why freights?

hi to everyone. i'm new to this board and i'm not from the states as ya'll can see....i have a question for everyone.

i've visited a lot of graff sites form the states and it turns out that more than 80% of the train pieces are done on freights.

aren't they a bit unsuitable for painting? i mean, all the doors and locks and stairs and bars and shit........a nice smooth commuter is way better! and more people see it because it actually stops in the train stations...

i painted a couple of freights when i was younger but got sick of them almost immediately, it really annoys me having to paint these ugly cars painted in ugly rusty colors and, mostly, all full of bumps.

so i was just asking myself why people love freights in the us....i don't think it's because they're safer to paint (because of cops or other hazards), seen the stories some people have written on this board.

it's obviously not because of the surface, which mostly sucks.

so is it because commuters get buffed and freights don't? or is it considered more cool or something?

peace to everyone.

i bumped up a discussion on this topic....

i'll add that i paint freights way more often (than commuters) because they don't get buffed like commuter trains, which rarely run painted...

and it only takes a brief period of painting before the ridges, rust and doors become second nature..i don't mind goin right over the bars

after all, its spray paint, and very easy to use for this purpose..

i like to do throwups on the doors actually...

and sometimes a rusted out metal background looks pretty fuckin cool behind a piece...some of the rusted cars are the best ones for me..

... there are also plenty of freight cars with smooth unridged panels...as well as holy rollers, which have holes, but no ridges..

aaaaaaaaaah freights...

caught rolling, sitting in the middle of nowhere, or next to a highway..paintable in groups or solo..available during a wide variety of times and infrequently buffed..

^ I think that about sums it up..Plus the feeling of a cold car on a cool night..and the sound of gravel under your feet as you carefully approach the line.haha..The feeling of rust flakes flying on your face...wonderful..

roach approach!;)

not to mention not every place here has "commuter trains" ....i find it odd that 2 females replied to this first...wanna make out?:crazy:

1. freights travel all over united states, and canada and mexico

2.not all freights have locks and doors and bars and if thats gonna stop you from painting, your a pussy with no can control

3. they dont get buffed

so that means when your dead your stuff is still gonna be running

4.when freights are rolling at a R.R crossing people in there cars have no choice but to look at the freights

about those euro trains i think there cool and shit and i give you guys props for hitting those but dont they get buffed like the next day?

even if it does run for a day or 2 and people see it in the station only those few people on that day will see it.

unless your painting for flick purposes thats a waste of paint if you ask me,

but thats my opinion , do your thing and ill do mine

drug

where are you at in italy?

drop me an email we should talk heroin183@hotmail.com im in italy as well. you can probably guess the location.

commuters here are great.

all at once children:

"dead horse"

Are2 got it right.

damn silloette got me feeling all nostalgic

;)

well i suppose you guys have a totally different poetic in doing trains am i right? you did kinda strike me......reading what you wrote it all seems more fascinating than i thought. and i don't want you to think i'm dissin, i'm just exploring other mentalities about graff and that's always a positive thing.

but.....

1 ok they travel but so do commuters

2 my can control is fine, thanks, but i find it really annoying when you can see the piece properly only from the front and with bars and all you can't really paint so smoothly as on a nice, clean, perfectly flat white train.

3 yeah i hate it that they get buffed after a few days/weeks but that's how it goes. to have your name up you have to strike a lot of metal: only then people will see your stuff.

4 i don't know about yards in the us, but if you ask me here freight yards are really too smooth.....i mean if you wanna paint freights there's no thrill, no challenge.....it's like painting a legal wall in most places. plus maybe you have no light and there's also a chance that you find mobbers or shit in the yard.

i mean i think there's no taste in painting a train-even wildstyle-and taking like an hour or more to do it. THAT means you're a pussy with no can control, i think-no?

there are some decent freight cars here in italy, the long smooth ones, but few people paint 'em because of there reasons mostly. plus, i dunno, commuters here are so damn beautiful and perfect for graff! they seem to say "paint me". perfect surface, perfect height, perfect colors. what more can i say......it's a different way of conceiving the whole train affair but it's cool to see what other people have to say bout it.

good freighting everyone

heroin you from naples by any chance?

freight trains are sexy

1. I've never been to italy but do the fr8's stick to italy's borders? Do the commuters? I would think that if you did a fr8 you'd have a much better chance if it going to southeast asia than a commuter.

2. I like the delayed payoff of a ridged car as it rolls by. you can see this splotch of color down the line and you get geeked and your camera cocked and it's just more fun when it finally all comes together. but then again I'm easily amused.

3. think, if over the years, you did 400 burners on italian fr8 cars. your guy did 500 burners on commuters, and now you have 400 maybe 385 peices running, and your boy has 1 he did this week. Who wins? I suppose its argumentitive. I guarantee that any kid who moves there or comes up after your boy falls off ain't gonna know he even existed. you on the otherhand obviously put in work.

4. fr8 painting is less stressful. I totally agree. Some people have to deal with probably as much shit as you do though, there's thousands of different yards all with their own level of security. I get a thrill when I'm on vacation with my parents 300 miles away from home and I see something I did and can't tell them. Or when you actually get chased out by yard workers, or when a skunk creeps up on you, or a bum that lives right next to your chillest layup comes at you with a machete for blowing up his spot, or your so drunk you consider taking a nap on the tracks infront of your peice-- not thrilling really but it's a beautiful thing that it's possible.

"i mean i think there's no taste in painting a train-even wildstyle-and taking like an hour or more to do it. THAT means you're a pussy with no can control, i think-no?"

I ain't mad at cha but you've just called every wall writer WORSE than a pussy with no can control.., and all the while you bitch about all the bumps and ridges.

on second thought, go fuck a salami.

na im not from naples, im a couple hours north in roma. where ar eyou at? i know what you are trying to say. the layups where i do commuters is just perfect,perfect height, pefrect surface, just beautiful, and commuters here run for quite some time it seems, well maybe more on the maroon cars, but even the teal fs trains run for quite sometime. unless you do a euro star like my drunken friends... and frieght yards here you have to watch for albanians too, i hate running into them in yards. acually there were some sleeping in the commuters we did last time. haha.

hot me off with an email.

Differnt mentality, whether your in Rome or Naples shit runs , in the States nothing runs so theres the alternative which is freights..In London no tubes hardly ever run, it`s clean , but we stiill do tubes cos it`s a subway and you got a flick, and plus you sometimes get them to run cos they have to run em to the buffer..peace..

It's been said before, but I'll say it again myself: It's not just the fact that freights run in the US, it's also the distance and places they can potentially go. A freight I could've painted in Los Angeles a year ago could be in New York now, Toronto a week later...Mexico City in a year...and then maybe even back to my own city again. You never know. North America is a huge continent, and my trains here have gone to some places I'm sure I'll never get to go. That's pretty cool if you ask me.

drug, move to the midwest or southern us and tell me how often you see commuters rolling around...the united states is a big place, people are more likely to see your freights, rather than passenger/commuter trains...

sure okay.......i get what ya'll are sayin.......and cheesecurd you know that i meant anyone that takes (blablabla) to paint a TRAIN. or any train piece that's not a oneman wholecar.

but i know people here who can do the craziest shit in half an hour in the best guarded yard in my town even though all the trouble they go through is "useless" when, a few weeks later, the train gets buffed.

yet people keep fighting this war with the buffers and for the moment we're winning cos no matter how much they buff we're still up. it's an illogical war but i like it.....

as for the piece you got the flick and sincerely even if they buff my piece.....yeah, it's sad and all, but what the fuck i had fun and i screwed them cops in the ass again!!!! i paint because i like to......if i have fun i won't regret it.

......it's the atmosphere....the thrill.......the beauty of the trains that attracts me....

i did a wholecar on a freight train a few years ago...i liked it because it was parked next to the street, which added a bit of thrill to something which would have been boring since here in italy freight yards are guarded really badly.

peace. i shall go fuck a salami now.

Originally posted by drug

i shall go fuck a salami now.

uh, do you mean go fuck up a salami?!

aaaahahhahaha lol

Dead horse...rib cage caved in, blood dried to a sticky brown, yet still the blows rain down.

Although this guy's attitude is better than most of the euro folks who come on here and diss freights right off, so maybe I'll answer his question yet again...later.

i think this needs to be moved to faq or something.

Why freights?

I think a European writer whose focus is transit would have to live for a long time in the US to understand North American freights and their current appeal to US writers over the formerly preferred subways.

There are several cautions. One is that it's not unanimous over here: there are US writers who don't care for freights. Many of them are from New York, where the love was obviously the subways, and then street bombing once the subway era ended (and there's the stubborn few who still risk absurd penalties to hit a NY subway once in a while, for the flick and the nostalgia; they often buff it themselves after the flick to save the threat of jail time that the vandal squad will certainly pursue). Many of these writers hold on to the idea that graffiti is an essentially urban expression, and the idea of kids hitting freight cars out in the sticks is alien to them.

The other caution is that I've talked to US writers who love freights, but when they tried Euro freights they were like "these things suck". And that is the starting point to our argument: the huge differences between the Euro and North American freight AND passenger systems.

I'm not qualified to describe Euro passenger or freight systems in any detail. But you guys know them so compare what you know to what I'm describing as ours and see if the differences make any sense.

First, let's take care of the US passenger system. There really isn't one, but the closest thing we have is Amtrak. These are hard to hit passenger trains that run from some cities to some other cities. They get buffed quickly. They also don't have a European passenger flavor because of the differences in our geography: population density. Huge tracts of the US are just rural nothing, with the densest populations on the east and west coasts and concentrated in scattered cities with sprawling suburbs. Air travel is far more popular than train travel, especially for long distances, and Amtrak is a money-losing dinosaur dogged by passenger complaints, derailments, and derision. Taking the train, unfortunately, is considered almost a second-class travel option by the hyper-rushed American traveler. (There has been a slight spark of revival for train travel after 9/11 fucked up smooth air travel and some travelers' psyches, but it's not an earth-shaking trend.) Passenger trains just aren't an important part of American life: most would rather drive or fly. From what I understand this is a big difference from the European setup, where a lot of small countries close together make trains more logical and popular ways to move people.

On to the regional or "commuter" trains. These are the smaller train systems that ferry passengers in and out of a particular city to its suburbs. They vary by city, and not all cities have them. In general they're hard to hit and get buffed fast, and they'll never get to any other city than yours.

Finally the subways: again, they vary by city, but most are ridiculously locked down, and the buff is in terms of hours, not days. Vandal squads in each city are ready to document every name that appears and match them to writers busted elsewhere, and penalties are beyond absurd.

Now let's compare freight systems. We need to have a US history lesson: this country was built around railroads. The pioneer westward movement, Manifest Destiny, whatever you want to call it, is tied to the laying of track: moving supplies forward into unsettled territory, and shipping newfound resources back east to established cities. Cities were born based on where the tracks were laid; towns died if the railroad changed their mind about running a line through that town. Time zones were born out of a need to have everyone's watches synchronized, so trains wouldn't crash head-on because one engineer's watch was fifteen minutes slow. To this day, old-timers in the freight railroad business do not use the terms "north" or "south" to describe the direction a train is traveling - that's how entrenched the east-west mentality was. A Chicago to St. Louis train, despite traveling almost due south, would be described as a westbound train. Freight railroads were among the first big corporations, with a history of environmental, financial, and human rights abuses. They made the map that is the US today.

There's nothing like this in Europe: there was an enormous and rich history of the continent way before railroading, so freight trains have no character there like they do here. Try to picture most European history erased up until a mere 200-300 years ago, and then hordes of Asians suddenly saying "Hey, there's cool stuff west of us", and spreading out, clashing with a scattered population of natives, digging for gold and drilling for oil, and a company like IG Farben laying rails, laying waste, and dictating the pace.

What does all this have to do with today's graffiti? The US (and indeed North American) freight system is everything the passenger system is not: a comprehensive coast-to-coast network where railcar shipments can originate in any town with rail and end up in any town with rail - often using the same tracks that host the feeble Amtrak and regional commuter lines. Over 1,700,000 freightcars of mixed types and ownership are constantly sent to and fro, some sticking to predetermined routes, but most of them could turn up ANYWHERE, ANYTIME - California, Canada, New York, Florida, Mexico, Texas and everywhere in beween. Certain cars - Union Pacific, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Boston and Maine, any of hundreds of railroads large and small - have a particular color scheme and logo, and dedicated freight heads try to represent on a good variety of cars, which almost have their own personalities.

I want to expand on this last point a bit and give you Euros something to think about: the massive melting pot of car types, where they're from, and what's on them. Imagine if the passenger rail network in Europe became universalized: all different types of train cars from different countries got sent randomly all over the continent, and rarely get buffed. Let's say you're in Italy and this is what rolls into your station: a five-car train consisting of one London tube with a couple of English pieces from '99, hooked to a German wholecar a month old, next to two Rome maroon commuters (one crushed by locals from '97, the other hit while it was laid up in Copenhagen), and on the end a Polish car with nothing on it but a couple of tags...and that last car is yours to hit, if you can find where it's laying up that night, because you don't see the Polish ones very often this far south, and when you do they're usually crushed by heads you're reluctant to go over. If you hit shit long enough, and learn your different car types, you can go all-Europe, getting something on every country's lines...all without leaving your few yards and layups. THAT is a taste of the North American freight system. Granted, there's not many places where a freight runs through a crowded platform over here, but the mix of geography over here means you can paint a freight in rural Nebraska and someone may see it run in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago - all in the same year. It might park by a major highway, or in the woods, or in the yard run by some crew who originally inspired you to write, and it could come back through your town two years later with THEIR pieces on the other side (or over yours, if you're wack)!

Writers looking for a new rolling canvas after the death (or sustained coma) of the New York subways found freights to fit the bill, only over a much larger territory. You can send your pieces thousands of miles, from one ocean to another, and if they only run for a year that is considered a quick buff. With so much territory to cover, you need to crush a lot to even get noticed, so even writers with spots that are fairly easy to get over at still have their work cut out for them. Many newcomers crush their local freight cars, then find out they rarely travel far before returning, and get savvy about car types and owners and where they're based, and begin focusing on cars that get wider play. And being able to paint those bumps and ridges you're afraid of becomes a point of pride for most freight heads, although it's still refreshing to find a nice flat-sided boxcar at your spot.

Benching trains at spots where 200-car trains roll by every hour becomes an addictive pastime beyond just getting up, due to the variety of graff that can roll by, in terms of its age, celebrity status, and point of origin. (This is why you hear US heads arguing a lot about straight letters vs. wildstyles on freights. Some contend that illegible wildstyles on freights are a waste of time if you're trying to get your name known across North America, because a lot of the faraway viewers have never heard of you, and can't read your letters, so it's just a nameless blob rolling by.) A case of beer and a good view of a doubletrack mainline and you can kill an afternoon.

Why freights? You Euros talk about that rush you get seeing a passenger car run through a station, and that's on point, there's no clowning it - it was the same thrill as benching the NY subways back in the day. But what if you could see your wholecar, three years later, rolling by you a thousand miles from where you painted it? That's our rush.

thank you......that was really funny. and no diss at all....hahahhaha...especially this part..

" it really annoys me having to paint these ugly cars painted in ugly rusty colors and, mostly, all full of bumps. "

what better way to learn can control.

anyway..right on drug...commuters here get no play.

Originally posted by drug

.

aren't they a bit unsuitable for painting? i mean, all the doors and locks and stairs and bars and shit........a nice smooth commuter is way better! and more people see it because it actually stops in the train stations...

 

i painted a couple of freights when i was younger but got sick of them almost immediately, it really annoys me having to paint these ugly cars painted in ugly rusty colors and, mostly, all full of bumps.

 

so i was just asking myself why people love freights in the us....i don't think it's because they're safer to paint (because of cops or other hazards), seen the stories some people have written on this board.

it's obviously not because of the surface, which mostly sucks.

so is it because commuters get buffed and freights don't? or is it considered more cool or something?

 

peace to everyone.

The Buff is Real

Originally posted by firstclass

3. they dont get buffed

so that means when your dead your stuff is still gonna be running

not quite...fr8's do get buffed! especially tankers because of the vital emergency info that when covered, could leave some poor country town in a toxic situation if the three people who live there can't find a number to call. a lot of "mom and pop" railroads also take great pride in a clean boxcar and buff them upon return to reloading. also, some yards have paint stations that when the workers are really bored, buff shit for the hell of it while other yards have trucks that drive around to repaint numbers and info boxes some of us paint on top of. you also have to understand the dismantle aspect of freights. not all boxes can run forever, sometimes they falter and can't be fixed which leaves the parts to refurbished, and no more panels. then, you have assholes that go over your shit. i'd guess after a year about half your fr8's have been either dismantled,repainted, or dissed. you just gotta keep painting to keep em running or self promote yourself to graffiti stardom...

...but, fr8's definetly run longer than commuters...

bump for the cracked ass...shit should be required reading.

two different ballgames.

Originally posted by VAITOMANOCU

damn silloette got me feeling all nostalgic

 

;)

Hey you can always count on me to be the corny one..anytime man..haha

and thanks cracked for putting the time into that..seriously

SP Flatty - I think your guess about buff percentages is terribly pessimistic. Yes, it's unusual for stuff to run ten years with all the factors you mentioned, but I think you overstated a bit - unless all you're hitting is tankers, Wisconsin Centrals, oldpaint RBOXes, and Hydra-Cushion flats with the insulation falling out the rust holes.:beat:

hey cracked, i got a question for you regarding a car of yours I saw..

get at me,

heavensfall@aol.com

Originally posted by Cracked Ass

SP Flatty - I think your guess about buff percentages is terribly pessimistic.

yeah, i overstated some what. but i just want people to know that longevity of freights relies on longevitity in the game. kids come out and rock five hundred trains in two years and are outta here will have less trains running than they believe, but the guy who's paintin 100 a year for five years will have been slowly infecting our minds with his name, therefore our respect level will be much higher than the guy who did 500 similar pieces three years ago. anyways, i just want people to understand they're trains will slowly dissapear. just keep painting.

one of my favorite things about freights is respect. someone from buttfuck nowhere will see a panel i did and flick it then put it in their book. they wont go over it...they wont judge it based on the info they think they know. it's not like a wall....with freights there's no politics if you dont talk shit. i'm a solo writer and i've never had any problem. plus it's kinda fun to go "hey i'm in 38 different states right now. cool!" another appeal to them is the ridges. i think it's fun to try and go around everything making the piece as big and clean as possible. you wont understand if you dont live here. everyone has their thing though. bombers wont be freightheads..and freight heads wont be bombers. although some people do a lot of both...