Eli Morgan Gessner

 

Zoo piece by Eli Morgan Gessner

I recently got to nerd out on all things skateboarding and graffiti with self-proclaimed nerd, Eli Morgan Gessner.  From hanging with TC5, to getting the Soul Artists' blessing to use the Zoo York name, we covered a lot of NYC skate & graffiti history.  

  

What did you get into first, skating or graffiti?

My relationship with both skateboarding and graffiti is like this: I was never like, "I want to be a skateboarder" or "I want to write graffiti". They both just came into my life at different times. I was a crazy kid in New York City playing roof tag and climbing trees in Central Park and riding on top of subway cars. Just doing daredevil stuff. 

I was aware of graffiti. My dad was the dean of kinetic arts at the School of Visual Arts. When graffiti first started showing up on the subways, in the mid/late '70s, nobody knew how it got there. And not knowing anyone who wrote graffiti, it was magical to see. So my dad and I would look at it and the colors and cartoon characters and the scale and think, "How did they pull this off?" My dad thought they must sit and wait for the train and do the piece little by little, and catch it every time it goes around the loop. He thought it ran on a loop, like a Christmas tree train. It was definitely cool, but I didn't know anybody who was into it. 

So like I said, my dad was a dean of arts, my uncle was a famous playwright, my mom was an art director and all our friends were artists or teachers. So I made art with all the kids I grew up with. All I did was just draw draw draw. I probably have some kind of ADHD or something, but back in the '70s all they had was the short bus and Special Ed. So once the teachers got to know me, they would just let me draw. They must have had a note, "this kid likes to draw," and just afforded me passing grades. But through that, the older kids who wrote graffiti would approach me and ask me to draw stuff for them. Dragons, Spider Man, bugged out dinosaurs - pretty much just characters. I didn't understand how to draw letters. 

 

Did you ever see any of your characters on a train or a wall?

I'm not going to say any names, but... You know how you give piece books to friends? Well I know I gave people piece books that I had pieces in and then would see a character on a train that was mine. And I'm like, "are you kidding me!" And I know who it was. But I don't want to make it sound like that happened a lot, because it didn't. It was a rare event. 

 

So that's where my world was. I was blessed and cursed to be an artist. I never had a say. When you're a kid, you're like, "I can be an astronaut or president of the United States." I knew I could not be an astronaut, I knew I could not be president of the United States; I couldn't be a lawyer or a doctor. I get to draw. Which I'm totally OK with. 

 

The real kind of like "Oh shit" moment for me was (still pre skateboarding) when I was going to Alexander Robertson on 95th and Central Park West. There was a kid in my class whose name was Chris Green. He lived in the West Gate projects and we would hang out. I went to his apartment one day after school and walked into the bedroom he shared with his brother. Above his brother's bed were all these graffiti photos. At this time, there was still no Subway Art and I had never seen anyone take a panoramic picture. So, over the bed there were these twelve-inch long, full-car photos taped together and stuck to the wall. I was like, "What is this?!" And Chris said, "Oh my brother is a famous graffiti writer. He writes Doze." Then he opens up the closet and there's all this spray paint. It was weird to see that. It was like seeing behind the magic; like backstage. I was seeing stuff that the general populous didn't get to see. I was like, "How does he afford all this paint?!" Not realizing it was all stolen. And, "Who came up with the idea to take multiple pictures to make a panorama?" That alone blew me away because I never thought of doing something like that. 

 

 

Then, around the same time, there was a shop called Wings, on Broadway and 93rd. This was probably '80/'81. (I started skating in late '82). In the window of Wings, they had airbrushed graffiti t-shirts. Chris took me there to meet Doze. All the TC5 guys were there airbrushing t-shirts: Doc, Beam, Seen (black Seen), and other TC5 guys. I lived a block away, so I would just go and hang out with them. I was this annoying, weird, little white kid with glasses hanging out with these black/Dominican/Puerto Rican grown men. They tolerated me. But they also would teach me things and they liked that I could draw. I was like, "This is what I'm going to do. I'm gonna get into the graffiti thing." But I still hadn't been to a train yard. I had been to the ghost station and the layups a couple of times. I was just street bombing around Riverside Park at night writing "Nost".  And they would call me toasty Nosty. I was around 10 or 11 years old and still not skateboarding. But I have no idea how I got my tag, and I never liked it. I learned to write it OK, but I did not have a good hand style and I was always ashamed of that. I could do dope wild style pieces, but I had no hand style. I really loved Zephyr's tag. But I aspired to do stuff like Dondi's chisel tip hand styles. 

 

Photo: @kids_theze_days

 

There was this graffiti writer Midas who I had seen in the Upper West Side. On my block was a movie theater called The Thalia. They showed rerun movies. I couldn't leave my block, so I would just end up hanging out at the movie theater or Wings. One day I went to The Thalia and there's a new employee. This calm, well spoken, black kid. I saw him drawing and I was like, "oh you write graffiti." He said yeah. Then he went into his wallet and took out a piece of paper that was folded up into a square. Back then everyone had piece books or a graffiti jacket and it was real aggressive and hostile. Midas' style was more like chess. He hands me the square and I unfold it. It was a full color with splatter paint stars airbrushed graffiti piece that said "Midas". On a piece of lined paper with holes in it! The psychological implications were devastating. This guy put all this work onto a piece of loose leaf paper?! Then folded it up and kept it in his wallet?! Anyone else would have framed it! So I was really intrigued with him. And it didn't matter to me if I saw you up a lot if I didn't like what you were doing. Or, inversely, someone tried to do a tag or piece and I loved it and it would stick with me forever. The psychology behind the art was always more compelling to me. I didn't even like the idea of writing the same name over and over. I really felt like I was alone in that. When I would go out writing with other kids, I'd sometimes write another name and they'd all get mad at me like, "what are you doing?!" I'd say, "I don't want to write an N today, I want to write an R." 

So I meet Midas, and he had a skateboard. He was a graffiti writer who skateboarded. He was from the UWS, so I assume he got into skating because of the Zoo York crew/Soul Artists guys. The original graffiti writing skateboarders. Midas had a real skateboard from a skateshop. I even think it was a Steve Olson. So I tried his board, but I was riding it laying down on my belly. The Thalia is on a hill, so I'm belly bombing this hill. And they were all, "No! You gotta learn how to skate!" So they'd send me down this hill. But I was like, "I'm going to go too fast." He taught me to go at an angle across the street to go slower. Zig zagging, back and forth, curb to curb. Not bombing the hill straight. Then he showed me how to do grinds off this little ledge. Midas ended up meeting this guy Ben Alvarez, who was a real hardcore skater. Midas just skated around and maybe did bonelesses and powerslides, but Ben was doing frontside ollies out of curb cuts and maybe even doing street plants. I was like, "these are my people." So I went to my mom, and I was like, "I need to get a skateboard."  

 

Eli at the Con Ed Banks in Astoria, Queens, 1988. Photo: Bryce Kanights

 

At the same time, I was going to a private school named York Prep. While I was there, I befriended a kid named Nicky Carlson, this rich kid from the Upper East Side. His dad was a stockbroker, and his mom was the beauty editor for Harper's Bazaar magazine. He had a skateboard, but it was a Variflex or some shitty skateboard. He hated the graphic and was embarrassed by it. So I said I could paint him a graphic because I can draw graffiti. So I wrote his name - Nicky - and I drew a bunny rabbit doing a frontside air with a machine gun. Now he didn't feel bad about having a shitty skateboard because it had a cool graphic. So he went to Dream Wheels, a skate shop on Mercer Street right off 8th Street. At the time, I didn't even know skateshops existed. I just thought you bought them from the back of Thrasher. So Nicky called me up to tell me about going to Dream Wheels, and he said they loved my graphic (bunny w/ machine gun). They were passing it around and no one could believe a guy my age (12 years old) could draw something like that. So all the planets aligned: I was like, "Mom! There's a skateshop. They know me and my reputation. I got my money. Let's go get me a skateboard." My mom said she will meet me after work. So I went after school, and I'm waiting for my mom to come around 5:30. The shop was off 8th St., and I knew 8th St. well. I was like an 8th St. kid. But I never knew there was a skateshop there. I'm looking around, and I see a skater walk into a shop, and I'm like I guess that's where the skateshop must be. I get to the shop and on the window is a graffiti piece of a skateboard demon monster face painted on the glass. I was completely blown away by the idea of painting on glass. I walk into the shop dumbfounded like, "How did that... who did that?!" They said, "The best skateboarder in NYC: Ian Frahm. He writes Thor IBM."  I was like I know the tag, but I didn't know he skateboarded. Then I was like, "Do you remember a kid that came in and he had a board with a rabbit and a machine gun?" They were like, "Oh yeah." I said I drew that. They all started laughing and saying, "Bullshit man!" I was like, "You want to see some more art?" And I go into my wallet and I take out a little paper square. Which I learned from Midas. As soon as they saw that, everyone at the skateshop was so sweet to me. 

So then the skate crew showed up. It was Bruno Musso and Ian Frahm and Bosco Money and Weasel; all the instrumental 1980s skaters came through, and it was my first time seeing a gang of skaters. It was one of the most formative days of my life. So Ian walks into the shop, and he was more punk rock. He had a flannel shirt that was just dirty. But looking back now, it was probably because he was writing graffiti in tunnels. Everyone is like, "This is Ian; Thor!" Then they tell him that I'm the kid that did the drawing, as they hand it to him. I could tell he was impressed, but he dismissed me. And he did that because I was a toy. And I was a toy. And I am probably to this day a toy. So Ian says, "It's cool, whatever." Then I point to the drawing on the window and say how amazing it is. Ian says, "Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I'm going skating." Then he kicks the door open, holds his board over his head like Conan’s sword, and does a bomb drop. I was thinking, fuck this kid! I was so mad. He was really mean to me and publicly shamed me. Even the guys at the shop were like, "He didn't have to be like that to you." After that I was like, I'm gonna get good at skating and show this guy! I really believe that. That sometimes you MUST have some kind of enemy, even if it's a frenemy. Whether it's sports, arts, politics - you need the other. That's how you get better; you outdo one another. That's the basis of graffiti writing: to burn. That's the basis of winning a skateboard contest (although we all know that's kind of bullshit). But you can be like, "Fuck this guy... I'm gonna get a full page picture in Thrasher." At least for me, I grew up in a competition-based thing. Most artists that I meet are unilaterally on some hippy dippy shit, like, "It's an expression of who I am." I'm like, "Invalid! I don't care." Unless it's a transcendence of your existence. But if it's a representation of who you are, I don't give a fuck. I like the craftsmanship and the rules and the limitations. You need to achieve this within this limitation. That's where the true essence of anything that is stylish or good comes from. Because of social media, I think this whole inclusive "it's an expression of who I am" thing is where we are currently. And it might suck, but for reasons beyond our control, the algorithm picks it up and this person finds success. You know who is a really good example? I don't know the guy, but what I know of his music, I dislike, as well as his personality, is DJ Khaled. He's a radio DJ from Miami. He started putting out records and making hits. Just yelling "DJ Khaled" throughout the track. I'm like, "Is he a producer? No, He made this beat? No. IS he the rapper? No." And I'm like - How did this guy get to this position? How did a person who is incapable of doing the art get to the point where superior artists are working with him? So the story goes: he was on his jet ski livestreaming and ran out of gas as the sun was going down. He's freaking out, "You guys gotta help me! I’m gonna die out here." And the internet went crazy, "DJ Khaled is going to die!" He gets rescued and that's what made him famous. That somehow validates him as an artist. 

 

Eli crail grabbing off of a tree in NYC, 1989. Photo: Bryce Kanights 

 

It's like this mess (Eli points to a Wombat scribble on a wall), who is this? Wombat, right? Antistyle - I don't believe in it. If Wombat was doing whole-car style burners in the traditional sense, then decided to do scribbles, then that's different. Take Picasso or Lichtenstein. Before Picasso's cubism, he had a decade of painting photo-realistic portraits. Lichtenstein was an amazing landscape painter, but the concept was, "I'm making a comment on our society, even though I can paint a perfect oil painting landscape, I'm choosing to do a detailed comic book strip and force you into an art gallery and look at this." There's a concept behind that. There's no concept behind anti-style. It's completely surface. It's "this is what I'm selling, if you're buying, great." I don't know who's buying it... I remember when we had the Shut skate shop, one of the guys who worked there was listening to mumble rap or trap rap. I said, "I don't get it. Help me understand why you like it." Now, if my grandfather asked me why I liked Punk Rock or Hip Hop, I could spend hours telling him the reasons. But this kid was like, "I don't know. It's just fresh! It's dope!" So now when I see kids and ask them what they're into and why, they're like, "I don't know." So if they don't know, who does? How can you not describe or understand why you like something? They are ships lost at sea. 

 

So after they put my skateboard together, the Dream Wheels guys took me skating down at Washington Square Park. From there, I started skating. You had a skateboard and it was a signal that you were a skater. And that first year or two of skating was when I was like, I'm giving up on graffiti. It was really the TC5 guys. I had high hopes that Doc - who I love; he's one of my favorite artists - Doc and Beam and them are gonna take me to the train yards and show me how it works. I thought I was going to be their apprentice. But right when I got into skateboarding, the city started cracking down on graffiti and there was the Ball Buster Crew. I got shot at twice while writing graffiti. It was heavy! Gangs of kids would come into Wings like, "What do you fuckin' write"! It was violent, and I didn't want any of that. But also at that time, Doc said very clearly, "We are not writing any more graffiti after 1985." I was like, "What are you talking about?" The TC5 guys were like, "You don't get it because you're young. But when we were your age, we would just steal paint, grab a beer, and walk right into the yards and paint all day. No one bothered you. Now, it's just so difficult." I was like, I'm not ready to get into a fight over graffiti. I figured, if I'm going to get hurt, I'm going to hurt myself. I think that's what I liked about skateboarding - it put my potential pain in MY hands. If I fall, it's my fault and I can make corrections. Whereas, you're writing graffiti and you think you've plotted it all out, and you miss something and you get fucked up. Having said that, I got arrested a bunch for writing graffiti. I think that my personality type wasn't suited for graffiti in the sense that I was kind of reckless. Or maybe not reckless enough? Reas and Ghost and those guys were way crazier than I ever was, but they somehow just kept going. So I was like, I can't get arrested anymore, so I'm just going to skateboard. The graffiti aspect for me, when I got into skateboarding ('83/'84), was like a NYC stamp of approval. 

 

Late high school, I was writing graffiti, but just for fun. I was a sponsored skateboarder at this point. I was still friends with Arson and Reas and Mesh and Chisel and those guys. I remember going to the subway tunnels with them, and these guys would get fucked up and were just wasted writing on the train freestyling it. I felt like a spy in the House of Love. These guys are real graffiti writers and this is what it's about. 

I suppose that if you are a great graffiti writer, your sense of self and value comes from getting up and name recognition from other graffiti writers. I didn't care about that. I didn't care if you knew who I was. I got more of a thrill from going out and doing tricks. One night, in Washington Square Park, Ian Frahm and I were learning how to do ollies over a skateboard on its side. We had no money, but Ian wanted beer money. So he convinced us to go to Bleecker Street and do inverts for change. It worked! It was like a break dancing circle! I had been practicing ollieing by myself, so I knew I could do it over a board. Ian was the HoHo master. So Ian says to the crowd, "I'm going to magically levitate my skateboard over this other board." He tries, but keeps messing up and hitting the board. I'm like, "Let me do it." I ollie the board and the crowd goes wild! This drunk blonde guido lady gave me five bucks and was like, "How did you do that? That's amazing!” A single ollie. Ian got so mad he took my money! He's like, "That's mine!" And he goes and buys a six pack and I think I got a Gatorade.

An inverted Eli. Photo: Stana Weisburd 

 

Jumping ahead, me and Beasely were skating a lot, but Beasely was more into writing graffiti than I was. We started going out to nightclubs. Payday was an early hip hop party, and Jeremy Henderson convinced them to build, not a halfpipe, but two quarter pipes on a stage at the club. Me and Beasley would go and skate there. Through all that, we ended up working at Mars (on West 13th and the West Side Highway) as party promoters. We used to go to the club during the day while we were skating around there. One day we discovered a supply closet full of spray paint, and some kind of polish with fat caps which no one knew how to get. So we took all the fat caps. After that I remember being in one of the offices and the boss was like, "Someone stole all the caps off of the cleaning supplies!" And we were like, "Oh fuck!" 

 

 

 

 

Then we'd go skate with our paint and the fat caps, and during that time, Beasely (Beasley 79) was up all over downtown. At that point, I wasn't going back to my original tag. So I'd write dumb shit and make joke tags. Like "The Frog" or "Liar"; it was always something silly. That said, we would bomb! That was when I got back into graffiti for a bit. A little after that, after Mars, we started Phat Farm. I was working with Alyasha (Alyasha Owerka-Moor). Aly is a great artist, and he has the one thing I never had, which is hand style (Relax BYI). I love his hand style. When we were at Phat Farm, I'd look at Aly's stuff, and his hand style was so good and mine was shit! I was doing more of the computer graphics stuff, but that's when I decided to improve my hand style. I want to learn how to write like Dondi. So I made a conscious effort and started getting better at it. Around the same time, Rodney and Bruno ended Shut. Soon after, Rodney told me he was starting a new skateboard company called Zoo York. 

 

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Were the Soul Artists guys cool with Rodney using the name? 

When I was a kid, I grew up right there with the Soul Artists. Futura's first girlfriend was my mom's pilates instructor. As a little little kid in the 70's I'd see them all skate at the Outlaw Ramp in Riverside Park, and I thought it was the circus; it was that foreign to me. That said, graffiti was even more foreign. I'm not trying to say I was down with them back then, I was a child, but I was aware of all of them. In the 1980s when I was skating with Ian Frahm and those guys, you'd see Zoo York, not as a tag but as a cross (like Dog Town) on everyone's griptape and sneakers. It was a skate thing; it wasn't a graffiti thing. This all goes back to the 70's. There was the Soul Artists graffiti crew: Futura, Haze, and so on. They all skated but were graffiti writers. Then there was the crew that were more into skateboarding: Andy Kessler, Puppet Head, Papo, and other guys. They were the Soul Artists of Zoo York. But the Zoo York crew were the skaters. Kind of like the Dog Town of the East Coast. They have really amazing stories, like Haze meeting up with Tony Alva when they came here in the 1970's, and Haze is also friends with Hosoi from back in the day. I even skated for Hosoi’s wheels back then. Rockets. So when Rodney was like, "I'm going to do Zoo York," I had already done one or two Zoo York boards for Shut. So Rodney approaches Futura about using the Zoo York name, and Futura says you have to talk to Mark Edmonds. So a phone call was set up and Rodney got the blessing from Mark. At the time, I was friends with Andy Kessler. He was not in a good place at the time, and so we reached out to him offering to be a part of this. He said no, he was done with skateboarding. 

We knew we needed to get a tag for the brand. While I was at Phat Farm, I was copying the Zephyr tag. So I decided to make the Zephyr tag into the Zoo York tag. Except, I'm not Zephyr. I don't have that hand style. I tried so hard, every way you could think: with markers and mops and spray paint. In hindsight I probably would have been better off trying to find him and being like, "Can you write Zoo York for me?" The reason why Zephyr is so dope is because of how the letters work together. Other skaters were bringing artwork, like Zoo York pieces and tags, and it all looked like trash. So I went into a meditative state trying to improve my hand style. Like hours and hours just writing "Zoo York". Now, after all that, I have some modicum of notable hand style and when people ask me to do their tag for them, I'm happy to. In some ways, I'm a serious toy. I think Sacha Jenkins said, "I'm a really good graffiti writer and I can skate, but I never got sponsored." I'm the reverse. I did get sponsored for skating, but I never went all city. I'm even nervous just doing this interview, because the success of Zoo York and the tag has put unwanted focus on me. I'm telling you, I didn't get dope hand style until I was thirty. Now I'm lucky that I have my own system of writing graffiti.   

  

Who did you look up to when you first got into skating?

The guys in NYC who could skate. Ian Frahm, Ben Alavarez, Bruno Musso. There were no NYC videos or magazines so you just jocked the local rippers. And obviously Gonz, Natas, and Tommy Guerro. Street pioneers.

Who did you look up to in graffiti?

Doze, but not even just graffiti, but in art in general. Going into his bedroom, without his knowledge, just influenced me so much. Then hanging out with all the TC5 guys. Midas is one of the greatest graffiti writers no one knows about. I did see him up and I think he did some cars, but he's not remembered. He's a musician, too. I think he left NY to pursue jazz guitar. I really love Reas and Ghost. And then I’ve always been impressed with just the sheer scope of JA "whoa JA is up out here in Nebraska?!”  Funny story - Me and Jeff Pang and some surfers were driving through Baja Mexico in the middle of the desert on a surf trip. We pulled over at a pile of giant boulders to eat lunch and there was a giant Twist ’screw’ and tag on the rocks. In the middle of the desert. Crazy.

In my interview with Hour KRT, he mentions meeting you at Union Square and you inviting him and Akira down to Zoo the next day. Sound familiar? 

I don't remember that. But I know the spot and I know those guys, and that's how it happened: they were skating well and you can tell when people are putting the time in and they deserve it. But when Zoo got really big and everyone wanted to skate for us, we'd get stacks of sponsor me tapes and we'd have whole team meetings. It was like Animal House when they were choosing people to join the frat. We'd be real mean, like "get this shit out of here!" But when we'd see a good tape, Jeff would be like, "he better be 13!" Then we find out he's 17, and we're like, "he's too old!" 

In skating, it's not cool to film at skateparks; in graffiti, legal walls aren't cool. What do you think of these "rules" in each subculture? 

I am someone who has watched it all occur. There was a point in my life where I had access to a video camera, so I was filming skating and hip hop as it was occuring around me, and nobody was happy about it. The skaters accepted it a little more than the hip hop people. Filming skating in the 80's was just bizarre. Nowadays, you can go out by yourself and film yourself skating a handrail. As long as your iPhone is filming, you're good. Back in the day, you had to get somebody to film. Or, like two or more people to witness it. For example, I was the first person to ollie the Met steps (Metropolitan Museum of Art). On that day, I said to my friends, "I need you guys to watch." I did it, and it wasn't on film. But the next day I went to Washington Square Park and everyone was like, "yo you ollied the Met steps!" But if I had asked someone to shoot a photo or film it, they'd be like, "What? you're not doing this for real! You're doing this for image!" Nowadays, no one goes skating without a camera. Like as if it doesn't count if you didn't film it. I would argue that it counts more if it wasn't filmed. On the graffiti flip flop of that, somebody sent me a really well edited Tik Tok of a girl graffiti writer interacting with the camera, doing little dances, it's all chopped up, and then she does a graffiti piece. My friend who sent it asked what I thought of it. I said, "You're not showing me a graffiti piece; you're showing me a performance art piece." The girl was more concerned with what the camera saw of her doing this experience. It's almost like her graffiti piece is a victim of her desire to be famous. It kills the magic. The true greatness of graffiti is how did it happen? It's Tuesday night, the sun goes down, people go to bed, and they get up the next morning and there's a full car! Who did it? How did they do it? That's the magic. Speaking of, I actually hold magicians in the highest regard. And I think they should exist somewhere in this venn diagram, because it's like Midas taking out the folded piece of paper. A magician doing a trick in front of you... he didn't just learn that. You're witnessing an action that's been practiced and labored over for decades. But at the same time, I feel that the best artists of nowadays don't get the love of the "most liked" on Instagram and there's something really dangerous about that. But I think in skateboarding, if you're a really good skater today, you'll get the props, and you don't have to win X Games or whatever to get those props.   

What is it about these two subcultures that they attract a lot of the same people?

I read an article recently about how big finance destroyed skateboarding and surfing by basically taking something that was essentially a big "fuck you" to society and scraped it for parts. The author was trying to make the point that capitalism is more brutal than skateboarding or graffiti. But, yeah, that's why it is: if you're a skater, you're probably somewhat predispositioned to finding comfort in stressful situations. I love it. I got into surfing because it was a new way to almost die. Now I've gotten into (NYPD and the FAA are aware) flying drones around the city. It's stressful: sweaty palms and almost hitting buildings. One wrong move and this giant hunk of plastic is gonna kill somebody! I think that's what it is. I think skaters and graffiti writers are the same person in that way. Skaters are extroverts; graffiti writers are introverts. By nature, graffiti writers are sneaky and want to do something loud, but they're not going to do it with eyes on them. Whereas skaters are like, "watch me jump these stairs!" The skater is welcoming the world to witness his defiant act, while the graffiti writer is not inviting the world to witness the act, but the world can see the result and the result will speak for them. 

Back in the 80's and 90's, skating and graffiti weren't accepted by the mainstream. Nowadays they are a lot more so. How do you think this warm welcome from the masses has changed these subcultures?

I am complicit in destroying the thing that I love. I didn't know what that was until it was gone. I thought that skating and graffiti and surfing were all was so pure and awesome, and by sharing them with the world, what could go wrong? And what went wrong was gatekeeping and hierarchy was lost. When I got into writing graffiti, I had to humbly hang at the feet of the TC5 guys. The first time I went to the Banks, I had to make sure I was OK to skate there and I wasn't going to get punched in the face. It's because of the way society went with participation awards and inclusivity and "express yourself" - you're basically inviting an orgy of amateurs. The suffering to get good at something until you're accepted is gone. I went to the reopening of the Banks and it was a catastrophe. None of the skaters knew each other. You can see who's good, but the kids who are good are subjected to the ineptitude of enthusiastic amateurs. Whereas in the 80's and 90's, if you showed up at the Banks and the Shut team was skating, you sat down and watched and learned. But now it's like "skating is for me and everyone is invited." Too much inclusivity; inclusivity to the point of destroying the thing you love. A graffiti example is Five Points. Everyone who got up at Five Points was knowledgeable enough and skillful enough to know the right people to get a spot there to paint. If Five Points was still around today, it would just be Wombats and worse, because there would be no one there to tell them, "the only reason you are here is because of us, and you can't do that." That's gone. That is what I'm culpable in, because I was selling it. But my heart was in the right place. But then, do I want a world where there's 30 mean skaters guarding the Banks, or do I want a NYC where everyone skates and there are skateparks everywhere? I want the latter. What we have now is better. But I will miss how I had it. I would like to think that I am evolved enough as a person to accept that the things that upset me are insignificant to the benefit that skateboarding and graffiti have delivered to our society. 

 

Last question: will you hit my book?

Yes! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jems KFD

In the intro to my interview with Cycle, I mention texting a friend about the interview who said he thought Cycle would be the best candidate for this project. That friend was Jems KFD, a Long Island skater and writer, who, himself, is a really good candidate for this project. 

What did you get into first: skating or graffiti?

Skateboarding, when I was in fifth grade. When I was like 10.

 

Young Jems, about to catch air.

 

How did you get into skating? 

I remember seeing Police Academy 4 with the Bones Brigade, and then I got a shitty board like a Nash or something. Then I convinced my grandmother to get me a Christian Hosoi Hammerhead. That was my first legit board. Then I met a friend in elementary school, Beau, he skated, too. And it went from there, like this is what I want to do. 

How did you get into graffiti?

Around 9th grade I started noticing and thinking, "that's cool." I started seeing Semer and the HTE and ABK guys starting to get up a lot. By tenth grade I had found the ABK pit and had done one or two really toy pieces down there. Also did some tags along the Long Island Railroad in my town (Garden City). Nothing serious, but that was when I first started. 

LIRR tracks circa '98

How did you get your tag?

I don't know how exactly I got the tag Jems. It was just a combination of liking this letter and liking that letter.  

 

What skaters were psyched on in your early days of skating?

All the World guys. Guy Mariano was probably my favorite. That trick he does in the credits of Mouse - switch frontside shuvit switch crooked grind on a handrail - is still insane! Mike Carroll, and of course Gino, the local hero. I was recently watching Dill's part in Snuff. I had the VHS of Snuff and really liked his part. Koston and Rick Howard - any guy who had a really good style I liked. Rudy Johnson was also a favorite, especially during the Video Days time. 

 

Jems jumps down the 9 stair at the Banks.

 

What writers stood out to you in your early days of graffiti?

Semer HTE was probably the biggest standout. He was a guy you saw up in the city, not just Long Island. I remember going to Sohozat to get fat caps and Semer had a fill-in on West Broadway. Hark and Bug'n had really good pieces in the Pit. AE One was up. Demco - I still look at his throw up from back then, it's still sick. Being more north shore LI, those were the guys I was exposed to. Then I moved out to Suffolk (1994), there wasn't anyone really up out there. Phat (now Phetus) had a wall in Huntington that was dope, it was a handball court at the top of a hill that went down to the village. And Foe, of course, was a favorite, too.

Tell me about your crew, KFD.

I guess it was me not taking myself seriously. The original meaning is King for a Day. I'd always say, "it would be cool to be king for a day." My aspirations weren't very big. It was just a joke between friends. It was really just friends, but I guess technically it is a crew. Everyone had three-letter crews, and I wasn't down with any at the time, so you make up your own and that's what we pushed. Then Slam threw me down with ABK. 

In Bobby Puleo's Epicly Later'd, Leo Fitzpatrick and Tim O'Connor talk about how the NJ skaters weren't really accepted by the city skaters in the 90's. And I remember Long Island skaters, who were clearly better than the city skaters, saying the same thing. Do you think there's a correlation with writing: suburban writers not being taken seriously by city writers?

Yeah, definitely.  Especially if you only stick to Long Island, which is understandable. Not everyone has it in them to go all-city or become a graffiti legend. At the same time, if you feel like you deserve respect from city writers, then you have to get up in the city. And they might have to work a little harder to overcome that suburban-writer stereotype that you're not as real or whatever. But there have been a handful of guys from Long Island - and a lot of people don't even realize they're from Long Island, but they are - and they've done interviews and for whatever reason they don't say where they're from, but I know for a fact they're Long Islanders. But they crushed it. And the proof is in the pudding. So, you know, if you're crushing it at graffiti or you're a sick skater and someone is looking down their nose at you, then they're just jealous and being a hater. 

 

Jems at the Banks, circa mid 90s. Photo: Bobshirt

 

Back in the 80's and 90's, skating and graffiti weren't accepted by the mainstream. Nowadays they are a lot more so. How do you think this warm welcome from the masses has changed these subcultures?

It's always a double-edged sword. One of the things that made skateboarding "cool" was the exclusivity of it. It was like a small club.You were dedicated to something that wasn't popular; we were doing it for the love of it. But it's good that it blew up and people can now make money off of it, but then you get a lot of fly-by-night people in it, which is really happening in graffiti, I can't say that about skateboarding because I don't keep up with it as much. But you know, it's like anything else - it's got good things, and it's got bad things. In skating, it used to seem like everyone knew each other, or at least knew of each other, but now it just seems like so many kids are doing it. Which is cool, because they're doing something that's creative and fun. But with that you'll always get the culture vultures that just try to take and not offer anything, which is the bad part of it. There's been a handful of artists who have made it in the gallery world who started out writing graffiti in the streets. Yeah, what they did kind of looked like graffiti but it's not graffiti in the traditional sense. Then they do some self promotion and eventually abandon graffiti and just go for the money in the gallery world. So I don't think they were actually into graffiti in the first place, they were just using it as a vehicle to promote really bad art. 

Jems' board for Wriders' "Graffics" Show

 

In skating, filming at skateparks is frowned upon; in writing, painting legal walls is frowned upon. What are your thoughts on these "rules"? 

I can see the similarities. When we were younger, we were dying for skateparks. Now there are so many. It's kind of crazy.  Skating and graffiti both have that do-it-yourself mentality, like you're making something out of nothing. Like, here's a set of stairs and it has a rail coming off of it, and a skater thinks, "I can jump onto that with my skateboard, ride down it, land and roll away." Whereas in a skatepark, it's all mimicking that vision someone had and realized back in the day. And legal walls - everyone gets the itch. If you're a graffiti writer, you get that itch to paint, while the graffiti world or the streets will respect an illegal piece more than a legal one, if you want to scratch that itch, don't misrepresent what you're doing.

When I interviewed Rebel, I came across a picture of a truck you painted. Do you remember that night?

Barely. When I was in college, I was living in south Park Slope and I was lucky enough to have a truck yard across the street from my apartment. The yard was behind this Muslim school, and I would get wasted and come home from partying and if I felt like painting I'd just hop the fence and paint. So that photo is a result of me drunkenly going over someone who was much more up than I was. I only went over half of it, and a couple months later I ended up doing a second fill-in over it, feeling like I was covering my tracks somehow. Then I almost ended up getting the shit beaten out of me for it, but that's the game I signed up for. 

Jems' trouble truck. Photo of a photo Rebel shot

What would you say are the differences between writing on Long Island versus writing in the city?

Unfortunately, I didn't have anybody that could show me the ropes. It was all trial and error. A lot of it in the beginning was by myself. My freshman year, I was painting in one of those cutty alleys off Broadway in Soho. It was probably the first fill-in I had ever done in the city. I got greedy and started doing another one, and then a cop pulled up at the end of the alley and shined a light on me. I ended up running with them driving down the wrong way on Broadway chasing me. I tried to hide under a car, but they caught me and stole my bag and let me go. It was a couple of years of slow going, by myself. But then I annoyed a couple of my friends enough to go out with me, and they ended up catching the bug. Then during the summer of sophomore year I started painting the LIRR quite a bit with my boy Send, which helped me get more comfortable with going on actual bombing missions. Also, my boy Kleps lived a few blocks down from me in Brooklyn, and we'd go to the city, meet up with a bunch of friends and drink, and catch tags. Then egg each other on to do some crazy shit. Other times I'd paint a spot by myself, usually with alcohol. Again, if you don't have someone who's been there and done that, it's a lot of trial and error. Like a crawl-walk-run kind of thing. 

 

Jems gettin' live in '25

 

Any new skaters that you're psyched on?

This is totally non-controversial, but Tyshawn Jones is sick. I like Nakel, too, he's sick. But there are a lot of skaters out there who are amazing, but they just don't do it for me. 

Any new writers catching your eye?

That guy Anso is up everywhere. I lived in Oakland for a couple of years, and he was up all over there. That seems to be the thing now - guys painting all over the world. That dude Goog; I like his throw ups and tags. False can do it all and he's been bombing like crazy.

Will you hit my book?

Yeah!

 

 

 

Poet x Poets

A pro skater from Brooklyn is rumored to have said that the only good thing about Long Island is that it's attached to Brooklyn. What this curmudgeon didn't mention is that the island also connects with Queens (so we LI'ers have that going for us, too, which is nice). In celebration of this connection, Wriders brings you Poet for Poets: a collaboration with legendary Queens writer, Poet CWK, and everyone's favorite skater's favorite skater, Long Island's Gino Iannucci (Poets).

When did you start skating?

Gino: The first thing that comes to mind is a young girl in my grade school that used to skateboard to school. This was probably around 1986. That's the first time I saw a legit skateboard. I was used to the Toys R' Us plastic boards, and she was riding a Town & Country wooden skateboard. I remember being intrigued.

When did you start writing?

Poet: Grade school, around '84 or '85, I was in class with a girl who wrote Boney D. I was intrigued. She knew a lot of people from the neighborhood, and that's how it all started. 

 

Available at Poets Brand

 

Where did Poets come from?

Gino: Poets Corner is a neighborhood in Westbury, Long Island, where I grew up. So I named the brand after the neighborhood.

Where did Poet come from?

Poet: There was a Poet from my neighborhood who stopped writing years earlier, so I went with the name.

Available at Poets Brand

In skating, filming at skateparks is frowned upon; in writing, painting legal walls is frowned upon. What are your thoughts on these "rules"?

Gino: I've filmed at skateparks as I've gotten older, and I think that's because I've gotten less and less interested in being in the streets. And less and less capable of the physical demand of skating through the streets from spot to spot. So parks became easier. If I was younger, I probably would have frowned upon park footage. I don't necessarily enjoy watching footage at parks as much as street footage, of course. So I don't frown upon it, that much, because I do it, but probably back in the day I would have.

Poet: Legal walls is street art. I have done them, and I will still do them. But not on a regular basis. Graffiti is illegal, and that's how it was and how it will always be.

Back in the day, skating and graffiti weren't as accepted by the mainstream as they are now. How do you think this warm welcome from the masses has affected the cultures?

Gino: Acceptance always seems to make things watered down and cheesy. That's my generation's way/my 50-year-old self's way of looking at it. To put it simply, there are pluses and minuses.

Poet: It's a 50/50 split. You have your pros, and you definitely have your cons. The cons are that they take something that was created by children and exploit it for their own needs while making millions of dollars with something that was created by kids; something that's frowned upon and they tell you that you can't do, you shouldn't do, yet corporate America has basically hijacked it. There are a few people that are getting paid off of it, yes, a few. Few and far between. There are countless others that ain't getting shit. And they're using their graphics and styles in commercials and clothing brands, so basically corporate America is robbing the poor. 

 

Last question goes to Poet: will you hit my book?

Poet: Yes. 

 

 

 

Renos HTK

Renos is the second West Coast skater/writer to be interviewed here. He's also the second subject to be connected with us by Rebel (thanks, Tommy). We spoke about his connections to/early inspirations from NYC, how he got his big pop, what skate companies he's done graphics for, and much more.

 

What did you get into first, skateboarding or graffiti? 

I started skating first as a youngster, riding a plastic board at age five and riding outside of the house. Initially it was just another toy in the garage, but by age 10 I got a real setup and was hyped. It was a Sims New Wave with Indys and Alva Rock wheels. That was the start of the addiction. 

I really started to get interested in writing around age seven or so. Just being intrigued by writing on anything around the neighborhood, all by kids writing all the AC/DC and Led Zep stoner graff, and gangster writing, and eventually breakdancing nicknames. Being as my dad was from Queens, I was also always intrigued by anything having to do with New York. I do recall riding from the La Guardia Airport and seeing graff along the freeway and thinking this is too cool. During that trip I absorbed all of the neighborhood graff, and was determined to learn,and wanted to know more about it. I was fascinated and I think it altered my brain chemistry and set me on the path. This was around 1980 or so. I remember riding the 7 line and staring out the window and watching the graff roll by. Those moments implanted the virus.

 

Renos, grabbing Indy in '89.

Who were you psyched on in your early days of skating? 

Initially I would see skating in the early surfing magazines - mainly just ads for the plastic boards and always thought the dudes in the pics looked real cool, carving all styled out. I had a step brother who surfed and skated and I would scour his mags. He rode a Big Red back then. He stopped skating when he bailed skitching and road rashed half of his shoulder off. He was an early influence. He was the cool older bro! Once I got a bit older and learned more about the scene I got into whoever was in Thrasher. I remember the first time I was taken to a vert ramp - it was a long skate from the skateshop and a local older kid let me tag along. We wound up at some random house and in the backyard and there is this huge vert ramp. Jeff Hedges was there; he was ripping and my mind was blown. He was the first in-person vert skater I had ever seen. Years later, I got to skate street with him. That was rad. I was too young and unskilled to skate vert and we were just into bombing big hills and just kind of cruising around the block. When we learned ollie to axel stalls, that changed the game for us neighborhood kids. Then the jump ramp era kicked in, and ramp to wall rides; we now had a type of skating we could better relate to.

 

Renos gets blunted in '88.

 We had a local skate shop, Go Skate, and they had a big crew of local rippers: Chad, Jay, Mike Alcantar, Scott Oster, Eric Ryder, Fletcher Hill, Craig Barnett. They were the older dudes who ripped and we all looked up to. Then later some other folks inspired me to try and skate better and faster: Kenny Fauty, Carl Fleck, Zoomer, David Smyrak, Kjhel Ossness, Toby Wolf, Pat Walsh, Kevin Price, Gabe Mckillop, Brian Carlsen the ollie master, Brian Backus RIP, Tom Cleary, Metal Man Ed, Tim Diet, Johnny Reverse RIP. When street skating started to get coverage it was Natas and Gonz and Tommy G. - they were mind melters.

 

Early '90s.

 

Who were you psyched on in your early days of graffiti?

Style Wars help set it off for us. We were already into graff and breaking, but once we got to watch that film over and over, that became our mentorship program. And my racked Subway Art book was my tracing guide. We also had a local scene with folks like: OZ, Quickdraw, 2fast, Rock198, Sway from Boston rolled by, OOZE, and all of the early SF writers: Dug, Deen, Bisaro, Dream RIP, Spie, UB40, Saint /Noid, J love A, RWD, LAZ, ARM crew, ROT, Smokey25th, and SO MANY MORE. Mainly I just tried to bite anything in Style Wars and Subway Art and from the up older dudes in SF and Oakland.

 

 

How did you get your tag? 

I’ve had a ton over the years. Started early as Mad, then Mace, then Merc 1, Cosmic Kid was my breaking name. I went on a heavy tour as Merc and ran into some legal issues which should have made me retire!  I chilled for a bit, then eased back into it with a new name to throw them off the trail. I took the first letter of my gov't name, added a “oner” which was in fashion at the time for “Soner”. Thinking I was clever and to try and camouflage it even more I reversed that.

 

 

What does HTK stand for?

Hill Top Kids is the original meaning, since the original members are all from a certain neighborhood. 

What would you say are the differences between California graff verses NYC graff? 

I think we just tried to do our own version of what we initially saw happening in New York. Some of it worked and some of it just got lost in translation. Everywhere had regional styles back then, before there was easy access to the game. Each local scene produced their own fonts and styles that evolved locally and organically. I think the differences were far more pronounced than they are today, which is good and bad. The learning curve is way shorter which may also help style evolve in a rapid rate which is interesting to watch. The good part of NY is that your work seems to last longer than out here in Cali.

 

When the West is in the house: Renos up in Brooklyn

You have some serious pop! Big ollies! Is that something you had to work on, or did it come naturally? 

One of the first things everyone used to ask was “How high can you ollie?” That was the "are you cool or a poseur" test. So I always wanted to make sure I could pass. We skated with this cat Brian Carlsen and he was the king of pop. He was ollieing tennis court nets on Roskopp face decks. He ripped!!! Jump ramp king, too. He could ollie up the stage at EMB first try... and this was in '86 or so. That was the skating I liked to do and it just felt rad to be able to pop around. The ollie was the staple back then and I just kept at it. And to this day I am content to just roll around and ollie. Sometimes I forget to flip my board or do anything else.

 

Renos ollieing high in 1997.

 

Have you done any graphics for skate brands? 

Luckily yes!! I was lucky enough to design a few decks for a brand called Co-Op. It was a small brand, and pretty short lived. We did a video too. I did four deck graphics and some ad lettering etc. I used a NY subway template drawing and did a “conspiracy” piece on it. It was a great experience. I was lucky enough to do an OJ Wheel graphic, and an Independent trucks  t-shirt. Also a few graphics for some skateshops: Bills Wheels, Long Beach Skate, Terrace skateshop and Slappys!! 

 

 

 

What is it about these two subcultures (skating and graffiti) that they attract a lot of the same people?

I think back in the day we were all wild childs. Latch key kids, feral creatures who were all looking for something. Skating was easy access, didn’t require parental involvement, and a rebellious activity that offered a ton of freedom. Just grab your setup and barge out into the world and wander looking for adventure. It often attracted some of the more fringe, outcast types who banded together like a pack of wolves. Similar to many of those who gravitated to graff. It offers adventure, little $ investment, a secret world with its own hierarchies, rules, politics, and chaos!! And for me, both were on the streets and I always enjoyed wandering. 

 

 

In skating it's not cool to film at skateparks. In graffiti it's not cool to paint legal walls. So are legal walls the graff equivalent of skatepark footage and vice versa? What are your thoughts on these two "rules"?  

I’ve always liked to break rules. Sure when you’re a youngster coming up you should be out in the wild getting up, catching wreck, skating street spots and painting street spots! That is where the real action lays and the test of your level in the game. Once you get a bit older and the risk vs. reward stakes change, just do your thing and fuck any rules. Be stoked to still be painting or skating wherever and whenever you can. Real life kicks in quickly and the return on investment changes. Do your thing and enjoy it. Be appreciative that these insane skateparks exist and that you can afford to buy the paint to doodle your name. 

 

 

Any skaters or companies you're psyched on right now?

Yes! I am psyched to see skating progress so quickly and looking forward to the future! It is dope to see Tony Hawk Playstation skating be real life!!!  Stoked on: Independent Trucks, Bronson Bearings, Mob Grip, OJ Wheels Double Durometers and Santa Cruz VX decks.

 

What writers are you seeing up that you like?

I like it all. Hyped on the toys in my neighborhood - there is a new wave of vandals en route. Stoked to see it. I like seeing the folks who are working on their tags and out there getting up!

 

Any shout outs? 

KTB, MD. HTK crew. Rebel SC. Thanks to you for reaching out and asking these questions! And to anyone who took the time to read my rant, thanks. Stay Up.