Visual OrgasmAdAm melnyk

Visual OrgasmThe eArly yeArs of CAnAdiAn GrAffiTi

AdAm melnyk

Frontenac House Media Ltd.

Published by Frontenac House Media Ltd. Building B1, Suite 136 2451 Dieppe Ave. SW Calgary, Alberta T3E 7K1

Text and photographs copyright © 2011 by Adam Melnyk

Printed and bound in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Melnyk, Adam Visual orgasm : graffiti in Canada / Adam Melnyk.

Includes index. ISBN 978-1-897181-50-8

1. Graffiti--Canada. 2. Street art--Canada. I. Title.

GT3913.15.A2M45 2011 751.7’30971 C2011-906038-8

Book and cover design: Epix Design Inc.

All rights reserved, including moral rights. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or placed in any information storage retrieval system without permission in writing from the author or publisher, or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), except by a reviewer or academic who may quote brief passages in a review or critical study.

Frontenac House Media gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We would also like to thank the Government of Alberta Multimedia Development Fund for their support of our publishing program.

This book is dedicated to my father, who motivated me, encour-

aged me and pushed me to complete it. Without him it would not

have been possible. It is also dedicated to the graffiti writers who

let me into their lives.

Acknowledgements2Fresh; Afex; Akira; Artistik; BenOne; Buddha; Cameo;

Chrome; Coder; Conz; Cosoe; Crumb; Dabs; Daser; Daub;

Dedos; Der; Dooer; Dope2; Dstrbo; Dubnut; Duro3; Dzine; Ephx;

Ethiks; Evoke; Fatso; Hans Fear; Flow; Galooch; House; Hype;

Imp; Kaput; Katie; Kid-C; Kome; Krewz; LaBomba; Lep; Levi; Lisaf-

er; Loves; Mark4; Mesa; Joshua Miller; Nazo; Neos; Note; Other;

PD; Phsyk; Plas; Ren; Reset; Rove; Sady; Chad Schultz; Sear; Sebo;

Sectr; Sinex; Spek; Stack; Stage; Stelth; Syzeo; Tars; Theory; Veks;

Virus; Randy Wong; Word; Russell Wyse; Zephyr; Zer; Zilon; Z-lok

FOREWORD BY ZEPHYR 11

INTRO BY ADAM MELNYK 13

ZILON 16

BUDDHA 20

DASER 29

SEAR 37

DAUB 45

DOOER, DUBNUT & THE

PAID IN CRIME CREW 50

GHOST 54

REN 61

LA BOMBA 73

GALOOCH 80

SADY 82

COSOE 90

VIRUS 103

DEDOS 117

Z-LOK 125

DOPE2 131

EPHX 135

KREWZ 145

DEZINE 151

WORD 159

NEOS 163

PD 174

SINEX 183

INDEX 188

CONTENTS

Visual Orgasm

11

FOREWORD BY ZEPHYR Zephyr is known as the Graffiti Dinosaur. He started doing graf-fiti in 1975 and wrote Zephyr for the first time in 1977.

He is most known for the pieces he painted on the subway trains of New York in the 70’s and 80’s. He was featured in two classic graf-fiti movies Style Wars and Wild Style, which helped spread graf-fiti world wide.

He has a mean tag that is the es-sence of style and when he isn’t dabbling in graffiti he is a lec-turer and author.

My first adventure to the land of the Maple Leaf

was equal parts unforgettable and forgettable.

Group shows had already been on my “things to

avoid” list for decades when I received the in-

vitation to exhibit a painting or two in Toronto.

The appearance of the names “Twist” and “Frost”

prompted me to quickly reconsider. Three weeks

later I was in Canada.

The Toronto exhibit was not sponsored by an

established gallery, but by a 30-something, well-

meaning (but clueless) millionaire that we’ll call

(for his benefit) Malcolm Chestnut. Highlights (or

lowlights) from that trip include: 1) Painting the

back of the gallery from a swaying electric cherry-

picker ten meters in the air — believing, the entire

time, that I was going to end up on the pavement

below. Can you say, “Change my diaper?” 2) Lis-

tening to Twist lecture some of the artists about

the dangers of marijuana. I thought he was joking

before realizing—much to my amusement—that he

was completely serious. 3) Discovering that Loom-

it had been attending two or three CONSECUTIVE

screenings a day, at a local movie theater, of the

film “The Fifth Element”. He mentioned this casu-

ally, as if it were as normal as farting.

It was also the week that Princess Diana was killed in

a car crash, August 31, 1997. That was weird too, but

not nearly as weird as Loomit, that fuckin’ nut job.

Being a veteran of the school of hard knocks that

making graffiti in New York City is, Toronto was a

cakewalk — pure Nirvana. Alleyways that went on

as far the eye could see were covered with pieces.

The residents seemed to have no problem with the

graffiti, so you could paint in broad daylight. I kid

you not.

We dined on falafels, and afterward tagged and

stickered the streets with wild abandon. On a

beat-up bicycle, Twist became king of the city

over the course of the weekend. But like Twist’s

Skam, Ren & Zeph by Zephyr, 1999.

12

rusty bike, the benevolent attitude toward graffiti

in Toronto was not made to last.

My next trip to Canada was for a Toronto tattoo

convention. I got to the hotel and dropped my

bags. I was itching to paint, but pissed because

I wanted to get in touch with Skam, but I didn’t

have a phone number for him. I walked out of the

hotel and headed down Queen Street. I walked

three blocks, and lo and behold; there was Skam—

walking right toward me! At that moment I knew

that Canada had some kind of spacey magic crys-

tal shit going on—a notion later confirmed in Cal-

gary when I met an amazing lady named “Boots”,

but that’s a story for another day. Maybe.

On that second trip to Canada, Skam, Wysper,

Meats, Ren and I painted up a storm. On one mis-

sion near Simcoe Street, Skam and Wysper had to

leave early and planned on leaving me to finish

up. They got a big laugh out of my public display of

panic. I was pretty concerned I’d have a hard time

convincing the local constables that the wall was

being improved by the application of my name to

it. But Skam assured me that the local policeman

was a friend of his, even a fan, and that his son

was actually a graffiti writer. Having been shot at

for painting graffiti in New York City, I appreciated

Toronto’s benevolent vibe A LOT.

Canada, around the turn of the millennium, was a

lot more fun than New York City to me, and Amer-

ica in general — particularly during the period I’ll

refer to as “The Horror Years,” or The Bush Presi-

dency. If it were not bad enough that America had

a psycho in the Whitehouse, we also had a psycho

as mayor of New York (Rudolph Giuliani), who was

committed to wiping out graffiti, and utilized a

broad variety of illegal measures to try and do so.

While future trips to Canada included, among

other things, freight adventures with local legend

Kwest, and walls with Bacon and EGR, the piece

de resistance of my Canada adventures remains

my summer 2006 trip to Calgary. On that trip I

was shown incredible love at the two talks I gave,

and at clandestine painting sites too—threatening

growls from wild coyotes notwithstanding. When

asked on a morning television show what I liked

about Calgary, my answer was simple: “The people

here are smart.”

The amazing collection of indigenous Canadian

graffiti you are holding in your hands is the result

of years of documentation by Adam, a truly hum-

ble, righteous guy who I’m proud to call a friend.

No one else has devoted the time and effort to

chronicle, for decades, the handiwork of Canada’s

aerosol artisans like Beast-man has. After hosting

the site Visual Orgasm for years, he has now effec-

tively put a binding on it, pasted it between two

covers, and provided us all with a very important

book.

With extensive coverage of graffiti created in The

States and Western Europe, it is long past high

time that the extraordinary painters of Canada,

and their distinctly impressive handiwork, get

their due.

So kick back, put your feet up, and enjoy this

book. This is not a book to just place on the shelf

and/or the collection next to Subway Art. It’s a

book to peruse, scrutinize and absorb. Fully. And

when you’ve read this book, a bunch of times,

cover to cover, look for me in Canada. Because,

plainly put, Canada is so damn fun. Oh, I almost

forgot. When you see me, make sure to ask me

about “Boots”. We’ll talk …

—ZEPHYR

New York City

Zephyr, New York

13

INTRO BY ADAM MELNYK

Graffiti – love it or hate it, enjoy it or despise it.

Most people have a hard time understanding graf-

fiti, perhaps because of the challenge it presents

to the concept of personal property. Everyone

learns from a young age that if something is not

yours then you don’t touch it. This goes as far back

as the year you were born, being told constantly

to give back toys that don’t belong to you. As you

grow up you learn to control your property, ob-

tain more property, build your wealth.

Just as children develop ideas of property and

wealth, they also acquire an understanding of

what it means to be well known, even famous.

Professional athletes, movie stars, musicians,

doctors or police officers all achieve recognition,

sometimes in overwhelming measure. And while

most people do not make graffiti a career, simply

being involved can bring you gratifying levels of

recognition. The fame is often limited strictly to

the subculture, but you still get acknowledged for

the creative work you do. Quality of work is es-

sential for gaining peer respect, but – given the

fact that longevity for graffiti is all but unknown

– quantity is essential also.

The artists featured in this book did not take up

graffiti to challenge the idea of property, and in

the 1980s the idea of fame and recognition was

less evident than today. Often artists came across

this unique art form by travelling to the United

States, or learning of it through the media or word

of mouth. Something intrinsic to this new sub-

culture pulled them irresistibly to learn about it,

develop it, passionately immerse themselves in

it, and create a movement that has grown across

the country. They are the ones who took that first

step with that previously unknown artistic tool,

the spraycan. The intrigue with graffiti has now

spread around the world. It was inevitable; it was

only a matter of time.

It is entirely appropriate that Zephyr, who first

created graffiti in New York in 1975 and is recog-

nized universally not only as an early pioneer but

also as one of the great masters of the artform, has

written the Foreword for this book. Zephyr was

a part of the heyday of painting subways in New

York and was featured in the most famous graffiti

movies, Style Wars and Wild Style. Now the guys

who watched him in Style Wars in the 1980s got

the opportunity to paint with him in Canada in the

2000s. In graffiti it is essential to know your histo-

ry and that is why a book like this is so important.

More than virtually any other subculture, graffiti

has an almost microscopic lifespan, ranging from

just a few hours to a small number of years, al-

though, miraculously, some of the artwork shown

in this book has done the unthinkable and lasted

15+ years. It is hard to understand the drive to pro-

duce something that could be gone the following

day but really it comes down to the fact that the

excitement of creation, the feeling of accomplish-

ment, is everlasting. Sure people will say: why

don’t they do something more productive instead

of writing on someone’s property? But if life was

just that simple then we wouldn’t have rebellion

against the norm in any context. Graffiti is a way

that individuals do what they want, where they

want, how they want. This type of freedom can be

scary to most of society.

The challenge of preserving an artform such as

this one is one of the main reasons for making this

book. Compiling photographs of graffiti art from

the 1980s and preserving them in a book is es-

sential to knowing the history of this subculture.

With the internet it is easier to keep these im-

ages from disappearing, but over time the physi-

cal photograph can easily disappear, fade, get

stained, folded, tattered, or otherwise rendered

unusable. It was a challenge trying to dig up old

photographs but that is why having them featured

in this book is so important. Commemorating how

graffiti started in Canada and showcasing the men

and women who created it is the main purpose of

this book.

If finding the photographs was a challenge, track-

ing down the graffiti writers themselves could be

equally daunting. I compiled this book over an

8-year period; it has been a long journey but see-

ing the photographs and meeting the artists has

been the best part. I wanted this book to be as

comprehensive as possible about the history of

Canadian graffiti, though that is easier said than

done, and there are a few artists I could not con-

nect with who played a role in developing graffiti

in Canada. One example is Akira, whom I did not

get to interview, who did the first large scale mu-

ral in Montreal, in 1989, which was sponsored by

14

the American spraypaint brand Rustoleum; amaz-

ingly, the wall he painted is still up to this day, at

W.H.S Gymnasium in that city.

All the artists featured in the book bring their

own flavour and thoughts to this subculture. The

most interesting part is hearing about what they

are doing now: tattoo artists, graphic designers,

businessmen, social workers, a doctor. A number

of graffiti artists from the early years are no lon-

ger with us. Galooch and I talked frequently over

the internet, but he passed while I was working

on this book. Ghost had a huge influence on the

Victoria graffiti scene and is remembered with

great affection and respect by fellow graffiti writ-

ers in that city and elsewhere. Aero, who is not

featured in the book, was often mentioned as a

writer who tagged all around Vancouver and was

one of the first to go all city with his tags. I hope

this book keeps their memory alive and shows

the role they played in building the foundation

for Canadian graffiti.

When I personally got into graffiti in the mid-90s I

was taught to know your history and respect your

elders – not just in general, like everyone else,

but in the particular subculture. These are the

ones who did it before you and went through the

trials and tribulations to get the culture to where

it is now. While documenting Canadian graffiti,

which I have been doing since 1995, I developed

an ever-increasing fascination with delving into

the past to learn where this all creativity came

from. I knew about New York and Philadelphia,

where modern graffiti originated, but I knew vir-

tually nothing about where it started in Canada. It

was interesting to learn that it wasn’t like a wave

across the country but more like spurts of interest

occurring more or less simultaneously in most of

the major cities during the 1980s. The subculture

spread as graffiti artists travelled around Canada

and the United States, meeting other artists and

bringing back graffiti-related items like spray

caps and magazines. The influence was divided,

with writers from Vancouver absorbing the styles

and techniques of Los Angeles and San Francisco,

while writers from Ontario, being closer to New

York, were more readily affected by the ideas of

that city. Ephx, for example, made a name for

himself in San Francisco for a couple of years as

well as painting in New York; and Virus travelled

across Canada and spent time in Toronto before

landing in Vancouver. As graffiti grew in the early

90s, graffiti magazines appeared and people began

trading photos of graffiti by postal mail all across

the country or even around the world; then, about

2008, the internet took over. The website I run

with the same name as this book, http://www.

visualorgasm.com, has been promoting Canadian

graffiti since 1998 and is one of the longer-lasting

graffiti websites on the world wide web. The use

of the internet to share photos, talk on forums

and promote your work is common practice to-

day. Even though I run a website, however, I agree

with most people that the internet has changed

the feel of graffiti. Rather than wandering around

searching out pieces in the street, people share it

online instead. Is this really just feeding our need

for instant gratification? The audience has grown

for artists to show off their work, but has it come

with a price?

Graffiti can be a stealthy, dark and literally dirty

passion. It takes people to places less travelled,

at least by most citizens. Dark alleys, transit lines,

warehouses and under bridges are the locales

where most graffiti is created. Graffiti is married

to the urban setting but one element that changed

some of that was the popularity of freight trains,

which enabled graffiti writers in small towns to

achieve national fame. Daser and Ren in Ottawa

and Toronto respectively got into it quickly in 1993

and Virus and Cosoe did the same in Vancouver.

Not only were showcases of graffiti from the Unit-

ed States travelling to Canada but now we could

do the same, both for our own audiences as well

as for the Americans. Freights are a rolling canvas,

an open gallery where the featured artist changes

daily – you don’t have to leave your city to see

graffiti art from places as far away as Los Angeles,

Mexico, Miami and Texas. Freight trains may well

be the closest thing to the painted passenger and

subway trains that rolled through New York in the

1980s. And just as those are long gone, so are the

majority of the pieces shown in this book. That is

why sharing the preserving and the sharing of the

early years of Canadian graffiti is so vital.

montréal

16

ZILONZilon is not your typical graf-

fiti artist. His simple but unique

faces started popping up around

Montreal in the mid-80s. He is a

well-accomplished artist who

has always played with a spray-

can. He now is a painter-musician

who does live works of art and

plays with all types of mediums.

His work certainly pulls people

in who might not have paid much

attention to graffiti. Zilon’s art

installations are very aggres-

sive and in your face – exactly

how his graffiti has always been.

When And Why did you sTArT usinG sprAypAinT?

I use spraypaint like a photographer uses Pola-

roids – I like the roughness and the quickness of

the medium, plus the fact it’s portable compared

to an arsenal of paint jars and a load of different

size paintbrushes.

hoW did your TAG Zilon Come AbouT?

The tag Zilon was born at the end of the 70s, around

76. It was a crossover between my real family name

and Zorro. The sound of Zilon when you say it is like

a super-hero’s name in a comic book.

WhAT WAs your relATionship To GrAffiTi bACk Then – did you knoW AbouT The movemenT GoinG on in neW york?

I was doing graffiti then like I was doing painting

or drawings on canvas or paper. It was the heyday

of that form of expression, it was the era of Har-

ing, Basquiat. The only exception for me was that I

was not fortunate enough to be able to live there,

I was quite poor, it was tooo expensive to live by

yourself in NYC. The walls, the bathrooms from

night clubs, the alleyways and abandoned objects

like old TV sets – these were my canvasses. The

city provided me with rich supports to exhibit my

urban works.

Above: Zilon 1987, Montréal; below: Zilon, 2006facing page, clockwise from top: Zilon, 2007; Zilon, 2003, Montréal; Zilon, 2009, Montréal

17

18

WAs There Any oTher GrAffiTi-Type Work beinG done Then in monTreAl?

At that time there was not much being done on

the more refined ways. It was more statements

of some frustrated people like “I hate you fuck

you!!!!” Some statements were very good: “Silence

we kill!!!” It was like in-your-face stuff, something

to make you think, but there were not that many

people doing it.

you Are Well-knoWn for The ChArACTers you pAinTed, And The fACes – simple yeT very AGGressive, ConfronTATionAl, espeCiAlly The siZe. WhAT Were you TryinG To Convey?

I simply expressed the moment that I was during

the procedure of drawing them. My signature art

works consisted only of faces, figures and some

bodies attached to them. Very comic book – pop

with emotions and looks.

did you do Any of your sTreeT Work in oTher CiTies besides monTreAl?

I did some of my urban works here and there. I did

some in NYC, Berlin, Tokyo and other Canadian

cities like Toronto and Vancouver. They were very

discreet and practically silent. Ghosts. Recently,

in 2010, a girl I knew who went to Berlin saw one

of my signature faces that I had done in 1998.

lookinG bACk on your Work WiTh GrAffiTi, hoW do you relATe To iT noW?

I still love the rawness of spraypaint and black

markers, especially with big tips. I always carry

a thick black marker with me in my bag or pock-

ets. I’m working on a series done exclusively with

black markers. Like I said, I love the portability,

like the iPhone. To be portable is essential for me.

I can be in Paris, Berlin or whatever and zap a face

on a wall instantly.

Graffiti is now overground in a way. The gallery

owners are like sharks around the poor young art-

ists. They know they’re gonna suck all their blood,

their energy, and make a load of money with the

pureness of the art form. Graffiti is for the streets.

It is beyond the censorship of so many gallery ass-

holes. Those owners only choose the ones that are

going to sell well – if it doesn’t work with those

fuckers, they simply replace you with a new, a na-

ïve one. Business kills art, so let’s use art to kill

the businesses.

Zilon, 1982, Montréal Zilon, 2007, Montréal

Ottawa

20

BUDDHAI did not know much about Bud-

dha before searching him on the

internet and talking to him over

the phone. By the end of the in-

terview I was so excited and

hyped after hearing of his dedi-

cation to hip hop, graffiti and

his drive to help others that it

continues to inspire me every

time I read it. In 1983 he cre-

ated the B-boy crew Canadian

Floor Masters with Kid Quick, and

helped build a foundation for

breakers across Canada and be-

yond. In the 80s he and his crew

did large pieces that conveyed a

variety of messages. He travelled

to England, where his work lit a

fire with those involved there in

hip hop that continues to burn to

this day. Even though his Mohawk

has disappeared he still wears

his Canadian Floor Masters cutoff

shirt showing off his tattoos, and

continues to not fit into any nor-

mal standards. Buddha’s company

Blue Print For Life is helping

kids up north and across Canada

build confidence and a sense of

self worth. I hope as many people

as possible get to meet him in per-

son to take in his inspiration

and commitment, while maybe even

having a chance to rub his lucky

Buddha belly.

you Are knoWn for your involvemenT in b-boyinG, buT hoW did you GeT involved WiTh GrAffiTi? CAn you TAlk AbouT some of The siGnifiCAnT pieCes you did in oTTAWA?

That term B-boy has now become a term used

specifically for a dancer. It wasn’t in the early

days, you could be a dancer but not a B-boy. You

could be a breaker and not a B-boy. For us a B-boy

showed a level of commitment to the culture and

that meant understanding, appreciating and rep-

resenting all the different elements. In some ways

it was a healthier kind of vibe in the early days.

That is how we got involved in doing graf. We ac-

tually felt compelled as early hip hop participants

to represent with very little direction what that

meant because there was very little graf that had

gone up.

I was a bit into the punk rock scene too. I had a

Mohawk and all that in the early days. I would put

up big anarchy graffiti, a big circle and an A, and

might outline it. Those were my throwups and that

was more like my politics coming out. But I was also

involved in hip hop and then the more I learned

about it, it was like no shit man, you can put up bus-

long burners. In Ottawa we have these things called

the transit ways where only buses are allowed to go

but there are big concrete walls. I remember one of

the first ones we put up. All of us stayed up all night,

6 of my crew. The burner drained from yellow at

the top to lime green to dark green. It was maybe

2 buses long and it just said Headspin and I don’t

know for sure but I think that was the first big one

to go up in Ottawa, it was in 1983. It scared the shit

Buddha, 1985, London England

21

out of them at the city. I know it did because they

had it buffed off in 2 days and no one wanted to talk

about it. Everybody was starting to talk about hip

hop and the city knew they couldn’t let this get out

of control. But it was a lot of work for us and then

just go “oh shit it is gone already.”

Then we switched to going to some broken-down

alleys, some walls where it is not the bright clean

concrete where the public is going to see it daily.

We did a big one behind Bank Street in Ottawa,

one of the oldest night clubs called Barrymore’s. It

had a large alley behind it and we did a huge piece

saying Crack Don’t Do It. Crack was starting to hit

the streets and we were really enthused by the

song The Message by Grandmaster Flash. That one

we tried to do in an orange and red blend with big

huge letters with lots of cracks running through

the word Crack. I think the oldest piece in Ottawa

we did with blue and a white trim and a big ma-

ple leaf hanging on the edge of it that said Floor

Masters, because that was the name of our crew.

That one is still up to this day, so that is a 27- or

28-year-old piece. If you duck down into this alley

in the ByWard market, which is our tourist area

behind a restaurant, it is still there. Sometimes

when cats come from out of town I show them

that, it is like they have come to a little shrine and

they freak out. It is pretty cool that way, it is a rare

thing that a big piece like that would still exist that

many years later.

Another one I am proud of was featured on CBC,

on a show called Switchback, which was a nation-

al youth show. They decided to do a thing on hip

hop, they had us on and we danced live but they

also did a little section on graffiti. It was probably

one of the first national TV stories about graffiti in

Canada, maybe 1984, 85. That was when Ronald

Reagan was coming to town. I was like we got to

fucking do something. So we went down to the

market and on this white wall, me, Kid Quick and

Trevor Walker did a huge bubble letter piece with

small letters Reagan is a … and then, in huge let-

ters, Psycho. That was cool because CBC was ask-

ing around on who knows about hip hop and I was

doing my master’s thesis on it at the time … .

i hAdn’T reAliZed ThAT you hAd done A mAsTer’s. WhAT Were you sTudyinG?

I was doing a master’s in social work. I like to help

people but I also like to look at the structure of pol-

itics and bureaucracies. I actually did my thesis as a

9 hour video documentary on hip hop in 1985. Most

people think it is the first academic piece ever done

on hip hop. The CBC interviewed me on this na-

Bando, 1985, London England

22

Clockwise from top left: FloorMasters, 1984, Ottawa; Danni, Mode 2 & Pride, 1985, London England; Graffiti by Beat Street Kid, Kid Quick and Buddha, 1983, Ottawa; Graffiti Fest by Trevor Walker, 1985, Ottawa

23

tional news story about graf standing in front of the

Reagan is a Psycho piece. I made some comment

about this is what is beautiful about hip hop – you

can bring your politics into it and it doesn’t have

to be the McDonald’s billboard – you know, who

asked for the McDonald’s billboard? I went into this

long tirade about the politics of visual spaces.

lookinG bACk on hoW muCh hip hop CulTure hAs developed sinCe you firsT sTArTed GeTTinG inTo iT, WhAT Are your ThouGhTs AbouT iT noW?

I don’t pretend that we were good, but I am proud

that we were getting up when nobody else was do-

ing it. Of course everybody does their own thing

these days but what we did back then was pretty

substantial. We did a parking lot jam or mini block

party in front of one of our pieces, we had a DJ with

turntables, we put down all the refrigerator boxes in

the parking lot and had emcees on the mic and we

battled and the public came by and saw it. No mat-

ter what you did, like beatboxing or emceeing, we

all hung out together and that goes back to the word

B-boy. B-boys were the ones who kind of celebrated

that we were counter-culture. It was a lot like punk

in that way. There is a feeling inside when you walk

down the street with your Mohawk – I ain’t buying

into everything of mainstream culture. We would

create and celebrate our own identity. It was based

on honesty and a deeper level of commitment. It has

to do with real culture and superficial culture. The

media is always chasing to grab a piece of what we

got because we got swagger, we got street cred, we

got all that. Then of course it really gets distorted

over the years. Now the media co-opt it for their

own devices like selling music videos and let’s put

it in video games to make it look raw and rugged.

That is a whole other thing. I am really proud there is

still a group of us that are still in contact and we talk

about the early days. My homeboy, who was just a

big strong black guy who hung out with us and didn’t

even dance, he was more of B-boy than a lot of other

cats. He would hang out and play bodyguard with us

if the skinheads came by and spit on our cardboard

when we were trying to street perform. But he was

down and committed to support this vision. We may

not have fully known where hip hop was going but

we were excited to celebrate that kind of energy and

spontaneity and creativity together.

i heAr you noT only hAd A biG involvemenT in The sTArT of CAnAdiAn hip hop CulTure buT Also you did sTuff over in enGlAnd?

I moved to England in 1985. I had to do one more

placement in my master’s program. The first one

I did was in a group home in Ottawa. I roll into

England and had no place to stay for a while. I’m

Graffiti Fest, 1985, Ottawa Canadian Floor Masters, 1985

24

sleeping in squats and in Hyde Park with a hundred

punks. I connected with the English hip hop scene

and at that point in 1985 it was largely run by the

record companies who did the big events. First of

all they had never seen a guy that looks punk rock

who is a B-boy who can do windmills and head-

spins. There were mostly black youth who were the

dancers from Brixton. They were excited because

I had stories and connections to the Bronx in New

York because we used to go there all the time. The

New York City Breakers who were in the movie Beat

Street in the big battle scene at the Roxy were per-

sonal friends of ours. We would go to the Bronx and

stay at their houses. In fact they used to be called

the Floor Masters and we were passed our name

from them to us, so there is that nice history piece.

Anyway, I’m in England and I’m practising with all

these black guys downtown at this drop- in centre

called St. Mark’s Field. All the youth would go there

to practise. There was a lot of tension because the

skinheads would come too. The skinheads would

hide razor blades in their mouths and shit and

sometimes it got kind of ugly. I started talking to

all the hip hop heads and was like, you guys are

fucking artists, so why don’t you run shit? They

respected each other but never really worked to-

gether like the graf artist, the emcees and the DJs.

I am almost finished my thesis and I have a lot of

ideas about structural analysis of cultures, like

why subcultures pop up in capitalist societies. I got

a bunch of theory ideas but they don’t mean shit,

how do you use this knowledge to do better street

work, social work? Here I am in England and why

don’t I put some of my ideas into effect? I brought

together England’s best graffiti artists, guys like

Mode2, he is known for big breasted women with

machine guns, his stuff is off the hook, then there

were the Chrome Angels, Pride, Scribla, Zaki and a

famous New York graffiti artist called Bando. Ban-

do moved from New York City to Paris and then

back and forth from Paris to London. At that time

they were all fairly young. We all got together and

I was like let’s do England’s biggest hip hop festival

over 3 days but it will be entirely owned and oper-

ated by you guys repping all the elements at Jubilee

Hall at Covent Garden, arguably tourist central in

London. I bite my tongue at times because it can’t

be my project. I’m just trying to facilitate. To me

the social work or empowerment comes from all of

those people doing the shit for themselves. Simple

things like you have to learn to sit and listen to

someone else’s opinions. How do you pull out the

opinions of the shy people like Mode2? Mode was

one of the shyest kids I have ever met. How do you

do it so it is not run by the one loudmouth emcee

in the room?

There were lots of struggles but there was a lot of

personal growth. They had to contact the media,

they had to find out how to get free things. I love

it because to this day they reference Freestyle 85

as possibly the most important not just in England

but in all of European hip hop. Because the power

went back to these dudes. People talk about it

as a pivotal turning point where the culture re-

gained control of itself. A lot of these cats went

on to have lifetime careers in hip hop. Imagine

the pride! It is great looking back that some of

my ideas actually turned out. Incidentally, when I

was in the UK I went by the name Negative G and

my B-boy name changed because my crew gave

me the name Buddha because I developed a little

tummy. My crew used to rub my tummy for good

luck before we would go on stage.

Kid Quick, 2005

25

One quick story about the way things worked at

the Freestyle 85 festival. I got Mode2 to phone up

the manufacturer of Buntlack spraypaint, in Ger-

many. He does all this and literally one week later

a flatbed truck pulls up to the youth centre, cases

and cases of free spraypaint. They were all jump-

ing out of their seats, they couldn’t believe it.

There was a huge art show component to the

event too. Henry Chalfant even came over from

New York and I got pictures of him with the

Chrome Angeles. It was great to see the interna-

tional connection as well in graffiti and hip-hop,

or even if you just look at the B-boy thing. B-boy-

ing went back underground in a lot of places in

Canada. It was 1986 to 89, BMX biking and skate-

boarding took over as the rage in the media and

we were just really getting started. We said fuck

it, we love this shit, we aren’t going to stop. We

actually danced through that downtime. But what

happened in Europe is Freestyle 85 was heard

about and inspired Italy and France and then they

started Battle of the Year in Europe and that in-

spired North America again.

When did you beCome AWAre of GrAffiTi? WAs iT When you Were TrAvellinG To The bronx?

I don’t remember what I saw first, there was al-

ways tagging around and some punk rock graffiti.

But not like big burners, you know. I don’t know

if it was wildstyle or Style Wars but it was one of

those where I realized the complexity and the size

of graffiti as a culture, a bigger culture. Certainly

when I went to New York and the Bronx we would

see lots of it, but I was already aware of it before

then. Beat Street came out in 1985, there is a big

graf component to Beat Street. I started dancing

in the 1970s, I started B-boying in 1982 or 83 but

I grew up near Windsor across from Detroit, De-

troit in the 1970s was the motherland of funk, so I

had a 1970s mentality. All that Earth Wind & Fire,

Isley Brothers, George Clinton, that stuff just got

etched into my brain as a teenager at the roller

rink. If you make the argument that hip hop is

also driven by the music and the vibe for the mu-

sic – and you could also make those arguments

for graf – then these things are an extension of

that vibe. That 1970s funk was the precursor to a

hip hop mentality. It’s easy to see that evolution,

especially at the roller rink because we danced on

roller skates and did acrobatics on roller skates.

That makes me one of the oldest B-boys in the

world, from the original generation – when I saw

Flash Dance and saw them spin on their back I was

already 23 years old; most of the kids in the New

York City Breakers, Rock Steady Crew, Dynamic

Rockers that got involved were 15-16 years old at

the time. So to your question, I was aware of graf-

fiti and because of the punk rock political thing I

already had an interest in putting up alternative

signs, sort of we are here, don’t blink, there is a

counter-culture. Looking back it felt like a natural

evolution, the timing was right for hip hop to drop

on me.

GeTTinG bACk To your mAsTer’s Thesis – hoW WAs iT reCeived When you finAlly CompleTed iT?

I got the highest mark of all the students. I got

honours with distinction. It was cool because ev-

eryone else was writing 300 page papers and I was

like hell no, how am I going to write about a visual

and audio culture, I can do it but it won’t be pleas-

ant and it won’t really rep it properly. It was cool

because I was in the culture, I wasn’t like a jour-

nalist student trying to interview a graffiti artist

or a beat boxer. It was like ya Buddha is a B-boy,

ya I’ll talk to you. I got kind of candid interviews.

The thesis is in the National Library of Canada on

VHS tape. Every once in a while I run into some

cat that goes, yo I pulled out your thesis. Dope! It

is ghetto editing, I didn’t have production stuff. I

bought one of the first video cameras every avail-

able, I’d sit in front of a plant in my house and

film myself talking. But the content was ill. I never

really totally fit in. When I was doing my master’s

of social work, you know 90 percent were nice

young women who wanted to be social workers

to save the whales and all that. There I am in my

trench coats and big spiky hair thinking this is cool

but this ain’t who I am. I think a lot of my early

ideas probably did form me to get where I am now

in my politics of what we do in the North.

Could you explAin WhAT you meAn When you sAy “my poliTiCs of WhAT We do in The norTh?“ i’ve heArd A biT AbouT your blue prinT for life CompAny ThAT runs soCiAl Work ThrouGh hip hop proGrAms, buT i don’T knoW Too mAny of The deTAils.

I have a family connection to the North. My sister

moved to the North 18 years ago and married an

Inuit guy. It kind of started like this, I was always

bitching at my sister, I’d be going what are you

doing up there, you got 3 beautiful girls you’d be a

great mom but what if their best friend gets raped

one day, because that shit happens up North.

I could see that just bitchin about it wasn’t good

enough, I needed to do something meaningful. I

was still a social worker full time doing child pro-

tection but I got a leave of absence to design this

26

daily per diems and they make between $1,000 and

$1,500 for the week. I think last year I paid $120,000

in contract salaries for B-boys. I’m really proud of

that because it normally doesn’t roll like that in

hip hop, sometimes people go fucking gangster on

stepping on their brothers and sisters, you know

what I mean? I like the hip hop hustle of being on

point and street smart but I don’t like stepping on

someone to get to where you got to go.

Anyway, here we are 6 years later. Michaëlle

Jean, the former Governor General, gave us a big

award. We were also nominated for the first in-

ternational reward for the arts, called Freedom to

Create, out of Hong Kong. They get thousands of

applications a year and we were the first group

from North America to be recognized as one of the

top 5 finalists. The other piece I am really proud of

is that we are not like a hip hop afterschool pro-

gram. I think my credentials are both that I’m a

father of 3 and that I’m an older guy so they can’t

go who is the angry kid. Secondly I actually have

a lot of experience as a social worker so police

and all these other people would be foolish not

to listen to some of the stuff I have to say. They

don’t have to agree but I’m not just blowing it out

my ass, right?

This whole thing has really opened us up to being

looked at a deeper level by the education system.

Like I said, we are not an afterschool program.

Most hip hop programs around the world are after

school or they come in for one afternoon. With

us, we become the replacement school. There is

no other school, besides my school, that goes for

5 days straight. I make teachers do my program to

humble themselves as if they were the kids. I think

that is a brilliant part too. We are always talking

program and applied for crime prevention money.

We rolled it out in Iqaluit in 2005 with 15 kids from

the secure custody jail, this is the 24-hour lock-up

jail. They were sceptical that we could transform

those real tough, angry kids. Anyways it was so

successful that people were saying shit, this is the

most important youth engagement in the Arctic

ever. I went back to my job and my phone started

ringing off the hook from other communities. The

North is kind of like that because everybody has a

grandmother in the next remote community and

word of mouth is how we grew. I had to make a

decision to quit my job to do this fulltime. I love

the fact that I probably pay hip hop artists more

than any company in the world. I don’t take ad-

vantage of the B-boys and B-girls. I got about 30

staff across Canada that are some of the illest Djs,

B-boys and B-girls, they go and have this amazing

experience, their expenses are covered, they get

Arctic Bay NunavutDJ Creeasian and Elder

27

about building relationships and a lot of times

teachers, social workers and professionals they

get these credentials and they move away and

close down communication with the youth even

if they don’t realize they are doing it. I’m kind of

like no, we are all human beings together, we all

have our stories.

We use a lot of our personal stories about pain

and suffering and perseverance and survival to

inspire the kids. I got a couple of B-girls that have

never talked about being raped before but they

talk to the young girls about it, that is pretty pow-

erful. Especially some on my team are First Na-

tions. Every time I talk to the kids I always say

thank you for being a respectful listener and who

wants to hear my own story about when I was 15

and I was doing break-and-enters and smoking

dope every day. Well you know why I was doing

this, well here is what happened and I thank them

ahead of time because by listening to my story

you are allowing me to continue to heal. I think

that is such a healthy mental health thing that we

don’t do enough of. We don’t lead by example as

adults, that if bad shit happens to you then that is

probably a lifelong healing process. If you keep it

inside you are going to combust. I tell my story of

being put in garbage cans in front of 500 people

in the school cafeteria and 500 people laughing at

me as I crawled out covered in garbage and mus-

tard. Then I talk about how I turned that anger

into becoming the best rollerskater in southern

Canada, even though I was tiny and got beat up all

the time. It is kind of like you need to recognize

that anger is real but it is what we do with it, we

can either sabotage or we can turn anger into a

healing tool. That is the big theme of what we do.

I really love the fact that it is not just dance but

when I guest lecture at universities and stuff I can

hammer people and show them 15 best practice

clinical techniques that we do but why the fuck

would I call this cognitive therapy even though

that is what we are doing, why would we call it

that when it would scare the kids? But when I

break it down we are probably doing better cogni-

tive therapy for kids who have been traumatized

than psychiatrists do. I think what has happened

is that I have become much better at articulating

our story in hip hop. It is not like we are taking

a round peg and putting it in a square hole. It is

kind of like I can prove to you that maybe we are

a better education model for some places. I can

prove to you that maybe we are better at deal-

ing with post-traumatic stress disorder than your

traditional ways of hypnosis.

Come on man, this year I was a keynote speaker to

all the chiefs of police and gang specialists in Ontar-

io and apparently they have never given a standing

ovation to anyone and I got a 10 minute standing

ovation. I come rugged, I unzip my coat and I got

on my cutoff shirt with my tattoos and I’m wearing

my Canadian Floor Masters shirt and – you’re gang

specialists, you know what this is – these are my

colours. But I want to talk to you about the impor-

tance of colours in a dance crew. How my guys

have horrific backgrounds but we came together

as a family and are young men and women sup-

porting each other.

I really felt like they got it. That would not have

happened in the 1980s or 1990s. People are starting

to open their eyes. We have already spent billions

on shit that doesn’t work. I remember I was in Cal-

gary a few years ago talking to bylaw officers about

the first Live Style event on graffiti. I’m trying to get

them to understand that it doesn’t matter if you put

a million bylaw officers on the street in Calgary,

that will probably just make things worse. Shouldn’t

you try and understand and try to find creative

ways to working with and supporting youth creativ-

ity through graf instead of going power and control

as the only option? As a parent, does power and

control work? If you do that to your kid your kid

will say fuck you and go hang out at the mall for

the rest of their life. These are smart, high profile

people that are starting to get it, and in the scheme

of things these programs don’t cost anything com-

pared to when big bureaucracy gets in the way and

messes everything they touch.

CAn you desCribe WhAT hAppens over The Course of one of your proGrAms?

The buzz words I would use are transformation

and hope. Honestly, I go to places where the shy-

est girls in the world live. I love the fact that we

aren’t just working with the athlete kids. I got half

girls and half guys – 100 kids and I got a team of 10.

We are intensely moving them through different

stuff. By the end of the week the kids who wouldn’t

take their hands down from their faces, the girls

up north typically have their hoodie up and they

put their hand over their mouth, you can’t even

see their smile. The body language is just out of

this world. We do a big battle in front of the whole

community. Often it is the largest community gath-

ering that has ever happened and we try to put

some traditional culture into it, which is all part of

our messaging. Imagine these girls strutting with

their arms up like ya what you got, in one week.

People are in such state of shock, parents and el-

28

ders. I know the kids are going to be fine so I don’t

watch them, I watch the parents. Let’s say 800 par-

ents came out, and that many people don’t even

come out to bingo in the North, and that is serious.

Many of them are tearing up and some are openly

sobbing like their chest moving up and down be-

cause they cannot believe what they are seeing. In

one week to have a transformation, maybe not ev-

erything sticks but some of them don’t even have

one happy memory in their fucking teenage life,

you are going to begrudge them that?

We hear stories all the time that these kids aren’t

trying to commit suicide anymore, they aren’t

sniffing gas anymore. I have testimonials out the

ying yang. A lot of parents and elders had given

up on their kids, believe it or not, and there are

different political reasons around what happened

in residential schools and stuff like that. We want

to create these human moments where we can

re-bridge generations. Our DJ elder pictures show

this. That is a very important symbolic moment. If

we are asking kids to take a risk with something

they are not used to, like graffiti art, B-boying,

then we got to lead by example. How cool is it for

them to see grandma, who knows fuck all about

Wheels of Steel, and she is up there in her tradi-

tional Inuit caribou outfit scratching and pound-

ing on the MPC? Every place we go the kids have

done a 9-by-5 foot graf piece. I got 45 graf pieces

done in their own language. Syllabic is a cool let-

tering style. This is their idea. We went to Cape

Dorset with 200 kids in the town and 6 had killed

themselves in 2 months just before we got there.

The kids did a graf piece saying Never give up.

Respect Each Other in Inuktituk, Kuujjuaapik Nunavik

29

DASERDaser is a hidden gem on the Ca-nadian graffiti scene. He has been leaving his mark since the early 80s and is one of the first in Canada to transcend his physical boundaries by putting his name on freight trains. Daser battles the often generic graffiti style of today with his own complex chunky pieces and abstract imag-ery. His passion for graffiti is as intense as his pieces and he con-tinues to promote the art form after 28 years.

hoW did you GeT inTo GrAffiTi?

I saw a CBC documentary on the poverty in the South

Bronx in 1982, it showed the subways covered in graf.

Trains in North America back then, they did not have

spray paintings on them like in New York, so that

shocked me to see them all painted up. Train watch-

ing was my hobby back then, I’ve been really inter-

ested in trains, passengers and freights since the late

70s, I watched them and drew them a lot back then.

Living in Kingston, I saw thousands and thousands of

North American freight cars roll through town and

no spraycan graffiti at all on them ever did I see, so

this New York subway situation was just another

world of its own on your TV set. Later that year I

saw Dreams Don’t Die premiering on ABC and I be-

gan painting graf in the spring of 1983 with one piece

that year painted illegally. All of this was inspired by

Dreams Don’t Die.

In the very early 80s I would travel to Toronto,

out west, or through Montreal. I had my eyes

opened for damn sure, the walls and trains were

bare, completely clean everywhere, everything!

Graffiti art based on what you would see in the

media about New York was simply not yet a part

of people’s thinking or culture here in Canada. All

I know is that back in the 70s and the real early

80s you did not see the New York City-inspired

spraycan art here in Canada. Yeah, we know some

hits were done in New York, but that’s like a drop

in the ocean for the size of North American rail

activity and its mindset in the 70s.

I was also doing a lot of breaking back then, it

took right over, and I was always trying to figure

out moves by watching rented beta video tapes of

Beat Street. Then by 86 it was deemed dead by a

lot of people, but rap music kept growing, and I

spent a lot of time taping radio stations. Later on I

caught the original airing of Style Wars on PBS out

of Watertown and the whole hip hop culture blew

up globally and took me over.

obviously you sAW GrAffiTi develop in CenTrAl CAnAdA; CAn you shAre A Timeline of your experienCe?

In 87 I moved to Ottawa and found some stuff

painted around. There was this street legal piece I

liked in the transit tunnels and it was hip hop kids

who did that stuff, but who? The Canadian Floor

Masters did some stuff circa 1984. I caught one of

their pieces done on Bank Street in 1986. In the

Daser, 1994

next spread, clockwise from top: Ren2 by Daser, 1993, Kingston;Ren2 by Daser, 1992;Solon by Ren2(Daser), 1993, Kingston;Daser, 1995, Ottawa;Hip-Hop by Ren2(Daser), 1989, Ottawa

30

31

32

later 1980s I would find the odd attempts, some

rare, rare tagging or hip hop-inspired spraycan

activity. There was no communication back then,

you just really hoped you would find someone

with the same interests. Between living in Kings-

ton and living in Ottawa I painted the words “hip

hop” a few times, and in 1986 I painted a piece

that said Funk Rules. It wasn’t until 89 that I had

even come up with a name: Ren.2.

My family moved back to Kingston and that sum-

mer I figured I would take a look for pieces in To-

ronto because I saw some on a TV show that had

been filmed there. I took the train and coming into

the city I saw the letters TCM spraypainted on a

bridge, there were highlights coming off it, it had

that hip hop feel. Further into the city, in around

Kensington Market, Toronto revealed a scene that

was rich with tags.

I saw really cool handstyles done with thick mark-

ers. One such writing said The Crime Messiahs – this

was TCM, their stuff all had that ill New York feel. I

thought to myself these guys had to be into rap or

breakers or something, the vibe was just pulsating!

painting for a while. Vancouver’s scene was con-

sidered really fresh back then, with the AA crew

leading it in hip hop graf for Canada, stylewise.

It was something a little bit closer to home than

the American stuff we were seeing, it was good to

see Canadian heads coming through. Toronto was

real close behind and then Montreal coming into

play over the years in a real big way. I used to go

through Montreal and see nothing but a little po-

litical graffiti in the 1980s. The mid-1990s seemed

to be the flashpoint spark for Montreal.

did The TAG ren.2 hAve Any ConneCTion To ren in ToronTo, mAybe from your Trip To ToronTo in 1989?

I came up with the tag Renegade 2000 on paper,

then I reduced it to Ren.2. That’s the name I was

known by around Kingston and Ottawa. It was

truly inspired by the Tommy Boy mega-mix with

the song Renegades of Funk in it. I just wanted to

see the elements of hip hop, but I could not find

dedicated people back then. By that summer I was

back living in Kingston and had already taken that

trip to Toronto where I saw the TCM hand styles in

I found a tag, Ren, on a pole on Spadina. Kid-C was

on the loose with tagging, his handstyles were little

pieces. The TCM crew was known for that.

In summer 1992 I had found more pieces in To-

ronto, names such as Sec and KS, and more stuff

by Ren, these guys were running the graf scene in

Toronto that year, Kane was in there, Sady was a

painter muralist from Scarborough. Ren was the

best of the bunch for his grassroots street tag-

ging and bombing on up to piecing and fills. Even

Virus, then known as KS, put some time in with

TCM in the early 90s. In 1994 I met Ren and Hope,

Reck, the whole crowd. I got in contact with Ren

and Hope, we traded photos, I ended up living at

Ren’s house that summer. That was the best year

for graf I have ever had. I was not the perfect

spraycan artist back then, but the heart was really

there. I gave to that crew, and I learned from it.

TCM took off as a second wave. Canada had so few

writers up to that point, but now graf was really

taking off. I met Shamus in 1993 in Ottawa, there

were kids there just starting out, the Puzzle crew

was making noise and seemed to have done some

Daser, 2000, Ottawa

33

the Kensington market and a Ren tag, but this was

over a half a year after I came up with Ren.2. I did

not know he was piecing until I saw flicks of the

Midas wall in 1991. In 1992 I came up with the Daser

tag, a new name that was not around, I wanted a

5-letter tag so I could stretch out a little more on

the freight car racks. It was an option to go along

with Ren.2. There was no Daser catching fame back

then in the books or mags anywhere on the planet

that I ever saw or heard of, remember we are talk-

ing the 1992, 1993 era. I had a Daser piece on a train

appear in Skills magazine out of Boston that year.

I had already been piecing certain very, very small

little areas in Kingston since the 1980s and the

early- to mid-1990s, but the TCM crew was like go-

ing to college or university. We were all different

types of people coming together, we were paint-

ing ahead of the kids that were just starting out on

Canada’s east coast back then. TCM had a very se-

rious influence on so many writers from the East

Coast and way beyond, a lot of those guys don’t

even know it. It’s like I say, “TCM is in you, but

you ain’t in TCM.” I learned so, so much from all

of them, but then again I brought strengths of my

own to the crew that they learned from, and the

photo trades I was doing globally, the magazines,

they all brought influence.

By that time, 1994, The Crime Messiahs were made

up of Sec, Reck, Kane, Hope, Ren, and myself – Das-

er, as I was becoming more known. Before that you

had Kid C, Ren and Cyber. I met Cyber in the 90s at

Ren’s house but never did any runs with him. He

was a cool tagger that rolled with Ren, a dope hand-

stylist for sure. Ren and Cyber put TCM together,

LaBomba was down with it, there were affiliations

types of thing, people that could put it up.

Hooking up with TCM in 1994 and through on down

the line was where I learned about flavour, seeing

Rock Steady Crew at the Toronto waterfront that

year. They brought back the art of the B-boy and

B-girl styles and straightened out the game for

what a B-boy is. The writer Hope was good at chal-

lenging things, he made me realize some shit, Ren

brought his extra-loose tagging abilities and let-

ter fills, Virus was swinging on the lettering. You

would start to figure out your own with time and

how to get spicy after a while, set your own mark.

A lot of kids now can paint, but it’s very generic,

transparent, you can tell what they’re made of, it

may look fresh out the box to some little kid, but

true players know the deal, and can break the shit

down. When I look at pieces, I just scan them in

an attack mode – where is that strong point that

makes it legitimate?

Daser, 1993

34

35

WhAT WAs The feelinG When you Were pAinTinG freiGhTs And reAlly no one else WAs AT The Time?

I started painting freights in January of 1992. In

Kingston they were only parked maybe 3 times a

year, and that’s if you were lucky. I would piece

them when I could. The summer of that year I

started seeing the occasional spray tag on double

stack trains. I kept piecing when the cars were laid

up in Kingston, although that was rare. The can

control mags I was getting were starting to reveal

some freight piecing action. In the winter and

summer of 93 I was still piecing racks. In the fall

of that year I started corresponding with Ren and

he had just started piecing boxcars and was mail-

ing out photos to the west coast. Then came their

stuff, the Vancouver vibe on the trains in 1994. I

was the first to start piecing freights consistently

here in Canada – I’m sure of this unless someone

can honestly prove otherwise with dated pieces

photographed, and I don’t know who that could

be. We are talking the start of 1992 from my own

personal documentation. You could practically

count all the writers on your thumbs and fingers

that were any good back then right across Canada.

The spring of 1994 was when I started seeing and

photographing stuff go by, saw a top-to-bottom go

by for the first time one night when I was out rock-

ing the steel. From that year on it just became a

reality with writers in general.

And Then of Course There WAs The IGT Zine ThAT sTArTed up in 1984 – did ThAT influenCe you AT All?

You mean the International Get Hyped Times? Ab-

solutely! Get hyped is exactly what it was about,

the first-ever aerosol art chronicle. It was put to-

gether back circa 1984 by Phase2 and Vulcan, 2 of

the scene’s king stylists and a ridiculous influence

on me and so many writers all around the world. It

was a kind of zine foldout that talked politics and

showed the piecing that was New York and other

painting from around the world. I can remember

back in 1992, just pulling it out of the mail box and

opening it up before you even got in the house.

Finally getting a good look at hardcore New York

culture after 10 years of wanting to see stuff. You

could put your address in it, and swap photos,

that’s how I hooked up with the first crew I ever

got down with, Tem CMD from Europe. I was not

in any crew so I asked them if I could write CMD,

and yeah, so I did some CMD freights in the early-

to mid-1990s. Because of IGT I corresponded with

lots of writers globally. It was a great year, 1992,

corresponding through IGT, getting hooked up

with writers and flicks of their scenes all around

the world. So the Ren.2/Daser name got out there.

The photo swaps were fun, crazy hype!

CMD by Daser, 1993; facing page: Daser, 2002, Ottawa

186

187

Clockwise from top left:Sinex, VancouverSinex, VancouverMouse by Sinex, VancouverSinex, VancouverSinex & K by Virus, 1994, VancouverSinex, 1994, Vancouver

188

INDEXGraffiti Crews

2See (alternate name

for The Graffiti Knights): 82

3Eight (alternate name for The Night Crime

crew): 45

AA : 32, 103, 107, 108, 114, 117, 119, 120, 125, 134, 160,

163, 166, 167, 175, 180

Aerosol Army (alternate name for AA crew): 120

Aerosol Arsenals (alternate name

for AA crew): 120

AK3: 39

Amoral Self Promoters: 39, 45

Bink: 51

Blessed With Style: 155

BSM: 48

Burning America : 142, 146

Canadian Floor Masters: 20, 29

CBS: 143

CBW: 45

CEY: 48

Chrome Angels: 24, 25

Crime Messiahs, The: 32, 33, 62, 63, 103

D5B (abbreviation for Dash Five Bionica crew):

175, 181, 183

Dash 5 Bionica: 155, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175,

180, 181, 183, 185

DVS: 117

Dynamic Rockers: 25

East Side Posse: 155

ELF: 45

EMC3: 163

Graffiti Knights, The: 82, 84

Graffiti Shamans: 62

Graph-X: 125, 155, 160, 164, 169, 183, 185

KGM (abbreviation for

Kings Gone Mad crew): 146

Keep Suckas Nervous (alternate name

for Kings Stop at Nothing crew): 146

Kings Gone Mad: 146

Kings Stop at Nothing: 142, 143,

Kool Style Network (alternate name

for Kings Stop at Nothing crew): 146

KSN (abbreviation for

Kings Stop at Nothing crew): 143, 146

KWOTA: 39

Mad Bombers, The: 39

Msias: 54

New York City Breakers: 24, 25

Night Crime, The: 45

Paid In Crime: 50, 51

PIC (abbreviation for Paid In Crime crew): 50

Puzzle: 32

Raggamuffin Rascalz (alternate name

for Rascalz crew): 119

Rascalz: 108, 119

Rock Steady Crew: 25, 33, 112

SK8s: 45

Swarm: 37

TCM (abbreviation for

The Crime Messiahs crew): 32, 33, 62, 63

Tem CMB: 35

TMB (abbreviation for

The Mad Bombers crew): 39

TMF: 135

189

TNC (abbreviation for

The Night Crime crew): 39, 45

TNT: 82

TWF: 135

TwoSee (alternate name for

The Graffiti Knights): 82

Two-Sicks: 45

UPC: 45

WCB (abbreviation for

We Crush Boxcars crew): 92

We Crush Boxcars: 90, 92

Who Cares Bro (alternate name

for We Crush Boxcars crew): 92

Wild Canadian Boys (alternate name

for We Crush Boxcars crew) : 92

Wrecking City Blocks (alternate name

for We Crush Boxcars crew) : 92

Graffiti Artists Entries in bold face indicate a

complete chapter for that artist.

2fresh: 91, 132

12 Midnight:159, 168

Absorb: 166, 167, 170, 175, 180, 185

ACB: 76

Acrow: 92, 134, 142

Aero: 14, 126, 149

Ajax: 46

Akira: 13

Amok (alternate tag for Sear): 41

Apaul: 117

Bacon: 12

Bando: 24

Base: 132

Bdp: 46

Billygoat: 38

Bio: 159

Blaze: 92

Bonzo: 91

Buddha: 20-28

Cameo: 92

Chefo: 45

CMD (alternate tag for Daser): 35

Code: 175

Code 7 (alternate tag for Daub): 45

Cope2: 137

Cos (alternate tag for Cosoe): 90

Cose: 45

Cosoe: 14, 90-102, 157, 159

Crayone: 135, 159

Crime: 91

Crush: 159

Cyber: 33, 62

Cycle: 137

Darrox: 90

Daser: 14, 29-35, 63, 114

Daub: 38, 39, 45-48

Deceit: 107

Dect: 128

Dedos: 92, 103, 111, 117-124, 125, 126, 128, 131, 132,

134, 137, 142, 143, 169

Der: 38, 39, 46

Derfer: 54, 55

Dezine: 132, 151-158, 164, 169, 175, 183

Dino: 104

Dondi: 90, 91, 92, 103

Dooer: 45, 50-53

Dope2: 128, 131-134

Dream: 135

Dubnut: 50-53

Duster: 91

Dynamo: 90

EGR: 12, 48

Electro Boogie: 45

EMC3 (alternate tag for Neos): 163

Enzone: 90

Ephx: 14, 53, 91, 132, 135-144, 146, 149, 155, 157, 159,

160, 163, 167, 168, 169

Ethiks: 54

190

Ewok: 39

Fatso: 92

Fever-One: 117

Finzl 15: 159

Frost: 11

Futura: 159, 164

FX (alternate tag for Ephx): 137

Galooch: 14, 77, 80-81, 104, 107

Ghost: 14, 50, 51, 54-59

Gonzo: 77

Haze (alternate tag for Neos): 164

Heat: 92

Hews: 96, 117

Hex: 143, 155, 157, 164, 169

Hope: 32, 33, 63, 79

Hopi: 54, 55

Hung: 51

Imposter: 46, 48

Insight: 134

Insist (alternate tag for Krewz): 145

Jaler: 96

Jase: 96, 142, 146

Jay Skin: 37

Jesus Saves: 134

Jimbo: 132

Jinder (alternate tag for Dooer): 53

Jon156: 164

Juice (alternate tag for Dubnut): 50

Jzone: 91, 132, 134, 137, 159, 160, 163, 164

Kane: 32, 33, 63, 79

Kaput: 92

Karma: 57

Kazal (alternate tag for Word): 159

Kemo (alternate tag for Dope2): 108, 119, 128, 132

Kev: 146

Kid-C: 32, 33, 61, 62, 77, 107

Kid Quick: 20, 21

King84: 90

King Ada (alternate tag for Sear): 38, 41

Krewz: 53, 91, 126, 137, 142, 143, 145-150, 159, 160,

163, 164, 166, 168

Krooze (alternate tag for Krewz): 53

Krs One: 46

KS (alternate tag for Virus): 32, 103

KSone (alternate tag for Virus): 103

Kurve (alternate tag for Dezine): 155

Kwest: 12

LaBomba: 33, 72-79, 80

Lep: 170, 171, 174, 175, 177

Loomit: 11

Maad: 84

Mars: 137

Mber: 39

Meats: 12

Mediah: 48

Mix Master Mike: 135

Mode2: 24, 25, 184

MSK: 77

Myth: 92

Negative G (alternate tag for Buddha): 24

Neos: 119, 137, 163-173, 175, 180, 183, 184, 185

Nicer: 159

Ozone: 90

PabloFiasco: 90

Pause (alternate tag for Virus): 103

PD: 111, 166, 167, 170, 174-182

Pez: 61, 104, 107

Phase2: 35

Porn: 95, 112

Posh: 96

Power: 157

Pride: 24

Punisher: 90

Pure (alternate tag for Ren): 105

Puzzler: 159

Q-bert: 135

Ranks : 92

Razor: 111

Reck: 32, 33

Recka: 63, 77

Red One: 119

Ren: 12, 14, 32, 33, 34, 61-72, 77, 79, 103, 104, 107,

114, 117, 119

Ren.2 (alternate tag for Daser): 32, 33, 35

Renegade (alternate tag for Daser): 32

Resist 2: 91

Rey One: 117

Rip1 (alternate tag for Ephx): 149, 160

Riske (alternate tag for Cosoe): 90, 169

Sady: 32, 82-88

Scribla: 24

Scuf (alternate tag for Dooer): 45

Sear: 37-44, 45, 46

191

Sec: 32, 33, 63, 107

Seek (alternate tag for Virus): 103

Seen: 91, 92, 159

Shamus: 32

Sight: 54

Sinex: 164, 168, 169, 170, 175, 180, 183-187

Skam: 12, 143

Skeme: 91, 92

Skully: 38

Slick: 143, 155, 157, 164, 169

Slomo: 45

Smoke (alternate tag for Word): 159

Sneke: 117

Soul One: 117

SP: 96

Spirit (alternate tag for Cosoe): 90

Spy: 135

Stage: 92, 142

Stelth: 57, 167

Stone: 107

Sug: 96, 114

Swirls (alternate tag for Ren): 61

T-Kid: 159

Take5: 114, 145-146

Tones: 117

TooFly: 76

Trax One: 82

Treach: 82

Tribe: 137

Twist: 11, 142, 155, 159

Tyke22 (alternate tag for Dubnut): 50

UFOUBA: 38, 46

Vandal (alternate tag for Cosoe): 90

Virus: 14, 32, 33, 92, 103-116, 117, 119, 121, 125, 126,

131, 132, 134, 137, 142, 164, 168, 169, 180

Vulcan: 35, 135, 159

Wall Wizard (alternate tag for Daub): 38, 45

Word: 91, 159-162, 164

Wysper: 12

Zaki: 24

Zap (alternate tag for Neos): 163

Zephyr: 11, 12, 13, 159

Ziggy (alternate tag for Dooer): 53

Zilon: 16-18

Zine: 92

Z-lok: 103, 117, 119, 125-130, 131, 132, 134, 137, 164,

167, 169, 183, 185

Zori-4: 76