Graffiti Saved My Life

[notesee]

Haven't seen Piece by Piece or Bomb It. You can watch all of Infamy and even the extra segments on Youtube. I downloaded it from somewhere, so I'm sure you could still track it down.

[C0C0]

i recommend this

[weirdnjfan1]

Thanks guys. I added both Style Wars and The Graffiti Artist to my netflix queue.

[champagne_bubblebath]

i recommend this

no homo..

ten

[avantreverse]

infamy

piece by piece

war

dope videos.

[dunkin deeznuts]

i recommend this

is that Little Puppet?

[notesee]

Just realized I joined that 12 oz prophet forum years ago and never used my account.

[Winu]

Graffiti is cool, but it is totally hyped around my town.

[TopVillain]

Graffiti is cool, but it is totally hyped around my town.

what part of sd??

[Winu]

what part of sd??

Mira Mesa. Kids here are crazy.

[Larry Bird]

Just realized I joined that 12 oz prophet forum years ago and never used my account.

haha..ive had like 8 accounts since 2000.....i actually logged on a couple months ago to try and contact some old friends... your not missing much notesee.

[RAISED BY WOLVES]

haha..ive had like 8 accounts since 2000.....i actually logged on a couple months ago to try and contact some old friends... your not missing much notesee.

I swear you just lurk in the cut.

I'll be like "where's Larry?" and then you appear out the blue.

[notesee]

Anyone used to check tagpage back in the day? I wish the audio interviews they did were still up, would kill to hear some of em again.

Nycgraf.com was legit too.

[Larry Bird]

I swear you just lurk in the cut.

I'll be like "where's Larry?" and then you appear out the blue.

naw man, i only have access to a computer when im at my girls or home at my parents house which is usually never cause they still dont like me...little do they know though, ive been here the last 3 days cuz they be in philladelphia.

[Charlie Delta]

Pfahaha

[C0C0]

aol graffchat at one point was the ish

[40ozprophet]

i stuck to bombingscience. never got old, but the new boards suck and i never go.

[TopVillain]

anyone done graff on a female? they make the best canvasas.

[eastcoastrider27]

anyone done graff on a female? they make the best canvasas.

If it's not illegal it's not graffiti.

[yella]

i stuck to bombingscience. never got old, but the new boards suck and i never go.

too right, the old ones were so good. only occasionaly go there to check some of the pic threads i used to always look at, just not the same though.

[eastcoastrider27]

Irak article via 12oz...

If you believe what the New York Police Department’s Vandal Squad says, graffiti is the first sign of a neighborhood that is out of control. But if you look a bit closer, and start to decipher the names that re-appear over and over again all throughout lower Manhattan - on corrugated metal storefront gates, nightclub bathroom walls, delivery trucks parked in Chinatown, burned into the glass of SoHo boutiques with etching cream - there’s actually no question as to who’s in control. In case you need it spelled out, the large public announcement that graced the Brooklyn Bridge last year made it perfectly clear: Graffiti is alive. Fuck Giuliani” - brought to you courtesy of lrak.

From a historical perspective of New York graffiti culture, the Brooklyn Bridge, a protected national landmark, is the Holy Grail of tagging. It’s only been done successfully three times, one of which resulted in the fall and subsequent death of 18 year-old David Smith, aka “Sane, half of the famous Smith-Sane brothers who, along with sacred names like Cost and Revs, Ghost, Toxic, Kaws, Crash, Tracy 168 and Futura 2000, are now so legendary as to be bedtime stories for today’s new generation of graf writers.

Sitting next to me in a hooded sweatshirt with glittering letters that spell-out “New York” is a bloke who’s on a hell-bent mission to achieve that same level of fame. Smooth-faced, strikingly attractive and characteristically pissed-off about life in general, Earsnot (he once misread the word “earshot” in a skateboarding magazine, and adopted the name as his tag) explains the origins of his crew, lrak. “lrak literally means ‘I steal’” he explains. ‘‘Racking’ means stealing or shoplifting, which is what some of us do for a living. A never-ending gangsta rap soundtrack blares in the background as ‘Snot” (as his friends affectionately call him) glances across the room at his partner Rehab, a Skinny young kid from the Dominican Republic. “We figure that we’re making between $40-50,000 a year each boosting, and that’s not even counting what we rack just for our own personal use. Although I don’t really know why I steal clothes since I wear the same thing every day.”

Talking to anyone in lrak is next to impossible without being fluent in the languages of graffiti and New York hip hop, as well as their own secret vernacular of “islands” (lines of coke), “lizzy bags” (hidden linings constructed of aluminum foil placed inside of messenger bags, meant for passing through security checks with items that have sensor tags), or realizing that every person has a minimum of two aliases.

lrak is certainly not the Only active graffiti crew in New York, nor are they the only ones to “boost” (selling shoplifted goods to a “bumpy” - retail stores that purchase the items, then resell them to the public). What sets lrak apart, however, is the incredible relentlessness of their schedule, which is essentially seven days a week, 365 days a year, as well as the sheer audacity under which they operate. Riding down Broadway on skateboards at midnight, they carry stolen $800 Gucci bags, loaded with spraypaint, cutting through the middle of traffic and kicking the shit out of anyone who gets in their way. Their politics are nil, their singular passion is achieving fame through graffiti, and their motto iS: “Every night is New Year’s Eve.” The never-ending marathon of coke, heroin, alcohol and pills is funded communally by profits from boosting, and nearly every night they spend their last dollar on getting fucked up.

lrak also stands out as an anomalous, culturally-diverse crew, crossing all ethnic and socio-economic boundaries, summed up in their leader, Snot, who is black and openly gay (with a preference for large, middle-aged white construction workers). In a scene that is fiercely homophobic, he often uses the tag “Kwearsnot” just to taunt his peers. The Tattoo on his arm is of saddam hussien with a bulging cock in his trousers. “I think the man is very sexy,” Earsnot says. “I’m not going to hide my sexuality and inconvenience my lifestyle just because some people have problems with it.”

A comparison to the film Kids is inevitable when you hang with lrak. And some of the crew are friends with director Harmony Korine, who they say checks in with them from time to time to swap stories. Semen is a long-haired bloke from Jersey who lives in the projects, just above a fried chicken restaurant with a huge sign that reads ‘Wings and Liquor.” His signature tag, a smiling sperm, pops up everywhere on the route to his home. “When I saw the movie Kids,” his friend Area, the youngest member of lrak, says, stretched out in bed with his sneakers on, drinking a ghetto-vintage bottle of Thunderbird wine, “I thought to myself, ‘Fuck yeah! I wanna do that! Going to the coolest clubs, doing drugs all the time, fucking shit up. I’d do anything to be like that.”’

On what could be described as a fairly typical night out for lrak, we hit a graf writer’s party at a bar on the Lower East Side. Earsnot is in the back, smoking a blunt along with a few others, when the bouncer walks up and asks him to leave. He responds by blowing a cloud of smoke into the man’s face, and picking up a pool cue. The bouncer warns him to put it down, and pulls a knife to make his point. Three members of the crew jump the bouncer, as Snot is dragged out the door, holding onto a chair which he smashes to pieces. Snot punches the bouncer in the face, and the police arrive. But before anyone can be apprehended, the members of lrak jump into a white limousine (hired out for someone’s birthday) and speed off. They don’t get far, however, before the driver stops and throws them out for doing charlie and smoking spliffs. The car disappears and once again they are left on the street with nothing but a skateboard, which is promptly run over by a car and broken in half. Earsnot throws up his hands in disgust, and stomps away.

[eastcoastrider27]

The episode back at the bar wouldn’t have happened, he says, if the bouncer had not upset the strict code of conduct they live by. A bar that is friendly to graf writers is treated with utmost respect, but as Snot says they singled me out because I’m black, so tuck them.” At that point, any form of retaliation becomes acceptable.

It’s only been about a week of hanging with lrak, and already I’ve noticed some personality changes in myself. Aside from the 7am to 5pm sleep schedule, I can’t seem to go into a store without nicking something. When I walk through a bar, I notice people step out of the way. When you walk with Irak, you feel as if you’re in an invincible cocoon. Everyone and everything outside the crew is vulnerable, but if you’re down with the crew, there’s nothing to fear - you are loved and protected, despite Snot’s frequent flip-out dramas, which are usually forgiven almost as quickly as they happen.

We pass through an endless barrage of nightclubs, following a trail of hip hop DJs, chilling until we are inevitably thrown out - usually because Sace (one of the two members of lrak who did the Brooklyn Bridge piece, the other has since been thrown out of the crew) has set something on fire, or because someone has been caught using drugs. There is a long list of clubs that lrak is banned from, but new ones keep opening, so the party just moves on. All the while, spray cans and markers are pulled out every few blocks to mark lrak’s territory like dogs pissing on fire hydrants; a message to the world that says, This little piece of New York is mine”

Just like grunge rock died with Kurt Cobain, for many people New York graffiti died the day the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) started the Clean Trains” anti_graffiti programme, buffing trains that were bombed before they were allowed out in public view. The city of New York had declared war on writers, hitting some with massive fines, so many chose to move on to the safe haven of art galleries. To that extent, the public at large tends to think the graffiti wars are over now, and that the city won. Few take notice of the ongoing dialogue on the streets today, but Irak -and a few other zealous youngsters - are starting to grab their attention once again. There’s definitely a new generation of writers that are ready to bust loose,” says Semz, who is currently at the top of the Vandal Squad’s most wanted list. “But unlike lrak, they don’t get together and meet in the Lower East Side every night, and roam the fuckin’ streets and do fill-ins and take tags. No crew does that. Irak is a beautiful thing, but it’s ridiculous because no one wants to realise what they have right now. It’s not even about the graffiti, it’s about getting together and having amazing times - meeting at five at night and staying out until five in the morning. 12 hours a day, every day. And if I miss a day, I feel so fuckin’ left out.”

Sace is 18 years old and has no job other than boosting. He wears a reversible leather/fur Gucci jacket that cost over $5,000. He got it less than a month ago, and already the sleeve is covered in paint stains. Sace could easily pass for Hollywood’s next rising star, with his drop-dead good looks. A tattoo of the Virgin Mary with an Uzi machine gun stretches across his slim chest, and a gold chain with a gold-plated combat tank hangs from his neck. Sitting in the dim light of a bar, girls look at him with a sort of intimidated fascination. Another strange thing about lrak, half of them look like Calvin Klein models. In fact, Earsnot was recently included in Paper magazine’s list of the 50 most beautiful people in New York.

Snot’s beauty and individuality extend well beneath the surface, as well. No doubt, like the others, he has a dark side, but the more I get to know the members of lrak, the more I find myself drawn to them. In fact, they’re probably some of the best blokes you could ever hope to have as friends, which makes it sad to think that, in many cases, their parents have abandoned them. They may look scary, and certainly they fuck off a lot of people, but society is more afraid of lrak than it should be. These aren’t the kids who shoot up their classmates at school, those nervous little introverts who bottle up their aggression then explode ‘cause they feel powerless. The kids in lrak are the exact opposite. Their rage is channelled into self-destruction, and though it is in some ways the source of their troubles, graffiti is also their one saving grace because it’s the thing that helps keep them ‘on point.’ You realise that when you look out at the crevice of the Brooklyn Bridge that Sace stood on to make his tag, and see that one small error would have sent him falling to his death.

Sace recently fled the country after the FBI came looking for him for various crimes that he prefers not to divulge. He went on the lam for months, turning his exile into a graffiti-tour of Rome, Madrid and Amsterdam. His hand is covered in cuts from punching out a window earlier in the day, and he talks with a nasal voice, like a bad guy in a ‘40s gangster movie, confiding in me that he likes to read the poetry of Rimbaud. Sace’s parents (who he asks me to write in the article are dead) disowned him after he went to jail. When I ask him why he wants me to say his parents are dead, he says “I want them to see this article. And I want them to read that I said that.”

You could say Sace, like the others, is a bit childish. But then Rimbaud was also a graffiti writer at the age of 17, chalking “Merde a Dieu’ on park benches in Paris, getting smashed on absinthe and hash, and getting shot by Verlaine before heading to Africa to become a gun-runner, where he renounced his poetry as “absurd, ridiculous and disgusting” right up until he died. lrak is definitely a combination of juvenile stupidity, legitimate art (aside from graffiti, some of the crew are painters whose work has been exhibited), and hardcore violence without remorse. “Sometimes I see a nice old lady working in a store, and i feel kinda bad,’ says Rehab. But if she’s gonna get in my way of making $300, I’m gonna knock the bitch out.’ One of Rehab’s friends is in jail now for killing a store owner in Chinatown over the botched theft of a baseball cap (he claims the death was an accident).

Racking paint has always been an integral part of graffiti, but Earsnot believes entire fashion trends can be traced back to graf writers and their habit of racking expensive clothing. “No one in the ghetto ever heard of North Face or Polo until people like Lo-Lifes started racking that shit,” Snot says. “It was all about going to some store in the suburbs, racking these butter jackets (butter

dope/expensive) just because they cost mad money. Then your friends would see it and be like ‘yo that shit cost $400? Wordl I want one, too’. Then they’d make their mama buy them one instead of paying the heating bill. Muthafucka Ralph Lauren owes us for that shit.”

Nearly all of the crew has been to jail at least once. On another night I am with lrak, one of their mates has just gotten out of jail, so they head to a newly-opened bar to celebrate. The DJ is spinning New York hip hop Notorious BIG, the RZA arid Capone-n-Noreaga, as the Irakians sing along to every word, cigarettes dangling from their lips, drinks all around, snorting bumps of cocaine off the tips of keys until the waitress catches on and throws them out. Then it’s on to the next club, and the next one after that.

The heroin starts to flow, and Earsnot is walking down the street, vomiting every few steps some awful red colour, wearing his headphones and listening to The Bends. We make it to a club, where he hangs under the table throwing up into a pile of napkins on the floor. On the way home, they stop at every chance to make tags arid do fill-ins, whether on delivery trucks or walls. “I want the kids who ioo~ at this stuff to wonder ‘Who the tuck are these guys?’” says Semz. ‘Their curiosity creates our mystery. Once they really know who we are, they’re gonna have no real respect for us.”

Sitting on the floor of his bare apartment, Sace shows me a framed photograph of an oil tanker, the entire side of which is marked with the most enormous tag I have ever seen in roy life. It says ‘TIE”, and is a tribute in red and silver paint to one of lrak’s mates who was shot in the back of the head. ‘That motherfucker,” he says, pointing to the ship, “sailed all the way to Japan. We got pictures of the fuckin’ ship from writers in Japan.”

Whether it’s true or not (bravado and exaggeration are endemic in the graffiti world), it’s still an unbelievably beautiful image to think of an oil tanker moving along out in the middle of the ocean on its way to Japan carrying a giant tag on its hull. And it’s undoubtedly the greatest tribute I could ever possibly imagine to a fellow graffiti writer’s life that was cut short, just as Sace took the time to add to his tag on the Brooklyn Bridge a memorial that read “Sane, R.I.P7

Its hard to imagine what these kids will be like in ten years, when the name lrak fades away from the city streets beneath the paint of the future generation of writers. With today’s kids numbed by MTV ‘Jack Ass” stunts, backyard extreme-wrestling federations, gangsta rap, and school shootings, lrak has had to work hard just to be noticed: ultimately what graffiti is all about.

Outside, the sky is starting to change colours, signalling the arrival of morning. The last of the drugs are gone, as Earsnot stumbles out the door for an hour_long subway ride home to the Bronx. He needs to grab a few hours rest. After all, tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve, and he has to live up to the tag under his photo in Paper that reads: “There is nothing more beautiful than a criminal.”

[notesee]

Even though I've read that Irak article, good looks for posting it.

Does anybody know what happened to Area? I liked his throwie, but he just disappeared from the graf game.

And if anybody knows why Year (the other writer that painted the Brooklyn Bridge with Sace) was thrown out of the crew ... post it up.

[renski]

Graffiti is cool, but it is totally hyped around my town.

there is NO graff in mira mesa, except for some toy/new jack tags and throw ups. ive seen some decent stuff once you go south more like pb and ob, but you'll see more once you hit chula and national. if you paint, trying hiting up the writerz block (imperial and euclid).

[Larry Bird]

Even though I've read that Irak article, good looks for posting it.

Does anybody know what happened to Area? I liked his throwie, but he just disappeared from the graf game.

And if anybody knows why Year (the other writer that painted the Brooklyn Bridge with Sace) was thrown out of the crew ... post it up.

if im not mistaken, i think i heard heard thru the grapevine that Area got popped......

Year got thrown out of Irak cuz he stole from kids in his own crew (ironic, huh?) plus some other shit went down with Sace...

the first time i ever read that JA article from Rolling Stone, i painted the hardest i ever did in my life....that shit got me motivated....good memories.

[off bowery]

[vard]

Graffiti saved everyones life, now rep your neighborhood.

[Aaron 8]

Shit I got hundreds of flicks from around town...I try and take at least camera phone pics of pretty much everything I see. Here are a few:

Set

Pudl

Scram

Spate

Radio

Hoser

TGD

[Aaron 8]

Make

Catch22 Bems

Dior

Metal Spazo

3

Peru

Set

Ok that will do for now

[DüM]

GRAFFITI SAVED MY LIFE