Rebel SC

 

A few weeks ago, FCEE messaged me asking if I had ever met Rebel SC. I said I had not. FCEE then mentioned that Rebel also skated. Naturally, I asked if he would be down for an interview, and FCEE said he was certain Rebel would be. A day or so later, after FCEE made the connection, Rebel and I made a plan to meet up for the following interview.

Which did you get into first, skating or graffiti?

I grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and first noticed graffiti when my father took me to work with him on the RR train. I was really young, and the only thing that I really noticed was that the train lights kept going on and off, and every time they went back on all you saw was a purple haze of ANT ANT ANT ANT on all of the walls of the car! 

 

 

Ant insides.

 

I was probably eight or nine years old. Around the same time I noticed graffiti in our school yard and around the neighborhood as well. In 1985 I moved to 94th street and Gelston Ave (still in Bay Ridge) and I started making friends there. My mom worked in the city and had a friend at work that was getting rid of an old skateboard, so my mom brought it home for me. It was a red banana board and I loved it, but quickly outgrew it. A friend in the neighborhood had an "Executioner" skateboard and it was all the rage at that time! I asked my mom to buy it for me and she told me her friend Maria had one like it, so if I was good in school she'd get it for me. I ended up getting it, but it wasn't the the Executioner, but it was similar. (I forget what brand.) So around summer of '87, I go on vacation to California to visit my uncle and my older cousin. My cousin had a skateboard in the garage that I was skating. My uncle saw that and took me to a local skate store called "ET Surf" in Hermosa Beach and my mind exploded! When we got back to Brooklyn all I wanted was a real skateboard! When I got home I was hanging out on the block with my friend Peter talking about my trip and everything and he pulled out a white Pentel marker (which was actually pink because he put red in it) and was like "let's go tag the poles in the neighborhood." I told him that I didn't have a tag, so we started tossing names around but after a while I didn't like anything. Then he looked down at the jacket I was wearing, which was from my uncle's boat called the "Sloop Rebel", and he said, "why not REBEL?" 

 

 

Rebel and his uncle's boat, the origin of the name.

 

It hit me and stuck and then we were off to the races! That was like my introduction to graffiti with my own persona. Not like looking at it as a fan and trying to understand it, but now as I had a name and I had to go with that. That October, right before Halloween, my Mom finally took me to our local neighborhood Skate Shop called "CS SKATES" and I got my first real skateboard! 

 

CS Skates in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

 

It was a Powell Peralta Ripper with blue Tracker Ultralite trucks and Slime Ball wheels! The grip tape was ripped up into little sections by the guys who worked there and put on my board and to me that was the beginning! October 27th 1987! 

 

Rebel's Ripper

 

 

Bay Ridge rippers

 

So skating actually started before graffiti, but I would say they were both so intertwined! So now we're skating and writing and taking trips to the city to go to the Banks and skate midtown and so on. We were meeting other skaters and writers and building our bond and our community. The Brooklyn Banks were bombed; you'd see kids skating and a pilot would fall out of their pocket and you'd be like, "Yo you write?" Yeah I write too...  That's how the conversation started. Sometimes you'd be in the city wandering at night writing and you would make a special trip to the Banks to bomb it so that weekend everyone would see it! I came off with tags in Thrasher magazine and in the Brooklyn Banks section of the 411 video from 93: at the end of the section, my buddy is yelling, "SETO SETO!" - that's my marker he's using! As kids, that's just what you did: write, skate, rip up parties and raves, and be out all night wilding! There was always something to do, a spot to hit, some girl's crib to crash at, a party... Common interests were the unbreakable bonds of our youth.

 

Rebel and crew getting up on a bus at a Banks contest in 1993

Who were you psyched on in skating back then?

There was a local church that had skate contests in the late '80s, and that's where you see the best local neighborhood guys. Dudes like Richie Rojas, Louis "Crunchy" Torres, a guy named "Duckie", John Gallagher, Steven Cales, Ryan Hickey, Ivan Perez, and so many others! In our crew we had a lot of different characters and one of our friends, "Trader Tim", was the kid who had all the skate videos. So we'd always go to his house to watch them to get inspired! We'd watch videos like "Future Primitive" and "Wheels of Fire". Guys like Vallely, Natas, Gonz, Mullen and so many others were influences! At that time it was everywhere! When you're young, everything is so fresh and alive! 

 

Rebel with his Barnyard Vallely

Who were your inspirations in graffiti?

Like I stated above, with the first experience on the trains to my local schoolyard, my first inspirations were guys from my block and the neighborhood: Kaves, Revlon, Ant, the TBR guys, and the stuff I would see in the streets. At that time, even regular kids who hung out had tags and handstyles. I worked for Kaves at his graffiti shop in the early '90s and I met a lot of people who walked through those doors. Then there was the kids in high school you chilled with who lived in different neighborhoods and had different styles. Riding the different train lines was always an adventure as well; soaking it all in while leaving your own mark, too. Then taking that inspiration and developing into your own style. Handstyle was always the most important to me, it all starts with your signature: "the tag." That's what you have to practice the most. I sit and practice all the time! It never stops! I've probably written a forest full of trees on paper in my lifetime! 

Kaves' shop

A friend of mine used to say that trucks are the subway trains of the streets. You're known for doing lots of trucks - what drew you to painting trucks?

When I started writing I caught the tail end of the train era. But I wasn't knowledgeable enough to really do damage. We were just really motion tagging. By the time I was hitting layups, the last of the graffitied trains had been sitting in the yards rotting away! People were still hitting trains but it was not the same. They wouldn't really run, so some people shifted their interests elsewhere. I was always into hitting stuff that moved, so early on I was tagging buses, trains, trucks, etc. We started taking it seriously and began seeking out truck yards. We'd dominate them by doing whole-side blockbusters! Then having your friends call you up and be like, "Yo! I seen your truck in midtown Manhattan! The Bronx! That fueled the fire! Desa used to catch them coming over the Manhattan bridge and send me flicks. We would be traveling to find truck yards - anywhere they parked long enough to properly decorate them! We used to check the registrations to make sure they would run! Our choice of medium was always American Accents because the paint had a flat finish, so in the colder weather it was perfect. We'd always outline with Rustoleum WoodSavers because it was thick and like spray glue and had teflon in it so water wouldn't affect it! So one night we go into the yard and there's this beautiful truck, but there's a Corvette parked next to it. I said to my guys, "we're not painting that truck." They were like, "what do you mean?!" I said, "If that was your Corvette, would you want mist on your car? We're not touching it." So we did every other truck in the yard, and left that one alone. You gotta put out good karma. For us the trucks were our subways of the streets!

 

 

What's the origin of SC (Style Crew)?

When you're young and finding yourself, you always wanted something to belong to. As a writer, you may be in several different crews at a time. But just like in life you find comfort in those closest to you. So I stared the crew (SC) in 1991. We already had neighborhood crews, but I wanted something of my own. I never felt like it was competing with anyone; I just wanted to do my own thing. The original name was Society's Children/ Silent Chaos. Then I used it as an acronym:  "S"omething "T"hat "Y"ou'll "L"earn "E"ventually Crew. Which makes sense! 

 

Fiends who crave.

You mentioned Polo earlier. What is it about that brand that appeals to writers?

I can't speak for others, but what I will say is that it all went hand in hand for me in the early '90s. You always wanted to be fresh! In those days, "fresh" meant different things to different people. I remember when thrifting the biggest pants you could find and cutting the bottoms off while skating the smallest wheels was a fad. Rave culture had its moments, as did club culture. New York City has its own culture! When you skated, your flow had to be flashy with finesse. When you wrote, you had to have flavor. As an individual, you had to look the part as well. I remember being in nightschool wearing a POLO P Wing turtleneck and a black denim jacket. The P Wing was on the left chest, so it wasn't really that visible with the jacket on. I was just sitting at my desk tagging the books and this guy who sat in front of me turned around because he smelled the marker and was like, "Yo! You write?" We started talking and he sees that I have a P Wing shirt on and fucking looses his mind! Like, "Yo you got the P wing!" Then he shows me he had on a Sui turtleneck, and next thing we know we are trading clothes at night school so we could always wear something different at school the next day and the frenzy began! I wouldn't go to school unless I had some new Polo to wear. Everything at that time was an obsession! The crazy part was that in school you had to look fly & flam! But keeping the ink and paint off your clothes was a full time job while leading your double life! A lot of times we were not that successful and some good clothes got ruined! 

 

Zero & Rebel with the P Wing turtlenecks

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?  

When we started skating in the mid to late '80s, it was still kind of new - we had the magazines, then the videos started coming out. And we were getting chased out of spots and having fights with security on a daily basis for a multitude of reasons. People only like what's pretty and can be packaged well. Once they realized they could harness the energy of skateboarding and there could be a profit from it things naturally started to change. Now it's a global thing and there are skateparks everywhere, which is wonderful. No longer is it "unaccepted." Graffiti is kind of the same. Major brands are using graffiti to market products. It also has a global impact. There are murals in every city. Artwork is everywhere, which is amazing to see, but at the same time there will always be those people who fill up a marker and sneak into a lay-up to hit trains or pack up a duffle bag to go out street bombing. Same as there are skaters who still hit spots that weren't designed to skate and rock it! The adrenaline rush is not the same as when it is uncontrollable and in your face! 

Style Crew stylin'

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?

Who really determines what is "cool"? It is always all about perspective. Same thing can be said about buying a marker - it's not as cool as making a marker. The thing is, when you film in the streets, the streets are always different - from Brooklyn, NY to Paris, France. The skatepark is built for you; nothing in the streets is built for you. With graffiti, when you're painting an overpass on a highway versus a legal wall, the energy is different. When you roll up to a legal wall, you can sit back and relax and paint and not have to worry about cops. Whereas when I was painting a truck yard at three o'clock in the morning, it was so dark I had to touch the truck to know where I was writing. And I couldn't step back because I was in between lanes. Then the next day you see it in the daylight, you're like, "oh shit, I missed that highlight." Again, the energy is so different. When you have the law chasing you, there's that adrenaline, like, "We only have fifteen minutes in this layup! Then we gotta run!" At a legal wall, it's just so chill. When you're filming at a skatepark, it's like, "I missed this rail 75 times, I think I'll go have lunch and stretch a little and maybe try again later." In the streets it's like, "Boom boom boom! Let's go! There's a car coming! Lookout for that lady!" The energy is so different! It's raw. 

 

Chez Rebel with OG Ripper and Barnyard Vallely decks on the wall

 

Last question: will you hit my book?

Absolutely!

 

 

 

 

 

Jaime "Rust One" Affoumado

 

 

When we were deciding on a place to meet up for this interview, Jaime suggested Washington Square Park because he had been playing jazz there often. As I rolled up to where his band was performing, I immediately recognized the song they were playing: "Watermelon Man" by Herbie Hancock. Of course my next thought was, "who skated to this?" Oh yeah, Guy Mariano in Mouse. What are the odds?

What did you get into first, skating or graffiti?

It was about the same time, but graffiti might have been before. I was only six years old. My older brother was three years older, and he wrote K 166, then he wrote Love 67, then he wrote Void ATB. He wrote a lot on the 1 train because he was going to Kennedy. He was also in the same class as Fuzz One at PS 80. Fuzz was already doing bubble letters back then and we all looked at that. And we were tagging around the neighborhood (Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx), but we also built a skateboard around the same time with metal wheels off of a roller skate. So it was basically at the same time because we built the skateboard and we were writing graffiti. 

Peep the Zephyr tag on the deck.

How did you get into skating?

Well, we built that skateboard, then urethane wheels came out. In 1975 my brother was working at a flea market, and he saw a used skateboard that had urethane wheels, so he copped it. But the trucks were small and thin, so they broke right away. That was a drag. Then I hooked up with the Riverdale Boys, and they had pools. There was also the Upper West Side guys like Andy Kessler.  Then my family moved down to the Village, so I got to hook up with all the Village skaters. I was twelve years old then, but I was an old 12: I was streetwise, graffiti wise, and fight wise. I was a childhood actor, too, so I got to go to California to film a movie. I got to buy some Vans over there, and skate all the skateparks: Pipeline, Skater Cross, Concrete Wave. That was in the summer of '77. So when I came back I was kind of ahead of skating here in NYC.

 

How did you get into graffiti?

Just being in the Bronx - everybody tagged. Also because of my brother, and knowing Fuzz. I wasn't like this dude that was bombing every night, although I did go to yards with NE and Rasta. We had a click: The Mins. I was never a big time graffiti writer, but I hung out with the big time guys - MG Boys, RTW guys, The Rebels, Zoo York skateboard crew. So I got respect that way.  

 

 

How did you get your tag?

Rust came in '75. Before that I was writing Mine 2. That was someone else's name, but he gave it to me. But I really wanted my own name, and for some reason I came up with Rust. I don't know, I guess I really just like those letters.

How did you get down with the MG Boys?

One day I went to PS80 to play basketball and there was some guy there I didn't know already playing. He had combat boots on and spray paint on his pants, so I knew he wrote graffiti. But I didn't know who he was. So we started shooting. Then these three Puerto Rican guys showed up and jumped the dude. Instead of running away, I fought these dudes with him. I clocked one dude in the head, then I clocked another dude in the head. He was choking one dude and threw him on the ground, then the other two dudes jumped him and I hit them in the head. We ended up getting the better of them and they ran off. The dude said to me, "Yo, that was amazing. Here's my phone number. If you need anything, just call me. You got a lot of heart, man." Then he goes, "I'm Mark 198." And I was like, "Oh shit! That's you?" After that, we were boys! Mark was like, "anybody fucks with you... call me!" Because I had his back, he had mine.

What companies have you gotten skate product from?

Madrid, Kryptonics, Santa Cruz, Independent Trucks, Mike Smith, personally, sent me boards. Also, in 1985 we skated at a nightclub called Area. They had a ramp in there for six weeks and they paid me to skateboard. $500 a week for six weeks. That's three grand! 

Salba, Jaime, and Rob Roskopp

What writers did you have respect for back in the day?

Guys like Ali, Zephyr, Bill Rock, all the RTW dudes, Wane, NE. Of course all the original MG boys, those are my main dudes. But I wasn't this top-notch graffiti guy - I'd rather skateboard. But I still hung out with those dudes. They were my friends. They got into a fight, that was my fight.

Did you ever write with Andy Kessler?

Oh yeah! We did everything together. We skated everywhere, skated everything. He was better than me, then I got better than him. And he had a lot of respect for that. He was like, "dude, you surpassed me."

 

Where did the name Puppethead come from?

I was skating at the courtyard in Westbeth when I was like 13 years old with KR2, Fat Peter, Joker 1, and Me 62. I used to spin my head like a ballerina when I did 360's - I'd spot my head. Those dudes were like, "you look like a puppethead." Next day they called me like, "yo Puppethead!" I was like get the fuck outta here... And it stuck. I was meeting people I didn't even know and they'd say, "yo aren't you Puppethead?" I was like I guess, who are you? My name is Jaime. That's a nickname for certain people from this inside thing. But now it's 45 years later and it's still going. That's a long time. 

 

 

What is it about skating and graffiti that they attract the same people?

It's street culture. You got street art, and you ride in the street. That's where they meet - in the streets. Then you got style. Depending on someone's graffiti style, you can kind of tell who they are. Skateboard style is a certain thing, too. I feel like skateboard style and graffiti style have a similarity in which you could be a toy or a poser. We just carried around markers while skateboarding. You see, on skateboards you could bomb easier. You could go from 96th street down to 42nd street in like ten minutes and bomb everything on a skateboard. You could also use it as a weapon - if dudes try to jump you, you could hit them with your skateboard. It's a multipurpose tool.

Here's a story that relates to what you're talking about: I was on an audition in midtown, and Joust was a messenger. I had my skateboard with me, Joust sees me and goes, "you skate, man?" Then he sees the graffiti on my board and says, "oh shit, MG boys, you know those dudes?" I said, "yeah, I'm from the Bronx, but I moved to the Village." Next thing I know he's inviting me to come skate a spot in Brooklyn. I think him seeing the MG Boys thing made him comfortable - because those dudes were serious. So I called him up, stayed at his house one night, and we skated this little blue bowl in a courtyard on Neptune and 15th St. 

How has the acceptance from the mainstream affected the cultures?

Graffiti and skateboarding were rebellious in the '70's and '80's. Skating got accepted into the Olympics which kind of watered it down. The tricks got more difficult, which is supposed to happen; you're not supposed to keep doing the same tricks. Back in the day you could count on your hands and toes how many people in NYC skated. Now there are thousands. Why did that happen? Kessler opened it up with the parks, it got commercialized, and it just grew. Now it's in the Olympics. Great. Now it's ok? Now skateboarding is not a crime?

As for graffiti, guys like Keith Haring and Basquiat upped the ante for a price of a painting. But they were street art, not graffiti. Then Futura and Haze and dudes like that went a certain route. It was either addicts trying to get some money, or it was totally good dudes who knew how to do business. And they made millions. And good for them. They came from the streets robbing paint, to the mainstream making money. It's kind of what's supposed to happen if you're a smart businessman.

Last question: will you hit my book?

Yeah! Definitely, man. Bring it out!

 

 

Keon Ex Vandals

I first met Keon at a legal wall in the Bronx. While we were painting, I noticed he was wearing Half Cabs. I told him those were my favorite skate shoes. "You're a skateboarder?" he asked me. I said yeah. He put his can down and took out his phone and showed me a picture of a dude skating a pool and said, "that's me in 1977." It was then that I realized I had my next subject for this project. 

What did you get into first: skating or graffiti?

I got into skateboarding first. A bunch of the kids on my block skated, but none of them wrote graffiti. This was on Church Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn. And remember, Brooklyn back then was a different place, as was the whole city. Neighborhoods were either all white, all black, or all Puerto Rican. That's it. And there weren't many skateboarders at all. At that point my hair was long and I wanted to be one of the Dogtown boys. Skateboarder magazine had just come out, and we'd see pictures of guys skating banks and so on, but we didn't have that here in the city; that wasn't our landscape. So my friends and I would look for different types of terrain to get radical. We found little waterfall pools in front of buildings in Brooklyn that had banked walls to keep the water in. So we skated those and would eventually get chased out by the doorman. Brooklyn College also had all-brick banked flower gardens that we would skate.   

 

Keon in Kings Plaza, Brooklyn 1977

Then I went to high school on 74th Street in Manhattan. That's where I met Andy Kessler, who was such a little rowdy and wiry dude, as well as a great skater. I also met Puppethead at that time, and Billy Gately who would vic all the Upper East Side kids who had just gotten new FibreFlex boards. We'd skate around the conservatory lake and hills in Central Park, and also all the pools in Riverdale. We were always getting chased out, but it was just about the fun of skating around with a pack of kids. We were like a posse of kids skateboarding. We were like the Dogtown kids of the east coast.   

Then in about 1979, '80, a couple of skateparks were built on Long Island. One in Northport and one in Farmingdale. I would skate these parks with my cousin, Tim. There was another place in Huntington, Long Island, which was an old warehouse that was turned into a skatepark. 

 

I ended up getting on this guy Bernie's skate team. Bernie made a prototype skateboard called RHI, started a team, and had a tryout at the Farmingdale skatepark. It was just S runs, no vertical. Tim and I made the team. Bernie took us to an expo at the New York Coliseum on 57th Street and Columbus Circle, where we met some of the California teams. This was a huge thing for me because I idolized these people. I met Russ Howell (the 360 king), Steve Shipp, and Curt Lindgren. Curt, who was on the Free Former team and who invented the kickflip (originally the "Curt flip"), and I connected, so he asked his agent if he could come to Brooklyn with me. Curt ended up sleeping over my house and skating our spots in Brooklyn. This was like having a rockstar sleepover. I was in such awe of this guy. 

Then there was Amyer's pool. My friend Luke Moore, who was a surfer/skater, was a caretaker for a mansion in South Hampton, Long Island, owned by an old lady named Mrs. Amyer. She had an emptied kidney-shaped pool in her backyard. We had the place all to ourselves. Glen E. Friedman came out to Amyer's with us and shot photos of Luke, which got into Skateboarder Magazine. And in 1981, I won the Blizzard Skateboard Contest in Central Park, both in freestyle and slalom.    

Keon shredding Amyer's pool.

 

How did you get into graffiti?

There was this kid in my neighborhood named Bill Hartung who would do bubble letters on the bottom of his skateboards. Everything was "Cat." Bill would write, "Cool Cat," Crazy Cat," "Top Cat." So I wanted my name on the bottom of a skateboard, and Bill gave me Crazy something, And I was just in awe of the bubble letter artwork he did. And this was on an old Roller Derby wood deck with metal wheels, before the clay wheel had come out. That was about 1974 or '75. I was also seeing bubble letters from All 1, Comet, Cliff, CA (Captain America) on the trains, which reminded me of Bill's skateboards. So between seeing what was on the trains and on Bill's skateboards, that's pretty much what got me into graffiti. 

I'm an Ex Vandal now, but in my neighborhood (Flatbush, Brooklyn), they were the premier group back then in my very segregated-black, white, Puerto Rican-neighborhood. They were young teenage black kids. That's who I used to see up: Scooter, Daddy Cool, Wicked Gary (who was one of the presidents), Savage, DINO NOD, Pinto. These were kids who had tags all over my neighborhood. I never knew any of the Ex Vandals back then except for The Block and Savage. And it was almost like looking at things that were threatening to a certain point. With all the markings on the wall, and being a white kid in an all-black neighborhood, it was a scary time and a scary place. But I liked the graffiti tags. It's funny, because now, as I'm 40 years older and not really writing graffiti other than on legal walls, the Ex Vandals put me in their group to further their name.  

How did you get your tag?

First I had Tex, then Mad Cal (which are my initials). Then some of the funky soul came out, and I got my name from an Eddie Kendricks song, "Keep On Truckin'". Keon, short for Keep On. 

Who did you look up to in skating?

Jay Adams was my favorite skateboarder. And of course all the Dogtown kids. I didn't really look up to them as much as I looked up to the palm trees and what it was out there (California) that we didn't have out here and always dreamed about. 

Who did you look up to in graffiti?

Comet-I loved his letter styles. All 1 and TJ 159. You know the show Welcome Back Kotter? Well, the train that passes through Midwood High School in the opening credits - any one of those guys on that train was my idol. I always wanted to write my name like they did, but I had parents, especially an Italian father, who I had to answer to. So I couldn't go out at two o'clock in the morning. Therefore, I was more of a street/truck tagger, rather than a train bomber. I had maybe four, at best, pieces on a train, which were all done with my friend Joust on the M train at the Sheepshead Bay/Kings Highway layup. I met Joust at a street fair on Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. We were best friends - skate partners first, then graffiti partners. 

Joust & Keon tags rockin' at CBGB

What is it about these two subcultures, skating and graffiti, that they attract a lot of the same guys?

They were both about rebellion. I was a rebellious kid, and they were both ways to be different. It was a way of seeing yourself outside of the muckety muck. And these subcultures always coincided. For example, I worked as a skate guard at the Roxy Roller Disco from 1980 to '85, when they had a hip hop night. It was there/around that time that I saw the hip hop culture morph with the art culture and the graffiti culture. The same way skating morphed with graffiti. Skateboarding was always an underground culture, like graffiti. So the two of them had a lot in common, but nothing in common at the same time. They were just underground cultures. 

What I am really proud of in 2023, is that I was there in the beginning of the skating/graffiti/hip hop movement. I saw it all firsthand, and all of my friends either created it or were it. I would say because of me and my friends, as time went on (this is before 1980) skating became a little more popular here in the city. Back then it wasn't in the culture, but it started to arise, and you see what it is now. It's like how graffiti has morphed, skateboarding has morphed. 

Last question: will you hit my book?

Of course I'll hit your book.

Pope RUH

Pope is the first west coast skater/writer to be featured in this project. I’ve been following his skate career for over two decades, but it was only until I started following him on Instagram that I realized he also wrote. Last month, I noticed he was posting skate and graff pics in Brooklyn. So I cold DM’d him to see if he’d be down for an interview. After checking with a mutual friend of ours that I wasn’t a cop, he responded in the affirmative.  

Which did you get into first, skating or graffiti?

Skating.

PHOTO: @DERRICKGERLACH

How did you get into skating?

I was born in a city called Baldwin Park, and we moved out in ‘85 because the block was just getting too hot. So we moved a few cities over, which was a little more bourgeois. Then we saw some kid come down the block skating, and my older brother started skating with him. And when I turned seven I got my first board. So I just followed my brother and his friends around. They had a skate crew called Team Woody and they ripped. But around ‘87, when I hit Pipeline and all that, that’s when skating got real for me.

Who did you look up to in skating?

Quy Nguyen is number one. Quy is the dopest to me. Then in no particular order, I like Gino, Guy, Keenan, Koston, Caesar Singh. Puleo, who didn’t have to flip in or out, but was still dope as fuck-that’s hard to do. That’s hard to get away with, and he did it. Also Marcus McBride. And Richard Mulder, seeing what he did on the daily made me skate better. I owe a lot to Richard. As far as new dudes, of course Tiago, he’s a beast.

How did you get into graffiti?

Well, I always loved it. The first graffiti I remember seeing was when I was like 10 or 11 years old, and it was by this crew YGW, Youth Gone Wild. They had this huge roller at a Park N’ Ride on a huge cement wall right off the Fairplex exit. I was baffled like, “how the fuck did they do that?!” 

I remember going to LA and seeing Saber, and GKAE, who was probably the most up. I remember seeing the fire escapes, thinking that was the coolest shit ever. Then Fart and Barf came and crushed it. I would see Hilo and Okaer in the early ‘90s. I didn’t know them then, but now they’re my homies. Hilo actually went to my school and I’d sell him skateboards. Then one day I saw Hilo was in an art show, so I went to peep it. And the homie I was selling boards to was there and was like, “What’s up, what are you doing here?” I said I was here to see the Hilo stuff in the show, and he said, “yo, that’s me.” I was like, “shut the fuck up!” A few years later we started painting trains together, and he put me on his crew, STS.  

2005 is when I really started painting on things. That’s when I met my homie, Keyps OCP. Going to downtown LA, the first building you see, he had a hang-over, with Okaer. “Keyps Okaer,” it was like a landmark. I met him at a party one night, he asked if I wrote. I was like, “nah, not really.” Then he asked if I had a car, and I was like, “yeah.” He goes, “I got paint, money… You down to drive around? I’ll show you what we do.” So he took me on my first mission, and I was hooked after that. It was like skating – you gotta scope out the spot and all that. 

How did you get your tag?

My mom is Catholic and she named me after the Pope. My name in Arabic is “Hona Bulis.” So at first I wrote “Hana,” but then I switched it to “Pope.” I just thought it worked. 

RUNNIN' UP HARD ON THOSE BROOKLYN ROOFTOPS

Who did you look up to in graff?

Honestly, the dudes I’m homies with now. Like Okaer, who skates, too. And Hilo, who I used to sell skateboards to at the skatepark. He’s OG – he used to do walkouts back in the late ‘90s before people were really doing that. Then there’s GKAE, who had fire escapes on lock. Fire escapes are like the Lockwood table of graff for me. I love fire escapes, and GKAE had ‘em smashed in LA. I wasn’t really writing when he was active, but I was definitely influenced by GKAE. Then the combo of Fart and Barf, just seeing that tag team, that was cool to me. Reakt is a big influence, too. He’s the dude who got me in RUH. Of course without the homie, Keyps, I wouldn’t be writing.

OKAER, REAKT, HILO, KEYPS

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

It’s the same kind of mission. You drive all the way to LA and you got 15 minutes to get your trick. Graff is the same thing. You get on a rooftop and you might have an hour, or you might only have ten minutes, and you try to pull something off that looks dope and get away with it. Like with skating, if you can get a trick before you get the boot, it’s the same kind of feeling. So I got the same feeling from graffiti that I got from skating, which I wasn’t able to do anymore because I was injured. It kind of filled a void for me. Then I just fell in love with it. 

In skating, skatepark clips are not cool. In graff, legal walls are not cool. So would you agree that skatepark footage is the equivalent of a legal wall?

Yeah, it’s the same. I don’t fuck with legals. You can sit there all day with your $18 can of paint and make something look cool. But if you go do it in the streets and deal with the elements, it might not look as dope, but I respect it more. Legals are like a skatepark trick; nobody wants to see a clip at a skatepark.

Back in the 80’s and 90’s, skating and graff 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?

As far as skateboarding goes, it’s good. Think about how much a basketball player makes. Millions of dollars. Of course there’s a bigger fan base, but what we do is way fuckin’ harder. The most I ever got was $1,200 a month. And I’m like, “I’m out here killing myself for $1,200 a month and no medical insurance?” So in that way, the popularity is good. But now you got a bunch of cornballs doing it. I seen a dad and his kid skating down the street, dad pushing mongo, and my homie was like, “that’s so cool and so terrible at the same time.” 

For graff, it’s bringing all the toys out the woodwork. It’s terrible for graff. But some dudes are making money off of it. They have huge followings and they’re selling their art work and that’s cool. But it’s just bringing out too many toys. There’s too much terrible graffiti out there. I’m not saying I’m the best, but I respect the rules and I learned my history.

 

Last question: will you hit my book?

Oh yeah.