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!
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| 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?"
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| Rebel's Ripper |
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| Chez Rebel with OG Ripper and Barnyard Vallely decks on the wall |
Last question: will you hit my book?
Absolutely!
