Hall of Fame

when they ousted Gavin you knew it was over

Too hungry for a plated photo but here's what's left of a seafood chowdah.

In light of the discussion and some really great memories posted in the Weigh In: Has the social media revolution devolved conversation? thread and because @Grassy Knowles never got around to writing up a 12ozProphet History piece, I thought I'd kick off this thread so that those that were there can share stories and photos from the earliest days. The more I talk to people, the more I hear about how impactful 12ozProphet was to some people. The laughs, the sharing of information, the friendships, etc. Obviously I've personally been on a nostalgic tip with where I'm at with everything, but really does seem to be coming full circle lately. Anyhow, before continuing to build forward, I thought it might be a good idea to start documenting the past in some form. Obviously this forum is packed with history. A lot of images are broken from that era before image storage was essentially free and we leached virtually every image posted, but there's literally discussions going back almost 20 years and its amazing to lurk through that old stuff and see a transcript of a long gone era in time. There's plenty of other threads worth checking out, including the Channel Zero...Is it making a comeback?? thread, The Where Are They Now, prelude to a 12oz Reunion Thread, as well as a recent request from original old school crew members @Europe and @diggity that have reemerged and asked about specific flix from the past. Anyhow, I'll start posting some gems from the archive, but also hoping those of you that were there, will share stories, as well as any images that relate if you have them. This thread is dedicated to Crude Oil who was an important part of all this, but no longer around. Rest In Peace to him and all the other friends and members that are no longer around to swing back through, reminisce and contribute to this next chapter. ------------------------------------- Starting with some of the oldest shots, swiped from another thread and shot by @psm026, here's the original 12ozProphet / Straight From the Bottom offices back around 1997 - 1998. Here's a couple shots of me and @psm026 when we just accepted delivery of 12ozProphet Issue #6 featuring Os Gemeos. A couple of the issues were pretty big milestones, but this one was a real turning point. It was there very first interview and the first time anyone found out about the pixacao scene in Brazil, as well as well as the amazing work of Os Gemeos outside of a very small handful of people. @Sonik3000 and @STRUGGLE INC were pivotal in both that issue and several of the others as well as a huge part of the early 12ozProphet history. Pretty insane to consider that 35,000 copies of 12ozProphet Issue #6 sold globally. It was actually the fastest issue to sell out and tipped things over to such a degree that the remaining inventory of prior issues all sold out along with it due to its popularity.

It's going to be dummy thicc and I recommend wearing it on cooler weather. I had a pair of 14.7oz I wore in the miserable Southern heat for a hot (lol) minute. Or the loose restrictions/standards especially in Italy (Prato) and the Chinese immigrants there. Yet, here I am, just copped knockoff LV monogram table mat and slides from China. China does get a bad rap because it's the shitty factories in the spotlight. Burberry moved their production to Chinese just a few short years ago. With the exception of MIJ denim (to an extent), I don't care where my designer clothes are made from. Generally speaking, that allure is long gone for me.

your mans started crying. rethink your view of that bunch of sissies.

Doing anything bad ass is definitely much more difficult with subpar or inferior equipment. Guns are no exception to that rule at all. An FN FiveSeveN is a bad ass pistol for anyone, especially a beginner that would be prone to being less accurate.

Being accurate at any distance with a pistol is not easy. Thats why pistol ranges start at 5 yards and rarely go past 15 yards. Seeing as that is a controlled environment and a static target that doesn't shoot back and people still rarely get good groups, you can imagine what it's like to actually shoot a moving target that is shooting back at you. This is why a shotgun is a great weapon. Obviously you should get real training and practice as often as you can regardless, but a shotgun will greatly improve your chances of hitting something over a pistol. Especially with the right type of ammo.

Its rare to find someone willing to sell privately to a stranger. You'd have to be an idiot to do that because when the gun gets used in a crime, it tracks back to the last record for that gun. 99% of private sales still do it through an FFL for that very reason. $10 - $20 for a transaction is a small price to pay. It also protects the buyer in case the gun was used in a crime before they bought. Again, it's a self policing system and you'd have to be an idiot to not do it. I've bought many gun privately and its always been through an FFL.

This is the truth. Now that Gavin is loose he's trolling everyone as his act of revenge. It might feel weird to be married to a Native American, have mixed kids, and be called a Nazi. Parts of this world have gone mad, but I have faith in the majority.

Reach out to me anytime you have a question about where to go with your IT career. I've been in the game for a long time now (for someone my age). I purchased a Kubota L355SS with rock rake, and a 60" shredder. I already have a nearly brand new 60" shredder so the older one will be for sale now. The only real accomplishment here is that I spent money, the cool stuff will be when I start using the front end loader to do work. I'm buying a BigTex 10ET trailer next and it won't even be able to haul the Kubota SVL75 skid steer I want to get someday.

Wow how are we not surprised that an antifa "leader" looks EXACTLY like the stereotypical incel cuck we imagined them to look like?

Needs moar arrowZ. To the face. As a superficial loser I tend to focus more on what lies above the shoulders. Let me check this midget a little closer...

smash the midget trash the man.

Vice used to be very good. Stopped watching when they exploited a mentally handicapped crackhead who shoved corncobs up his ass. Shane ruined Vice. Big head. He's a loser drunk who deserves his impending heart attacks.

Haven't etched glass in a couple years. Too much risk vs. the reward but decided to pick it up again. Anyhow, not too bad, but very tough.

Depends on where you live to some degree. But its not reeally up to a shop owner to decline the transaction, it happens once you've submitted your NICS check. Unless you specifically told him something that can be used to disqualify you, nothing should prevent you from it unless you fail the check. If that happens, you'll be given a reason and can then appeal or correct the issue unless its something that would prevent you altogether (Felony, restraining order, mental health issue, etc). As far as what to get, you can't go wrong with a decent shot gun, which is the probably the best all around gun to own. Obviously you can't conceal carry it, but its good for just about anything else. As far as a pistol, try to fire something (or better yet multiple somethings) before you decide. If you can't shoot it, at least hold it and see what fits your hand and feels comfortable. If you can shoot them, you'll likely perform better with one than another, so pick the one that you shoot best with. Generally it'll coke down to a Glock (compact or full size in 9mm), Sig Sauer (Again, likely 9mm and likely one of the striker fire versions like the P365) or possibly something like an M&P. After that, your next gun will probably be an AR. Just make sure you get training. If you don't have the time and money for training, the gun can be a larger liability than an asset.

Seven more today

Solo_weight_loss_acapella-18s2zm1ovjk51.mp4 If the thick thread had a theme song...

On my comfort day. I don’t fuck with slip ins anymore cause I feel too grown. But these special “pop cush” sole shell toes HIT! Highly recommend for all y’all old niggas. They feel amazing almost a year later. Skate well, too.

Friend hooked it up.

@jasonpitt908did you need those for court?

I'll take a well done tan with a medium rare cheeto.

Will keep this sort of brief, but was just digging through a pile of CD Roms looking for a copy of the Jesus Potato emoji file that has been a popular request over the years and found a few screen grabs some of you super OGs might appreciate. Back in the late 1990s, 12ozProphet was going through a weird phase... We'd just come off the peak of the first (original generation) of fans and hype. Issue #6 featuring Os Gemeos took things to an entirely new level and we managed to sell over 35,000 copies globally all through independent distribution. A little time had gone by since that issue and I'd been back in Miami for a couple years after college in Rhode Island. I was hanging out a ton with Crude Oil (RIP) and had developed a jaded attitude about things. Seemed like every time an issue of 12oz dropped, I got slammed from all sides by people wanting to get down, sending promo product and inviting me to events. Then 6 months would go by without a new issue (took me forever to drop new product... story of my life) and it was *crickets*. I struggled to even get people to call back, suddenly some writers were skeptical about getting down on the next issue and everything in general sort of became something akin to the lack of momentum you might experience from trying to run under water. At the same time, 1990s graffiti was reaching its pinnacle with European writers frequently flying to NYC to get down on mega murals that were happening all over. Even Brasil was popping since they'd already started going out there also after we blew the lid off the scene with the Os Gemeos issue. There were lots of caps, tons of new painting tricks and techniques being developed now that graffiti art optimized spraypaint was easily accessible. We'd helped provide a platform for all that with the 12ozProphet zines, but ever since Issue #3 with Barry McGee and from hanging out with Crude Oil, coupled with what felt like an over saturation of the graffiti scene, I sort of yearned for simpler times. So I ended up building out a concept called theVapors Project, which was intended to deconstruct graffiti back to its most simple, primal form. Likewise, it was a chance to start clean, with no baggage of expectation, which had really started to feel kind of heavy at about that time. Likewise, it was also my sort of inside joke and a subtle "fuck you" to what I felt were some fair weather friends at a lot of the big companies that sort of tried to get down with what we'd been doing, but then never really did. Guess that was some post-teenage angst I was working through or something, but the result was pretty awesome. Cody Hudson (@struggleinc) and Caleb Neelon (@Sonik3000) were rallied up and convinced to help me get that project going. Odd as it seems now, there really were no bombing zines back then at all (at least none we saw anywhere, including the magazine racks at Tower Records) and we really had a chance to evolve some of the visual direction we'd developed doing 12ozProphet. It only released as a single first issue unfortunately, but it did hit people pretty hard eventually. When it first dropped, nobody could understand why we were regressing shit like we were. Everyone was trying to do bigger and bolder style productions, literally inviting a dozen top names and showcasing the height of can control, elaborate backgrounds, photo real characters, expertly executed in a complexity of color that would have Pantone choking. But there was still no denying the simple beauty of ink drips or the talent it takes to have true handstyle. Eventually people went from scratching their heads, to criticizing what we'd done to later really giving us respect for publishing theVapors Project. We eventually upgraded the splash screen that made up the website for theVapors Project into a full site and though the 12ozProphet forum was already massively popular, also launched a simple forum system that was an early online hangout for a lot of NYC bombers just getting online. Anyhow, here's a picture of the cover and a shot of the forum I just found. Also, I'm attaching a screen shot of the design template for the index page of the site I found from before the website was actually coded. I'll try to dig up better pictures a bit later.

http://www.12ozprophet.com and the Writers forum through the years... Maybe some of the old crew can chime in, but as I recall the original forum was a single section that was straight graffiti. I'd set it up with the help of @Misk-TheDragon to stay in touch with writers from other cities that I'd met along the way. Among the most notable was @Joker who I'd met at the Tribal booth at an old ASR tradeshow. In those days long distance calls were expensive and most writers that new writers from out of town would send hand written letters via snail mail along with hard copy flix or negatives that you'd go get processed and then return. Anyhow, the internet was still fairly new and most the population still didn't even have a computer at home, ket alone several. You got online via dial up and most online conversation took place on IRC or on various BBS systems and shit like UseNET. IRC was a pain in the ass to use and I figured if I couldn't easily figure it out, most writers probably wouldn't bother. Then I came across the first forum system I'd ever seen, an old CGI based forum system that was browser based and pretty simple to use. I reached out to Joker and a few people and that was the start of the 12ozProphet forums. Very quickly I saw the potential of community and looked to create a sort of virtual writers bench on a global scale. At that time, the few graffiti websites that existed were mainly static photo archives that you couldn't really search and took a monumental amount of work to maintain. I was more interested in the networking and conversations (Still am after all these years) and so 12oz moved in a different direction by always focusing on the community aspect of it. The forum started growing and so we added sub sections for trains, walls and graffiti discussions (tips, news, etc). The core members invited friends, that in turn invited other friends and it grew from a small handful of writers to a pretty big forum. @Misk-TheDragon being the young computer genius that he was knew how to exploit Microsoft Front Page extensions and would hack some other competing sites and setup redirects so their traffic would go to 12ozprophet until the owners could figure out how to fix it, often a few hours later or maybe a day or two if we were lucky. Likewise the zine was really coming into its own by Issue #3, featuring a very early interview with Barry McGee aka Twist which also turned a lot of people onto the website and as the mailorder got bigger, that was another avenue for people to find out about the site and forum since we'd stuff each order with various flyers and other stuff. I believe 12ozProphet was one of the first companies on the East Coast selling spray caps and for a few years, we were by far the largest. Once we connected with Os Gemeos and discovered the crazy skinny caps they were using out there, the game got raised to a whole other level. We'd trade batches of 1000 NY Fat or NY Skinny caps with the twins in exchange for the stock Colorgin caps they were using, which we're thinner than NY Thins by at least half or more. On the plane ride back from the trip that led to the Os Gemeos feature in 12ozProphet Issue #6, I made up the name "micro caps" and it didnt take long for those to be the biggest thing in graffiti for the next while. We struggled to keep them in stock because whereas we had the plug to the factory for NY Thin, Fat and Rustos and literally bought them in batches of a million or more, Os Gemeos were bribing the janitor at the ColorGin factory to swipe caps at night when he mopped the factory floors. In any case, we still got requests for micro caps like half a decade after they were no longer available. Even into the era of all the Euro graffiti0centric paint companies that opened the flood gates with quality paint, in a massive spectrum of colors that were low pressure and had a library of various specialty caps available. If I'm not mistaken it was @beardo was the person to suggest we start a forum for non-graffiti discussions. Up until then members would have to add "NGC" before thread titles so everyone knew that it was "NO GRAFF CONTENT". Worked well until the forum really picked up momentum and then we started breaking the forum down into more granular subsections. Among them were "Channel Zero" inspired by Public Enemies 1988 hit song by the same name and "Static Age" which was inspired by a Misfits album that dropped about the same time (In turn inspired by a much older song title).

Believe this was the second mailorder catalog we did for Straight from the Bottom, the mailorder side of 12ozProphet. Back in the early and mid 1990s we used to print these catalogs up and travel around the country and parts of Europe hitting up graff and B-Boy jams, meeting kids off the board and handing these things out. In fact, UPS was so expensive back in those days that we frequently just hopped flights to deliver suitcases of magazines in person since it cost about the same as UPS. Shop owners, magazine owners and friends would let us crash on their couch for a few days and we'd usually return home with suitcases of foreign graff mags. Deal was that you could take a backpack with your gear, but the two checked bags were solely for the cases of zines in exchange for a free flight to wherever. Pretty crazy how different all that works now, but we had some really great trips and got to see Battle of the Year several times, as well as meet a ton of great people. Likewise in the USA, the B-Boy summit and Rocksteady Jam were milestone annual events that we all anticipated so we could catch up, put faces to names and strengthen friendships that we'd been forming in the early internet days here on the forum. \

I'm going to keep adding to this thread... Have a bunch of CD's, hard drives and photos to dig through. In the meantime, here's a super rare video clip from that era mentioned above. There's not much video from those days, especially of Brazil and Os Gemeos, but we were fortunate enough to video some stuff and somehow those recordings survived (whole long story on that). Anyhow, enjoy... [MEDIA=vimeo]51971026[/MEDIA]