's letters on anything and everything

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