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Graffiti: So Cool It’s A Pillar of Hip Hop · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and we are doing a wild style today. You're
0:17
Speaker 2: on Stuff you Should Know, one of those episodes where
0:20
Speaker 2: it's like this topic is cooler than we are, but
0:23
Speaker 2: we're going to give it our best to try to
0:26
Speaker 2: get across how neat it really is.
0:28
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'm not gonna say when. Maybe you can guess,
0:31
Speaker 3: but there's one portion of this that it'll be the
0:35
Speaker 3: most like middle aged white dude thing ever.
0:38
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm looking forward to it because I can't guess.
0:41
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll see me. You'll probably know when I go
0:43
Speaker 3: into my voice.
0:45
Speaker 2: Okay, is it that old witch voice that you like
0:47
Speaker 2: to do?
0:48
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, you'll know the voice.
0:49
Speaker 2: All right. Is it an Italian thing?
0:53
Speaker 3: No? Not Italian?
0:54
Speaker 2: All right, I'll figure it out. Then we're talking graffiti obviously, Chuck,
0:58
Speaker 2: I don't know if everybody knows that.
1:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we covered some of this in our
1:02
Speaker 3: hip hop episode for sure, but this is one of
1:05
Speaker 3: the pillars of hip hop culture, as we'll see. But
1:07
Speaker 3: graffiti needed its own thing, and graffiti in the United States,
1:13
Speaker 3: we basically think of as sort of the late sixties
1:15
Speaker 3: East Coast thing, and this isn't one of those things.
1:19
Speaker 3: I do see where Livia put in like cave drawings,
1:22
Speaker 3: but I'm not even going to talk about that, sure
1:24
Speaker 3: because I was like, come on, Olivia.
1:27
Speaker 2: But.
1:29
Speaker 3: Very good point here in Mexico and like the nineteen
1:32
Speaker 3: thirties where mural art and sort of public art during
1:37
Speaker 3: the Mexican Revolution was a big thing, and so Chicano
1:40
Speaker 3: kids in the nineteen thirties sort of brought that same
1:42
Speaker 3: style to La and other cities in the nineteen thirties
1:45
Speaker 3: and forties before the spray can was invented. But I
1:48
Speaker 3: feel like that is a genuine sort of precursor to
1:51
Speaker 3: what we know is modern graffiti.
1:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they were, well, they were writing on walls sometimes,
1:56
Speaker 2: they were using paint and brushes. Markers didn't exist, spray
1:59
Speaker 2: can didn't exist yet, but they were using what they
2:02
Speaker 2: had a lot of times just to tag their neighborhood
2:05
Speaker 2: as like this, this turf belongs to this gang. But
2:08
Speaker 2: they added flourishes that kind of gave rise to some
2:12
Speaker 2: of the details and touches that are still around in
2:14
Speaker 2: graffiti today. So it is definitely a valid river that
2:19
Speaker 2: flowed into this larger river that flows into the ocean
2:23
Speaker 2: of graffiti that's on planet Earth, which would be the
2:27
Speaker 2: hip hop culture.
2:29
Speaker 3: I mentioned the spray can that's obviously a vital part
2:32
Speaker 3: of graffiti. That was in nineteen forty nine by a
2:36
Speaker 3: paint owner in Illinois, a paint company owner named ed
2:39
Speaker 3: Seymour and his wife. And I tried to find her name.
2:42
Speaker 3: What's her name, Bonnie? Oh, I couldn't find it. You
2:45
Speaker 3: found Bonnie.
2:45
Speaker 2: I had to look really hard, yes, but I found
2:47
Speaker 2: it Bonnie. Isn't it a love of name?
2:49
Speaker 3: Nice work? Yeah? I do love the name Bonnie. But
2:52
Speaker 3: they said they were trying to coat radiators with an
2:55
Speaker 3: aluminum coating, so they invented the spray can, and right away,
2:59
Speaker 3: like you know, people that were protesting or maybe artist
3:04
Speaker 3: on the down low, because you can hide a can
3:06
Speaker 3: pretty easily, you can work with it very quickly. It
3:10
Speaker 3: works on a lot of different kinds of surfaces. So
3:12
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, spray cans, you know, really paved
3:15
Speaker 3: the way.
3:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. Pazzi from Happy Days famously was a Clandestinian artist
3:20
Speaker 2: using spray paint.
3:21
Speaker 3: Oh really, no, I remember that one I could Hey,
3:24
Speaker 3: I could have seen that be in a Happy Day's episode.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but I wouldn't have been yeah, exactly. Maybe Ralph
3:30
Speaker 2: Mouth might have gotten talked into trying it and then.
3:32
Speaker 3: Just fade out, but probably would have been Richie.
3:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so. Man, that was such a good.
3:37
Speaker 3: Show, like a real Lesson Learner episode.
3:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
3:41
Speaker 2: And the fond who you'd think would be like a
3:43
Speaker 2: spray paint graffiti artist, like Van Doll, that's the one
3:47
Speaker 2: who talks to Richie's like, that's not cool. So there's
3:51
Speaker 2: a lot of advantages to using spray paint. That's why
3:55
Speaker 2: graffiti really kind of started. This is like where its
3:58
Speaker 2: roots really took root. Markers are another thing that people use,
4:04
Speaker 2: and most people think of spray paint with graffiti, but
4:07
Speaker 2: markers are important and they didn't come around until the
4:11
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. So you had spray paint before you had markers,
4:13
Speaker 2: which is surprising to me. And if you want a
4:16
Speaker 2: nice little trivia question, magic marker was the first marker
4:20
Speaker 2: for commercial sale starting in nineteen fifty three.
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Speaker 3: That makes sense because that's became sort of the proprietary
4:27
Speaker 3: eponem in a way.
4:28
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, for sure, not.
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Speaker 3: So much anymore, I feel like, but in our era,
4:33
Speaker 3: for sure.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's fun to say.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a marker that creates magic.
4:38
Speaker 2: Exactly.
4:39
Speaker 3: I didn't really consider markers as graffiti, but then I
4:41
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, like everything like on the inside of
4:44
Speaker 3: a marta train or a New York subway car, like
4:47
Speaker 3: that's all marker.
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Speaker 2: All marker.
4:49
Speaker 3: Yeah it is.
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Speaker 2: It's very important for what's called handstyle, as we'll see.
4:53
Speaker 3: That's right. But we need to talk about cornbread, right.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's a guy named Darryl McCrae who will
4:58
Speaker 2: tell anybody who sits long enough that he was the
5:01
Speaker 2: person who invented graffiti. Yeah, and he makes a really
5:04
Speaker 2: good case. Unfortunately, there's some other people who were doing
5:07
Speaker 2: the same thing at the same time, but you could
5:10
Speaker 2: still say corn bread, which was his handle his tag.
5:15
Speaker 2: Was one of the very first people who took up graffiti,
5:19
Speaker 2: starting in nineteen sixty five.
5:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was but a twelve year old. He's a
5:24
Speaker 3: Philly guy, and he was in Juvie, and in Juvie
5:29
Speaker 3: he said, I don't want this white bread. I want
5:31
Speaker 3: corn bread. My grandmother made cornbread and I love that stuff.
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Speaker 3: So he got the nickname Cornbread.
5:35
Speaker 2: I don't think he got the corn bread though.
5:37
Speaker 3: I doubt if he got the corn bread. It's very
5:39
Speaker 3: labor intensive to make cornbread for sure, I mean compared
5:42
Speaker 3: to this opening up a bag of white bread. You know.
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Speaker 2: Also, though, I think at places called youth development center,
5:47
Speaker 2: they don't give you your preferred food day, give you
5:50
Speaker 2: what you're going to.
5:51
Speaker 3: Eat, Yeah, like Oliver Twist style.
5:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, no requests please, no more.
5:58
Speaker 3: So he took that nickname, start riding it on the
6:01
Speaker 3: walls there at his institution that he was in, and
6:04
Speaker 3: then when he got out in nineteen sixty seven, he
6:07
Speaker 3: would take to the streets of Philly writing his name Cornbread,
6:11
Speaker 3: especially like if he knew that his sweetie Pie was
6:15
Speaker 3: on the bus, he would ride it along the bus
6:16
Speaker 3: route so she could see that and be impressed.
6:19
Speaker 2: Sometimes running alongside the bus.
6:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, like while it was going other bus lines. And
6:25
Speaker 3: that was sort of the you know, the beginning along
6:29
Speaker 3: as we'll see and you know, which was already happening
6:31
Speaker 3: in Spanish Harlem of sort of the early point of graffiti,
6:34
Speaker 3: which is like a name, you know, later on they
6:36
Speaker 3: would call it a tag, and the point was to
6:39
Speaker 3: get that out in as many places as you could,
6:42
Speaker 3: and and like you were super cool if you did
6:45
Speaker 3: it in like a very risky or hard to reach
6:48
Speaker 3: place like the wall in front of the cop shop
6:50
Speaker 3: or the top of a water tower or something like that.
6:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you add in the flourishes that Chicano
6:56
Speaker 2: kids came up within the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and
7:00
Speaker 2: in la with getting your tag out there as many
7:04
Speaker 2: places as you can. That's the That is definitely the
7:07
Speaker 2: beginning of graffiti. And this is where most people point
7:11
Speaker 2: to as the start of the whole thing. In the
7:13
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies in New York City, all of this
7:17
Speaker 2: started to blossom. All these things kind of came together
7:20
Speaker 2: and just the right hands and graffiti became a thing,
7:23
Speaker 2: just slowly but surely. Like you said, some of the
7:27
Speaker 2: first people were just writing their names and they would
7:29
Speaker 2: come up with this tag. And some of the earliest
7:32
Speaker 2: tags came from Spanish Harlem, where you would have your
7:35
Speaker 2: nickname and then in number like Turk one eighty two,
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Speaker 2: and Turk would be your nickname, one eighty two would
7:43
Speaker 2: be the street you hailed from. I think Turk one
7:46
Speaker 2: eighty two is entirely made up. I don't think it
7:49
Speaker 2: was a docu drama. But one of the first two
7:51
Speaker 2: was Julio two to four and Taki one eighty three.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Taki one eighty three. Taki was the nickname, a
7:58
Speaker 3: Greek nickname for Dmitri. It still is. But Taki was
8:02
Speaker 3: a this is in like sixty nine or seventy was
8:04
Speaker 3: a delivery worker. So Taki went all over the city.
8:07
Speaker 3: So it was a really good way to get the
8:09
Speaker 3: Taki one eighty three tag all over the place, and
8:13
Speaker 3: it got so far and wide that Taki was actually
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Speaker 3: part of a New York Times article in nineteen seventy one,
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Speaker 3: and all of a sudden it inspired people saying, hey,
8:22
Speaker 3: like this is the cool new thing to do on
8:24
Speaker 3: the street.
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Speaker 2: Yeah or else they hated Taki one a three for
8:28
Speaker 2: disraacing New York all over the place.
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Speaker 3: Good point.
8:31
Speaker 2: That same year that the article on takiy three came out,
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Speaker 2: there was the first graffiti crew kind of came together
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Speaker 2: Writer's Corner one eighty eight. They met at the corner
8:41
Speaker 2: of Audubon and one eighty eighth Street, one hundred and
8:43
Speaker 2: eighty eighth Street, as they say in New York and
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Speaker 2: the crew was called WC one eighty eight, and it
8:50
Speaker 2: was like one of the first ways that people started
8:52
Speaker 2: sharing different style tips and kinds of markers that did
8:56
Speaker 2: different things. It was just the first way that different
8:59
Speaker 2: people doing the same thing came together and figured out
9:02
Speaker 2: how to do it better.
9:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like I said, it was sort of a
9:06
Speaker 3: quantity over quality thing for a while. I think that's
9:11
Speaker 3: sadly kind of part of it now a little bit.
9:13
Speaker 3: When I see graffiti around Atlanta, there's some really good
9:16
Speaker 3: stuff and also some really kind of not so great
9:20
Speaker 3: tags that I see a lot.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and more often than not, it's the not so
9:24
Speaker 2: great ones, right, kind of like watching adults skateboard.
9:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, god yeah, I mean, man, Atlanta just didn't have
9:33
Speaker 3: the skateboarders. That's a West Coast thing I never see.
9:35
Speaker 3: I always see those guys trying to do the tricks,
9:37
Speaker 3: but they never land the tricks exactly.
9:39
Speaker 2: That's exactly like junkie tags, which is I think called
9:43
Speaker 2: toy in the the graffiti world.
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Speaker 3: Oh really, toy If your tag is just sort of
9:49
Speaker 3: not great.
9:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it's just junkie amateurish graffiti, it's toy graffiti.
9:55
Speaker 3: Well, what if these people are like, hey man, I'm
9:56
Speaker 3: not such a great artist. Lay off, I'm trying.
9:59
Speaker 2: Will they I would say, stop doing what you're doing
10:02
Speaker 2: and go do something else then, because the streets are
10:04
Speaker 2: made for good graffiti.
10:06
Speaker 3: Not toys.
10:08
Speaker 2: Right.
10:10
Speaker 3: The subway was where things got really a little more
10:13
Speaker 3: like artistic. I guess, riding on a subway train in
10:18
Speaker 3: New York you could obviously get your name out, you know,
10:21
Speaker 3: to more people, because that subway's going all over the place. Right,
10:24
Speaker 3: It's also risky, and as we'll see, like risk is
10:27
Speaker 3: a big you know, I mentioned like the wall and
10:29
Speaker 3: from the police station, Like risk is a big, big
10:31
Speaker 3: part of it. Because like as you'll see, like when
10:35
Speaker 3: they made great efforts in the in the seventies and
10:38
Speaker 3: eighties in New York to stop this stuff, it wasn't
10:42
Speaker 3: like they were like, oh boy, we better stop doing
10:44
Speaker 3: this graffiti. It was sort of like game on man,
10:47
Speaker 3: like this is what we're looking for. Like now we
10:50
Speaker 3: know they're after us, so it makes it even more
10:52
Speaker 3: sort of challenging and risky.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean these early graffiti artists were by definition
10:57
Speaker 2: juvenile delinquents to a person, So the idea of adding
11:01
Speaker 2: more challenges to them just played exactly into their whole
11:05
Speaker 2: ethos etho, Yes, I could never remember.
11:08
Speaker 3: And to be clear that with this, I just want
11:10
Speaker 3: to if you don't understand, they're not spray painting the
11:12
Speaker 3: moving subway cars. They would break into the rail yards
11:14
Speaker 3: at night, and all of a sudden, you have this
11:16
Speaker 3: huge canvas just sitting there.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And like you said, a lot of people
11:21
Speaker 2: would see it because that subway car the next day
11:23
Speaker 2: would be traveling all over New York. So that was
11:25
Speaker 2: a big deal. And that's kind of what you think
11:27
Speaker 2: of when you think of late seventies early eighties graffiti
11:31
Speaker 2: in New York subway cars is kind of traveling all
11:33
Speaker 2: over the place with really cool, colorful graffiti on them.
11:37
Speaker 3: Totally.
11:38
Speaker 2: Do you want to take an early break or you
11:40
Speaker 2: want to keep talking and get into some different kinds
11:43
Speaker 2: and styles.
11:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe let's break down the styles first.
11:46
Speaker 2: All right, let's see it. So it turns out there's
11:48
Speaker 2: three categories of graffiti in order of easiness to increasing hardness.
11:57
Speaker 2: It's got to be a better way to put it,
11:58
Speaker 2: but I'm leaving it there.
12:00
Speaker 3: There's tags, yeah.
12:01
Speaker 2: Which Olivia calls very sterily basic identifying signs.
12:06
Speaker 3: I love that well, tags didn't comelong until nineteen ninety
12:09
Speaker 3: the word, right.
12:10
Speaker 2: But essentially it's your signature. It's your nickname spelled out
12:16
Speaker 2: in a very stylized way specific to you. That's what
12:20
Speaker 2: handstyle is. And then when you use your hand style
12:24
Speaker 2: to put up that nickname in a certain stylized way
12:28
Speaker 2: on the wall that today, at least, that's a tag.
12:31
Speaker 2: That's one of the three kinds of graffiti.
12:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, and before they called it tagging in nineteen ninety,
12:36
Speaker 3: back in the day, as they say, they would call
12:39
Speaker 3: it hitting maybe or bombing or just writing yep, throw ups.
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Speaker 3: Terrible name is the next kind. It can incorporate your tag.
12:48
Speaker 3: It's like your signature, but it's usually more than that.
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Speaker 3: It's tag plus a lot of times it's multicolor, like
12:54
Speaker 3: two or three colors, maybe even more if you've got
12:56
Speaker 3: the time. It's you know, it's more. It's just said,
13:00
Speaker 3: it's kind of more artistic.
13:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're almost always like bubbly letters from what
13:05
Speaker 2: I can tell.
13:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, unless it's the block style, which I like.
13:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, blockbuster, Yeah, I like those as well. Those are
13:14
Speaker 2: it's a different style. They're not throw ups. It's kind
13:17
Speaker 2: of a style that could be used in throw ups,
13:19
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of times used using rollers,
13:22
Speaker 2: but they're really large letters. A lot of times they're
13:24
Speaker 2: more straight than bubbly, which is the differentiation. Like you
13:28
Speaker 2: were saying, I like Blockbuster too, Chuck.
13:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. And then you've got the best kind
13:34
Speaker 3: when you might get a whole subway car and many
13:36
Speaker 3: hours to decorate the saying, or a whole wall. And
13:39
Speaker 3: those are called pieces, just like you would call an
13:42
Speaker 3: art piece a piece, because it is an art piece
13:45
Speaker 3: for sure.
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Speaker 2: They're way more detailed, way more colors. They have all
13:49
Speaker 2: sorts of crazy cool effects, like fades from one color another.
13:53
Speaker 2: They might have sparkles on them, they might somehow have
13:56
Speaker 2: like a chrome effect. There's a lot more decoration to them.
14:00
Speaker 2: They're just amazing. That's probably what most people think of
14:02
Speaker 2: when they think of graffiti or pieces. Yeah, and these
14:06
Speaker 2: all are. They get They start out easy, like you
14:09
Speaker 2: just practice doing tags, then you move on to throw ups,
14:12
Speaker 2: and then you move on to pieces eventually, and so
14:15
Speaker 2: they also take different amounts of time. Like once you
14:17
Speaker 2: get good at tagging, you can do this in like
14:20
Speaker 2: less than a minute, maybe five. If you're just starting out,
14:23
Speaker 2: it can take a minute if you're really really good
14:27
Speaker 2: and have been doing it a long time. To put
14:29
Speaker 2: a throw up up can take fifteen minutes if you're
14:32
Speaker 2: still figuring out your way those pieces. This surprised me.
14:36
Speaker 2: They can take days to do. With multiple crews working
14:39
Speaker 2: on the same thing, it can still take days. And
14:42
Speaker 2: if you're just one dude making a piece a masterpiece,
14:46
Speaker 2: it can take months, weeks and months to get it done.
14:49
Speaker 2: Which I mean if you're doing this illicitly, like on
14:52
Speaker 2: a wall somewhere, having to go back like night after
14:55
Speaker 2: night to do this and not get caught, that's it's
14:59
Speaker 2: rather thrilling.
15:00
Speaker 3: If you asked me, well, and the just the time
15:04
Speaker 3: investment for something that a third of the way through
15:06
Speaker 3: or halfway through or towards the end could get could
15:08
Speaker 3: go away.
15:09
Speaker 2: I thought about that too. Man, that's kind of hurt.
15:11
Speaker 3: That would really suck.
15:13
Speaker 2: What about wild style I referred to it early on.
15:18
Speaker 3: Wild style is obviously Superstylized's where you get sort of
15:22
Speaker 3: the overlapping letter patterns. It's usually fairly bright and like
15:27
Speaker 3: you mentioned, like a lot of shading, maybe a three
15:30
Speaker 3: D effect. A lot of times these pieces have wild
15:33
Speaker 3: style involved, right.
15:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like the most advanced form, I guess,
15:39
Speaker 2: just because it's so it's just it's really hard to
15:43
Speaker 2: do and it's the most intricate usually, But it's also
15:46
Speaker 2: kind of like gone beyond what most people appreciate as graffiti,
15:52
Speaker 2: where they have no idea what this thing says. Like
15:55
Speaker 2: other graffiti artists can read it, but the average person
15:57
Speaker 2: is just like, oh, look at that of colors. It's
16:00
Speaker 2: kind of like how metal bands logos have kind of
16:05
Speaker 2: evolved to where they're like, I have no idea whose
16:08
Speaker 2: album this is. It's very much similar that wild style is.
16:12
Speaker 2: But one thing that stuck out to me Chuck wild style.
16:15
Speaker 2: I'm like that probably came around in maybe the nineties
16:18
Speaker 2: at the earliest. It's from the seventies too, Like all
16:21
Speaker 2: of this stuff is from the seventies. So in the
16:25
Speaker 2: seventies in New York City, the general guidelines for what
16:29
Speaker 2: constitutes graffiti's still today were laid out and established by
16:33
Speaker 2: those people, Like it's still followed today. I think that's amazing.
16:38
Speaker 3: You know.
16:38
Speaker 2: I thought it'd be added piece by piece over the decades,
16:40
Speaker 2: but no, they figured it out pretty much right out
16:43
Speaker 2: of the gate.
16:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's cool. I love it. And then if you've
16:46
Speaker 3: ever seen like and this is a little more West coast,
16:49
Speaker 3: like the old English style or like the western saloon
16:53
Speaker 3: lettering that's known as solo style, a word that you know,
16:57
Speaker 3: sort of associated with like gang culture, like Mexican gang culture,
17:01
Speaker 3: but that developed from that Chicano writing culture on the
17:05
Speaker 3: West coast and then spread around, like you can see
17:08
Speaker 3: that on the East coast. But it's definitely I feel
17:10
Speaker 3: like more West Coast thing. And that looks super cool.
17:12
Speaker 2: Too, No, it definitely does. There's also they use a
17:15
Speaker 2: lot of characters, cartoonish characters of like gangbangers with bandanas
17:19
Speaker 2: like almost over their eyes, that kind of dude. Yeah,
17:22
Speaker 2: they show up a lot. It just seems like there's
17:24
Speaker 2: a lot more cartoon figures in Tolo style than say
17:27
Speaker 2: that New York graffiti. There was one more style that
17:30
Speaker 2: I ran across called anti style or ignorant style, and
17:33
Speaker 2: essentially it's like what most people would call toy it's
17:38
Speaker 2: just primitive. It's amateurish, but it's done on purpose because
17:41
Speaker 2: it's done by graffiti artists, a lot of whom are
17:44
Speaker 2: actually really good, who are like this has gotten totally
17:46
Speaker 2: out of control. If you've seen this wild style stuff.
17:49
Speaker 2: We need to like get back to basics and just
17:51
Speaker 2: have fun with us again. And so they're kind of
17:53
Speaker 2: trying to recapture what the earliest graffiti artists from, like
17:58
Speaker 2: the seventies. We're doing as they when they figured it
18:01
Speaker 2: out as they went along. A lot of people hate it,
18:03
Speaker 2: can't stand it. They think it's just a dumb idea.
18:06
Speaker 2: But from what I can tell, if you're a good
18:09
Speaker 2: artist doing purposefully primitive work, it's actually pretty cool looking.
18:14
Speaker 3: All right, should we take that break?
18:16
Speaker 2: I do want to take that break, Chuck, all right.
18:18
Speaker 3: Let's go get our spray hands, check him up, and
18:20
Speaker 3: we'll be right back.
18:34
Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terris or call it
18:36
Speaker 1: red actol, how to take a bank is gone. That's
18:39
Speaker 1: a little hunt the word up, Jerry.
18:50
Speaker 3: All right. So we mentioned markers early on, and obviously,
18:55
Speaker 3: like I said, inside, like on the wall of a
18:56
Speaker 3: subway car. A lot of times maybe not even inside,
19:01
Speaker 3: but if you just want to provide detail for a
19:03
Speaker 3: larger piece on like the exterior of a subway car
19:05
Speaker 3: or wall or something, yeah, you could use a marker.
19:08
Speaker 3: And in the early days, pilot marks a lot and
19:12
Speaker 3: dry mark dri and Sandford King size were they were
19:16
Speaker 3: very broad tip markers. So those were some of the
19:19
Speaker 3: early markers that were the most popular. And you could
19:22
Speaker 3: also refill a lot of those with different kinds of ink.
19:25
Speaker 3: So the you know, the felt was just sort of
19:28
Speaker 3: the instrument and you could put whatever color or mixed
19:30
Speaker 3: colors if you wanted to, for sure. And they would
19:32
Speaker 3: also like make their own stuff. It's a very sort
19:35
Speaker 3: of DIY style of art where they were making their
19:38
Speaker 3: own tools and components maybe like shoe polish bottles and
19:41
Speaker 3: stuff like that.
19:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, you also mentioned that it's one of the four
19:45
Speaker 2: pillars of hip hop. There's technically five as far as
19:48
Speaker 2: Africa Bombarda is concerned, and that would be knowledge as
19:52
Speaker 2: the fifth pillar, like knowledge of self, knowledge of where
19:55
Speaker 2: you come from, your history, real KRS one stuff, you know. Yeah,
20:01
Speaker 2: and so as being part of hip hop culture, I
20:04
Speaker 2: don't know if we said the other onesing and DJing
20:07
Speaker 2: and breaking, Yeah, and graffiti and knowledge, those are the
20:10
Speaker 2: five pillars of hip hop. And like the other stuff
20:13
Speaker 2: like mceing and djaying and all that, and breaking in particular,
20:17
Speaker 2: there's a real competitive element to graffiti, like where you
20:23
Speaker 2: can go so far as you end up in a
20:25
Speaker 2: war with other artists where you're spraying over their stuff. Yeah,
20:28
Speaker 2: spraying over your stuff, and that is you're not supposed
20:31
Speaker 2: to do that. Like, if you spray over somebody's stuff,
20:33
Speaker 2: it better be terrible work and you better be really
20:36
Speaker 2: good at it, because that's a huge flex. I guess
20:40
Speaker 2: you would say if it was twenty twenty four.
20:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. It is also intersected with other art
20:46
Speaker 3: forms over the years. In the nineteen eighties and there's
20:51
Speaker 3: a comic artist named von Bode who was very influential
20:55
Speaker 3: to this culture. He had a couple of characters, Puck
20:58
Speaker 3: and Cheech Wizard he came up with. I think he
21:02
Speaker 3: came up with these characters like in the nineteen fifties wow.
21:06
Speaker 3: But then in the sixties they were in like self
21:08
Speaker 3: published comics and then went a little more and want
21:11
Speaker 3: to say mainstream obviously not mainstream mainstream, but like seventy
21:15
Speaker 3: two to seventy five they're in the National Lampoon, so
21:17
Speaker 3: a little more mainstream.
21:18
Speaker 2: Right.
21:19
Speaker 3: And if you think you've heard that name before, that
21:21
Speaker 3: sounds familiar, you might have heard the song sure Shot
21:25
Speaker 3: by the Beastie Boys. I'm like von Bode I'm a
21:29
Speaker 3: cheach Wizard, never quitting, so you won't listen very nice
21:33
Speaker 3: Well said, yeah, I knew I had heard that before.
21:36
Speaker 3: I was like, that's been in a song, I know it.
21:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, And cheach Wizard is essentially like a giant wizard
21:41
Speaker 2: hat with some legs coming out of it. It's cheech
21:44
Speaker 2: Wizard and he's like a wise, smart ass kind of
21:46
Speaker 2: well wizard hat. And I don't know, I didn't see why,
21:50
Speaker 2: but for some reason, graffiti culture just loved that stuff.
21:53
Speaker 2: So cheach Wizard shows up and Puck the Lizard show
21:56
Speaker 2: up in a lot of graffiti from the seventies and eighties.
21:59
Speaker 2: And then one of the other influences, I saw that
22:02
Speaker 2: that cheech Wizard or von Bode had his lettering for
22:06
Speaker 2: his comics. He like, from what I can tell, he
22:09
Speaker 2: came up with bubble letters, and that that made its
22:12
Speaker 2: way into graffiti directly from von Bode's comics.
22:16
Speaker 3: Well, graffiti and the book covers of math books of
22:21
Speaker 3: gen X Kids. Yep, I was big into the bubble lettering.
22:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, using those those pins with like the five different
22:28
Speaker 2: colors that you can click.
22:29
Speaker 3: Down, Yeah, I was okay at it. I definitely use
22:34
Speaker 3: those pins. I remember G's giving me a lot of
22:37
Speaker 3: trouble and S has given me a lot of trouble.
22:39
Speaker 2: Those were hard, but I tried. How was your out
22:44
Speaker 2: of bubble Q?
22:45
Speaker 3: Oh God, is that a thing? It is now possible.
22:50
Speaker 2: I think I just laid down the gauntlet for somebody
22:52
Speaker 2: to come up with that.
22:53
Speaker 3: Oh wow. So graffiti starts to spread around the world,
22:58
Speaker 3: Britain in the late seven and amster Amsterdam in particular.
23:03
Speaker 3: In the Netherlands and their punk scenes in the late seventies,
23:05
Speaker 3: they started doing some of this stuff. Yeah, and then
23:08
Speaker 3: it also helped spread because of media a little bit.
23:12
Speaker 3: I mean, most of it was fairly underground media at
23:14
Speaker 3: the time, unless it was some news report that had
23:16
Speaker 3: a scathing report. But there was a photographer named Henry Chalfont, Yeah,
23:21
Speaker 3: who did a few projects, one of which I highly
23:23
Speaker 3: recommend watching on YouTube, a documentary from nineteen eighty three
23:27
Speaker 3: called Style Wars, which is a really good watch.
23:29
Speaker 2: It's one of those ones where you're like, I feel
23:31
Speaker 2: cooler just watching this thing.
23:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
23:33
Speaker 2: He just turned the he turned the camera. He and
23:36
Speaker 2: the director Tony Silver, who worked together, they turned the
23:39
Speaker 2: camera on these graffiti artists and just had them talk
23:43
Speaker 2: and show what they were doing and explain why they
23:45
Speaker 2: were doing this, and then interspersed is like break dancing
23:50
Speaker 2: from the rock Steady Crew when they were just starting out.
23:53
Speaker 2: Like it's just super cool, like this captured time capsule
23:59
Speaker 2: like moment into yeah, where this is all starting. They
24:03
Speaker 2: totally Henry Chaufont like got it. He was like, we
24:06
Speaker 2: need to document this is because this is going to
24:08
Speaker 2: be important.
24:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean there's there's other things like
24:11
Speaker 3: photographs and this and that. But when you look at
24:14
Speaker 3: the birth of a of a new art form in
24:16
Speaker 3: sort of a urgeon in culture to have this this
24:19
Speaker 3: sort of one document so like perfectly capture this moment
24:23
Speaker 3: in time like you were talking about. It's I mean
24:25
Speaker 3: that that should be in like the Library of Congress
24:28
Speaker 3: like that kind of stuff for sure or whatever. What's
24:30
Speaker 3: the film version of that, I can't remember the name.
24:32
Speaker 2: Of it, The Fiberio of Fambus.
24:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh wow.
24:38
Speaker 2: I know that deserved a while. I'm really screeping the
24:40
Speaker 2: bottom of the barrel here in year seventeen. Oh so
24:46
Speaker 2: you said that it was it was like a document, right.
24:50
Speaker 2: It actually is kind of referred to in in graffiti
24:53
Speaker 2: culture still today, Like if somebody's starting out and they're like,
24:56
Speaker 2: what should I go? What can I learn from? One
24:59
Speaker 2: of the things that people refer them to Style Wars
25:01
Speaker 2: because again, these these like essential guidelines were laid down
25:05
Speaker 2: at this time, so you can still learn a ton
25:08
Speaker 2: from watching Style Wars or Henry Chaufont got into a
25:11
Speaker 2: couple of other projects too, one with a photographer named
25:15
Speaker 2: Martha Cooper called Subway Art. I've also seen newbies referred
25:19
Speaker 2: to that book too, and then another one with another photographer,
25:22
Speaker 2: James Prigoff called spray cant Art. So Henry Chaufont had
25:26
Speaker 2: a real impact on like documenting this stuff that still
25:31
Speaker 2: is important today.
25:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was kind of like it made me think
25:35
Speaker 3: of the guy I can't remember his name, but the
25:37
Speaker 3: famous photographer who captured the southern California skateboard culture early on,
25:42
Speaker 3: because they seem like kind of the only people doing
25:45
Speaker 3: that in such a sort of artistic and profound way,
25:48
Speaker 3: you know, right, you know, yeah, good stuff.
25:51
Speaker 2: Two other things to call out. There's a photographer named
25:53
Speaker 2: Gordon Matta Clark who documented photograph in photographs just like
25:59
Speaker 2: tags all around New York City. Has a pretty cool
26:02
Speaker 2: I think they'd make showings of his photographs sometimes. And
26:04
Speaker 2: then the movie Wild Style actually came out a year
26:07
Speaker 2: before Style Wars nineteen eighty two. It's considered the first
26:10
Speaker 2: hip hop movie ever. I think it was a Fab
26:13
Speaker 2: five Freddie project. But it has the Rock City Crew,
26:17
Speaker 2: one of the rare early woman graffiti artists, Lady Pink,
26:20
Speaker 2: she's in it, and then King ad Rock is in
26:23
Speaker 2: it before he was called King ad Rock before the
26:26
Speaker 2: Beastie Boys. Yeah, but there's a ton of like the
26:28
Speaker 2: whole premise of this, it's a movie, like a fictional movie,
26:33
Speaker 2: but the old premise is this guy's being hired to well,
26:37
Speaker 2: I guess put up some graffiti by this. I can't
26:40
Speaker 2: remember another dude or a company or something like that.
26:43
Speaker 3: All right, I'll check that out.
26:44
Speaker 2: Thanks.
26:45
Speaker 3: So, you know, we mentioned graffiti as art because graffiti
26:49
Speaker 3: is art, but as far as being accepted into like
26:52
Speaker 3: the legitimate art community, that sort of happened in fits
26:55
Speaker 3: and starts over the years. There was an I guess
26:58
Speaker 3: the first academic article about graffiti was in nineteen sixty
27:01
Speaker 3: nine in The Urban Review by Herbert Coles called names
27:04
Speaker 3: Graffiti and Culture, and then a few years later in
27:08
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, a big deal happened when, or a
27:12
Speaker 3: big deal for that culture at least Hugo Martinez as
27:15
Speaker 3: a student activist at City College in New York, and
27:18
Speaker 3: he helped start a collective called United Graffiti Artists with
27:22
Speaker 3: a bunch of Puerto Rican teen graffiti artists. And that
27:26
Speaker 3: was sort of the first collective where he was like, hey,
27:28
Speaker 3: do this stuff on canvas because this is art. And
27:32
Speaker 3: they had an exhibition at City College and then the
27:34
Speaker 3: very first graffiti art gallery show at the Razor Gallery
27:37
Speaker 3: in Soho that same year.
27:39
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they became really influential. The next year, in
27:43
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, choreographer Twyla Tharp, she had the United
27:49
Speaker 2: Graffiti Artists do basically the scene decorations for her performance
27:54
Speaker 2: in Chicago. I can't remember what was called, but weirdly,
27:58
Speaker 2: the dance was choreographed two Beach Boys music with graffiti
28:04
Speaker 2: in the background. It was a real mishmash when the
28:06
Speaker 2: whole Beastie Boys music, no, I said, beach Boys, And
28:10
Speaker 2: the whole time she just kept going Twila, Twila, Twila.
28:14
Speaker 2: Well she danced, that's good, You're getting better. Yeah, it
28:19
Speaker 2: comes and goes.
28:21
Speaker 3: We did mention. You know, obviously, the other side of
28:24
Speaker 3: the coin is there is and still are people that
28:27
Speaker 3: think this is just vandalism. They think it's just like
28:32
Speaker 3: an urban decay happening before our very eyes. And in
28:35
Speaker 3: the early seventies, New York got on board that line
28:38
Speaker 3: of thinking, at least the government did, when Mayor John
28:41
Speaker 3: Lindsay declared a war on graffiti. That following year, in
28:44
Speaker 3: seventy two, the city Council said it's illegal to even
28:47
Speaker 3: carry an aerosol can in a public facility. And then
28:52
Speaker 3: in seventy five they created the Transit Police Graffiti Squad,
28:57
Speaker 3: and you know, they're cleaning out subway cars. But like
28:59
Speaker 3: I said, early all this, all this was was like
29:01
Speaker 3: game on. Like there's not a single graffiti artist that
29:04
Speaker 3: was intimidated or scared out of doing what they were
29:08
Speaker 3: going to do because of this. If anything, it heightened it.
29:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another example of that is they outlawed selling spray
29:16
Speaker 2: paint to teenagers in New York City. Yeah, and so
29:20
Speaker 2: graffiti artists who were like, oh, okay, we'll just start
29:22
Speaker 2: stealing it. That's cheaper anyway. So stealing your spray paint
29:25
Speaker 2: became like just a part of graffiti and New York
29:28
Speaker 2: in the in the seventies and eighties.
29:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, not condoning that.
29:31
Speaker 2: Well, I said they were juvenile delinquents and I wasn't kidding.
29:35
Speaker 3: Ed Koch, famous New York mayor in the latest seventies
29:38
Speaker 3: and seventy seven, was very anti graffiti and would razor
29:41
Speaker 3: wire the subway yards, had guard dogs, he had cops
29:46
Speaker 3: like staking out houses and following kids home from school.
29:49
Speaker 3: That's nuts, man, Yeah, that's just nuts.
29:53
Speaker 2: So I think I don't know if Koch, Yeah, I
29:55
Speaker 2: think Koch was still mayor at the time. They came
29:58
Speaker 2: up with the Metro Transit Authority's Clean Car program, and
30:02
Speaker 2: this one actually had an impact. This was beyond razor
30:06
Speaker 2: wire and German shepherds.
30:07
Speaker 3: Like.
30:08
Speaker 2: This was if we find a train car has been
30:10
Speaker 2: hit overnight with graffiti, it's not going to go back
30:13
Speaker 2: out there until that graffiti is cleaned off. Yeah, So
30:16
Speaker 2: imagine like working all night or whatever and getting your
30:20
Speaker 2: piece up and it just cleaned off before it even
30:23
Speaker 2: leaves the transit station. So that actually worked him. By
30:27
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, apparently, like whole car graffiti was just
30:33
Speaker 2: not around anymore in New York. Like you can still
30:35
Speaker 2: see it on cars, but they used to use the
30:38
Speaker 2: entire car. There's a really famous one by Futura two
30:42
Speaker 2: thousand and Dondie which is called Break, and it's considered
30:47
Speaker 2: one of the greatest full subway car masterpieces anyone's ever done.
30:53
Speaker 2: It's beyond description. Just go look up Break by Dondee
30:57
Speaker 2: in Future A two thousand.
30:58
Speaker 3: What did you think of it?
31:00
Speaker 2: I thought it was amazing because it just completely departed
31:04
Speaker 2: from any kind of I know how just ridiculous I
31:06
Speaker 2: sound right now. It departed from any kind of convention.
31:09
Speaker 2: It used all sorts of new elements and stuff that
31:12
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen anywhere else, and you really had to
31:15
Speaker 2: kind of examine it in detail and then also stepping
31:19
Speaker 2: back to kind of take the whole thing in. I
31:21
Speaker 2: didn't love it, yeah, I mean I could see that
31:24
Speaker 2: that's hard, you know, yeah, exactly.
31:26
Speaker 3: Or let's say this, I've seen a lot other stuff
31:29
Speaker 3: that I thought was like, maybe it just appealed to me. Mohere.
31:31
Speaker 3: I was about to say it was way better, but
31:32
Speaker 3: that's again it's just in the eye of the beholder.
31:34
Speaker 2: Man. That was a really great way to put it,
31:37
Speaker 2: So thank you.
31:38
Speaker 3: I appreciate that again, I mentioned earlier that it was
31:41
Speaker 3: a sort of a DIY community when how I like
31:44
Speaker 3: figuring stuff out, sharing tips and tricks with one another.
31:47
Speaker 3: And from the beginning they would use various nozzles from
31:50
Speaker 3: other types of cans or you know caps. They would
31:52
Speaker 3: call them from different products to provide different ways of painting.
31:57
Speaker 3: I know that you know when you spray that I
31:58
Speaker 3: don't use the stuff, but that off oven cleaner. You know,
32:01
Speaker 3: spray's that big, wide area. So they started using that
32:04
Speaker 3: to achieve the same effect with paint. And they, I mean,
32:10
Speaker 3: they were a real I guess when they were buying
32:12
Speaker 3: the paint. Made a difference in the profits of Rustolium
32:17
Speaker 3: and Crylon over the seventies, for sure.
32:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Rustolium and Cryon were Crylon were specifically avoiding
32:24
Speaker 2: marketing or making their products attractive to graffiti artists. They
32:29
Speaker 2: couldn't do no, this is no. You did not want
32:33
Speaker 2: your brand being accused of catering to graffiti artists at
32:38
Speaker 2: the time. But it was still pretty good. It was useful.
32:42
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why is because they were
32:44
Speaker 2: both chuck full of lead up until the late seventies,
32:48
Speaker 2: and lead does all sorts of great stuff for spray paint.
32:50
Speaker 2: It makes it dry faster, it makes colors brighter, it's
32:54
Speaker 2: more durable, it's moisture resistant. So when the leg got
32:58
Speaker 2: taken out, that was a real bummer for griffist. Yes, yeah,
33:02
Speaker 2: I mean I could see that having a huge impact.
33:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, in Europe they did market There were
33:08
Speaker 3: a couple in the nineties, the Montana and Molotov brands
33:12
Speaker 3: of spray paint actually target street art markets and have
33:17
Speaker 3: all kinds of like you know, weather resistant paints and
33:19
Speaker 3: crazy colors and different effects with their caps. So they
33:23
Speaker 3: embraced it and basically said, hey, come buy our stuff.
33:26
Speaker 2: Yes, but if you're a purist in America, you probably
33:30
Speaker 2: are still using rustolium or cry line.
33:32
Speaker 3: Yeah.
33:33
Speaker 2: One of the other things that really kind of evolved
33:35
Speaker 2: that helped things along was not having to take the
33:39
Speaker 2: spray nozzle off of easy off anymore, and having nozzles
33:43
Speaker 2: that were designed and sold for graffiti art, like all
33:48
Speaker 2: sorts of different kinds of nozzles that do all sorts
33:50
Speaker 2: of different kinds of things.
33:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, fat lines and skinny lines,
33:56
Speaker 3: different caps achieve those effects. They had clear calligraphy caps.
34:02
Speaker 3: If you ever been at a paint store and looked
34:03
Speaker 3: at you know, sometimes you can even spray a little
34:05
Speaker 3: piece of cardboard they have there on the wall.
34:07
Speaker 2: Lucky.
34:08
Speaker 3: But you know, sometimes it's a little round pinhole, but
34:11
Speaker 3: sometimes it's a slot. And those are calligraphy caps like
34:15
Speaker 3: a horizontal line. I never knew that.
34:17
Speaker 2: I think those are big and solo graffiti too. Yeah,
34:21
Speaker 2: needle caps they make splatters, so if you want like
34:24
Speaker 2: controlled drips, you don't want uncontrolled drips or unintentional drips,
34:28
Speaker 2: but you might want your piece to have some drip
34:30
Speaker 2: look to it, so you would use needle caps. They
34:33
Speaker 2: also add texture to the lines because they there's like
34:36
Speaker 2: a like a splattery haze that when you step back
34:40
Speaker 2: just kind of softens the lines a little bit from
34:43
Speaker 2: the needle caps. It's pretty cool.
34:45
Speaker 3: Should we take our second break?
34:46
Speaker 2: I think we should.
34:48
Speaker 3: All right, we'll come back right after this purpose.
35:02
Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terris ORTA call it
35:04
Speaker 1: red actol. How to take a perfect.
35:07
Speaker 2: Is gone.
35:07
Speaker 1: That's a little hunt the Lizzie word up, Jerry.
35:19
Speaker 2: So if you wanted to get into this kind of thing,
35:21
Speaker 2: there's a place to start, and it's called developing your
35:24
Speaker 2: hand style and that is your own personal way of
35:31
Speaker 2: writing your your tag essentially, and graffiti artists will come
35:36
Speaker 2: up with their own entire alphabets that they just designed themselves.
35:40
Speaker 2: And there's a really great website it's super useful if
35:43
Speaker 2: you do want to get into graffiti called bombingscience dot com.
35:48
Speaker 2: They have a post of sixty one different graffiti artists
35:51
Speaker 2: and their alphabets essentially that they've created for their tags,
35:55
Speaker 2: and it's really cool. Some of them you're like, I
35:57
Speaker 2: have no idea what letter that is, but even still,
36:01
Speaker 2: there's just super neat that people have put this much
36:03
Speaker 2: thought into it and come up with a font essentially
36:07
Speaker 2: their own personal font that they use for graffiti. And
36:10
Speaker 2: the way that you do that is by practicing it
36:12
Speaker 2: to develop your own handstyle, and that is essentially step one.
36:16
Speaker 2: And you do that not on a wall or any
36:19
Speaker 2: public place or even with paint. You start out with
36:21
Speaker 2: pens and markers figuring it out.
36:23
Speaker 3: That's right, And now we're going to give you some tips.
36:28
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, there we go.
36:30
Speaker 3: You're gonna want to shake that can up, guys, got
36:33
Speaker 3: to shake it really really good. All kidding aside, You
36:38
Speaker 3: do want to shake that can up because that's what
36:40
Speaker 3: makes the paint flow really well. Don't short change that shake.
36:46
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm speaking for a lot of listeners
36:49
Speaker 2: and saying that I can't help but feel a little
36:51
Speaker 2: forlorn that you're not doing this whole list in that point.
36:55
Speaker 3: All right, I'll keep going.
36:56
Speaker 2: Okay.
36:57
Speaker 3: Step two, guys can control. So this is how you're
37:02
Speaker 3: gonna avoid those unwanted drips. Get a feel for that pressure.
37:05
Speaker 3: It's gonna determine how quickly you're going to move that
37:08
Speaker 3: hand to achieve that the end result that you're after.
37:11
Speaker 2: Very nice can control, it's called.
37:14
Speaker 3: And then finally, guys, you're really gonna want to adjust
37:18
Speaker 3: that distance from the wall. If you're closer, it's gonna
37:21
Speaker 3: be thinner, it's gonna be more saturated. It's gonna be
37:23
Speaker 3: great for outlines. Step a little further away, it's going
37:26
Speaker 3: to diffuse out it's gonna cover a wider area. It's
37:28
Speaker 3: just science, guys, very nice man ah right, and scene.
37:35
Speaker 2: So yes, the upshot of all this is the figuring
37:38
Speaker 2: out the nozzle pressure in the distance from the wall,
37:41
Speaker 2: or basically the two most basic things that you can
37:44
Speaker 2: understand and learn about graffiti. But it's also the things
37:48
Speaker 2: that come up the most.
37:50
Speaker 3: That's right. And some of the rules which I kind
37:53
Speaker 3: of like to see. You don't tag churches. You don't
37:56
Speaker 3: graffiti churches. You don't graffiti schools. You're not supposed to
37:58
Speaker 3: at least hospitals. You're not supposed to do this to
38:02
Speaker 3: someone's house or their car, or certainly headstone at a cemetery,
38:07
Speaker 3: or nature like trees and rocks. You don't know, those
38:09
Speaker 3: big rocks in Central Park, you don't tag those. That's
38:13
Speaker 3: not what you're supposed to do. And of course you
38:16
Speaker 3: don't snitch, because you know what they get.
38:19
Speaker 2: They get a stitch or two. From what I understand,
38:22
Speaker 2: that's right. Yeah, there's a story of an an artist
38:25
Speaker 2: named Cope two who was still considered legendary, but he
38:29
Speaker 2: was accused of snitching and just like overnight, his reputation
38:32
Speaker 2: just went into the gutter.
38:34
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, I imagine.
38:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't take snitching lightly for sure. And then
38:40
Speaker 2: there's other things too, Like we've basically been focusing on
38:43
Speaker 2: spray paint for a good reason. I mean, it's the
38:46
Speaker 2: first medium, they're the most used medium, and then there's
38:49
Speaker 2: markers and all that, But there's other stuff you can do.
38:51
Speaker 2: That's considered graffiti too. You can get yourself some sort
38:55
Speaker 2: of poster, get some wheat paste and stick it up
38:58
Speaker 2: like an old timey hand bill that you might see. Yeah,
39:02
Speaker 2: make stickers, sure, people make stickers. You can come up
39:05
Speaker 2: with stencils like a real bank sye. And all of
39:09
Speaker 2: these things have like the advantage of most of the
39:12
Speaker 2: work being done at home in a studio, out of sight,
39:15
Speaker 2: not in public, and then you can throw them up
39:17
Speaker 2: pretty quickly and move on and not get caught. I
39:22
Speaker 2: think that makes it a different form of graffiti in
39:24
Speaker 2: that sense. But yeah, it's still I mean, it's still
39:27
Speaker 2: street art at the very least.
39:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. And then Lyvia dug up this
39:31
Speaker 3: thing called reverse graffiti, which I had never heard of. Yeah,
39:35
Speaker 3: and she used a very good example, like when you
39:38
Speaker 3: use your finger to write wash me on a dusty car,
39:41
Speaker 3: you're using in, you know, an inverse of something to
39:45
Speaker 3: create an image. So a lot of times it's like
39:50
Speaker 3: it's like a political statement maybe or maybe to call
39:53
Speaker 3: attention to like pollution or the environment or something like that. Yeah,
39:56
Speaker 3: and it's also one where they're saying like, hey, I'm
39:59
Speaker 3: cleaning a surface technically not defacing anything, so come at me.
40:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they'll still just come along and be like, oh, no,
40:06
Speaker 2: we're going to now we're going to clean this wall.
40:08
Speaker 3: Now that you've done this, now you put something beautiful
40:11
Speaker 3: up right. Yeah.
40:13
Speaker 2: So, over the years, some people have really kind of
40:16
Speaker 2: made the jump into like mega Mondo fame, like art
40:21
Speaker 2: world fame, who started out as graffiti artists. One of
40:26
Speaker 2: them was Jean Michelle Basquiat. A lot of people point
40:29
Speaker 2: to him as a wildly successful artist who started out
40:32
Speaker 2: in graffiti. Same o was his tag. He started out
40:36
Speaker 2: in the late seventies with a friend named al Diaz.
40:39
Speaker 2: By the eighties his paintings were some of the most
40:42
Speaker 2: expensive in the art world, and he was friends with
40:44
Speaker 2: Andy Warhol and by nineteen eighty two we had a
40:48
Speaker 2: solo exhibition. This is like a an art like a
40:51
Speaker 2: graffiti artist. This is a huge leap for somebody to make.
40:55
Speaker 2: And I think he might have been the first. I
40:57
Speaker 2: think he came before Keith Hering.
40:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, Basquiat had a pretty good indie movie made about him.
41:03
Speaker 3: I think it was Jeffrey Wright that played him back
41:06
Speaker 3: in the maybe nineties. It was really good. But yeah,
41:09
Speaker 3: you mentioned Keith Hearing too, they were friends. We were
41:12
Speaker 3: just in New York for fall break and the family
41:14
Speaker 3: went to MoMA and the Whitney and we saw Bosquillot's
41:18
Speaker 3: and obviously Warhols and some Keith Haring stuff in person,
41:21
Speaker 3: which is always a thrill. And Keith Hearing, I know
41:24
Speaker 3: we've talked about before, but he started drawing in chalk
41:28
Speaker 3: on the like when they would take a advertisement down
41:32
Speaker 3: on the subway walls, there would be this backboard there
41:35
Speaker 3: and he would put his art up there and was
41:38
Speaker 3: very famous initially, at least for the Radiant Baby was
41:41
Speaker 3: kind of his tag. Yeah. And if you don't know
41:44
Speaker 3: the Radiant Baby, like if you looked it up, you'd
41:46
Speaker 3: probably seen it somewhere before. It's very famous.
41:48
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, it's like a crawling silhouette with like light
41:53
Speaker 2: lines coming off of it.
41:54
Speaker 3: Yeah. And very sadly, Jean Michel Basquiat would pass from
41:59
Speaker 3: a heroin to us in the late eighties, and Keith
42:01
Speaker 3: Haring died from complications from AIDS and HIV. I believe
42:06
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety I read.
42:08
Speaker 2: An interview with Basquiat. It must have been in like
42:11
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight because the interviewers it was like he
42:13
Speaker 2: got up no less than two or three times to
42:16
Speaker 2: go shoot Heroin in this rather short interview, like he
42:20
Speaker 2: could not not do what he would have gotten sick
42:22
Speaker 2: like that quickly. Jeez. There's also Shepherd Faerry is very
42:28
Speaker 2: famous for his Andre the Giant has a posse stickers
42:32
Speaker 2: that he made, and then also for his Hope poster
42:35
Speaker 2: of Barack Obama during the two thousand and eight election.
42:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, Shepherd Fairy, good work, yep.
42:42
Speaker 2: And we mentioned Banksy, right.
42:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean do we have to talk about Banksy?
42:47
Speaker 2: No, there's a couple other ones that I want to
42:49
Speaker 2: call out that are still working today.
42:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do that.
42:52
Speaker 2: So Dondie White, he's an overlooked one. He was the
42:55
Speaker 2: one who with Future of two thousand did that full
42:58
Speaker 2: car called Break. But he hung out with Keith Herring
43:02
Speaker 2: and Bosquillacht and Kenny Sharf in Future of two thousand
43:06
Speaker 2: like he was a he never really made the leap
43:08
Speaker 2: to the major art world. He was like a old
43:10
Speaker 2: school underground artist.
43:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and did you mention Now you didn't mention Lady K.
43:17
Speaker 3: Who'd you mention earlier?
43:19
Speaker 2: Lady Pink?
43:20
Speaker 3: Oh, Lady K. Lady K is different lady Kay is French.
43:24
Speaker 3: I believe, right in Paris.
43:25
Speaker 2: I believe that's where she was born, and she might
43:27
Speaker 2: be working there still, either Paris or New York.
43:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, very cool stuff there too.
43:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then also so check out her stuff, and
43:34
Speaker 2: then check out Wren's R. E. N. S. Who's working
43:37
Speaker 2: in Copenhagen. It is mind numbing how amazing this work is.
43:43
Speaker 2: Like it just can't even imagine conceiving a lot of
43:46
Speaker 2: a lot of it, let alone being good at it.
43:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's beautiful, beautiful stuff. It's really like I'm looking
43:53
Speaker 3: at some of them now, man, that's amazing.
43:56
Speaker 2: And then there's one called kid Olt who as a
44:00
Speaker 2: vandal actually like purposefully vandalizes luxury brand stores who have
44:06
Speaker 2: collaborated with graffiti artists for their brands. They don't like that,
44:10
Speaker 2: so they will like it's not really like pieces that
44:15
Speaker 2: they're putting up. It's more like huge, huge vandalizations of
44:20
Speaker 2: these stores.
44:21
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, Oh that's is that the one that's
44:24
Speaker 3: like like stores that are kind of co opting graffiti
44:27
Speaker 3: is like the cool thing. He'll go hit them. Yeah, okay,
44:29
Speaker 3: kid Old, Yeah, but they're probably like great.
44:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm sure. Oh wait, you mean the stores. Yeah,
44:37
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've heard that they don't like Kiddle
44:39
Speaker 2: very much really, OK. And then lastly, the I want
44:43
Speaker 2: to call out Apothecary, who never really got off the ground.
44:47
Speaker 2: That's Umi's tag from when she got into this. She's
44:51
Speaker 2: always been interested in bee boy culture, so of course
44:53
Speaker 2: she came up with graffiti a graffiti tag, and I
44:57
Speaker 2: think she realized, like fairly early on, this is way
44:59
Speaker 2: too long Apothecary to use as a tag, So I
45:04
Speaker 2: don't think I think it kind of petered out fairly
45:06
Speaker 2: early on.
45:06
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to tell Emily that because uh, I mean,
45:09
Speaker 3: obviously Apothecary is right at par ally, so yeah, for sure,
45:12
Speaker 3: that's funny.
45:13
Speaker 2: Uh, you got anything else?
45:15
Speaker 3: I got nothing else. I'm gonna work on my my tag.
45:17
Speaker 3: I'm gonna come up with a tag and a font.
45:20
Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah. Get busy on your handstyle yo. Yeah, since
45:24
Speaker 2: uh we were just talking about handstyle again, I think
45:27
Speaker 2: that means it's time for listener mail.
45:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. This is from Ben in Connecticut, who's been listening
45:36
Speaker 3: for quite a while and recently heard our Selects episode
45:39
Speaker 3: The Great Finger in the Wendy's Chili Caper. That's kind
45:43
Speaker 3: that one that was incredible. We were commenting about the
45:47
Speaker 3: way Letterman and Lenno covered that, and that Letterman was
45:51
Speaker 3: was funnier. You know, no surprise there for me, at
45:55
Speaker 3: least I assume you as well. Yeah uh, And then
45:58
Speaker 3: Josh mentioned Leno's well known of cars to differentiate the
46:03
Speaker 3: late night hosts. However, guys, David Letterman is well known
46:06
Speaker 3: within the Indy car racing world as one of the
46:08
Speaker 3: owners of Rahal Letterman Lanagan Racing. The team won the
46:12
Speaker 3: Kart Indie Championship in nineteen ninety two, the year the
46:15
Speaker 3: team was founded, and has won the Indy five hundred
46:17
Speaker 3: twice with drivers Buddy Rice in two thousand and four
46:21
Speaker 3: and Takuma Sato in twenty twenty. So while Leno may
46:25
Speaker 3: be more well known for his love of automotive history
46:28
Speaker 3: and tinkering with race cars, David Letterman is also well
46:31
Speaker 3: known within the automotive world. And that is from Ben, Connecticut.
46:35
Speaker 3: So I think the takeaway there is a Letterman owns
46:38
Speaker 3: Leno once again.
46:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was who was that? Ben?
46:43
Speaker 3: Yeah? And it's so low hanging through to bag on Lino.
46:46
Speaker 3: So I don't think I'm original or cool for doing so.
46:49
Speaker 2: Oh no, but it's I mean you still mean it? Yeah, Yeah,
46:54
Speaker 2: thanks a lot, Ben. That was in a very arcane
46:57
Speaker 2: fact that I definitely hadn't heard. And I also just
47:01
Speaker 2: realized that Arkane would be a great tag too. R Kane.
47:06
Speaker 3: Well, you and you and you me went out together
47:09
Speaker 3: and did this like Arcane and Apothecary together. They'd be like,
47:12
Speaker 3: who is this new power couple in DVD?
47:15
Speaker 2: This crew is amazing?
47:16
Speaker 3: Wow?
47:17
Speaker 2: What handstyle?
47:18
Speaker 3: I know? And that'd say, guys, you got it just right.
47:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for doing that voice. You really sure
47:25
Speaker 2: think you saved the episode.
47:27
Speaker 3: I kind of stole that from Eddie Murphy when he
47:30
Speaker 3: used to do the White Boys.
47:31
Speaker 2: Is that who that was?
47:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a little bit.
47:34
Speaker 2: I was gonna guess Johnny Carson on Helium doing George W.
47:38
Speaker 3: Bush.
47:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, go back and listen, you'll be there. Oh my god,
47:44
Speaker 2: Well I think that's it. Yes, Ben, Thank you very
47:46
Speaker 2: much for that email. Ben, And if you want to
47:48
Speaker 2: be like Ben and get in touch with us, we
47:51
Speaker 2: love that kind of thing. You can send it off
47:53
Speaker 2: to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
47:59
Speaker 3: Stuff Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
48:02
Speaker 1: For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
48:05
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.