Growing up as a little kid in a town so far away from one of the birthplaces of graffiti there wasn't much for us to learn from, only the older guys who were all biting either NY or LA style. The first document to come out for us toys to study was the book Subway Art, which dropped in around 1982 the same time as Style Wars. After that, the nooks and crannies of the world would study these as there was no other OG foundation for learning about style. I studied style pretty much during all waking hours for a good 5 plus years. Many on the outskirts did not really get to learn about graffiti in a true way. This can be witnessed in the plethora of writers who can’t tag, but only piece.

I missed seeing multicolored illegal pieces on the streets in hot spots. Perhaps the graffiti produced on each coast reflects ethos that the kids in each particular scene represent. A lot of the kids slaying in SF are “lil goon scenester rich kids” with hairdos, outfits, and drug problems. Most of the writers in New York are street kids who have been raised fluent in the true language of graffiti: raw destruction i.e. tagging. While the absolutely prolific proliferation of tags and bombs is quite a feast to take in it still left me yearning for a throwback to the OG subway days in which super detailed time consuming pieces existed in mass abundance. All of the pieces that I witnessed in NY were either legal or were spots by the usual names from out West. This is not meant to disrespect New York writers. Far from it, it is more of a compliment to them. These cats are so wrapped up in all out destruction and surface saturation that they can’t be bothered with fucking around and piecing. But still I was fiending to see some real live illegal burners and luckily I was able to do this by buying a twelve dollar train ticket to New Jersey.

Not having enough loot to make it out to Europe where some subways still run untouched, me and my homie who had made the cross country trek from the Southwest, headed out from Penn Station on a cold dismal morning. Even though I had only been in the city a few weeks it was already good to get out of its cramped confines for a minute as we took the train into what the locals would later call “the armpit of America.” For a state with such a derogatory alias it has the most spectacular array of graffiti running of anyplace that I’ve been to. As soon as we crossed over the trackside pieces began to pop up and our faces were glued to the windows. I prayed that the train would be delayed and have to slow down, giving me time to whip out my camera and photograph some of the rarer gems. But perhaps I witnessed these small miracles in the way they are intended to be seen: whizzing by so fast that they can’t be captured by photography but are forever burned into my psyche.

We were seeing so many spots by the late graffiti legend Nace. Many of his spots were so clean that they looked like they could have been painted last night even though he had passed away years ago. We rode past miles and miles of wrecked tracksides and witnessed miles and miles of the finest graffiti out, and we hadn’t even got to see anything on the freeways yet. In the graffiti scene Jersey is known for their monumental destruction of freeways. Not just destruction in the sense of millions of bombs and tags, but pieces more intricate and complex than you’re apt to find on a permission wall. Jersey is definitely known for their freeways and we wanted to ride around and peep ‘em.

Luckily the homie had linked us up with some kids from out there so we weren’t left to wander the massive sprawl alone. After taking the train a few stops deep in the state we got off and were met at train station by a local cat. I was expecting him to be a stereotypical Jersey Shore type sleaze bag complete with heavy accent and backwards Kangol hat but he is probably one of the most humble and respectable dudes that I have ever meet in or out of graffiti. Much to my dismay I learned that he was a few years younger than me, this saddened me in a way because he had already done more graff than I could even comprehend doing. He led us past the college and we walked down toward freeway and made our way through a narrow tunnel flanked by sleeping bums on either side of us. We emerged on the other side and what we saw was a massive two or three mile stretch of graffiti saturated freeway retaining wall sitting up against calm waters.

The long wall was on the opposite side of the freeway that the cars drove on and was a far cry from the hot spots we would see later. The wall was a quasi legal spot that had been chill to paint illegally for many years. They even told us that Nace had had done some of his first pieces here. They told us it was being converted into a permission wall by some local artsy fartsy dudes from the college and would be a chill place for us to paint pieces until the sun went down. We painted silver pieces and the Rusto silver had a hell of a time drying in the frigid air. We bullshitted and anxiously watched a pack of mallards that were known to attack people and fuck shit up (no lie son). After finishing our pieces one of them told us a great story about the strip of land that we stood on.

One day around the age of 13 or so him and a buddy ditched school and were smoking and drinking when a tall Mexican girl approached them and made conversation. His buddy ended up going off into the shrubbery with her and came back with a shit eating grin, informing him that he had just received a blow job from the girl and that she offered to give him one also. He was too scared to take the free fellatio and was pissed at himself for not doing it after he made it home. He was so upset about it that he even confided to his father that he may have made one of the biggest mistakes of his life by not accepting the courtesy dome. A few weeks later he would find out that the Mexican girl was really a guy and the biggest mistake of his life turned into the best decision he’d ever made. Even ten plus years later he had never had the heart to tell his friend that he had received head unwittingly from a tranny.

We got scooped up in a van by a third friend and finally got to take a guided tour of the NJ freeways. The buff squad had been out pretty recently painting out a few spots and a local toy had been dissing a lot of shit begging for an ass whopping but shit was still running hard. Heavy hitters had multiple production caliber pieces and a ridiculous amount of fill-ins so we just kicked back and enjoyed the expanse of multicolored concrete for miles and miles, cruising back and forth on the freeway until it started to get dark.

Of course it wouldn’t make sense to make the pilgrimage all the way out there without piecing the infamous highways so we decided to post up for a couple of hours until it was chill enough to hit the streets again loaded up with backpacks of paint . We went back to the friends and posted up eating some organic food and listening to his pops talk about making colloidal silver. The spot that we were going to rock was a virgin spot off of the 287 (I believe). I had a hard time keeping track of all the numbers as the massive stretches of highway blew by. Our spot was hella cutty and we didn’t even watch the main freeway but only got down as cars merged on the freeway via the road inches away from us. I had to yank down a shit load of vines and brambles to clear off my spot. We rocked it on some James Bond type shit in two sets of two and when I was painting only one cop passed by us and but we had to duck twenty or thirty times. After that we fucked around and did some fill-ins but it was getting late.

We’d missed the last train back but luckily the homie did us a solid by letting us crash in his beer can littered attic and even gave us a ride back to the station in the morning. Feeling really haggard the next morning and the fact of having to seek gainful employment to acquire money to eat looming over my head I was happy about my decision to impart my minuscule piece to their momentous destruction.

KAI1