Be honest

[Hua Guofang]

5 hours ago, Schnitzel said:

@Hua Guofang

 

The bboy piece at Doonside? think sadly it was gone over by the time I got into graff. Maybe the Alien was still there but I think the B-Boy piece was gone by 1990

Would love to see that wholecar was it a rattler? 

Did you ever see it run? That would have been sick to see. I wish the people would ever get the Sydney history book going.

 

 surburban white kid - me to a tee

 

Yep, that's the one. I couldn't stop looking at it, my mind was a swirl of unfinished sentences, wonder and awe, like when you see something for the first time but you get it like you always knew it.

Nope, it was one of the old diesel jobs that went between Blacktown and Richmond. Never saw it run, it was only a blockbuster as well. Not sure if we ever even got pics of it, to be honest!

Edited February 22, 2019 by Hua Guofang

[iloveboxcars]

What first got me into graffiti was watching Oakland go by on BART and all the bombing everywhere. I remember claw throw ups or something extremely similar. This is when I was 9ish years old. 

 

My friend and I started a crew called The Skulls. We didn’t have individual names, just repped that skull life. Mainly drawing skulls on underpasses and anywhere there was no chance of getting caught. 

 

My first real partner and I almost got caught doing our first roller. It faced a freeway but there was also an alley that could see it. While we were pretty close to finishing up a loud scrape came from the alley and we turned to see a cop creeping with his lights off. We ran about a mile until I realized I had to ge back for my truck that I left in a shopping center. There was no real safe way to walk back at this time so my dumb ass pretends to be a jogger in an industrial complex going back to my truck. Luckily no cops drove by. After I got my truck I drove back to pick up my partner and this guy didn’t have a shirt on, and he got in the truck like everything was normal. I asked him what the fuck and he said he had to take a shit and needed to wipe. We went and got Weinerschnitzel.

[Mercer]

Every writer has that 1st moment of awe. Looking at someones shit and wondering how, and why the fuck that much effort/skill is put into something like graffiti. Then somehow understanding this counterintuitive concept for yourself, and eventually acting on it.

 

It's a beautiful thing, and the one thing I always thought back to when I wondered why I even cared about this graffiti shit. I mean I cared what other writers thought, but the chance some kid might see my shit and getting the fire burning in their own mind stoked was probably more motivation than giving a fuck what someone in the scene thought.

 

For me, my first awe was seeing hands by this dude who wrote 4play in Philly way back in the day, mainly his work in, and around West Oak Lane on a trip I took to North Philly in 1991. I couldn't comprehend how anyone but an absolute genius, and madman could get away with that damage, every fucking street, every fucking corner.

 

By 1996, I had stopped writing my original name from 1991 and started writing Mercer. Soon after I remember having these kids show up watching us paint in a railroad underpass walls down in the tracks. One kid was clearly a little more stoked, and asked what I was writing, I said Mercer and exact words "whoa, I see that shit everywhere". Blew me the fuck away, I even forced my young terrorist self to be nice, and sold him a fat cap for a quarter. One of the most rewarding moments I can remember. Eventually the kid started painting "pest" down in the Southside.

 

 

I didn't know this until years later, but the kid changed his name the next year and began murdering Pittsburgh. Name constantly on the evening news, climbing to the tops of all the bridges type shit, putting his name up everywhere. The Mayor launched the first graffiti task force there because of the headlines, then the next headline was all the anti graffiti vans having his name etched across all the windshields.  Wild shit. to this day he's one of only 4 or 5 people that can claim to be "King" in Pittsburgh. My own short 3 year run there wasn't bad, but truth be told was almost nothing in comparison, and if I'm being brutally honest my own shit didn't stand out that much when compared to most considering how heavy the scene was in the 90's. I left Pittsburgh in 99 and spoke to him about it  years later when I found out who he was, and he was always like "holy shit I remember that, you didn't know that was me?".

 

 

 

TLDR:

 

I might not have been shit when compared to some writers, but at least I've got that one thing I actually gave a fuck about going for me, which is nice. 

 

[Mr.Maker]

Sometimes I do things but not much. 

[Dirty_habiT]

This is a cool thread.  I'm kind of surprised by some of the stories that have already been told here.

[Kalashnikov]

7 hours ago, Mercer said:

Every writer has that 1st moment of awe. Looking at someones shit and wondering how, and why the fuck that much effort/skill is put into something like graffiti. Then somehow understanding this counterintuitive concept for yourself, and eventually acting on it.

 

 

So fucking much. In the "groups" I listed in before, I'm probably a mix of #4 and #1, slightly more #1. When I was a kid we lived in the city, albeit not by that much, and my mom worked weekends. My old man would take us down to Marshall Fields (damn that's showing my age) to get candy and new shoes or whatever else on the weekends, then usually take us out for pizza. We'd take either the blue line or the Metra, usually the Metra because kids were free (still are maybe?) and they had some cheap weekend pass.

 

I used to look forward to those trips so damn much because I would just get to stare out the window of the train the whole time. My dad would ask us if we wanted to go downtown and I would jump at the opportunity just so I could look at the graffiti. This was like mid 90s, so before the Graffiti Blasters, where the city actually had a very healthy amount of shit painted.

 

I was maybe 8, or 9 years old at the time. I just remember having my face pushed against the train window staring in amazement at some of the pieces I saw. Thinking, "How does someone do something that looks so good with just spray paint?" "How did they get up there?" "How long did that take?"

 

As I got older I started riding trains by myself, then eventually started painting in the stupidest fucking spots with whatever I could get my hands on. Like I'd venture way off the beaten path and do some obviously toy shit under a bridge or something. I remember how shook I was the first handful of times, even though realistically (looking through my adult eyes now) nobody would even be close to being back there, and anybody who was back there wouldn't give two shits about some young kid painting on a bridge.

 

Then time went on, started painting actually in visible spots, got better, and the rest is history. My parents moved us to the suburbs and a different state, I had to travel to write since I've never been big on freights and always liked street bombing.

 

When you mention about other people seeing your shit, I was kind of the same way. Like I always had this feeling that I wasn't writing enough and that nobody knew who I was. But again, realistically, if I notice other people's shit, people are noticing mine.

That's a dope picture too, I always like looking at throwbacks like that.

 

 

@aufI like how you mention the smells of things. At least for me, smells are something that I don't really notice consciously, or don't really give much thought to. But then when I'm doing something and a familiar smell hits me, it brings back a flood of memories. The smell of ink, paint, the city at night, etc.

 

@iloveboxcarsThat story... lmfao. Too much crazy shit can (and does) happen when you're out. Reminds me of one time I went into an abandoned factory where it was dark as shit, this bum decided it would be a brilliant idea to sleep in the doorway. Stepped straight onto that motherfucker's face. He was not happy.

Edited February 22, 2019 by Kalashnikov

[iloveboxcars]

I was really hoping there would be more back in the day hood rat stuff stories in this thread so here’s my attempt to make that happen

[Urbanophile-666]

On 2/21/2019 at 4:07 PM, Mercer said:

This holds true of 99% of the writers in their 40's, but having been in and out of the fringes of graffiti for so long,  I've met a few people over the years that have done extremely well for themselves financially from graffiti while still painting illegally. Likewise, I've know several people raising/providing for a family (and doing a good job of it I might add) that still bomb occasionally, and are heavy in the legal wall scene.

 

To be honest, no matter how far I drift away from it, there will always be a part of me that kind of admires the fact that even some of the so called losers in this, broke and over 40 with open graffiti cases, that couldn't quit even if they tried. Many of them I still hold in high regards in my alternate universe.

"To be honest, no matter how far I drift away from it, there will always be a part of me that kind of admires the fact that even some of the so called losers in this, broke and over 40 with open graffiti cases, that couldn't quit even if they tried. Many of them I still hold in high regards in my alternate universe."

 

Wut?

[Schnitzel]

10 hours ago, iloveboxcars said:

I was really hoping there would be more back in the day hood rat stuff stories in this thread so here’s my attempt to make that happen

In 1991 one rainy day so my mate and I came up with a brilliant idea to paint this roadside box thing near his house during the day.

Wall was dry, grass was about 3ft high so we didn't need much more height covered and there wasn't much traffic so we took umbrellas and painted behind them. 

PRO TIP: bright umbrellas bobbing around in front of a wall is also pretty visible.

BUT you also can't see through them so when the police come flying down the road on an unrelated matter you have no idea.

PRO TIP don't use the expensive umbrella of your mum's because you have to find a way to hide it and when you're being chased by the cops you can't just ditch it because it's bright colours.

 

Back in 2001 there was a rash of empty warehouses in the area called Pyrmont in my city.

We'd just moved around the area so were psyche don so many spots to paint.

 

Painting the second piece I ever did with my now 18 year old name I turn around and there's an Indigenous woman taking the messiest stinkiest shit about 12 feet away looking over her shoulder and smiling at me. 

 

Then the following week we found this big complex that was around a dump site. we painted a few pieces in there one day but  dodged a room because of a pair of undies with a fresh dookie in the on the floor.

later it transpired a local girl owed drug money and had been kidnapped( for want of a better word) and tied up in the building  for a couple to get the point across. and we'd just missed her.

 

 

[Schnitzel]

1 minute ago, Schnitzel said:

In 1991 one rainy day so my mate and I came up with a brilliant idea to paint this roadside box thing near his house during the day.

Wall was dry, grass was about 3ft high so we didn't need much more height covered and there wasn't much traffic so we took umbrellas and painted behind them. 

PRO TIP: bright umbrellas bobbing around in front of a wall is also pretty visible.

BUT you also can't see through them so when the police come flying down the road on an unrelated matter you have no idea.

PRO TIP don't use the expensive umbrella of your mum's because you have to find a way to hide it and when you're being chased by the cops you can't just ditch it because it's bright colours.

 

b=not really that hood rat because I was 27 at the time but back in 2001 there was a rash of empty warehouses in the area called Pyrmont in my city.

We'd just moved around the area so were psyched on so many spots to paint.

 

Painting the second piece I ever did with my now 18 year old name I turn around and there's an Indigenous woman taking the messiest stinkiest shit about 12 feet away looking over her shoulder and smiling at me. 

 

Then the following week we found this big complex that was around a dump site. we painted a few pieces in there one day but  dodged a room because of a pair of undies with a fresh dookie in the on the floor.

later it transpired a local girl owed drug money and had been kidnapped( for want of a better word) and tied up in the building  for a couple to get the point across. and we'd just missed her.

 

 

 

[Moe Szyslak]

Im kinda like #4 on the kalishnakof scale right now. I started off as a #1 though.

[Moe Szyslak]

Also he needs

#5 Old heads that used to write constantly but semi-matured out of it and get up occasionally