CBEE KSA

 I've been wanting to interview ‘CB ONE’ for some time now. After connecting through our mutual friend, ‘Sneek’ KSA, I finally got to sit down and talk with #CBKSA about skateboarding and graffiti. While we were discussing things, ‘CBEE’ even managed to link DJ'ing in within this dynamic. Read on to learn about how he got down with KSA, bombing with ‘TKA’, acting in the movie ‘Kids’, and much more…

CBEE & Seno

What did you get into first, skateboarding or graffiti?   Graffiti for sure. Around 1980, when I was five. You know that's the age when you start getting into things, and the whole B-Boy and Breaking  Culture was a thing, so that's what got me into it. I was writing something between the ages of five and ten, but I didn't start bombing until I was 12 or 13. Then skateboarding came after BMX’ing. My bike got stolen twice. I had two Redlines, which were expensive. Skateboards were less expensive. So after getting two bikes stolen, I decided to start skateboarding. 

A young CBEE catching air. 

With the growth of the industry in the late 80's, skateboarding just caught my interest more, anyway. With competitive skateboarding, eventually I got hurt. Blew my knee out pretty badly filming, and couldn’t ride the same anymore, so I had to retire. That's how I got into graffiti more. Ultimately, I got into DJ'ing in 1995 and playing a ton of raves and clubs and flying everywhere. It's like one thing led to another.

Who did you look up to in your early days of skateboarding? 

The Shut guys for sure, Jeremey Henderson. This is pre ‘Supreme’ and ‘Kids’ and it was all still kind of underground. No one on the east coast was really well known. My first board was a Santa Cruz Duane Peters. It was a boat! Then I had a Jeff Kendall. All the early Powell guys from Public Domain were an influence, too.

Who were you inspired by in the early days of graffiti?

A lot of people. Probably more of the Queens guys. Obviously we were exposed to the stuff coming out of the Bronx/Manhattan, on the trains and Video Graff, and the worldwide zines. Living in Queens exposed me to the guys getting shit done on the expressways, because no one was bombing trains anymore. I think that doesn't get talked about enough - there should be zines on just the expressways. In the outer boroughs, our parents had cars, so we saw the stuff on the highways. Fib, Med, Jest, TKA, Desa, Set, Trap, Joz & Easy. Cost, Chester, Air. I was inspired a lot by Chester and Cost. I want to shout FCEE - he really influenced me a lot in the beginning.

FCEE GAS crew & a CBEE floater.

 

Cost KRT & CBEE KSA

Seno KSA

Jasper KSA

How did you get your tag? 

It's my initials. At first I used to do just a C and a B. Eventually I added the two E's to it because it gave it more letters to work with, especially when I started doing pieces and burners. First comes bombing, but at one point I got tired of it. Looking back, I don't regret using my initials, because everything I've ever done (graff and DJ'ing) is under one brand. My initials or my actual name; graff, acting, music. You're down with KSA, yeah, Keeping Style Alive. Killing Shit Always. Krazy Skateboard Artists. It started with friends ‘Marcus Jurgenson’ and ‘Jasper’. Somehow they knew my friend ‘Seno’. I would skateboard until really late at night. I'd skate home alone, with my backpack on which was full of paint, and I'd see the streets were dead. So I'd take my paint out and do a fill-in. I started getting up a lot, writing by myself at first. During that time, I started writing with ‘ADA’ (Another Dope Artist). He was one of my best friends, and he also got me into DJ'ing. Then I started skateboarding with ‘Seno’, but not writing with him just yet. Eventually I got down with KSA through ‘Seno’ and other crew members. KSA was a skateboard and graffiti crew. ‘Celk’ went on to trademark Keeping Style Alive years later. We didn't know skateboarding was going to blow up the way it did, and literally go MAINSTREAM. 

 

CBEE & Celk KSA

 

CBEE & Jasper

 

What was it like writing with ‘TKA ONE’?

I met ‘TKA’ through the rave scene. We were hanging out a lot and bombing a lot, promoting for NASA together. There was a period where we were racking paint and markers a lot. He was Chinese, not Korean. It's not ‘The Korean Artist’, but I don't know what it ever stood for (some people say The Krazy Asian), I think he just liked the letters. ‘TKA’ was really good at forging people's tags. He'd sit on the phone all day just forging people's tags with pen and paper. He had a legendary run; he was in and out. He did what he had to do, and had some really high moments. He had heart, and when you rolled with someone like that, you knew the difference. King TKA - no one did bigger shit than him at that point in time. He did top-to-bottoms like no else. I was there with him. The trust fund writers might have been doing their thing, but it's not the same thing. There are guys who got into this with no money, and got very far with no money. Then the culture vultures started sweeping in and claiming it theirs. Last time I saw ‘TKA’ was about ten years ago. I was visiting NYC from Iowa (I lived there for about eight years), and somehow I connected with him. He's a changed man these days. He got into finance back then, I believe. He cleaned up his life, meaning, he did what he wanted to do (with graffiti), and he's onto something else. Similar to why I don't DJ much anymore, I enjoy making music now. Also, why I don't bomb anymore. I did what I wanted to do with it. But, if someone said, "Hey you want to paint this huge wall with us?" I'd be like, hell yeah! I'd love to do it. We didn't really talk about graffiti, I was a bit lowkey when it came to letting people know what I wrote. I think some people get to a point in life where they are happy with what they accomplished in that scene and then something makes them say, "I don't want to deal with the beef and the politics, or the drama." You get tired of it. I think maybe ‘TKA’ was a part of that for too many years. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. You get arrested on a holiday weekend, you're not getting out for three days. 

Photo: @90s_interlude

 You probably don't remember this but I met you back in '94/'95 while you were painting a legal wall on 28th St/Broadway.  Do you remember that wall?

Yes, I do. I'm pretty sure my mother had something to do with getting me the permission to paint that wall, however I can’t remember the connection. A cop came and approached us, you know, the way they do. But once I pulled out the permission slip, the cop changed his tune real quick. I was painting that day with ‘Mosp’, short for (Mospeda), a black and Chinese friend who lived in Jamaica. He was good friends with another one of my friends I went to Art & Design with, ‘Nem’. ‘Mosp’ went to Bronx Science. This is the Jamaica ‘NEM’. The ES (Extra Skills) ‘Nems’. I started doing a lot more pieces with the ES crew out of Jamaica, Queens. ‘Mosp’ taught me a lot, cutting techniques while we burned Franklin K. Lane and Hillcrest High School‘s, and used it as our concrete canvases. Mosp, you know, was an intricate part of ‘Queen Andrea's’ (QA) early career. But anyway, I had my bombing era, then I had my piecing era until I got too busy, DJ'ing. 

CBEE and Mosp at the 28th St wall.

 That video of you, ‘Kech’, ‘Giz’, and ‘VE’ has gotten a lot of action on Instagram. Do you remember that night?  That was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn near the Acid factories. That video has become sort of legendary clip. At the time I had no idea it was in ‘Video Graff’ because I was busy doing other things. I remember ‘Kech’ telling me, "Yo we were in ‘Video Graff’ - did you see it?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" Again, because I was so busy with other things, I didn't know what he was talking about. But the unromantic detail no one talks about is that we got caught for that shit. If you look closely, mine looks unfinished. The bubble on the back doesn't have an outline. I think we spent a night or two in jail. Now, going back to what I was saying about people nowadays paying to paint and paying to not get caught...! Back then, we were paying with fines and jail time to do the real thing! That's the sacrifice, because out of that came a nice piece of footage that the world got to see. 

 

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How did you get in ‘KIDS’?

I think it was Sid (@sidlifecrisis), an old school club kid friend of ours, ‘NASA’ guy, he's the one, I think, that helped get us all into ‘Kids’. Some of us had an opportunity to audition. I didn't take it seriously, so I didn't get a real part. They still wound up throwing me in the movie. I just played myself, and the whip it scene I share with Justin Pierce and others, has a few ‘CBEE’ tags behind me. On top of the money we got paid to be a part of the cult classic film ‘KIDS’, my DJ career blew up because of it. It's great to talk about this, because people are always chasing the paper and the promotions, but sometimes in life you gotta do something because you want to do it and something else could come from it, without having those expectations. Yes we got paid and fed, but it was an indie film, so it wasn't a lot. But when that movie came out, my DJ career blew up. I started playing out in the summer of 1995, which is the year that movie came out. The rave scene was starting to use the fact that I was in the movie in promotions. They definitely exploited me up to a certain degree. Some people might say ‘Larry Clark’ exploited all of us, but who gives a shit?! As long as we got something out of it. I was skateboarding with ‘Larry Clark’ when he was just a photographer and he was mad cool. I don't see it as us getting exploited. I got a DJ career out of it. I threw a weekly party for 15 years and then some. I made a legit living Dj’ing, I was just immersed in the culture, right time and place. But at the same time, ‘Kids’ (and even Supreme) did a lot of good things, but it also turned a lot of people into really big headed egotistical monsters. 

CBEE and Justin Pierce on the set of Kids with CBEE tags in the background.

 What do you think it is about these two cultures, skating and graffiti, that they both attract a lot of the same people?  It's like what I was saying before... You could grab your skateboard and go out at any given moment and skate until whenever time you want. And because of that, if you had a marker or a can of spray paint on you, you could get away with tagging something. If you were a skateboarder, it (graffiti) was accessible. More accessible than if you were a BMXer. With a bike, you have to worry about this thing you're sitting on top of. But with a skateboard, you could have that skateboard in your hand, and use it like a weapon while you're doing a fill-in or catching a tag. There's something about creatives, in general, that make us skateboarders artists, and eventually, graff writers. You know, guys like ‘Neil Blender’ and ‘Andy Howell’, ‘Ed Templeton’ and ‘Mark Gonzales, and ‘Ducky Talavera’ for the real old schoolers. But you know, I'd say that you could even include raves/DJ'ing in this dynamic, because there were times I would show up to ‘NASA’ on Fridays, with my skateboard and paint on me! Then we would paint early in the morning in SoHo and beyond. There were trucks laid up around there that ‘Seno’ and I would hit. 

CBEE & Seno KSA

 You have a bit of background props at the Brooklyn Banks (Gotham Park) in old skate photos and videos, yeah?   I'm in ‘Harold Hunter's’ ‘Sky Pager’ part. I have a squiggly straight letter ‘C-B-E-E’ on the wall on bank. ‘Seno’ did a bunch of S's on the back wall. I think ‘Seno’ went back with ‘SN’ and did more stuff at the Banks. ‘Seno’ comes out in a lot of background in  ‘Larry Clark’s’ photos from the Banks. Back in the 80's and 90's, skating and graffiti weren't accepted by the mainstream. Nowadays they are both accepted a lot more, it’s amazing how far they’ve come. 

 

CBEE in the background of Harold Hunter's Skypager part.

 How do you think this warm welcome from the masses has changed these subcultures?      I think it's hurt the cultures. Same exact thing that happened to skateboarding, happened to rave/electronic music/EDM. At this point, whoever has the most money has the biggest chance of succeeding. All the small brands now have to compete with these big companies who want in, too. It takes money to stay relevant. You have to have real money to sponsor Tyshawn. The top guys are going to want real money. So who's going to run the industry? The guys with the most money. While the people who started it all struggle. Like the guy who made ‘Video Graff’, you think he got rich off of that? No. But he put a lot of people on the map. I feel that it's unfair that everything that started out with no money has become about money. The pioneers don't get any credit, while the millionaires and billionaires who invested in it to turn it into a business, now decide who gets the credit for whatever culture they are exploiting. 

How do you compete with that? This is why you can't do the things you love for money. I got lucky with DJ'ing, but I've has shitty retail jobs and service industry jobs on and off my whole life. You don't think a company like ‘Zumiez’ won't put a small skateshop out of business? And that's the problem - we all want things to get big, but at what cost? There's a small window in either cultures' time that the real heads are going to be able to make some good money. I think that window has passed for skateboarding, and for EDM. The people ruling the ‘EDM’ industry are the elite, the 1%. Whether they are making any money or not, they at least have the money to create the smoke and mirrors that they are. Again, it's a small window for the real heads, but when the people with wealth see that happening, that's when they swoop in to get some for themselves. 

Nem & CBEE

Last question: will you hit my book? 

Yes, THANK YOU! Of course, my pleasure!!