Jump to content

P I T T S B U R G H


Mercer

Recommended Posts

This forum is supported by the 12ozProphet Shop, so go buy a shirt and help support!
This forum is brought to you by the 12ozProphet Shop.
This forum is brought to you by the 12oz Shop.
  • Replies 10.8k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

when I first moved to 412, early 80's the metro "daown taown" there was a force tag, a tect tag maybe a sire hand or a serg hand.

im talkin bout the streets, not the super chill wharehouse, or under some bridge.

there was stuff on the streets in the east end besides the busway, yeah...force, buster, just,.. gdb's, ak47, nex, cesno, celo, spaed.

but there wasnt really anything in the metro city b4 cerk and reke, b4 sesk was killing shit, b4 ono, dever, nise ever moved here, b4 nsf, b4 pfg. the fliks are out there, some of its still runing.

 

and my two post, yeah I had to cancel my old account. I bet u dont know who half of the people mentioned above are, or what they write now

 

im no expert but this iis an odd comment because you clearly know a lot of the OGs from the 80s in pgh, but the timeline you have with the 90s is off. i moved to pgh in 96, as did ono, dev 95. we bombed a bit but nothing major downtown. reke and cerk came after us, just age-wise, like maybe 98 and 99ish....but they did actually do street level fillins and stuff on gates and stuff downtown. i think the first people i recall seeing really doing like SPOTS downtown was a combination of EVICT RAELS and REKE, maybe JESSE, and then PUZL a little later.

 

i wouldnt call anything me or ono or dev did downtown "spots"...maybe in the hill district more but being honest even thru the 90s no one really painted downtown pgh like full-on spots. we did more like tags or hollows and stuff, reke and cerk did street level filled in fillins.

 

so if you look at it that way, none of us did much more than all the 80s legends did...in general, pre-internet days, downtown pgh just wasnt considered worth it...my opinion its because its a unique downtown..unlike other cities where people are concentrated there, pgh's downtown is like a peninsula, so when all the 9to5ers leave, no one goes "thru dowtown" at all..its a total ghosttown. people focused on rep spots on the highways and destinations like east end, southside, even doing a spot out past wilkinsburg was more rep than doing a roof downtown it seemed. same with northside, almost no one painted there becuase basically not many writers went there. (i remember 2789 guys painting north side, and later people hit the northern highways well...but in the 90s almost no one i knew plotted spots in thennorthside at all because it was just not really rep...downtown was kinda the same).

 

also because pgh's downtown is so dead at night (unlike other cities where people go to clubs and bars and shit) youd stick out much more bombing. bored cops had a lot less people to be watching down there...it was mostly homeless dudes if anyone.

 

i was stoked to see CERK paint again too...but i had to chime in because it seemed like it was saying me & some of my freinds painted downtown more than the OGs....which i dont think is a true description of the past. i barely painted downtown at all...and i think the KYT guys prolly had the biggest influence on actually doing shit down there. but reke and cerk DID smash street level like gates and stuff when no one was doing that....just the timeline was off as those guys are a little younger than dev, ono and i.

 

also, as to the 80s and 90s, bombing in general was much less "sav" back then because pgh IS a small city. people did not see it as a city you stomp hard....and in my opinion i think the 2000-on method of smashing the city super hard is prolly what motivated the anti-graff police state that came, resulting in insane punishments for people like mook, MF, hert and so on. i think personally sometimes that smashing smaller cities at a big city intensity is kinda what leads citizens to freak out like has happened. i think the 80s and 90s cats recognized that delicate balance more, that you cant destroy a small town and not expect it to cause a super-cop to come about.

 

that, in my opinion (just my opinion, not a fact), is why it seems all those 80s legends in pgh didnt bomb downtown has hard as it theoretically couldve been. i owe everything i learned in that city to all those legends....and even when i got there in 96, it was just a part of the dynamic that downtown was always more heat than rep. i think in any city you gotta strike that balance...i mean you can to small town USA and hit every rooftop on their quaint little main street in one night....BUT youll also become like the #1 town crime wave and the local gov will let whatever supercop do whatever to hunt kids down...making it harder for everyone to bomb and make it so kids doing art end up getting years for what you used to get fines and CS for.

 

just my 2cents reading the last few pages

 

peace to pgh past present and future, one of the best cities in the US...but also now one of the hottest cities to paint too.

 

and what up cerk! ha

 

-nise

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...