1 20 232 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220118.xml Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:41:45 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed BUTCH 2 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with BUTCH 2 OH-BAADP.20220118 01:41:45 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the donation of Stephen DeSimone, President/CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. bxoralhistory BUTCH 2 Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 butch-2-oral-history-2022-01-18.mp4 5:|222(8)|428(7)|578(3)|822(11)|1104(13)|1332(7)|1551(5)|1805(5)|2098(12)|2357(1)|2575(10)|2822(8)|3066(14)|3283(2)|3494(11)|3685(5)|3877(6)|4076(3)|4307(2)|4515(1) Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/AF91enQGgec YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the first oral history of the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at the Bronx County Historical Society. Kurt and Pastor, why don't you introduce yourselves briefly before we introduce the main event, our guest here? Kurt Boone: OK, I, I'm Kurt Boone. Native New Yorker, and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Pastor Crespo: I'm Pastor Crespo, and I'm a volunteer here at The Bronx County Historical Society. Steven Payne: Alright, thank you, and we're really excited to be here today with the art legend, BUTCH 2, who came of age in The Bronx during the 1970s and first achieved fame as a writer for his mastery of wild-style lettering design and is a member of The Fantastic Partners (TFP) . . . In this segment Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, introduces the interviewee, BUTCH 2, and asks the other interviewers, Kurt Boone and Pastor Crespo, to introduce themselves. Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Graffiti artists;Lettering in art;The Fantastic Partners (Graffiti artists group) 0 61 Family History and Early Years Steven Payne: So, why don't you tell us a little bit about your family's history and background and how they ended up in The Bronx? BUTCH 2: Me? Born and raised in The Bronx, 1960. My father's from Georgia. Steven Payne: Sure. BUTCH 2: August, Georgia . . . In this segment, BUTCH 2 talks briefly about his family history and background, his earliest memories of The Bronx, how graffiti first caught him when his family moved to Hunts Point, his first forays into art in school, and his early encounter with graffiti culture. Graffiti;Hunts Point (The Bronx, N.Y.);J.H.S. 123 (The Bronx, N.Y.);Markers;Tagging;Third Avenue El;Whitlock Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.) African Americans--Georgia;Art & arts;Graffiti;Migration, Internal--United States--History--20th century;Railroads, Elevated;Subways 0 258 Choosing the Name BUTCH 2 BUTCH 2: . . . everybody had a graffiti name, everybody, just like when rap first started, everybody had a rap name . . . Bozo the Clown (Fictitious character);Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Rap (Music) Graffiti;Hip-hop 0 376 Growing Up in Hunts Point Kurt Boone: You were showing me the other day about, we talked a little bit about, you know, the movie Fort Apache, you wasn't really into it . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about his time growing up in the Hunts Point section of The Bronx. He touches on his brief foray into gang life through the "junior" gang, the Young Javelins and how his creativity kept him away from gang life and got him into Music and Art High School in Manhattan. He also speaks about the various things that he would do for fun around the neighborhood, including tackle football in the streets, baseball, stickball, and other street games, as well as the music that he remembers hearing in his neighborhood (before hip-hop) and his first introduction to drug culture in high school. Baseball;Bruckner Boulevard (The Bronx, N.Y.);Dewitt Clinton High School (New York, N.Y.);Football;Fort Apache (Motion picture);High School of Music and Art (New York, N.Y.);Minnesota Vikings (Football team);Savage Nomads (Gang);Savage Skulls (Gang);Seven Immortals (Gang);Simpson Street (The Bronx, N.Y.);Stickball;Stylistics (Musical group);Sunoco (Firm);Wild style (Graffiti);Young Javelins (Gang) Football;Games;Gangs--United States;Genre, music and sound;Graffiti;Hunts Point (The Bronx, N.Y.) 0 886 Time at Music and Art High School BUTCH 2: Later on, I really realized, I try to call Music and Art like the cousins to Art and Design. Steven Payne: OK, yeah. BUTCH 2: But it's really not. We took, we had art classes and we had projects to do, but Music and Art was really for performing arts . . . In this segment, BUTCH 2 talks about his time at Music and Art High School in Manhattan and touches more on drug culture at the school, which he mostly avoided because of his devotion to the graph. He also mentions a teacher of his from J.H.S. 123 in The Bronx who did not believe that he could make it into this specialized high school and remembers painting his first piece in junior high. Graffiti;Homework;J.H.S. 123 (The Bronx, N.Y.) Drug use;Graffiti;High School of Music and Art (New York, N.Y.);Public schools;Subways in art 0 1236 Early Experience Writing on the 6 and 2/5 Lines BUTCH 2: It was easy to, I mean, if you're like a daredevil it's easy. Because we would have to go up and, and go on the tracks and, and step up on the third rail. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: It's been some fatalities through the years . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 discusses his early experience writing along the 6 line in The Bronx and his decision to graduate to the 2/5 line. 2 Seventh Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;6 Lexington Avenue Local;<6> Pelham Bay Express;Subway tunnels Graffiti;Police--New York (State)--New York;Subways--Accidents;Subways--Graffiti;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 1413 Memories of Food and Family Steven Payne: What are some things that you remember eating in your household while growing up? BUTCH 2: [Inaudible] My mom does cook. My mom's a good cook. Sundays, I think, we, by 2 o'clock in the afternoon we were eating dinner . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 remembers various traditions around food and cooking in his family while growing up. He also talks about visiting his father on Webster Avenue after his parents split and living near his grandmother on Clay Avenue. He touches briefly on his relationship with family members outside of New York. Augusta (Ga.);Clay Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.);Creamed corn;Fried chicken;Meatloaf;Onions;Spaghetti;Sunday dinner;Webster Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.) African Americans--Georgia;Cooking 0 1624 Learning Style Lettering Steven Payne: Kurt, why don't you go ahead and, and start asking some more questions about . . . Kurt Boone: I wanted to kind of like: you, you graduated from Music and Art? BUTCH 2: No I didn't . . . In this segment, after touching on his incarceration as a 17-year old, earning his GED, and attending Bronx Community College, BUTCH 2 gets into a discussion of style lettering. He talks about individual letters he was particularly drawn to, various sources of inspiration for his lettering design, and the process he went through of learning how to use a spray paint can as a paintbrush. Arthur Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.);Calligraphy;Caps (Spray paint cans);GED tests;Highschool of Music and Art (New York, N.Y.);Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);Pressure (Spray paint cans);Red Devil (Spray paint firm);Sketch pads;Stan 153 (Graffiti artist);Style writing (Graffiti) Bronx Community College;Comic books, strips, etc;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Inspiration in art;Lettering in art;Prisons--United States;Spray paint;Tools in art 0 2193 Painting Whole Subway Cars Kurt Boone: . . . whole car. BUTCH 2: It's a production, man. Production's just a—gotta have a theme. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: Sometimes you have to have a blueprint. Steven Payne: Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2: Yeah. It's, it's really obvious. And then you gotta have the paint . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 discusses what went into painting whole subway cars, both by himself and with a crew. He also speaks about the first time he painted a whole car, when he was 12 or 13, his favorite spot to paint whole cars by himself, and the strategies that were involved in the process. 2 Seventh Avenue Express;225th Street (Subway station);233rd Street (Subway station);3D (Graffiti);5 Lexington Avenue Express;6 Lexington Avenue Local;<6> Pelham Bay Express;Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Layup (Graffiti);Outlines (Graffiti);Whole cars (Graffiti);Yard (Graffiti) Graffiti;Subway stations;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 2430 Racking and Getting Supplies Kurt Boone: Tell us about racking, because, you know, there's a lot of stories about how artists got their paint. People would do, young, young artists would do different kind of things to get their paint. BUTCH 2: Different kind of things? Kurt Boone: Things like not pay for it . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about his experience with "racking," a term that graffiti artists use to describe the extra-legal ways they would go about acquiring supplies. He also discusses how writers back in the day would have to obtain extra caps and the difference that the mainstreaming and legalization of graffiti in certain settings has had upon the tools that artists use. Caps (Spray paint);Colors;Racking (Graffiti) Graffiti;Spray paint;Tools in art 0 2752 Pieces that Stand Out Steven Payne: Do you, do you have a favorite production of yours, from, either from the early time or maybe your entire time writing? BUTCH 2: There was one. I think, you, you know the one I'm talking about, the one that they, that Don1 filmed . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about his favorite piece as well as a mural that he helped paint at Prospect Hospital during the period that a few writers were transitioning to mural and canvas work. Don1 (Graffiti artist);Pieces (Graffiti);Prospect Hospital Graffiti;Mural painting and decoration 0 2879 The Fantastic Partners (TFP) BUTCH 2: TFP. Kurt Boone: Yes. BUTCH 2: TFP is my crew. It's not my crew but the crew that I'm a member of. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: Goes way back. I think we started TFP probably in about '72 or '73. Long time. In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about his graffiti crew The Fantastic Partners (TFP). He remembers some of the members of the crew and talks about what's expected of members and how the crew has changed over time. Bot 707 (Graffiti artist);Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Hash 161 (Graffiti artist);Solid 1 (Graffiti artist);The Fantastic Partners (Graffiti artists crew);Voe 56 (Graffiti artist) Graffiti artists 0 3084 Reflections on Aerosol Art BUTCH 2: It's just, it's rewarding. I know I was there when it all began, you know. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: It's a global thing. Global, my man. I bet if you walk in Montefiore you'll probably see some type of art soon as you get in there. In this segment BUTCH 2 offers some general reflections on graffiti, particularly the spread of the art form around the globe, his frustration artists who are hesitant about the word "graffiti", and the often arbitrary distinction between "vandalism" and "creativity". Aerosol arts;Graffiti;Koch, Ed (Edward I.);Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center;Vandalism Advertising;Art & arts;Global culture;Graffiti;Hip-hop;Subways;Vandalism 0 3358 Current Work BUTCH 2: I got a few canvases I, I'm playing with. You know, you got some people who are waiting for some new work. I'm setting, I'm still putting my studio together. But yeah, canvases. I wanna go bigger. I'm doing some, I got, got, got like 9x12"s, some 8x10"s, but I wanna go bigger . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about some his current work painting canvases and his efforts to convert his apartment into an artist studio and gallery. Canvas Graffiti 0 3424 CASE 2 (TFP) and Other Writers BUTCH 2: That's my partner, Case, because before him I was painting alone. Like I said, 225th Street. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: Until, I'd go up there and do my whole car . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about other graffiti artists, including his longtime artistic partner CASE 2. He discusses where he and other writers would watch their subway artwork, the importance of crews in getting into subway stations, and the fact that so many of the early artists are still living in The Bronx and never received significant money for their art. He also speaks about appearing in Style Wars (1983), his experience with Fashion Moda (the first storefront gallery featuring graffiti artists in The Bronx), the end of the era of whole car painting, competition with other artists, and subway lines besides the 2/5 and 6. 149th Street–Grand Concourse station;6 Lexington Avenue Local;<6> Pelham Bay Park Express;Allerton Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.);Blade (Graffiti artist);Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Claremont Parkway (New York, N.Y.);Crash (Graffiti artist);DJ Kool Herc;Dr. Dre, 1965-;Esplanade (Bronx, N.Y.);Futura (Graffiti artist);Hunts Point Avenue station;In (Graffiti artist);Inside writers (Graffiti);Kodak instant camera;Layups (Graffiti);Magik Markers;Pieces (Graffiti);Quinones, Lee George;Soundview (The Bronx, N.Y.);Style Wars (1983);The Crazy Five (Graffiti artist group);The Fantastic Partners (Graffiti artist group);Third Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.);Throw ups (Graffiti);West Farms Square–East Tremont Avenue station;Whole cars (Graffiti);Writers' Bench (Graffiti) Canvas;Fashion Moda (Group);Graffiti artists;Hip-hop;Lettering in art;Street art;Subway stations 0 4373 Work as a Bike Messenger and Time in Texas BUTCH 2: I don't know. I guess it was quick and easy. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: And it was big, it was a big business, too. Steven Payne: Sure. In this segment BUTCH 2 speaks about his work in New York City as a bike messenger, as well as a period of his life that he spent in Texas working primarily at a Yard House Restaurant. He also discusses the graffiti scenes in San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston. Co-op City (The Bronx, N.Y.);Dallas (Tex.);Houston (Tex.);Meeting of Styles (Graffiti convention);Olive Garden Restaurants;San Antonio (Tex.);The Paint Yard (Graffiti store);Yard House Restaurants Bicycles and bicycling;Graffiti;Messengers;Mexicans in art;Restaurants--Employees 0 4930 Various Topics and The Bronx in the 1980s BUTCH 2: Today's artists is buying paint. I find that hard to do. Steven Payne: Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2: I find that hard to do. Steven Payne: Yeah, for sure. In this segment, BUTCH 2 revisits and expands on a variety of topics, including racking, the difference between getting supplies now versus back in the day, and the effect of drugs on the graffiti scene. He also speaks about what he was doing in the mid-1980s, his time at Bronx Community College, his experience with hip hop during these years, and fires in The Bronx (both current and past). Angel dust;Bronx Community College;Bronx River Houses;Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Crack cocaine;Genevese Drug Stores;Grandmaster Flash;Joints;Martin Paints;Racking (Graffiti);Soulsonic Force (Musical group);The Fantastic Partners (Graffiti artist group);Wild Style (1983) Arson--United States;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Drugs;Fires;Graffiti;Hip-hop;Paint shops--Equipment and supplies 0 5604 Graffiti Exhibits BUTCH 2: What's this here? It should be decent . . . In this segment BUTCH 2 talks about a 2020 graffiti exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts as well as his being featured at the Museum of Graffiti in Miami, Florida. Bronx Museum of the Arts;Futura (Graffiti artist);Museum of Graffiti (Miami, Fl.) Artists and museums;Graffiti artists 0 5833 Final Reflections BUTCH 2: Home, basically. Steven Payne: Yeah. BUTCH 2: The Bronx is Home. I was born in Jacobi Hospital on March 31, 1960. In this final segment BUTCH 2 reflects on The Bronx and the meaning of art. He also offers advice to younger artists. ALDI (Firm);Claremont Parkway (New York, N.Y.);Co-op City (The Bronx, N.Y.);Gun Hill Road (The Bronx, N.Y.);Hunts Point (The Bronx, N.Y.);Jacobi Hospital;Lambert Houses (The Bronx, N.Y.);Longfellow Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.);Pelham Gardens (The Bronx, N.Y.);Washingon Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.) Art & arts;Bronx (New York, N.Y.) 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on January 18, 2022 with BUTCH 2, a pioneer in the graffiti arts movement from The Bronx, a master of wild style lettering design, a member of The Fantastic Partners (TFP), and one of the first artists to paint whole trains as early as 1972. In this oral history, BUTCH 2 describes his time growing up in The Bronx of the 1960s and 1970s, what drew him to graffiti, how he developed some of his artistic techniques, and much more. Steven Payne Welcome to the first oral history of the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at the Bronx County Historical Society. Kurt and Pastor, why don't you introduce yourselves briefly before we introduce the main event, our guest here? Kurt Boone Okay, I'm Kurt Boone, native New Yorker, and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Pastor Crespo I'm Pastor Crespo and I'm a volunteer here at the Bronx County Historical Society. Steven Payne All right, thank you. And we're really excited to be here today with the art legend, BUTCH 2, who came of age in The Bronx during the 1970s and first achieved fame as a writer for his mastery of wildstyle lettering design and as a member of The Fantastic Partners (TFP). And there's many other things I could say about BUTCH 2's stylistic and technical innovations, but we'll ask him to talk about that in a little bit. For now, we'll start this oral history with a bit of background. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your family's history and background and how they ended up in The Bronx. BUTCH 2 Me born and raised in the Bronx. 1960. My father's from Georgia. Augusta, Georgia? Yeah. Augusta, Georgia. My mother's from the Bronx. Their union is pretty much a mystery to me. But they did meet and my mother had four kids. I got I'm like the guy right in the middle. Steven Payne Okay, right in the middle. BUTCH 2 I got older brother younger brother. I got older sister. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 Yeah, we grew up around Claremont Parkway with the Third Avenue Ele. Steven Payne And I was still standing. Yes. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Right. And because matter of fact, I think our window was right level with the Ele because you can hear it going by Steven Payne okay. BUTCH 2 But I don't think the trains really interested me then. You know, people were tagging and stuff like that. But I think it was more that point in time, people I think got more fun out of hitchhiking on the bus hitchhiking on the train. It wasn't really grabbed. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 you know. I think graffiti might have caught me. When after we left on Third Avenue. We moved to Washington Avenue before Claremont Projects came up. Steven Payne Okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 And from there we went, we moved to Hunts Point. And that's that's where it all basically started the 6 line. I live by Whitlock, between Whitlock and Hunts Point. So we on the corner and we playing and we playing Johnny whatever. The pumpkin, you would see the trains come off the tunnel. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And I think one day I saw a Take Five. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 And I think that changed my whole everything, you know, with the with the fire hydrant with the flames. Yeah, that that's what graffiti first grabbed me. Steven Payne How old were you? BUTCH 2 I think I might have been 11 or 12 Steven Payne 11 or 12. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Steven Payne And had art interest you much before that? Time. Yeah. BUTCH 2 In junior high school. You know, it's funny. There's a photograph. Ah, we're in art class and everybody sitting around, we might have had an art. What do you call it like a project. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And everybody was, you know, drawing and doing whatever they got to do. They want us to draw a bowl of fruit. They want to draw some pepper shaker. My project was on the blackboard. Steven Payne Ah, okay. BUTCH 2 And I had to tape paper all the way down. But that's how I started working big for the beginning. Steven Payne Wow. Yeah. BUTCH 2 And there's a picture of that in my high school yearbook. Somebody had that photo. Oh, but yeah, that's when it kind of started. I just love art. Steven Payne Yeah. Which High School was. BUTCH 2 I went to junior high school 123 its on Bruckner Boulevard and Larson. Steven Payne Okay, okay. BUTCH 2 Yeah, I was about 11 years old. Writing on the buses was big thing. Steven Payne Okay, BUTCH 2 you know, because on the way home everybody pull out, they little markers were like this big. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And, um, I was telling you before everybody had a graffiti name, everybody. Steven Payne Yes. BUTCH 2 You know, just like when a Rap first started. Everybody had a rap name. You could have been cool, cool. Stevie D. You know, Steve ski in MC Stevie Steve that? That was the format. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 you know, I was you know either the street you live on? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 I think I was Butch 179 or something. And then I was like, nah. I'm gonna do Butch One. And there was this one guy my junior high school named Keith Keith for Bronx River and God bless he's dead. He passed away a long time ago. But he came up and said, I'm Butch One! You know what I said? I'm Butch Two Steven Payne easy. BUTCH 2 And went from there. Kurt Boone Why was Is Butch your nickname? BUTCH 2 That's my nickname. My brothers and sisters gave me that there used to be a, just to bring that up real quick. There was a cartoon Bozo. Who was his sidekick, Butch? Kurt Boone Butch, Oh, okay. BUTCH 2 And they used to call me that and I didn't like it at first but it kind of stuck. It kind of stuck. But yeah, that's where that came from. And it went from there some guys after the Graff, that's when hip hop started with you know MCing DJing. People kind of migrated to that. Steven Payne I see BUTCH 2 a lot of guys you know, threw the magic marker away, picked up a microphone. You know, but I'm just kind of stuck with Graff maybe because I never could really get the concept of of rapping, you know, you know, and then that freestyle I was never that the best at it. So I stuck with the Graff. Steven Payne Stuck with the Graff yeah yeah, Kurt Boone You were telling me the other day about we talked a little bit about the movie Fort Apache you wasn't really into it, but you you grew up in that in that neighborhood BUTCH 2 Yeah down the street. Kurt Boone That was 41st precinct. So explain what it was liking you know, you know, obviously a lot of gangs you you didn't get into any gangs. BUTCH 2 I think I might have. I might have been a Young Javelin or something, Steven Payne young javelin, okay. The Royal javelins was the BUTCH 2 The main guys they was. Yeah, it was in the Nomads, the Skulls, the Immortals, the Javelins, you know, it was a lot of gangs best bet don't even go up towards Simpson Street. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 don't go to Simpson Street. Because shits happens up there. But then it wasn't really guns back then. It was more zip guns. You make your own little zip guns. And yeah, if you had that you was a bad man. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 Nowadays, I just don't understand it. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 People running around. Yeah, yeah, they catching people. 17 and 18 years old to adults. And Steven Payne I know, BUTCH 2 in different stuff. I'm like, wow, Yeah. But that's how the Graff started with me. Because there was a story I heard about a rapper. I won't even mention his name, but it's a rapper. And they matter of fact the group went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But he gave his story and said he wasn't good at writing. Steven Payne Ah, BUTCH 2 he couldn't really do the wildstyle and all that. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Which is why he left and went again started rapping. Steven Payne Ah, I see. I see so it went back and forth huh. BUTCH 2 see with me. Yeah, so that said, everybody was looking for their niche. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 you know, and I'm creative so I stayed with the Graff. Yeah, absolutely. Kurt Boone Now you you were in the competition and you. You submitted your art to Music & Art high school. And you got to admitted right. BUTCH 2 Oh, yeah. I told myself. I'm not going to a local high school. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 We had you have Monroe, Stevenson, Roosevelt. That's like being on the block. You ever go come outside and sit on the stoop? That's what it's like. Everybody, you know, everybody. So I told you, I made a promise to myself that I would I would not I would never go to a local high school. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But I wanted to go to Clinton for the football team. Because back then Clinton had the main football guys. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Clinton Truman, Evander those were, the football schools. Um, but I put together they told me I took the test for Music and Art. And they said, Well, you submit your portfolio and I I didn't know what a portfolio was portfolio. But I had a small envelope, a manila envelope. And I put a few sketches in there. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 And I got accepted. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So before before we get more into into your high school experience, Cause you mentioned football already. You were telling me earlier how you used to play football out in the street and football was something that you were really, really into for a period of time. BUTCH 2 Yes, yes, that's true. Oh, I was in love with football. I think my team back then ..... It was at about '72. Because Sunoco, the gas station. They used to give out stamps of different players. And then you put that in your in a book. It's like a big everyday I would would come across a Bruckner to go down to my boy's house on Evergreen to get stamps to go home and put them in my book. And I had that book, till. Not long ago, but yeah. Never heard of Pop Warner. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, I had bought my own helmet, my own shoulder pads. I was a little guy. I think I might have weighed 120 or something. So, you know, I was intent on bulking up and, and stuff like that. Um, I maybe I didn't ask enough questions, but I never made it into any Football League. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 We used to play football. Like I said, right outside. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 I put on my helmet. Shoulder Pads. You know, I think my favorite team was the Vikings back then. Because you had all the Purple People-Eaters. I used to like them. Steven Payne Yeah. Did you ever get injured while while playing football out on the streets? BUTCH 2 Oh, no. But I think I had some animosity from my brothers. And we used to play they would play. And I realized later on that I should have been more of a defensive guy. Steven Payne Okay, BUTCH 2 because you can hit people legally. Legally, especially when you learn where to hit him at. But, uh, I was the one always wanting the ball, which it still can be defensive. Because if I'm the defense and you got the ball, I'm coming after you. But oh, yeah, my brothers and them They used to try to, you know, late hits and stuff like that. Kurt Boone You had equipment on out on the street or you went to the park? BUTCH 2 Right outside. Kurt Boone That's interesting. You played tackle right on the street? BUTCH 2 We played tackle right in the street right in the street. Yeah. Steven Payne What what are the things would y'all do for fun in the neighborhood? BUTCH 2 Oh, yeah. I mean, back then, I had the helmet and the shoulder pads. I had the catcher's mitt with the catcher's glove. We had, you know, the stickball bats, and basketball a lot of sports a lot of sports, you know, um, but that's what we did. I mean, we did the normal Johnny on the pony stuff. And Ring a Leave E Oh, you know, we did all that. Steven Payne All of that. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Pretty decent upbringing. Yeah. Steven Payne And as far as, as far as growing up goes, what kinds of music do you remember listening to either in your house or on the street? BUTCH 2 Oh, um, before Hip Hop. This is before Hip Hop. Yeah, because I remember in 1979 We were already living on 179th Street. And we first heard Rapper's Delight and all that. But before that, we used to do the Stylistics you know, all those guys. We used to chat we used to it was a couple of we used to have kissing contests. You got to get the girl as your partner you got I mean you kissing until slob was running... But that was the reason that was almost like Spin-the-Bottle. Kurt Boone Like Spin-the-Bottle, yeah. Steven Payne the parties did you do.... down in the basement. The hookie parties BUTCH 2 Nah, school was where it was at. I might go to school and not go to class. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 So we never didn't go to school. Steven Payne Okay, BUTCH 2 School is, where everythings at. All the people. We wasn't even into the weed or the drink or nothing like that until I got to high school and there was one guy. DAVID MOSS. He used to write Kill One Kill One and ah. He was like a friend of mine but he used to always come up I got that Acapulco Gold yeah and then hand it to me. I take a couple of puffs again. I'm just sitting here like this for like the next two hours. You know, funny thing though. Yeah. Funny thing is oh, he was a writer too. He did some lay-ups and and everything. But it was just a thing that happened to him. He had a ...that's the job. He had Let me turn this off he had stuck his head out the window of a moving train and got hit by the traffic light. Turn around Boom!. So he has a nasty scar. Yeah, yeah. Oh. But that's what happened at Music and Art. But then later on I really realized I try to call Music & Art like the cousins to Art & Design. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 But it's really not we took we had art classes and we had our projects to do but Music and Art was really for Performing Arts. Steven Payne Okay. I see BUTCH 2 Acting. Steven Payne Yeah. So not really what not really what you were into looking to get into? BUTCH 2 No not true, because a few actors came from that school. Steven Payne Okay, okay. BUTCH 2 A few actors um. Marlon Wayans Jimmy Castor I don't know if your Jimmy Castor he went to Music & Art. I think did Wesley Snipes or somebody got to Music & Art, but they spinned-out a few guys Kurt Boone Was it like Fame the TV show. BUTCH 2 That's what it was based on the Performing arts. Kurt Boone The performing arts from the musical high school Fame TV show was based on it. BUTCH 2 Yeah, but not like I was not really dedicated but then a lot of new shit started coming up. Steven Payne Ok, yeah. BUTCH 2 Crews, Graff. I don't know why these guys used to come to my school all the time. Shouldn't y'all be in school? Yo, Butch. I Come outside and there was like three or four guys waiting on me well you know I got to go to class. You know? That kind of derailed me. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Now, they coming up and you got there was one girl Karen. She used to ah we used to hang out at her house because she was like over on Broadway, Amsterdam. But she kept ah weed. Steven Payne Okay, yeah. BUTCH 2 But I was not really into weed like that. Never was Steven Payne yeah, no. BUTCH 2 I mean, I had a crew called Cheeba Action because we after a while we did start that everyday shit. Yeah, but that's Kurt Boone Music & Art where was that at? That was ah BUTCH 2 The original Music & Art is now it's called A. Philip Randolph. Kurt Boone Okay. BUTCH 2 It's on 135th and St. Nicholas Terrace. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 You come down. 136 and you get to the park. Okay. It's at the top. You can see it's like a castle. Kurt Boone Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's A. Philip Randolph now. But Music & Art, I moved down to Lincoln Center. Steven Payne Ah, okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 It's Lincoln Lincoln Center. Steven Payne Yeah. And what was what was your overall experience like in high school? BUTCH 2 It was, uh I don't know. I think like I said, different things started coming into play a lot of different stuff. So I would go to school and not go to class. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Stuff like that. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Ah, my academic history. I was in 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 6-1, 7-SPE. And then I when I went to eighth grade, I went to 8-3 I thought the world was ending 8-3. Oh, my God. And then oh, I got to Music & Art and everybody's smart. Everybody's getting top grades. So I'm not really the star of the show no more. You know? And I wasn't really like what I learned about college. It's like, you can't come home and just steal your books and gone outside. You have to sit down and do what you got to do. You got homework and shit. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 I wasn't doing that. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you were using in elementary and junior high. It just came naturally to you. BUTCH 2 Yeah, it did. Steven Payne Yeah, I didn't really have to study much or anything else. BUTCH 2 When you got with but when you get up to the higher grades its a little more complicated, because now you got to do algebra, geometry, trigonometry. And you got to you got to figure that out. It's not that simple. Steven Payne Yeah. And what were the teachers like for you in elementary and junior and high school? BUTCH 2 I loved all my teachers. they were, good. It was one Miss Glazer. And I went back. I had to go I couldn't find her. But she's the one that kind of stunned my application all you you're going for Music & Art. Like you're not gonna make it. And when I got to when I made it, I personally was going back to show her. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 Miss Glazer. Steven Payne Okay. Yeah. Well, if she if she's still around. BUTCH 2 I think you know she's long gone. I think when I went to Music & Art it was '74. Steven Payne Yeah. Wow. BUTCH 2 And now my name is starting to become more known and people know me and this and that I got a girlfriend and I got a thousand reasons not to go to class. Again, when I finally do go, I'm not prepared. And stuff like that. So that thing's got tumultuous around the 10th grade. Kurt Boone You were already painting trains at that time too. BUTCH 2 Yeah, yeah, I had hit whole cars at that time, I was going with a girl that lived across the street from 123. Steven Payne Okay, okay. BUTCH 2 And I just go to her house. I still talk to her on Facebook. Um, can't get her to come over. But Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But yeah, I did my first piece on that bridge, right there across from 1569 Bruckner Boulevard. It's her building and we 123 is right across the street. And there's a little bridge that takes you to the other side of Bruckner. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 I did a piece on that bridge. And I had that picture. I lost it. Steven Payne Oh, that's too bad BUTCH 2 yeah. Steven Payne Wow. Wait. So So were you in junior high school when you did that first piece? BUTCH 2 UmHmm Steven Payne Okay. Wow. So, so when you saw when you had that experience in, you know, looking at the 6 line, you must have started writing pretty much very shortly after that. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Yeah. It was easy I mean. If you're like a daredevil, it's easy, because we would have to go up and go on tracks. And step up on the third rail. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's been some fatalities through the years a few people died. Steven Payne Sure, BUTCH 2 Messing with trains. But we would go and then now we're forming a little crew. Now you got guys to go with you. And it might be four or five, six of us. Right up on um Soundview? Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 The trains was right there. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And when the temperature dropped, they will put him in a tunnel. And we would really go for it. Steven Payne and make it easy for you. Yeah. Otherwise, you'd have to balance and BUTCH 2 Yeah, but we knew how to we knew how to get through the track to the "Ele." pole and go down the pole. You know, we had escape techniques and stuff. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 Um, yeah, that's when they they tried to say that the 6 line the 6 train was like a toy line. Oh, ya'll hit the 6 because we but at this point we're the 6 boys Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 The 6 boys. And you got guys ah y'all the 6 boys. Come on, man. the 6. The 6 is toy line. Y'all got oh, you King of the 6. Come on, man. So what we did we banded together and we moved over to the 5 train. We go on we we are now coming to Broadway. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And that's what we went hard. We went hard. We did a piece and Bob will tell you we're invading 5. we're invading the 5. And then we just went off. And that's when we I guess you, you big time now. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. Graduating from the 6 to the 5 BUTCH 2 Yeah. Yeah, Steven Payne yeah. Wow. Yeah. BUTCH 2 2s and 5s. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And the 5 train wasn't that far. So we, you know, we never had problems because within the Graff world you have conflicts with different people and territorial and this, we never had that. Never. I've never had problems with that. I've never got arrested for graffiti. Kurt Boone So Daniel's squad They never got you. BUTCH 2 Never. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 They used to come down to 149th Street and just say hi, they will just they wanted to see who was who? Kurt Boone Ahh, see the faces. BUTCH 2 Pretty much. But see it's different now because of you. If you destroyed state property or something, they'll look for your name on Facebook. Kurt Boone Ah fuck that. BUTCH 2 They look for you. Yeah, Steven Payne For sure. BUTCH 2 Yeah, Steven Payne Sure. So let me see. I think maybe just one or two more questions, and then we'll get you know, fully into into the Graff world. But just a couple of questions about growing up. What are some things that you remember eating in your household? While growing up? BUTCH 2 I love my mom's she does cook. My mom's is a good cook. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 On Sundays. I think we By 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we are eating dinner. Steven Payne Okay BUTCH 2 with that. See got I accustomed to that. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 See I can get up at 6, 7, 8 o'clock in the morning and start dinner. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 You know, but then she would send you out for the Sunday paper. But that's when the Daily News was like $1. I think now it's maybe $3. Steven Payne Yeah, I think so. BUTCH 2 But uh, my mom's did your baking and she fried chicken and your meatloaf everything. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Spaghetti. All of that, the only thing I didn't like was creamed corn. Steven Payne Oh, okay. BUTCH 2 I think I think I get the hives. All of a sudden I was like, yo, and then I looked it was like a big welt, and I was like and I never ate it again. And I had to be like eight. Steven Payne Okay, yeah. BUTCH 2 8 or 9 never ate it again. I'm 61. Never! Steven Payne Did your dad ever cook? BUTCH 2 Nah, I think oh, they had split my father was living on Webster Avenue. Steven Payne Oh, okay. Okay, BUTCH 2 In a basement apartment. My grandmother his mom lived around the corner on Clay. Steven Payne Ah, okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 You know. But yeah, I guess they, he did his thing over there. I used to go see them. I'm that type. I always go visit my aunts and uncles. And this and that. That was my thing. You know, um, yeah, before I was cooking, cause I cook now. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 And I know my way around the kitchen because you know how mom was like "get me a onion." You don't got not that big. So now your mind you know what to do? Steven Payne Yeah, for sure. BUTCH 2 Yeah. My mom's cooks. I cook. I think my daughter's a good cook, too. Steven Payne Oh, okay. Okay. So yeah. When would y'all ever visit your your father's family back in Georgia? Did anyone stay in Georgia or did everyone? BUTCH 2 No, my daughter and them is in Georgia now but Elaine is my father's youngest sister my aunt. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Which she gets a kick out of calling me nephew because we're about the same age. She's in Virginia. She invited me down. At least we're pretty much reconnecting right now. We we talk and everything. She invited me down. But no we never went back to Augusta, Georgia. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 My father's history. I'm not too knowledgeable about that. You know, my mom. She was like a bunch of brothers and sisters. You know, back in the days it would be grandma had 10 kids. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Grandma had 10 kids. I don't even know if the birth birth control existed. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 I don't know. But um, yeah, she was the oldest and everything so. And she was like the last surviving member of her family too. Steven Payne wow. BUTCH 2 Yeah. But um, we, my moms she always talked about like, family reunion. No, we never did that. Everybody been doing their own thing. You know? It's kind of hard to pull them together or people will sell you dreams. Okay. Yeah. And then no-shows. Yeah. Steven Payne Yeah. Well Kurt, why don't you go ahead and start asking some more questions aboutnGraff. Kurt Boone I wanted to kind of like, you went, you graduated from Music & Art? BUTCH 2 No, I didn't. Kurt Boone Okay, BUTCH 2 I got in trouble in the 10th grade and I wound up getting a prison sentence. Kurt Boone You wanna talk about that a little. I mean, not not to what you did, but you know, what was that experience like? You know. BUTCH 2 17 in a state prison. What was that experience Like? Hmm? Kurt Boone So you? You went upstate? Out of Rikers you was in Rikers but then you went upstate. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Kurt Boone Okay. Yes, so you was pretty young in there. BUTCH 2 Seventeen. Kurt Boone That's young. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone In an adult prison. That's pretty. BUTCH 2 Oh, I had gotten my GED. end up getting my GED and get the highest grade out of everybody. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Um, when I came home in '79, around November, because when you was getting closer to your release, I tried to get into college up there. Steven Payne Oh, BUTCH 2 And they wouldn't let me for I think it was a violent crime, whatever they classified to say no. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 So what I did was say as soon as I get out, I'm going to college. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And they said, because my GED was a 242 was my score. You have to have 300 or better to go to a university. So that 242 I ended up in Bronx Commjunity College. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. BUTCH 2 I, I think, um, no, I didn't graduate from there. But um, I have for 66 credits to graduate. I think I had 62. Steven Payne Oh, yeah. Right. Kurt Boone You were close. BUTCH 2 Um, reason being, I had a job with two guys on Arthur Avenue. It was like it was a TAP program, tuition assistance program, something like that. And they convinced me to stay. I needed one more class, which was a pre precalculus. Steven Payne Oh, BUTCH 2 And I was trying to take it at night and there was not enough people registering. So I never got that class. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 They were giving up a couple people. I knew had got their honorary degree, you know, Steven Payne yeah. BUTCH 2 But you have to go back to the math department or to whatever department and state your case and whatever and it's up to their discretion, but I think I was trying to get back in and it just never worked. Kurt Boone Okay. So what was your your first introduction to style writing. So obviously, you're in the game, they're, you know, they not just putting up they name in your way. You got to develop a form to get some respect. So when did you start kind of like working on your craft? And did you see any other artist that you wanted to innovate for afterwards? Saw them do you want to do your own kind of innovation and style-writing. BUTCH 2 That's just what Graff is all about. It's just creative. You know, anybody can just do a B U T, but it's how you do it? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, it's about innovation. That's what the game is about innovation creating. Like you got guys that have different, 10 different names. I got one name, but I'm gonna work hard each time to change it up. Like you asked me before that I have other names. I had a couple of names and stuff. It's certain letters that a kind of intrigued me like at the N that goes like that with the base that so I came up with Nino or something crazy. Steven Payne Yeah, just to highlight that letter. Kurt Boone Highlight the letter. BUTCH 2 Yeah, but I um. I just see nowadays everybody's just adding arrows and stuff. I mean, come man. There's got to be more than that. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Well, yeah, I just always, always created always sometimes we would sit around a table all day. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 All day. Kurt Boone Oh so you were using your the black-books first before before you went to New York City. BUTCH 2 Nah, nah . Black Books are for keeps you maybe more like a sketchpad. Kurt Boone More like a sketchpad okay. Steven Payne Everyone would be spread out. BUTCH 2 Yeah. sitting around and you know you get your little critique, but then you got some guys who try to criticize you like, come on. You always gonna to get that. Steven Payne Yeah. Did y'all ever look at like, like different kinds of type faces or like things like that? Or did you pretty much just kept it within what you all were doing? Did you look at like, calligraphy or things like that ever to get inspiration? BUTCH 2 Yeah, we had characters, we did faces characters, different letters. Sometimes it's calligraphy and things like that is what gives you different ideas. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Sometimes you look at that and figure I can take that and do this. Steven Payne Yeah, for sure. BUTCH 2 Yeah, Steven Payne for sure. BUTCH 2 Everything is ah inspiration. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Everything. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 I could look over here and see that box and say I'm gionna do box letters. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah, for sure. BUTCH 2 Oh, shit. I can make the 3-D flowing back like that. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Everything is great. How do you usually use just see it like that? That's how you see. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone So how was it learning how to use the spray paint can cause there's an art in just creating art with the spray can versus the brush. Did you experiment with it first. or you just went out there and got it naturally? BUTCH 2 A little bit of both a little bit of both. But the game's changed. I mean, even as far as just faded colors, faded 3D, explosions, fire. All that's changed. There's just a lot more. But yeah, you experiment you like the saying goes, you learn something new every day. You got to try it though. It doesn't always work. Which comes, trial and error. Kurt Boone Right, right. Steven Payne Do you remember the first spray paint can you ever picked up? BUTCH 2 It's probably Red Devil. Right. Back then it was Krylon Red Devil and Rustoleum. Those were the three major brands that I think today. It's a spray paint's a big market. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 See, now they got Montana. They got a bunch of other brands, you got some guys. from Germany doing something that's paint for Loop there's another paint called Double A or something. But it's the quality and the pressure. Because high pressure means it'll spit fast. So if you don't know that, it's just gonna be all kinds of drips. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 So they have other paint that was low pressure, just kind of spit slow. Which is what you want? Pretty much. Steven Payne sure. BUTCH 2 You know, oh, if you get high pressure, that's probably if you're doing something like this. And you have the right cap. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You can probably fill in fast. Yeah. But I learned about that pressure thing quick. Yeah, because I'm doing what I normally do, but I'm ruining it somehow. And you can't not like a canvas where you could just white it out. See you can't do that on the trains. Steven Payne Did you have guys that you were that you were running with who had already had a little more experience and were able to teach you or you all kind of just go into it. And experimenting. BUTCH 2 Oh, physically just going in. But I mean, we had a lot of guys. That can talk to you about almost like the facts of life the facts of Graff. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Like Yeah, like big brothers sure uncle's like Stan 153. God bless he's dead Phase Two. I used to go to Stan's house like all the time. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And just watch him paint. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And it still things he did that I never figured out. Steven Payne Really? BUTCH 2 Yeah. Oh, but that's that's the canvas. That's when the game trans transferred like over the canvases and stuff. Steven Payne Okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 Because he was always intent on trying to do he was like an illustrator. He wanted to do a comic book. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 Type of guy we used to go and sit down and watch him draw and help him with the dialogue and stuff like that. But as far as learning how to paint, you just learn on your own. Steven Payne learn on your own. BUTCH 2 Yeah, that's the only way you could do it. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone So you, your career. You you kind of spent a lot of time doing whole cars versus throw-ups, the throw-ups would be smaller and do a quick, the whole cars is a lot more work. So what tell us what goes into painting a whole ar. BUTCH 2 It's a production. A production is just so gotta have a theme. Sometimes you have to have a blueprint. Yeah. It's really obvious. And then you have to have the paint you know, sometimes teamwork you have certain guys that, like I was back then I was when we was on the 6s. And some of the early days on the 5 I'm like the like the, not to brag, but the brains of the whole operation. You know, I I can do the outlines. Everybody's. While he's coming behind me filling in. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Then I come back to do 3D. You know, and then all the way down while he's doing you know, it was It was an operation. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 You know, and yeah, it was the objective was to do the whole car. Even if you just did three different names, connected him with a cloud and then just did all kinds of explosions and stuff. Just to cover the whole train. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Steven Payne How old were you when you did your first entire car? BUTCH 2 I think I did a silver and black, top to bottom when I was about 13 cars and I had that picture give you a quick story about my photo albums every time we would get in trouble but one of my partner's Case 2 would come to my house and get the books. Steven Payne Yeah BUTCH 2 Hey Mrs. Wilkins. This ah Butch ah they told me to. So and then I come home and get back and forth back and forth back and forth and some how they just disappeared Steven Payne That's too bad. BUTCH 2 Yeah I had pictures going back to seven to the whole call. I was about 12, 12 or 13 Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 But I did it this slick way you at on each train station there's a thing of pipes that come off. And there was one set of pipes on 225th Street. Steven Payne Okay, okay BUTCH 2 On the 2 train. And I would just come there like 6 in the morning? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 By myself. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 And just do a quick whole car and just cut out. Steven Payne So how long did it take to do a whole car? BUTCH 2 A few hours? Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 But see thething about to 225th street you can see the train all the way up the track so now I know the train's coming. I can get up and go on back downstairs. Yeah. Wow. Kurt Boone And that was like those were like a lay-up like a lay-up versus the yard. So like the yard you you kind of you like did a lot of work on lay-ups versus going into trying to get BUTCH 2 We did both. Kurt Boone You did both okay. BUTCH 2 Lay-ups and yards? I said I had a favorite spot. Kurt Boone You have a favorite spot. BUTCH 2 Yes. Kurt Boone Where was that Brooklyn Bronx Queens? BUTCH 2 225th Street on 2 train. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Or to 233rd somewhere up near the end. Okay, sure. Because you know, it's near the end so not that many people are coming to go uptown. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And the thing about the downtown side you covering the windows and everything. They can't see you. Kurt Boone Oh, wow. That's smart. Yeah, because it gives you more time to paint. BUTCH 2 Yeah, but a little trickery involved. But sometimes the best way is just the right way. Because sometimes you I might have had a good academic background thinking, but sometimes now you try and out slick the police and, and out slick the engineers and some of the yard crew and it doesn't always work. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone So you have to run. When they see you. BUTCH 2 Yeah, Steven Payne yeah, Kurt Boone yeah. So you tell us about racking because there's a lot of stories about how artists got they paint, people would do young artists would do different kinds of things to get their paint. they get their paint. BUTCH 2 Different kinds of things. Kurt Boone Things like not pay for it. BUTCH 2 And actually, honestly, in the beginning, I was pretty much a scaredy cat. But like I said, I was the brains. So I didn't have to steal nothing. Steven Payne Sure, sure. You just organized it. BUTCH 2 Once they came with the paint, we figure out what we gonna to do. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone Okay. BUTCH 2 But oh, I mean, eventually. Because you five of us would go in a store, and they will come out, everybody come out with paint and I might have one can. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But I think along the way, I developed a little more courage. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. BUTCH 2 And now, you know, because it got to a point where it didn't matter if they even saw you or not because once I pick, pick this up. It's mine. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 I'm leaving with this. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And um, yeah, after after a while. Like they got pretty good. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And that's when I used to be by myself, because I could just go and get what I need. Boom. Steven Payne Yeah. How many cans do you think it would take to do a whole car? BUTCH 2 I would say 8, 10. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 Something like that. Steven Payne Not a huge number then BUTCH 2 Nah, not really. But it depends on because I got one guy who paints today. Sometime in a production, one of the main attractions is the diversity of the more colors you have. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 So he this OBI, so he may have 30 cans with him? Steven Payne Oh, BUTCH 2 30. Steven Payne Were all different colors. BUTCH 2 Yeah. But to see now you can take that beige and add a little bit of brown for the shade. You know, a little bit more darker. Stuff like that. But see, you bring 30 cans and you probably taking about 30 back which you. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And I was just on some I'm taking when I need that's it. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, maybe I'll find a Can or I can borrow some paint But Steven Payne yeah, BUTCH 2 that was me. But it depends on what you doing. You know, like this today, guys got cars. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And they can have a trunkload of paint. Steven Payne Yeah. But lugging all that on the subway or walking. BUTCH 2 It's different. Right it's Different. Steven Payne Yeah. And you're telling me earlier before we started this about the caps, so I thought that was really interesting. Then, as opposed to now, BUTCH 2 Yeah there was only two caps, two kinds of caps There was Jif Foam and Niagara. Jif foam was I think some type of Toilet Bowl Cleaner or something. And Niagara was spray starch. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And like I said, we would have to go into the store and take actually, take the cap off, take the cap off, take the cap off. And I said now you can go online and order 100 caps, you can go to any one of these little graffiti stores. And they give you a bag with 100 caps. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 That's what I said. Wow. Wow. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But I think that's why guys kind of give us a praise. Because it was a whole different lifestyle. You know, you had to get in and get out. Like I said, Now you guys, they're painting legal walls. You got permission. So you can sit out there all day. go to lunch, come back, sign a couple of autographs. Talk to a few girls. you couldn't do that. Steven Payne You were always looking over your left shoulder. BUTCH 2 Yeah, you get in and get out. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's different. Steven Payne And did you ever use anything other than spray paint as far as paint goes? BUTCH 2 No, I think guys have but I haven't. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 I've seen guys actually pull out a roller. Steven Payne That makes quick work of things. BUTCH 2 I've seen it but like I said today, the mission is to just get the job done. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, back then last year was taboo. Oh no. Yo, you use stencils. Oh my god. No. Yeah. Now I've seen people pull out paint brushes and stuff. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 You know, for lines and different things and you know, using borders to get that tight line. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Anything goes. Steven Payne yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 Then used to be they usually paint late at night. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 So you don't see you just come the next day and be like, Oh, shoot. Oh, yo this is nice. They got paint brushes. Steven Payne Little did you know. BUTCH 2 Right, exactly. Steven Payne Yeah. So you really had to know all the ins and outs of what spray paint can I mean, I'm sure you got to know them very quickly. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Sometimes cans get clogged. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Sometimes we would we would paint in subzero weather they get they get clogged and shit. That's a little frustrating. Steven Payne Oh, yeah, for sure. BUTCH 2 Yeah, you come and. Right. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, and swearing you be like, Oh, man. Now you got to change plans real quick. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Different stuff. Steven Payne Do you have a favorite production of yours from either from the early time or maybe your entire time? Writing? BUTCH 2 There was one I think, you know, the one I'm talking about when that they of Don One filmed. Kurt Boone It's the one were you standing on the ditch, the track and you were painting? Yeah yeah. BUTCH 2 Yeah, I like that one. I like that one I didn't even know he filmed it like that. Kurt Boone Okay. Steven Payne Oh, wow. BUTCH 2 But that you know, I think, um, because I had a fade I had a red orange and yellow cloud, my shit was cascade with purple 3D. And, and I did that real quick. Considering, you know, and, my boy, he was behind me taking pictures. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 He wrote a book and then he, he died. God bless he's dead Don One Queens writer. Yeah, yeah. He came out and they told me he was like, Yo, I want to paint with Butch. I want to paint with Butch. And we never did a piece together. But we hung out. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 I think we did that mural at Prospect hospital. That was the beginning of like, commission work. Steven Payne Oh, okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 1976 It was Prospect hospital because Prospect Hospital is not even there anymore. Steven Payne Wow. And ya'll had a mural there. BUTCH 2 They gave us a canvas. It was only supposed to be about four of us, but I think it wanted to be in about eight or 10 of us. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Same money. More bread to spread. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know. And, but we had fun that day. We had a little audience and everything. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone So that's the picture in your book the book. Oh the Daily News wrote an article about that. So that the picture in Yoga the book. The Daily News wrote an article about that yeah. BUTCH 2 Yeah the news was there. And they had a few of they have they usually we needed to have events like that they usually arrange for TV magazines and all that There'd be cameras instead. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone So tell us a little bit about The Fantastic, The Fantastic Partners. BUTCH 2 TFP? TFP is a my crew. It's not my crew, but a crew that I'm a member of Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Goes way back. I think we started TFP, probably in about '72 or '73. Longtime of OG Solid, But, me, Hash. Who am I forgetting Hash? VO 56 Those was like the core members. still around. Everybody's still around. Except Solid. He God bless he's dead. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 He died in a train accident. And it's tight as me him was I don't know where I was that day. Steven Payne Okay. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Somebody has the article. I think it was 1974. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 Yeah but The Fantastic Partners. It has it's grown. It's a Case 2. Yeah. It's grown. It's you got guys in Centos' in Hawaii. Yeah, OB is from Australia. We got guys all around. You know, the name is strong. My thing about TFP it's only it's just one thing. It's one entity. You can't write OTB, BTR GG. Then 't write TFP. No. If you notice most of the members it's all you write. Like if you was writing Steve TFP. That's it. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 A that's that's like the main thing. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 A lot of guys that a different walks of life and stuff. Everybody's holding they own. Everybody's healthy and stuff. We get together like that. Kurt Boone In your do ya'll paint sometimes together? or it's more like you're on any like any organized meeting thinking like that was just it's based on craft. So you're good enough as an artist we'll guide you to put TFP on your name. BUTCH 2 It's not only art. sometimes you have to be a well rounded pretty decent guy. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 You know you know, because it's later on we are trying to groom a new generation that might be more based on a skill set, you know, but I'm pretty well rounded people. That's all. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 We didn't have nobody running around robbing people. Nothing like that. Kurt Boone Creative art, art. Nice. That's great. So, you know, what's, what's it like today seeing the growth of Aerosol Art and seeing how it's being commissioned by big companies and artists doing large scale works on 20 storey buildings What's that like for you to see the art form grow into this kind of global phenomenon? BUTCH 2 This is a rewarding. I know I was there when it all began, you know? It's a global thing. Global my man. I bet if you walk in Montifiore, you probably see some type of art. Soon as you get in there. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Everywhere. You go into a rich man's house. He's gonna have a bust or some type of thing art but see, we didn't create. We just added an art form. Steven Payne Yeah, Kurt Boone okay. BUTCH 2 Art, music and art is life it's everywhere. Steven Payne For sure. BUTCH 2 And it's always gonna be there music and art. You know like music you see rap came along. and whatnot. Then it kind of fused with R&B then it fused with rock & roll. You got some country rap? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You got to Dominican rap. So it but it's all music. It's just it's a new fusion. Everybody is looking for a little spice. You know, sometime you you even eating chicken all your life. Today, you might want to try something different. Let me throw some curry powder in there. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 So it's all music and art. It's just an added form. That's all. Graff. Kurt Boone Graff. BUTCH 2 You said some people don't like that word. I don't. You know what I'm talking about? Steven Payne Oh, yeah. Kurt Boone That's right. BUTCH 2 But I'm scared. But I'm saying some people don't like the word graffiti. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But if I say graffiti, you know what I'm talking about. So I'm trying to as a as a communication. You have a sender and a receiver. You trying to get your message across? Ah, I don't like that. Come on man. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's really silly. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Aerosol, what difference does it make? I mean, OK grafitti. Represents vandalism to a degree. But you get it where you fit in? If the shoe fits wear it. Do you vandalize? Do you create? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, what I'm saying don't don't take it as an insult. Let it fly. Kurt Boone Let it fly. I mean, from your perspective, when you when you were doing whole cars, you're thinking that you're, I don't know what you're thinking. But when people talk about it, they talk about as a masterpiece. BUTCH 2 Right, that's how it started. Kurt Boone Right? You're not talking about the vandalism? Because you're going in the yard? That's it? I mean, obviously going into the yard. So the Mayor Koch would call it vandalism, right? The police would call it vandalism but the artist himself didn't call it that. BUTCH 2 It depends on how you do it. Because you're going to cut a hole in states' property. If you're going to leave a bunch of cans laying around, writing in your name on the traffic light and shit. See if you noticed the guys who are really artists. Kurt Boone Yeah. BUTCH 2 They clean up behind them. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 They came behind themselves so that's part of that's part of it today. Steven Payne Sure. BUTCH 2 You take all your shit with you. So you don't give the owner a reason not to want you back. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You fuck up then now you give him a reason. So you just cleaned up on yourself? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, that's how that goes. And you notice that even when they have old timers doing all they just out there and drinking all day. Look to your side. You know what you gonna see a garbage bag. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 They don't just go start busting bottles. Fighting. No, it's they did the motive is to clean up behind yourself. So it's not vandalism. But like I said, You go in the yard you done cut a hole in the fence. You done left a bunch of paint laying there. You done tag on the traffic signals and you done fucked up. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You don't do that. Kurt Boone Right. Right. But still they would give it even though you would do a masterpiece on the whole car. MTA would still wash it off. Right? They don't, agree with how how it was done. You know how it's done? BUTCH 2 You're supposedly defacing property. Steven Payne Yeah, Kurt Boone yeah. BUTCH 2 But if you look at trains now look at all the advertisements. Steven Payne Oh, I know. Absolutely. BUTCH 2 That's advertisement. Steven Payne Yeah. Absolutely. Kurt Boone Yeah. Okay. All right. So tell us tell us a little bit about what what, what you're working on these days. BUTCH 2 I got two canvases I'm playing with you know, you got some people waiting for some new work. I'm setting I'm still putting my studio together. But yeah. canvases, I want to go bigger. I'm doing one guy got like, 9 x 12s or whatever two 8 x 10s. But I want to go bigger. Because matter of fact, I have a space. Matter of fact, what I'm doing is decorating my own apartment. I'm trying turning my apartment into like an art gallery. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 That's what I'm really doing all these spaces. But see, the thing is, you don't paint the walls. You just get a big canvas where you can just hang it. Steven Payne Oh, sure. Yeah. BUTCH 2 So that's what I'm doing some interior decorating was this was Steven Payne okay. Kurt Boone You also painted with Case 2, you guys were known as a fearsome art team. You want to talk a little bit about Case 2 as well. BUTCH 2 That's my partner Case. Before him I was painting alone. Like I said to 225th Street on 2. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 I'm going up there to do my whole car. But then, how'd I meet Case. We were still on the 6s. We're still hitting the 6 line. And we were at Soundview at night. Doing our little shit. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And I think he was an inside writer. He was going through the train with a magic marker Steven Payne Sure. BUTCH 2 And he saw us out there painting so he stuck his head out. You know, like I told you to do all the main statement back then was What do you right? Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone Yeah. BUTCH 2 And he said Case. I said Oh, I saw that before. And I asked him you know how to paint. He said, Yeah, I said come on down. And I gave him a can and had him fill-in the first can I think he ever had and then that started a whole nother thing. He i He was with me every day. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 Yeah. became my partner. So now it ain't just Butch you see it's Butch and Case, Butch and Case Butch and Case? He was always there. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And he was my boy, you know? Kurt Boone And yeah, he would paint with one arm right. BUTCH 2 Two. Kurt Boone Oh, he had two. BUTCH 2 I'm just kidding. Dude only had one arm. I'm just messing with you. Steven Payne Were there spots you all like, like to hang out at to see your work? BUTCH 2 Oh, yeah. Everybody knows the Concourse. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 149th Street & Grand Concourse. Oh, yeah. Most guys came through there. Some guys didn't. Because then after a while I think we had a reputation for being rowdy and something. Steven Payne Oh, okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 Or what's a better word? Not even rowdy. But kind of these guys like to start they started taking stuff from people. Steven Payne Okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 Because we we didn't have nothing to do. We would just go around the lay-up and if we saw somebody painting. Steven Payne Sure. BUTCH 2 We take they paint. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 So they we started having a bad reputation. And that's why a lot of people didn't come to the Concourse. Cause we would be there a lot. Or if we in the train, because you know if anybody rides the train when you coming uptown, into the Grand Concourse. Steven Payne Yeah BUTCH 2 the bench is right on the end. So I'm in the front. I'm looking. If they see you a lot of people will leave. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, um, I mean, yeah, we used to watch them. And then we watch trains on the Tremont train station. Because it's a big turn. So as it's turning, you can see this side and then when it comes in, you can see this side. Steven Payne Okay, yeah, BUTCH 2 and if you saw something that you want you run a get the picture. That's when the Kodak used to have the 35 millimeter. And you would just then mail it out. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 That was then. But yeah, we'd do the Concourse and then we would do Tremont or 180th. Steven Payne Okay. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Yeah. On the 6 Train We would be at a Hunts Point. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. Kurt Boone So 149th and the Concourse. They called that the writer's bitch but there was more than one Writer's bitch, but BUTCH 2 that was the one that was Kurt Boone The was the main one. Yeah yeah, 149th and Grand Concourse. BUTCH 2 I mean, everybody had their little spots. Steven Payne Yeah, for sure. BUTCH 2 You got guys in Brooklyn everybody hang on Utica or something. We might hang 180th. Kurt Boone Okay, BUTCH 2 you know, Kurt Boone right. Right. Right. So, I mean there're a lot of writers who became well known for for doing whole cars and, and you knew quite a few of them. BUTCH 2 I know them all dude. Kurt Boone Alright So let's talk. Some just by name. Give me Give me some reflection. So Blade, for example, like, BUTCH 2 I was down with that crew. The Crazy Five, Kurt Boone The Crazy Five. okay BUTCH 2 I was coming down off Allerton. And one day, I might have been doing a piece or just taking pictures of something. roaming the city. And I ran into those guys at McDonald's on Allerton. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 like, Yo, you want to get down with us? And I was like, alright. There's Butch 2 The Crazy Five yeah. But there's about 50 of them. So I don't know how ya'll come up with The Crazy Five you know. Because I spoke to the girl Porsche the new girl is Porsche. And I said Porsche, you don't remember me? She said yeah You're our 28th member. I was like damn ya'll chrona chrona chronologically whatever. You know, Like that. But he came up a few times he saw me and we talked. Lee Kurt Boone Lee put out, but he mentioned you in the movie WildStyle. He wanted to be like Butch 2. Steven Payne okay, yeah, Kurt Boone so that's just goes a lot for your art. BUTCH 2 But, yeah, but like I said, it's a it's a mix of a few things. I mean, you can paint but you but than can you get paint you know, we had the keys to the to the how the station is closed at night. We had the keys we had keys to the trains you know, I had a crew that would fuck you up if you did the wrong thing it's it's a it's a blend it's a mix man. You got guys that can paint their ass off that don't leave the block. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's a Mix but that's how we lived. That's why That's why I told Cut I said yo ask any writer from back then just say my name. And they'll tell you Kurt Boone There's a lot of stories BUTCH 2 and they'll give you a story. Kurt Boone Crash had a story and Crash, you know. BUTCH 2 Futura Kurt Boone Futura had a story. BUTCH 2 Daze. Everybody he says Yeah, I remember you he said remember that shall we all went to Esplanade this and that okay. But that that's what that's what it was then. It was. It was Graff was a way of life. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 It was. And I'm proud of the guys that took it to Canvas. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And pushed the art form. And you know, it's graff is mixing with street art and, and and then it's become a commercial. But you know, let's let's get a piece of that now. Because you got some of the original MCs and DJ s that still live in the Bronx. While, you got some other guys that done bought houses in California. Dr. Dre 90 million or something? But then you got guys that? Yeah. Steven Payne Still living in the 1520s. BUTCH 2 Right. But yeah, I heard they had offered him a bunch of stuff. And he acted funny. Steven Payne Oh, okay. Okay. BUTCH 2 I think they was trying to give him a star on the Walk of Fame or something. You know, when he you know, I don't know. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 But yeah, that's the sad part man and how they did like, all the rappers and all that they all they took that and left them high and dry. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Wow. Steven Payne Yeah I know. BUTCH 2 All of them Herc used to write to Bambata used to write? Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Off the record. But back then I told you before rap hip hop and all that. Do you met somebody they're gonna say what do you write? Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. So writing was it was more of a deal in the Bronx. BUTCH 2 that's the first element that's what they say in writing, everybody used to write. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Everybody. Kurt Boone You was in the you and Case were featured in the movie. Yeah. Style Style Wars Style Wars. So that was a good scene man you wanna talk a little about that. That scene and how BUTCH 2 I think it was, I think there's another piece of that, that they didn't show was there a piece of us walking down the train station platform. Kurt Boone I didn't see. BUTCH 2 Okay. All right, Kurt Boone I saw when ya'll was in the apartment BUTCH 2 Right. There was another part where we was walking down. We was in Esplanade because I remember that day, because I had my daughter with me. And she's like two years old. And I had her in the stroller and I had to put the stroller to the side. And that's when I started telling these guys well what are ya'll paying. Cause Y'all got us doing all this? At that scene I never saw again. Kurt Boone Okay, BUTCH 2 But like I said, if you if you look at that I I do the coaching and and advising off camera, because you see we in Style Wars Case is doing all the talking. ALl the talking Oh yeah, he's a character. And I wasn't doing no talking. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. BUTCH 2 That's the mouthpiece he'll tell you. But God bless he's dead. That's my boy. Kurt Boone Yeah, yeah. And I saw the YouTube video interviewing you and Dondi and what was what was that? Gallery? BUTCH 2 Fashion Moda Kurt Boone Was a Fashion Moda. BUTCH 2 I think it was Fashion Moda on Third Avenue. Kurt Boone Yeah we were interviewing both of you guys. And it was interesting Dondi went on to become Rest in Peace Dondi Dondi but he became famous too. As a whole car artist. BUTCH 2 He got one whole car that's like, famous immortal Kurt Boone in Cook got Right? Yeah. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Kurt Boone But it's the whole the whole car era was when did the whole car era end? Like when they when they like Koch likes got a lot. A lot of people to clean all the trains and got a lot of police on it and. BUTCH 2 I don't know, I think from what I think that think they started treating the car with some chemical. Or something like that's where you're right? Because it would seem funny. that all of a sudden, nobody's doing nothing. But once in a while you will see something people will get, you know, beside they self and go and try something. So you'll see it here and there. But as far as the whole thing. I think most of these guys would probably still be doing it. Steven Payne Yeah. For sure. Do you remember the last one that you did? BUTCH 2 Oh, on the train. Nah, I don't that they would just coming. They were just coming. I was it was almost like you had to have you had to like to I said Refresh or update. Every week. I had to have something you know. Come out. Steven Payne Yeah. Absolutely. BUTCH 2 Because then you have Blade and them had shit. They would have shit coming out. After a while it became a game of keeping up. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, Lee and them started the whole car thing. So we had to do whole cars Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Blade never had shit coming out regular. So we had to have shit come out regular. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 It was it was a race. Everybody was doing it. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Everybody was racing. Kurt Boone Yeah you'll race whole cars. But they had a whole draw draw era too if he were just doing his throw-ups. BUTCH 2 No, not everybody. I mean, you might have a simple Yeah, well, I guess that's a Throw-up. Yeah. Kurt Boone A simple one. BUTCH 2 But then you had guys that all they did was Throw-ups? Kurt Boone Yeah, yeah. So what's Can you explain to the Throw-up a little bit BUTCH 2 Quick. Throw-up and pretty much explains itself? Or you can probably do two or three cars with two cans. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 That's that's an attempt to get up to have your name just to more pieces. Like you had the guy In IN. Kurt Boone Two letters. BUTCH 2 He talking about? He got a million pieces. Steven Payne Easy to write I N a million times. BUTCH 2 And he would do on one car 20 of them. You know now now your count is up. 20 Oh, yeah, I got a million pieces. Steven Payne There's a guy in my neighborhood now who's like that? BUTCH 2 A million pieces. With about with about ten cans? type of bullshit and then sometime you can see they're not even thoroughly filled in. You might just chhhhhsshhh You be like, Come on, man. That's it eeeeh. That don't even count. Kurt Boone Yeah what a story man I it must have been such a interesting period. BUTCH 2 But I mean, if you're an artist, you can do a simple piece but then you may want to add some 3D you may want to throw some designs in there. A little cloud, one thing leads to another now you want to cloud. Now, you know, so unless you only have two cans, you're going to do a little more. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And we didn't count pieces, Our thing our thing, was because we had Blade. We had Billy. Bic 149. Butch. So our thing was B's the letter B? Kurt Boone Oh, BUTCH 2 So, I was the king of Bs. Kurt Boone Yeah, Steven Payne for sure. BUTCH 2 Yeah. Blade, Bic, Billy. I think we have Bloodshed. Butch. It was you know, king of Bs you know, King of top-to-bottoms. King of the 2. Steven Payne Yeah BUTCH 2 Everthing was a race just putting it out there. Steven Payne Yeah. Would you ever paint any of the lines that are exclusively in Manhattan? BUTCH 2 I don't think there are any. Steven Payne No, not exclusively Manhattan but I ones that don't go to the Bronx. BUTCH 2 I would, yeah. Like, like you got to G that takes you from Brooklyn across Manhattan into Queens. The F train and shit like that. Um, I don't think I was into that. I think those are more the BMT trains. The IRT's are the ones that we have. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 BMTs, are the ones that kind of shaped like that and their silver. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But I'm nah I don't think I ever because a lot of guys used to go out to Brooklyn to the lay-ups I didn't. we had lay-ups in our backyard. I'm not going to Brooklyn. Got our paint stashed in the station when it's locked. Kurt Boone Okay. BUTCH 2 You know, I'm taking my shit and then go two or three stops up and produce some fresh and new. Steven Payne Absolutely BUTCH 2 yeah Kurt Boone that's great. Steven Payne What about the was 3rd Ave mall was out already. That was already in the process of being dismantled by the time you started or was that BUTCH 2 Oh, yeah. I think it was gone it was gone but now. I was born right there 3809 3rd Avenue. Oh, the Claremont Parkway, but I think the 3rd Ave Ele was it was on his way out then. Steven Payne Yeah, it was. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Because not they got the buses and shit buses. It was more prevalent after that. But I remember the 3rd Ave Ele they had the little wicker seats, and shit with the fan Iremember that. Kurt Boone So I met you at Mobile Messenger Service. So how do you become a Bike messanger? How'd you get into it? BUTCH 2 Ah I don't know I guess it's quick and easy. And it was it was it was a big business too. Steven Payne Sure. BUTCH 2 Big business guys gotta get a bike. Steven Payne Do you know to ride a bike already? BUTCH 2 Yeah get you a bike get you a bag. And I think a Mobile I mean, not Mobile. Who'd I start with it was called Wing Foot. Wing Foot was on 38th and 6th, they became Dynamics Kurt Boone Oh they became Dynamics. Oh, Dynamics is big. BUTCH 2 Yeah, I know, they I think they've been there was a lot of companies merged. Kurt Boone That's right. BUTCH 2 Yeah, but I was. I was Wing Foot. And we was rockin for a while. But I was telling them too do Oh, we were getting remember they came out with biking cops. Police on bikes. I don't know if you remember that. You must have been out of the game. But this is the 90s They had police on bikes. For us. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone Yeah, BUTCH 2 But um, you going the wrong way? Sidewalk red light. Your third red light ticket is $750 Steven Payne Oh, Kurt Boone whoa that's some serious money. BUTCH 2 Yeah. I had 14 tickets that have never paid for it. And they still sitting there. Um, but they need those biking cops Now. You see all these motorized scooters? Electric bikes. I was telling them. and I laughed I said. I think everybody goes to at least one harrowing experience a day with the e-bike Steven Payne Oh, yeah, BUTCH 2 everybody. Yeah, yeah. All, on the sidewalk you be like yo! Kurt Boone What you doin? What you doing man don't you know how to ride. BUTCH 2 Yeah, um, but yeah, then I left I was in Texas for about, I can say 8 years I was down there. And I came back. I think, actually, to be honest, I think I got blackballed because I was working at Darden restaurant called Yard House. Yeah, they have I think they have Yard House in Houston. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Oh, I think the big thing I was looking for Houston was Jimmy Chang, who was a Chinese restaurant. Yeah. As I said, I was in Texas. I said, I want some wings and rice badly. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And the girl took me to Jimmy. Jimmy Changs. Steven Payne Yeah, I think BUTCH 2 It's a Chinese restaurant in Houston. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Because you know, it's you can get a burrito on every corner. That's what's down there burrito. Yo, they got some down there where they mix corn and mayonaise's never seen it. Steven Payne Oh, yeah. Elote or somehting like that. BUTCH 2 I don't know what it's called. But it's I'm like corn and mayonaise. And it's like a delicacy. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Wow. Steven Payne Yeah they spread it on the corn and BUTCH 2 whoa, Steven Payne a little cayenne pepper or something on it? BUTCH 2 Yeah, something like that. But um, I left. Oh, my mom's had passed in 2017. And she had a co op over here in Co-op City and I was supposed to come back for the Co Op, and I didn't put in. I put in a two week notice at Yard House. But I think I left in a week. Only reason why was because I was trying to get out of the landlord's apartment before the first before we went into the month because he gonna try to prorate or whatever all even eight days. That's a couple of done. So that's a you know, let me get out of here on the first. And I don't think Yard House like the way I exited because it was one girl Emily was going back to California. And she had visited a Yard House in California talked and everything and they arranged to transfer so I'm watching her and say Oh, well cool, because I'm going to New York. I came went to the Yard Houses there's a Yard House in Yonkers somewhere. And I talked to them and everything. Yeah okay as soon as we talk to your manager. You don't worried about it. We get you in your garden. But I never got in. Never got it. And I know. Then I went to Olive Garden. They he said oh yeah sure whatever? Never got in? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 You know, then Yard House just opened up in Time Square. Steven Payne Oh, BUTCH 2 I said let me go there. They said they came up with something. But I said that that manager that I left? I think she really did something. Because I was there for eight years. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 So that's when I went back to Mobile. I said, let me let me go back to these guys. And they took me back. Kurt Boone What was Texas like? You liked it down there or was it? BUTCH 2 It was alright. I had fun. I had me a brand new car apartment and all that you know, two three air conditioners in my apartment. Yeah, only thing about them. The bus stop. doesn't have like we have I know. It's just a bench in the middle of the grass. And it'd be 100 degrees Steven Payne And you might wait there. 30 minutes or something cause the buses don't come very often. BUTCH 2 In New York. Three days over 90 is a heatwave. In Texas, it was like 40 days over 100. I'm like yo this shit is crazy. And everybody walking around, don't let it don't let the temperature drop in Texas. If it's 40 or 50 degrees. They're panicking. I'm like what? Yeah, this feels good. I think one time before I left, they saw snow. It might have been a little flurry. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 They went bananas. I'm like, yo, this is crazy. But uh, yeah, Texas good. I had fun. Well you know a bunch of girlfriends and all that. Kurt Boone So you was near Houston? BUTCH 2 No I was in San Antonio. Houston is two hours. Kurt Boone Oh Houston is 2 hours. BUTCH 2 Down I-10 Kurt Boone All right, BUTCH 2 And then after you got Beaumont, Katy and all that shit. Kurt Boone Did you paint down there? BUTCH 2 Yeah, yeah, they had a they had a spot called the Paint Yard. It's one of those Graff stores. So they sold paint. You go in the back. They had a wall. I had some pictures that. I don't know what happened to them. Me. I had this little kid I call him a weasel but um DAP DAP. And then of WizArt, I don't know if you WizArt He has he's a guy with his characters. He's a bad dude. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And we collaborate on something. We had fun that day. And then I think I drove up to Dallas. And they had this wall up there. I did a piece in Dallas. San Antonio, we supposed to go Houston has the Meeting of Styles. That's what it's called in Houston. San Antonio is called Clogged Caps it's a few. It's a few conventions. They be having Clogged Caps was nice. I told you them Mexican dudes was amazing. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And then they was playing James Brown and I was ike oh shit they have hip hop. Yeah. Everybody had the little coolers. It was a it was like a factory area. And they was rocking rocking Clogged Caps. I think I had the book or something. It was a What year was that? It had to be 2015 or something. Kurt Boone 2015 alright man, Texas super fun man. BUTCH 2 Yeah, they just getting up on Graff. And then you know, they got the all what is that? Like, Aztec Indian motif thing? They do a lot of that. And then they got they got a couple of some. They gave me some shirts some complimentary shit. Oh, The School of Fine Arts. This is for you this that that that. Yeah. Then Karen came down there. Kurt Boone Right. BUTCH 2 And see the thing was, she wanted to take a picture of me pieceing, but I had already did a piece. So we went inside, bought a Can of paint. And I'm tagging my name. And she's taking a picture of it. But see the thing is the guy that runs the walls. Any wall you're not really supposed to tag because that's gonna get people thinking that they can just tag, Steven Payne yeah, BUTCH 2 So what he did he didn't say anything like yo Butch you weren't supposed to that what they did. They went over my shit the next day. You know, TK was down there too, Kurt Boone okay, okay, BUTCH 2 but yeah, that that kind of diffused the whole friendship. I'm like, You fuck me on the Yeah. And then I think I recently spoke to the guy Oh, yo Butch you know I feel bad about that this and that man. I'm like yo but it wasn't nothing. Because it was they paint anyway. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But that's the only thing about today. Today's artists is buying paint. And I find that hard to do. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 I find it hard to do. Steven Payne Yeah, for sure. BUTCH 2 And I know guys that are like my boy from Australia. He'll go and buy 10-15 cans but you see the thing about that. It's not like it used to be like yo, let me get some of that red His paint it's his paint. Steven Payne He doesn't share it huh BUTCH 2 no. Steven Payne Oh yeah. BUTCH 2 Which I can dig though. You buying paint but then everybody's trying to do cost effective shit they got cans for $5 $6 and shit like that. I think I had bought four cans and I was like hyperventilating. I'm like oh my God. I want paint. Kurt Boone so now you have to paint it's locked up in cages. How do you feel about that? BUTCH 2 We it's because of us, we used to empty shit out. let me tell you something you see this bookshelf? Kurt Boone Yeah, BUTCH 2 If that was all paint we would probably come in with a dolly and try to take the whole job no try to wheel the whole thing out. because we got guys to go in the back and act like they gonna steal something or they need help excuse me sir. And get him out of here you know and then we wheeling the fucking whole rack out. Yeah, we went big we wouldn't big. We had one guy used to go in the store with a big suitcase. Kurt Boone Yeah. Steven Payne Were there were there some of the stores that you're like to hit up the most you have to move around a lot? BUTCH 2 Oh, we moved around a lot. Because I mean, if you burned a store, we would go back there. Remember? I don't know your guys. Martin Paints Martin's then We had a what was the store in Queens. Was it Genovese Drugs was in Queens. Martin's Paint. And then those were like the two main Steven Payne Okay, yeah, those are the two BUTCH 2 Martin's and Genovese Drugs. Steven Payne I see. So you're going out to Genovese. And you're gonna have to get all that paint back up to the Bronx. BUTCH 2 Yeah. I mean, yeah, you you're exhilarated now. I'll be juggling them shits we had been out to Long Island and shit. We found stores that had backdoors. Steven Payne Okay, yeah. BUTCH 2 We had stores where you would have to really wait 10 or 15 minutes just to get help. Excuse me and ladies, just keep walking. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 We'd be like, Oh, shit. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 Oh, and then we just come in two or three trips? Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 But that was that might have been the 80s. It might have been not even the 80s it might have been just '70s. Because I think the 80s is when fucking angel-dust came out and all kind of shit. Yeah, drugs. That's sad. That sums it up. Shit shit start happening Everybody want to try something? You know? Which wasn't good. But yeah, it changed the game it really did. Steven Payne and had a big impact on the Graff community. BUTCH 2 Somewhat. No, because in the beginning we would go to lay-up with sandwiches. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Beer. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 A couple of joints, you know, but that's all you needed. You can buy a tre-bag and get five six joints. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 You know, so we will go we started the little parties you know get in there and puff of joint you know, okay, Yo do the outline. And you know, that thing was the hardened drug you know, that's that's like the trap smoke. You smoke weed. You get a little feeling now let me take a puff of that. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 What is that? She gave me a puff. Curiosity killed the cat. Yeah, um It depends on the individual because I know some guys that can get hi and just want to sit down and, and space out on a piece of paper. Steven Payne Absolutely. Yeah. Kurt Boone So by the time you would say, 24 was the train era over? So cuz you started at around 12 and It was a certain period that BUTCH 2 24 I think I was 1984. I was about school. I was in Bronx Community College. I left there in '85. And that's when fucking crack hit. Kurt Boone Oh, right. crack crack Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 What is that shit? Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone I never tried crack. So in '84 you were still doing whole cars in '84. But they still artists out there. BUTCH 2 I don't know. I think I was at that time. I was I was just shirt and tie with the bookbag and shit. Well, let me let me say leather attache the shirt and tie. You know, I think I had a brand new car. And all that I had two three four girlfriends and stuff. Kurt Boone So you wasn't hittin the trains that much. BUTCH 2 Nah, not really. But again, there's always somebody who kind of nudges me back in. Come on man. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. this and that. I think I might have Case is usually the one. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Yeah. But then I think at that time, rap rap rap is was getting bigger. Steven Payne Okay, that time BUTCH 2 Rap was getting bigger. And you know, we was going to different parties and stuff and like Flash and all them? Steven Payne Sure. BUTCH 2 They would have the amphitheater, somewhere down by the Lower East Side I Think. Pastor Crespo Yeah. They just tore it down. BUTCH 2 Yeah, we just had on Wildstyle 35th and isn't there , because there isn't that project like Cherry Street or some shit. Pastor Crespo That's the Vladecks Houses on Jackson. BUTCH 2 Behing the courts. Yeah, yeah. They just had something big over there. I didn't know they tore it down. I never found it. I was I'm walking up and down thing. They said, Well, you have to know where its at. because you don't hear it. You would have to know. And I was walking never found it. Pastor Crespo Right across from Jackson Park a Little bridge. BUTCH 2 Yeah. They said it was a bridge. They just had something big over there. Kurt Boone Yeah. So hip hop. I mean, obviously Hip Hop is is pioneered in the Bronx. So you was around, you know, Grandmaster Flash and a lot of these artists, you know. Do you remember hanging with Grand Master Flash at all? BUTCH 2 Nah, I've been around those guys, but I think I was closer to the Soul Sonic guys. Steven Payne Okay. BUTCH 2 Oh, daily. Bronx River. Yeah. But then at this time. People were getting like, big headed egos were swollen. I don't know. Kurt Boone Yeah. BUTCH 2 I just know there was a lot of egos. and shit, so and I'm not starstruck. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 So if you don't want to extend yourself didn't then heck with you. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone But I think the two movies came out in early 80s Style Wars and Wildstyle. I think it was 82 Steven Payne Yeah, something like that. Kurt Boone '82 '83s so you was like a movie star in 82 83? BUTCH 2 Yeah I had been in newspapers, magazines, movies, all of that. Steven Payne Yeah, Kurt Boone Books. BUTCH 2 But what's fame without fortune, give me the money. And just give me a, put my name in the credits and let me go ahead on down now. But that's what it is. Now, a lot of guys, it's is more of you know, contracts and stuff. Everything is a disclosure, stuff like that. Cause he knew when Karen came down and did the interview for the Case 2 documentary Kurt Boone Yes, BUTCH 2 She had me sign papers. Yeah. I'm like, you know, it's better it's better to kind of just talk then really interview? Kurt Boone Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's better to just talk You'll get way more in the different better way. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 But she came down and we had fun. We had dinner and stuff like that. Oh. We just they buried somebody well they didn't bury they cremated a guy. one of TFPs wives? Yeah. She was in fire a couple of weeks ago. And we had to. We had the memorial um Saturday. Yeah. Rest in Peace Sherry. Then the son is past as well of smoke inhalation. Steven Payne The Big fire in the Bronx. BUTCH 2 Not that one. Steven Payne Not that one a different one. BUTCH 2 Yeah, but I used to live in that building. Oh, really? On the 15th floor. Steven Payne That's crazy. BUTCH 2 333 East 781st, but that's right before and I was having problems with management. And that's when I left and went to Texas. Okay, Steven Payne I see. BUTCH 2 That was like '08 '07 or '08. Something like that. Yeah. But Kurt Boone yes, so that was yeah, BUTCH 2 there was another big fire on Webb. Steven Payne Oh, Kurt Boone I don't know if you heard that. But it was only one apartment that burnt and that was by his apartment. His wife got burnt and his son he had smoke inhalation. Steven Payne That's terrible. BUTCH 2 It is. Steven Payne Were there many fires in any of the places you lived? Growing up very much. BUTCH 2 I was in the Bronx Bronx was burnt down period Our hang out would be an abandoned building a burned down building. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And then you know, they got pictures of some Hip Hop pictures where you just see bricks stacked up that's what that's what it was. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 That was that was it? You know, swinging on a monkey bar and uh, you know Yeah, that that was the Bronx in the 80s Kurt Boone Abandoned cars burnt out cars BUTCH 2 But see this now is is is entirely different. Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 It's entire they rebuilt it you know, they got a lot of malls and you know, they trying to offer us everything. I don't know if we appreciate it, you know, because you got your restaurants you got Popeyes you got White Castle you got Chinese? Yeah, you got all the trying to offer us everything. I don't know if it's just after our money or whatever, but it's just should be decent. But it should be decent. Kurt Boone We ask every artist after the interview to tag to do a tag for us for the Library Archives. But yeah, that's one of my books, that's all so I just use this tablet. I'm gonna tear it out. And then it's going to go into library archives while we're here. So that's Futura right there. I don't know who that is some of them are your friends so BUTCH 2 this look like Kurt Boone That's the draw BUTCH 2 Oh that's what that was Kurt Boone You did that at the Bronx Museum BUTCH 2 The Bronx Museum. The one on the Concourse. Kurt Boone The Grand Concourse yeah. BUTCH 2 When was that? Kurt Boone That was ah BUTCH 2 They had bean a big show there Kurt Boone Right around that show when they did the whole BUTCH 2 that was February of last year or sometime. I know it was. Kurt Boone It was before the Covid Steven Payne Right before Covid Kurt Boone right before Covid so Futura did a like a three hour Black Book signing like he he anybody could come it was free bring your black-book and he would sign it it was really really nice. BUTCH 2 But that you can does it say Futura because of you sign in a black or I guess it was just getting his art out. But to get your name out I would expect to be able to something legible also Futura, but you know if you're going to sign 100 books Kurt Boone yeah but you went to that exhibit, right? The Bronx BUTCH 2 Yeah. It was I think that was the best event the Bronx had had in a long time. Kurt Boone Oh, right. Right. So down down in down in Miami. I was mentioning to you they have you on Graffiti in Miami, they have your name as the one of the pioneers had his own style. Right. I believe they have pictures of the Don 1, the Don 1, car that you get who photographed it, BUTCH 2 right, Kurt Boone They hanging on hanging on the wall. So how's does that feel to be in the museum? Where where they telling the story of how this art form began? and they going? Have to go by your name. Right? to kind of understand how this whole global movement started. BUTCH 2 Yeah, not surpriing that said I was there. It's not surprising. I mean, you know, if you have a, they came up with a list of the 50 best writers in New York City ever had. I think I'm number 13 or somthing. But it makes me laugh. That's why I told you that's what we was living man. Kurt Boone Right. And you didn't count how many trains You did. So that's, that's interesting too. BUTCH 2 Nah, I didn't count. I know I wasn't on that. I don't think I was on that I got new shit. Steven Payne Your production right? BUTCH 2 Like they said a day a a time, a piece at a time? Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. BUTCH 2 I wasn't trying to like be the king. Oh, you know, like, like, in with a million pieces. Like I said, I'm king of Bs. King of top to bottoms. Shit like that? Yeah. Kurt do you have any other? Kurt Boone Yeah, I think I'm pretty good. I mean I think I'm good. Steven Payne I got a final question. Then Pastor if you have some questions, you're more than welcome. Pastor Crespo I'm just on the observation side. Steven Payne So here's a final question for you. This this is more about just the Bronx in general. What does the Bronx represent to? BUTCH 2 Home basically? Steven Payne Yeah, BUTCH 2 Bronx is home. I was born in Jacobi hospital on March 31, 1960. Oh, I done been through the Claremont. We moved to Washington Avenue. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 From there we moved to Lambert. That was a no Longfellow Longfellow. Yeah. That Hunts Point. And then from there, we moved to a Lambert. I think I was in Lambert for 20 years. Yeah. Then ah I moved out we had a girlfreid we got a place and then my mom's went to Co Op. She was up there about 25 years. Steven Payne Wow. BUTCH 2 Yeah. I came up there to get the Co Op, but it's a whole legal system. Like I was saying about signing stuff. My name wasn't on anything. So I mean, you have the option to add people to your what do they call it the affidavit Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And I wasn't on there. So that that created a whole nother thing. But yeah I love the Bronx and Bronx has its good moments and good times. And it is places in the Bronx that are beautiful. Listen, I was at all This is. And I don't know if you guys know where Aldi's is at on Gun Hill. Steven Payne I used to go there all the time. BUTCH 2 Behind there it's beautiful. You wouldn't even know it's back there. Steven Payne Back there. With the big Hill. What road is that? BUTCH 2 I don't know the name of the street. But it's where Aldi's is back behind? Steven Payne I know what you're talkng about BUTCH 2 Yeah, behind there over. It's Immaculate Steven Payne it is BUTCH 2 I said Wow. Like a hidden jewel. Steven Payne I know. Absolutely. BUTCH 2 I love the Bronx. I like the Bronx. Bronx is home, Steven Payne yeah. Do you think living in and growing up in the Bronx Do you think that had? Like a specific impact on your style? As far as your your writing goes? BUTCH 2 Nah, not really. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 Just because, like you, you draw he like you go into a zone. Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 And in that way, wherever you are, Steven Payne you go into that zone. BUTCH 2 Right. It don't matter where you at. You know, that's why a lot of times you draw because you can just kind of block all that out. Steven Payne Yeah. And you were telling me earlier that you think art might have been a way for you like a way of escape? Or something do you want to talk about that. BUTCH 2 Well, art, music and art. I think music and art is everybody's escape cause everybody has a favorite song Steven Payne for sure. BUTCH 2 Everybody does some type of doodling? Steven Payne Yeah. BUTCH 2 It's an escape and then color? You know. And the thing about today is you don't have to be a expert at anything what you your work is your work, you know anything's allowed. That's why it's so easy to draw whatever you do. You got kids that are five years old and drawing. Steven Payne absolutely BUTCH 2 Art is life man. That's all I say, Steven Payne yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up. And like we want to share anything else. Anything we're going to talk to talk about, that you want to talk about, or maybe any advice for artists today or anything like that. BUTCH 2 The only advice I can give to artists is just to be yourself. If you're coming back, if you're making a comeback. Come back with what you're known for. Don't try to keep up with the Joneses. Set your own bar, do what you do, or do what you're known for. You know, this guy will be his wild style, and he can do this. Let him do it. That's him. Yeah. You're known for what you do. Just stick to your stick to your guns, man. Yeah, that's it. Steven Payne Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. Butch it's been such a pleasure hearing about your life, your art, your artistic vision, everything. Really, really appreciated and really honored to have you as a first participant in this. BUTCH 2 Alright. Thank you. Kurt Boone Thank you. So CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 /render.php?cachefile= Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with BUTCH 2 (TFP) Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on January 18, 2022 with BUTCH 2, a pioneer in the graffiti arts movement from The Bronx, a master of wild style lettering design, a member of The Fantastic Partners (TFP), and one of the first artists to paint whole trains as early as 1972. In this oral history, BUTCH 2 describes his time growing up in The Bronx of the 1960s and 1970s, what drew him to graffiti, how he developed some of his artistic techniques, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Stephen DeSimone, CEO/President of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.01.18 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220118 BUTCH2 graffiti TFP Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 02:27:16 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220301.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with BG 183 OH-BAADP.20220301 02:27:16 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the donation of Stephen DeSimone, President/CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. bxoralhistory BG 183 (Tats Cru) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 bg-183-oral-history-2022-03-01.mp4 0.50:|10(10)|18(1)|21(9)|24(9)|28(9)|34(12)|38(8)|42(9)|47(2)|53(1)|57(3)|62(9)|66(15)|75(10)|80(5)|85(6)|90(5)|99(9)|108(11)|113(11)|119(6)|127(7)|132(4)|141(1)|145(16)|150(13)|165(4)|169(2)|174(2)|179(6)|188(1)|193(7)|198(16)|203(14)|210(9)|217(13)|222(17)|228(4)|241(2)|246(4)|256(10)|265(8)|271(8)|281(6)|288(2)|292(11)|298(10)|305(16)|310(4)|315(1)|327(9)|335(5)|340(5)|348(13)|360(6)|373(1)|377(13)|384(2)|388(8)|398(10)|407(4)|411(10)|415(11)|422(16)|427(18)|431(15)|439(13)|447(13)|454(4)|461(10)|466(15)|471(8)|476(17)|487(3)|492(16)|501(11)|506(12)|512(6)|521(2)|533(12)|543(3)|548(5)|553(1)|557(14)|567(14)|574(4)|590(4)|598(8)|603(7)|610(6)|616(2)|623(4)|629(7)|640(5)|650(14)|656(5)|667(6)|680(8)|699(5)|705(6)|710(14)|717(12)|725(1)|730(14)|742(5)|749(15)|760(4)|769(2)|774(4)|779(11)|785(10)|795(7)|800(14)|809(3)|830(9)|836(6)|851(15)|872(1)|888(14)|894(5)|901(8)|910(3)|915(15)|925(10)|930(10)|938(7)|946(18)|955(8)|969(19)|974(14)|985(6)|994(10)|1008(15)|1014(4)|1025(2)|1030(1)|1037(9)|1042(13)|1048(2)|1064(6)|1072(6)|1085(8)|1091(7)|1096(6)|1102(5)|1110(9)|1119(14)|1124(15)|1133(5)|1138(1)|1150(9)|1159(3)|1174(5)|1177(11)|1182(7)|1185(5)|1204(7)|1211(6)|1218(8)|1230(6)|1238(7)|1243(3)|1248(1)|1254(8)|1258(12)|1263(6)|1268(15)|1279(5)|1305(7)|1309(10)|1313(12)|1325(6)|1337(9)|1342(4)|1346(7)|1355(5)|1360(2)|1365(5)|1372(1)|1377(4)|1390(10)|1400(7)|1405(13)|1418(13)|1426(1)|1434(3)|1439(13)|1447(8)|1453(4)|1459(4)|1464(7)|1476(11)|1484(3)|1488(14)|1494(6)|1499(10)|1506(10)|1513(5)|1527(9)|1536(4)|1540(8)|1546(4)|1553(2)|1558(15)|1566(13)|1580(1)|1584(11)|1596(9)|1619(14)|1625(13)|1635(12)|1648(5)|1652(12)|1656(5)|1661(5)|1667(9)|1672(14)|1678(5)|1685(5)|1690(13)|1697(4)|1705(10)|1710(8)|1716(2)|1720(9)|1726(13)|1736(4)|1740(13)|1752(14)|1758(8)|1763(3)|1769(9)|1775(4)|1781(3)|1788(9)|1794(1)|1797(3)|1801(3)|1807(3)|1814(9)|1821(13)|1826(4)|1831(4)|1837(5)|1843(8)|1848(12)|1852(14)|1856(6)|1862(9)|1866(7)|1871(3)|1876(9)|1880(9)|1889(11)|1895(6)|1899(17)|1905(15)|1911(1)|1917(6)|1923(3)|1926(9)|1930(8)|1935(13)|1941(5)|1946(11)|1951(1)|1955(7)|1962(2)|1966(8)|1971(3)|1986(10)|1992(5)|1997(5)|2002(13)|2017(7)|2022(13)|2025(12)|2030(15)|2037(4)|2041(14)|2047(1)|2055(4)|2059(6)|2063(11)|2070(10)|2075(14)|2080(6)|2086(2)|2094(7)|2098(16)|2103(7)|2118(10)|2127(4)|2127(5) Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/XchdbfmsoVc YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne Librarian and Archivist at the Bronx County Historical Society. Kurt do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone: Yeah I'm Kurt Boone and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. SP: Great. So today is March 1st, 2022 and we're really happy to be here with BG183 a founding member of Tats Cru, really legendary graffiti artist, master of style, and the intricacies of his backgrounds and the details in his pieces are just out of this world and BG will be talking a lot about growing up in the Bronx and his art, and we're excited to get into it. In this segment, Steven Payne and Kurt Boone, the interviewers, introduce themselves as well as the interviewee, BG 183, an early graffiti pioneer from The Bronx and founding member of Tats Cru, a legendary crew known for their style mastery. BG 183 (Graffiti artist);Tats Cru (Group) Bronx;Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 45 Family History and Early Life BG183: I remember there was a building right across the street from where I live at and through the windows and through the curtain I could see light, a lot of light coming through the curtains! And then when I used to open the curtain it was like one of the biggest fires in the South Bronx. It was like a total of 5 buildings--like a complex building connected together, and you could see the whole five buildings burning. And then after that it was kind of like, you know, my entertainment. You know I'm sleeping I'm trying to sleep and I see all this light I'm looking out the window, seeing this fire, hearing people screaming. And I'm like wow! this is kind of like, you know I'm young this is crazy. And then the next day in the news you'd hear four firemen had died in that fire... In this segment BG gives an overview of his parent's background, as well as his own childhood experiences. We learn his father was a professional baseball player in Puerto Rico who had experiences traveling throughout the Southern United States as a young man. The focus when his family moves to New York to BG's own life. We get a rich sense of the games BG and his peers played, including the rules of informal ball games in fashion at the time. We also see how the fires in his South Bronx neighborhood affected him, becoming "like an entertainment" to him at one point. African American children's games;Baseball;Handball;Jigsaw puzzles;Santurce (San Juan, P.R.);Santurce Crabbers (Baseball team) Art;Bronx;Children's games;East Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Fires;Outdoor games;Puerto Rico;Racism 0 776 Adolescence and School BG183: That particular junior high school had just opened up. It was called Rafael Hernandez. He was a Puerto Rican musician. This school had everything. This school had a wood-shop, electrical shop, arts and crafts, sewing class. It was a school that was meant for, in my type of neighborhood, so-called the ghetto, was a school that had all this high end stuff to teach young kids. ... BG183: In the craft and art class I learned how to do stencils. That was my first time doing stencils. My teacher actually taught me how to use a razor blade, put it on the light to make sure you don't have extra paper sticking out. And during that time I was a great artist so I created this parakeet bird, and when he sprayed it, or I think he was doing silkscreening or whatever he was doing, he loved it. He showed the class and was like "look at this student." And I was kind of like shy back then I was like "ok." In this segment BG delves more into his experiences in Elementary and Intermediate schools. He gives a few great stories of his early experiences with art, including his first stenciling and how he came to treat art as a competitive skill to acquire. We also see the his relationship to the local street gangs growing, and how his identification with the burgeoning hip-hop subculture kept him neutral to the gangs, accepted but not necessarily "with" them. BG also talks about the stores early hip-hop participants were shopping at around Simpson St. and Southern Boulevard, and the types of clothes. He calls out Nike Cortez shoes in particular. Boogie Brothers;Chingaling (Street gang);Public School 66 (Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Rafael Hernandez Intermediate School 116 (Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Savage Nomads (Street gang);Savage Skulls (Street gang);Stencils and stencil cutting Education in art;Education--New York (State);Gangs;Gangs--New York (State);Hip-hop 0 1363 Involvement in Hip Hop BG183: When I went to his house and he's talking to his mom saying "Mom! Where's my gun at?" And I was like I can't even tell my mom where my slingshot or my peashooter was she'd whack me and this guy is saying "Mom, where's my gun at?" I thought he was joking and I hear his mom say "Yeah it's right here in the kitchen drawer." I said wait a minute. "Ok you sure which one is it? It's a small .22." Then I was like oh shit! What the... What's going on here? Next he asks for another gun, his mom says, "yeah I have it right here" and he says "Yo Ma can you bring it over" and his mom really brings it over, gives it to him and he's like "Ok Ma thank you" and I said wow. And this guy was one of the guys that when people heard his name they rand. So he was my friend! I remember we walked over to where Grand Wizzard Theodore was performing and he's walking around with a shotgun. And we got to the area where they're DJing at and he tells me "Yo, I want you to do this. Grab the shotgun, put it on the side, and walk around." And I said to myself like, why? Next thing you know I grabbed the shotgun and I walked around. KB: You did it! BG183: I did it. Then I tried to give it back to him and he was like "Nonono, walk around a second time." I said ok, walked around a second time, and then after that I see Grand Wizzard Theodore DJing, he got his crew. Back then if we didn't do stuff like that you got robbed for your equipment. A lot of DJs got robbed for their equipment. This segment details how BG 183 got involved in the hip hop scene. Gang-member friends doing security for park jams introduced him to the music and gave him access to DJ equipment and BG would become obsessed with the music. He also talks about the violence in the hip-hop clubs, how eye contact was dangerous and he and his friends would hang in the back and stay for the music, allowing them to observe who's wearing what and who's getting robbed. He also talks about his work making hip-hop flyers in the 80s later on. In addition, of the earliest art jobs he got was to replicate ticket stamps to get into clubs and parties for a discount. We also hear how the early hip hop hits were already considered played out by the time they made it to the radio due to being found on mixtapes and in performances for up to a year before. Grand Wizzard Theodore;Grandmaster Flash;Rivas, John "Mr. Magic";Savage Skulls (Street gang) Audio equipment;Gangs;Hip-hop;Hip-hop dance;Hip-hop--Influence 0 2257 High School BG 183: I went to James Monroe High School. You know one of those high schools that was so bad. The reputation was no good. And for me it was like my district school so when I went there who I saw? Everybody in my neighborhood. My brother's there. I remember my first time being at James Monroe high school you know you had to give like a ticket to get your lunch. So I gave my ticket and I had sat down and left my coat and bookbag. Then I went back--I went to get my lunch and came back and somebody was sitting in my chair. I said holy shit somebody is sitting in my chair! And I see my brother and all my friends here. And I asked the guy, yo you sitting in my chair! And then he went "This is not your chair." Next thing you know my brother and my friends say "yo get up." "Oh okay! I didn't know he was your brother." So I'm already connected at the school. So I think I was blessed to be connected to a lot of people that were someone... I grew up safe. In this segment BG details his experiences attending James Monroe High School, which was his zoned school, meaning he already knew most of the students attending from around the neighborhood. This afforded him some protection not extended to most students, meaning he could openly wear his gold chains and 8-ball jackets. We also learn about his experiences in gym and art classes, which led to meeting the person who would come to be BIO, one of the founding writers of Tats Cru and a close friend of BG. Bio (Graffiti artist);Bon 5 (Graffiti artist);James Monroe High School (New York, N.Y.);National School Lunch Program (U.S.);Pome (Graffiti artist) Education, Secondary--United States;Fashion;Fashion--Social aspects;Graffiti;Tats Cru (Group) 0 3180 Entry into Graffiti BG: I was doing other names I had a name called GAPP, I didn't like it. Then I had another name I didn't like I don't remember the name I was using. So every name I didn't like SP: tried them out BG: Yeah. Then the only name that I liked it was because after a while--remember I was playing softball-- KB: You's an athlete BG: I was real nice. So there would be a man on second and third, and we're losing, and they'd be like "Yo bring the batters in." So that's what I used to do. I was so nice I could hit it over first, I could hit it over third, I'm a switch hitter, so. So I used to bring the batters in. So BRING. Oh BRING that's a good name. I started writing B-R-I-N-G, but it was too long. So I cut it down to B-G. I took the first letter, last letter, and put it together. This segment goes through the beginning of BG's graffiti bombing career, getting his name, improving his style, slowly integrating into the community, his early experiences, and becoming the leader of a crew. Notable is the discussion of the Writers Bench located in the 149 St-Grand Concourse IRT station. BG talks about the layups he was able to hit and the lines he was most interested in painting. He also brings up the emergence of the "White Elephant" train fleet, a failed experiment by the NYCTA in 1981-82 to prevent graffiti by whitewashing large portions of the fleet with a teflon-paint mix, but as BG points out, actually encouraged them by providing a clean stable canvas for graffiti. Bio (Graffiti artist);New York City Transit Authority;Shoplifting;Writers Bench Anonyms and pseudonyms;BG 183 (Graffiti artist);Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 4640 Adult Life and More Graffiti BG: We did like the Ghost Yard, the Ghost Yard was on like 207 St, it was a yard that was only us. Anyone who went in left with their head cracked, sneakers taken, jewelry. SP: What Line was that on? BG: It was a yard. It's on the 1 Line. On the West Side, on 207, and I think it's Broadway. This section details BG's early adult life, including his employment preparing and installing heavy metal apartment building doors. He also details his graffiti activities at the time with the crew TAT, an early iteration of Tats Cru. He worked with BRIM at the behest of Afrika Bambaataa to paint the inside of the Bronx River Center, briefly worked in a Graffiti and Hip-Hop based television program on PIX 11, all the while continuing his activities on the trains. What comes out is the significant violence of the scene, for instance he and his crew were able to maintain a monopoly on "Ghost Yard", the 207 St maintenance yard in Inwood, Manhattan by robbing any would-be competition. According to BG, this was exacerbated by the increasing security of paint stores in the City, making paint a valuable commodity that writers would travel even out of state to secure (and ultimately rob each other for). He details one event where he and his crew were robbed at gunpoint for their pain in Brooklyn, at a layup near Utica Ave, but allowed to finish their pieces first by the robbers, which he ended up seeing running on the trains. Afrika Bambaataa, 1960-;Grim (Graffiti artist);Krylon;Shame 125 (Graffiti artist);Violence;WPIX (Television station : New York, N.Y.) Employment;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Railroad yards;Robbery;Spray painting;Tats Cru (Group) 0 5413 Creation of Tats Cru and Mural Career KB: So you was TAT what did T-A-T stand for at that time? BG: Ok it was Tough Ass Team, Tough Ass Teenagers, The Art Team, anything that stand for TAT... KB: And then the S you added with the third--so to become Tats Cru, maybe explain a little about how that came about. BG: Right so the Cru, Bio came up with the Cru because of, he didn't want to write Crew as C-R-E-W. So that was like slang so we did TAT CRU, that was there since the early 80s. ... BG: Like, I'm a graffiti artist, I paint graffiti, now I'm painting faces for these people that died! and I say to myself, "I can't handle this no more!" I'm hearing the news, I'm doing memorial walls, you know people just dying left and right. And I'm like, to talk about it nicely, "I can't take this no more, I can't draw this." You know I'm painting the face, and they come up behind me and they're talking to me. And I look, they're not talking to me! They're talking to the mural that I'm painting on the wall. This segment details the evolution of Tats Cru, how it evolved out of the graffiti crew as the members got older into a powerhouse of muralists. BG goes in depth on the spiritual toll memorial murals took on him, as well as hardships faced from the media who portrayed them as drug dealers and thugs, with memorial murals being whitewashed by the city. Coca-Cola;Graffiti Hall of Fame (Harlem, New York, N.Y.);Mortality;THE POINT Community Development Corporation Art and business;Education in art;Graffiti;Mural painting and decoration;Mural painting and decoration, American;Tats Cru (Group) 0 6633 Becoming a Business BG: Even when we went to go look for walls to go do this stuff we would go and talk to the landlord, and say look, we're gonna do a graffiti mural, "Nah I don't want it." And then we'd go back and say oh we're gonna do like a mural, a graffiti mural here. And I said, damn what's going on? Maybe I have to stop saying graffiti and say art. Oh we're gonna do an art mural here "Oh okay!" And that's how it all opened up. And again the media was also saying graffiti's not good in the 90s, be careful. This segment deals with the transition from "graffiti" to "art" with the Tats Cru. It was clearly not a clean break, the crew was writing heavily with Crack TS, more likely known by Fat Joe, at the time of the early transition. The portmanteau of TAT and TS is where Tats come from as a name. It also deals with how the business has been run from BG's perspective and his recent gallery experiences. Big Pun;Coca-Cola;Fat Joe;KRS-One (Musician);Mad Lion;Tats Cru (Group) Art and business;Graffiti artists;Mural painting and decoration;Mural painting and decoration--Technique;Street art 0 7750 Influences, Technique, Global Futures of Graffiti KB: How do you feel about this mural movement around the world? And you being a part of that, 'cause you travel the world and are an inspiration to this whole mural movement. Now it's way more than tagging its a whole global movement of murals. So how do you feel about the name Mural Kings and this whole mural movement. BG: When I started doing the graff you had artists like Lee. Lee was doing incredible murals back then in the 80s. He did one that was in the train station that was like my internet. You know back then the way you saw murals was you had to travel, by train like. So Lee had one that was from, I think from 34th Street to 14th Street there's an abandoned 4/5 train station. I think it's on 27th Street and it's abandoned. And when the train is going slow you could see the abandoned, and he had this mural that he painted, this Egyptian guy on a camel. It was a silhouette. So he did like yellow and orange this guy, and beige into browns for the sand. And on the tip of the mountain of the sand he did like a camel with an Egyptian like a silhouette and he drew like the shadow of the camel of the silhouette and it was so amazing. Like, wow I didn't know you could do that with spray paint! Like you could do art! This segment details how BG views the global mural movement, and his place within it. He speaks about those that were doing murals before him and inspired him, including LEE and SEEN, as well as new artists in the US and abroad who look up to BG, including those BG met on trips to Mexico and Brazil. Brazil;Mexico--In art;Quinones, Lee George;Seen (Graffiti artist), 1961- Mural painting and decoration;Mural painting and decoration, American;Spray painting;Zines 0 8439 The Bronx According to BG 183 SP: I got one final question for you, which is what does the Bronx represent to you? BG: For me the Bronx represents everything. It represents life, represents me as a person, because without me living in the Bronx and showing me different elements of life, from being poor, from being broke, from seeing everything. Like when people say, "You live in the Bronx?!" "Where?! In the South Bronx?!" You know for me it was like life. We had the hydrant, we had sports, we had the street games, everything that only a poor neighborhood would have, and we did, you know have the crime rate. You had to protect yourself. You had you know, your friends that was doing so much crime. Or you had your friend who passed away too early in the game, and you didn't want to hear about that. And you had everything that, you know like KRS-One says, "The Bronx keep creating it" and that's what we've been doing for many years. We create something out of nothing. That's what the Bronx represents. If you are born and raised here somehow you're talented in some how and some where in your life. If you want to be a dancer you go knock on your next door neighbor and he's a dancer. You wanna be a DJ you go upstairs and DJ. You wanna do graffiti the wall across the street has graffiti. Everything that you want is here. This segment is BG wrapping up his interview by answering what the Bronx means to him. He talks about the Bronx spirit of "making something of nothing" and shouts out everyone who has shown him what that means. He wraps up by writing a tag for the BCHS library. Díaz, Ruben, 1948-;New York Yankees (Baseball team);Salsa (Music);Tats Cru (Group) Bronx;Community, creativity, choice, change;Graffiti;Hip-hop 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 1, 2022 with BG 183, a member of the legendary Tats Cru, one of the most prolific Bronx graffiti crews painting whole cars and trains during the Golden Era of the 1980s and trailblazers of the contemporary global street arts movement. In this oral history BG 183 speaks about growing up in the South Bronx along the 6 line, his love and aptitude for art from a young age, his involvement in the emerging hip hop culture of the 1970s, his early days as a graffiti writer, how he got involved in Tats Cru (originally T.A.T. Cru), transitioning more to mural work during the late 1980s and 1990s, his current work as a globally renowned artist, and much more. Steven Payne: 00:00:01.339 Welcome to the Bronx aerosol arts documentary project. My name is Stephen Payne, librarian and archivist at the Bronx county historical society. Kurt, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone: 00:00:10.237 Yeah, I'm Kurt Boone, and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Steven Payne: 00:00:15.590 Great. So today is March 1, 2022, and we're really happy to be here with BG 183, a founding member of the TATS CRU. Really legendary graffiti artist, a master of style, and the intricacy of his backgrounds and the details in his pieces are just out of this world. And BG will be talking a lot about growing up in the Bronx and his art, and we're excited to get into it. So BG, why don't you start off by talking about your family's history and background and say a little bit about how your family ended up in the Bronx? BG 183: 00:00:53.603 Okay. Yeah. So my mother, Maria, my father, Sotero, they both met in Puerto Rico in a place called Santurce. Santurce, Puerto Rico was basically a place that had kind of a hip-hop element in Puerto Rico but was called salsa. In that particular area that my mom and father lived at in Santurce, they had a lot of land club that was one of the best salsa performers, musician, singers came from in that era in Santurce. And that was like the beginning of my mom and pop. My father was a professional baseball player in Puerto Rico. He played under the baseball team, Santurce, and he played for two years. And before that, he also traveled, because my father was, like, a dark skin Puerto Rican. So when they took him to places like South Carolina, he played in Georgia, he played in different parts of the South of America. He was wondering why they kept putting him in black hotels. He only allowed to eat in black restaurants. BG 183: 00:02:35.609 So first time in his life, he was facing racism, like being Puerto Rican and Puerto Rico. If you dark skin, you still could walk into typical white skin Puerto Rican. But over there, when he came down here to America, he was treated different. They all rode in the same bus, but all the white, light-skinned Puerto Ricans, they took them to the white hotels, and then my father would go into the black hotel, and that's how it was for him. So after that, he went back to Puerto Rico. My mom and him got together, and then my father decided to go to New York City. So he moved to Harlem, like a 106, 107 in Park Avenue. Today is where they do the festivals at. So my father was there, in the beginning, I think he moved there in 1957. He came from Puerto Rico, so now he's in Harlem, and my mom is still back home. So I think after, like, three, four years later, my father asked her, let's come to New York. So they moved to New York and they moved into the Bronx. And I think it was like Brian Avenue where they lived there for a while, then they moved again to a regular apartment building where I was born. And that was in Freeman Street, right off of the Sheridan. I was like maybe a block away from the 6 train. We used to take the 6 train back then. BG 183: 00:04:32.359 My father worked as a factory worker, as a shipping clerk for many years and my mom was basically a housewife, like taking care of me and my other two brothers and my sister. And that was a time that-- it was early '60s I remember, and I remember a lot of stories. My father used to play softball. Now he's a softball player playing here. He would play like at Cortona Park, Central Park, Pelham Bay Park, and he used to play for-- they used to play for money, or for beer. Whoever wins would buy a couple packs of beer for the players. And then my father got into playing dominoes. So he became a professional domino player. Back then, he used to bring back trophies. I used to see trophies and I remember-- I think I probably knocked one of them. And I remember breaking one and he was very upset. I don't remember him hitting me or anything like that, but I know he was very upset. And my father was very strong. He was a very strong man. My mom, for Christmas, she would buy me art supplies. And that was like the beginning of me drawing and that helped because for Christmas, for my birthday, any type-- [inaudible] outside walking while she would see something art related and she would buy me coloring by colors, like those pages or coloring books, anything that was art related we used to do. I remember my mom used to buy like these 500 to 1000 puzzles and then we used to start early in the day and finish it at night, with all four of us, we'd be like [inaudible] putting all the puzzle together. Steven Payne: 00:06:39.236 You got your puzzle crew. BG 183: 00:06:40.454 Yeah. You take care of the sky, you take care of the tree area, you take care of the buildings, or the water scene whatever the actual puzzle was. We entertained ourselves, saying like I would go outside and I would play the street games. And one of the street games was [Skelzies?] . That was one. We used to play-- it was called 13 and that was-- you throw the ball against the edge of the side of the building and it will pop. It will go and you grab it or it might get stuck. They had like a little space of the building that if you throw it just right the ball gets stuck there and that was considered like 50 point to 100 points. And we used to play to like 180 so the more you [inaudible] but you always had to pass the number 13. You couldn't go under. If you went under that's when the next person [inaudible]. But I remember the [inaudible] I think that's how I [inaudible] and then you know we play roundup around the world, that's like a tag that you play, bulldog. We played all different games and [doing?] that time I remember we was mostly in a black neighborhood. But again I was kind of dark skinned so I actually fit into the neighborhood. And they used to say Puerto Rican against blacks. So it was like that. We always lost because they were much bigger than us and everything. We was kind of skinny but we had definitely had great time. I don't remember anything crazy. Then when when we was living in Freeman the building got-- that's when the beginning of the burning of the South Bronx. So these buildings was getting burned or-- accidentally. Not everything burned because they wanted to burn it. Steven Payne: 00:08:47.691 And these were old buildings, too, right? BG 183: 00:08:48.924 Right. These was buildings that was there owned by landlords and they were-- everybody was living there. But one building burned because maybe the Christmas tree. A lot of fire was caused by in the winter time with people plugging in heaters-- Steven Payne: 00:09:05.834 Heaters. Yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:09:06.175 --with the Christmas tree or with the washing machine or-- everything was in one outlet. And these fire was really-- at that time I don't think they had any regulation how to plug in these stuff. So all these fire was taking place and next thing you know I think the landlord couldn't really afford to fix these, so-- and people was not going to move in places like that. I remember we always was almost the last family to move and they were like 30 family members that lived in one building. We was like maybe the second or the third to move. So I mean, during that time there was no landlord. So again my mom and pop was not really making money, so we would stay in those-- you still had light, but it was no heat. But at least you only got to do is my mom would put on the stove or buy two or three more heaters because again we're not paying for no light bill because that building, it's not on the record. So we lived like two or three years living like that. We were comfortable. After a while, you had a move because it was getting more abandoned and it's not safe anymore. It this like the early 70s? Yeah that's like early, early 70s. And then my mom moved again. We moved to Simpson-- Steven Payne: 00:10:31.615 Okay, Simpson. Yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:10:31.873 --right across the street from Casita Maria. And that was a recreational area that I'd spend my time playing sport or ping pong or handball. And they also had a softball team there. And that particular block was always active and in activities because of Casita Maria. We still had the stickball. We used to do all different games. Every summer it was just playing sport, being active every day, doing that. Me and my brother was one of the best what at we was doing. We got into playing Connect Four and we became the champion of the block. Even to this day people said, I'll play you Connect Four and I'm still nice at it. And this is how it was and then again with the fires I remember there was a building right across the street from where I live at and through the windows and through the curtain, I could see light-- a lot of light coming through the curtains. And then when I used to open the curtain, it was like one of the biggest fire in the South Bronx. Steven Payne: 00:11:49.625 That's crazy. BG 183: 00:11:49.566 It was a total of like five building, a complex building, that was connected together and you see-- you could see the whole five building burning. And And then after that was kind of my entertainment. I'm sleeping I'm trying to sleep and I see all this light and I'm looking at the window I see the fire. I hear people screaming and I'm like ''Wow this is kind of like--'' For me it was like ''Wow.'' I was like I'm young so I was like that's crazy and then the next day in the news you would hear that four or five men had died on that fire because they probably was on the roof and it fell because all that heat of the fire. So this is what you heard. You heard always the fire department truck always passing by. You hear the ambulance passing by you hear the police going in and out of-- and I'm still you know I'm still growing up but at the same time I'm doing the sports, I'm enjoying I'm doing some art and my school and I graduate from the 5th to the 6th and now-- Steven Payne: 00:13:05.705 Which elementary school? BG 183: 00:13:07.179 I went to [P.S.] 66 that was on Jennings and then from Jennings so I went to PS 116. Steven Payne: 00:13:17.176 Oh okay. BG 183: 00:13:18.089 No, it's P.S. 66 and I.S. 116 was a junior high school and that particular junior high school was just opened up. Steven Payne: 00:13:30.226 Oh great. BG 183: 00:13:30.939 It was called Raphael Hernandez. He is a Puerto Rican musician and they had-- this school had everything. This school had workshop, electrical shop, art and craft, it had sewing class it had everything that-- like it was a school that was meant for-- and my type of neighborhood so called the ghetto was a school that had all these high-end stuff to teach young kids that going to that school so I went to that school when I was in the 6th grade and I learned how to do workshops, electrical, I learned how to do sewing, craft and art and the craft and art class I learned how to do stencils and that was like one of my first time doing stencil like my teacher actually taught me how to use a razor blade, put on the light to make sure that you don't have extra paper sticking out and I would again during that time I was a great artist so I created like this parakeet bird when he cut it and then when he sprayed it or I think he was doing like silk screening or whatever he was doing he loved it he said he showed ''Class, look at this student.'' And I was kind of like shy back then I was like ''Okay.'' And I remember doing that and then I remember one story in the third grade I think this is like one of my stories that I always mentioned is I drew a Spider-Man Steven Payne: 00:15:15.058 yeah. BG 183: 00:15:15.448 I just did like an oval head and the eyes of Spider-Man. And I remember I looked at it, I had on top of my table and I think it was like home rule like you could talk for like 10, 15 minutes before class would start again. I remember this one guy one of the students came up to me and said, ''Oh, can I see that drawing you did? It looks very nice.'' And took it and he brought it to a group of students that was like talking about it and I'm hearing them like this ain't some stuff then the guy come back and he says ''My friend is better than you.'' And he gives me back my Spider-Man. I said ''What?'' So that made me go back home to practice. That was like the beginning of me getting into it so I went and I drew the same Spider-Man head but this time I did the web that come for the Spider-Man head. I thought I'm gonna show these guys. So now I'm waiting for them. So he comes over. "Can I take it?" I said, "Yeah, take it." Then he comes back and said "The other guy drew Incredible Hulk. It's better than you." I'm like, "Oh my gosh." So again because the life of The Bronx is like that. It's always a competition, like, "I'm better than you. Look at your sneakers, your sneakers, they got holes in it." Or, "Your sneakers look dirty. I got the brand new sneakers." So the fashion part of The Bronx and I was next to Jewman. They had a store called Jewman with cool [hosiery?] and that was around the corner and they the one who actually started the fashion of hip-hop because all the clothes were made by Jewman. You would buy before [Dr Jays?], before the Jimmy Jazz, before all these stores, they say, "This is a hip-hop store." Jewman was one of the first. BG 183: 00:17:16.085 So we had one on 163rd and it's still there. The son is still there. His name is Chucky. We know him for many-- we know him since the '70s and then you had two more stores that were around the corner on Southern Boulevard, on Simpson train station, and then you had another one on Freeman Street. So we had really no more than 1000 feet, 1500 feet away from all these stores. When you bought your first Nike sneakers was-- Steven Payne: 00:17:54.885 You go there. BG 183: 00:17:55.620 --you go there and I remember going into these stores and you'd be like, "Oh, let me get those pair." "These are the new Nikes." I said, "Nike?" And they were called Cortez. They were riveted bottom with a-- almost like a tennis sneaker, a blue family. And I said, "Oh, they look nice. Can I buy one?" And they'd be like, "Okay." So they would show you the brand new Nike, oh that's beautiful, and then they would put it in the box and I say to him, "Oh, can I see the other one?" They say, "Why? Why do you want to see the other one? Why?" And I'd be, "Oh, I want to see how you look." And they will be like, "No." And then when they pull it out, it's an old pair of Nike. So the left or the right will be old and be like, "I don't want it." And then they say, "Get out. Get out. You don't want to buy--" it was only $15 for a pair of Nikes. This is the beginning of sneakers. And the same way when you bought Adidas. Adidas came out before Nikes and you had the Pumas-- Kurt Boone: 00:19:09.448 [inaudible] PRO-Keds. BG 183: 00:19:10.225 --and then you had the PRO-Keds. You had the 69ers. The 69ers were-- Steven Payne: 00:19:14.315 The 69ers, for sure. BG 183: 00:19:16.162 These were like a line and then before that with the Converse and then before the Converse were the Skippys. The Skippy was one of the first. I made sure that I had a hole in my Skippy because I didn't want to wear Skippys. Yeah, and then snap on your [inaudible]. Yeah, and your toes be on the bottom like this looking or they will flap up. It was because the heat of the summer used to burn the rubber off. So it was really hard times. So again, so we had the Jewman giving out the hip-hop clothes. They had the sheepskins. They had the leather jacket, the bombers. I used to rock all that, that [Chinese?] mock neck, the overlap jeans that had French-cut pants. Everything that was the fashion, you went through them. Steven Payne: 00:20:11.013 And this was when you're in junior high? BG 183: 00:20:12.381 It was '73, '72, '74. Steven Payne: 00:20:15.949 Yeah. Sure. Sure. Very early early then. BG 183: 00:20:18.464 It's very early. Again, because I always outside. And it's funny. I was not trying to show up in front of a girl. It was mostly to show up in front of my friends. You know what I'm saying? The day, the one, I would go to that group, and automatically, they would try to snap, make jokes on you. So in the beginning, I felt kind of like, "Oh, why they doing that?" Then after a while, I became the guy. You come up to me, but I see something I didn't like, I would-- Steven Payne: 00:20:53.993 You would be snapping them. [laughter] BG 183: 00:20:54.954 Yeah. Be like look at your glasses or look at your jeans, look at your pants. Next thing I know, they want to fight me, and we start fighting. But that's how it was. Growing up, it's the fashion, painting, playing sports, I'm better than you, I have more home runs than you, I got a better swing, I could catch better, and when we play two in touch, I could do more moves than you, I could catch, I could run faster. So everything was always a competition. Kurt Boone: 00:21:29.371 So let me ask you. Talking about the gang activity too. So you run in the gang members. You got colors on. How did you navigate that too? Steven Payne: 00:21:40.621 You see that graffiti up on different walls, things like that. Did you encounter that? BG 183: 00:21:43.639 For me, doing the time with the gang members, they looked on my block. So it was not like I was scared of them or anything. So I was very part of that group, but not running with them, but I was neutral with them. Steven Payne: 00:21:59.938 Sure. Which one was it? BG 183: 00:22:00.344 So we had the Savage Skulls. We had the Ching-a-lings. Yeah. Savage Nomads. And you had the Boogie Brothers. And then you had other crew that wasn't gang member that was regular crews. You had Kelly crew. In my neighborhood, we had Kelly crew, Wilkins crew. You had the Gestapo crew. You had those little nation. You had all these crews that was up. We got Boogie. You had the Bamboo Brothers. And that was with Theodore and them. You know what I'm saying? They used to jam a place called 75 Park in the early '70s. And I saw him perform, but I didn't know he was [inaudible] with the Theodore. And a true story is, again, I had a friend of mine that when I went to his house and he spoke to his mom and he's saying to his mom, "Mom, where's my gun at?" I can't even told my mom where's mine [laughter] or where's my slingshot or my pea shooter. You know what I'm saying? She'd whack you if you do that. [laughter] She'd whack me. And this guy's saying, "Mom, where's my gun at?" I thought he was joking. And I hear his mom saying, "Yeah. It's right here in the kitchen drawer." I said, "Wait a minute." "Okay. You sure? Which one is it?" "It's a small 22." [laughter] And I'm like, "Oh, shit." I'm like, "What the--?" And my mom like-- "What's going on here?" So next thing you know, he asked for another gun. His mom said, "Yeah. I have it right here." I'm like, "Oh." And he says, "Yo, Ma, can you bring it over?" Now, maybe this guy is lying. So his mom really brings it over, [laughter] give it to him. And he's like, "Okay, Ma. Thank you." And he gets it back to her. And I said, "Wow." BG 183: 00:23:54.944 And this guy was one of the guys that when people heard his name, they You know what I'm saying? So he was my friend. And so I remember we walked over to where Grand Wizard Theodore with performing and he's walking around with a shotgun. And then we got to the area where they were DJing at. When you DJ, there's always people surrounding to-- and he tells me "Yo, can you do-- I want you to do it. Grab the shotgun, put on the side, and walk around." And I say to myself, "Why?" But next thing you know, I grabbed the shotgun and I walked around. You did it, though. I did it. Then I went like this. I try to give it back to him. He like, "No, no, no. Walk around a second time." And I said, "Okay." I walked around a second time and then after that I see Grand Wizard Theodore-- Steven Payne: 00:25:02.059 Doing his thing? [crosstalk]. BG 183: 00:25:02.237 --performing and DJing. He got his crew because back then, if we didn't do stuff like that. You got robbed for your equipment. Steven Payne: 00:25:10.070 Absolutely. Your equipment would be gone. Yeah. BG 183: 00:25:11.975 Because equipment. A lot of DJs got robbed for the equipment because, one, there was no money in the street and the way you probably got-- you rob somebody for they DJ equipment or you will break into the store, an electrical store that's sold mixers and turntables. Steven Payne: 00:25:30.532 That stuff was expensive, anyway. Yeah. BG 183: 00:25:30.754 You would go in there-- at that time it was expensive. Or speakers. So at that time, that was like that. So I started DJing because he had DJ equipment in his house. So, boom, I'm DJing. I met a lot of a lot of people during that time. There was a DJ, Whiz Kid, and had a couple of groups that were performing back then. Breakers? No. The breakers was later on in like in the 80s, but they was-- before breaker they were called b-boy and the b-boys, they had their own almost like a alt-rock. They used to do alt-rock firs. Before breaking they was more alt-rock and they would dance together and they would drop and do almost like a routine. And that was the first time I got to see that-- in that time, again, I was not really dancing or doing anything like that. But then later on-- I'm seeing and not even into graffiti yet and right now I'm more into-- Steven Payne: 00:26:43.738 DJing. BG 183: 00:26:44.062 DJing. And then you had the song Rapper's Delight that came out. But when Rapper's Delight came out, I'm in the mix so you'll be the first one to hear it before it went on the radio. So it went it went on the radio a year later. It got on the radio. So what happens when you hear too much music? Kurt Boone: 00:27:07.815 So you would hear it in the [inaudible], or you just [crosstalk]? BG 183: 00:27:09.630 Right you hear it in the [inaudible] or you buy the record? Kurt Boone: 00:27:13.486 Oh, you buy the record. Okay. BG 183: 00:27:14.291 Right. You buy the record because it's the beginning and everybody's like, oh, look, Rapper's Delight and already the DJs and the MCs, they're already performing. You're hearing the Grandmaster Flash perform. You're hearing a lot of DJs performing and you hearing all these cool Herculoids performing. So all that you hear it from mixtape. And people coming over with mixed tape and giving you mixtape-- Steven Payne: 00:27:41.761 [crosstalk] mixtape [crosstalk]. BG 183: 00:27:42.912 --and you're hearing all this and that's how-- and then you had in the early 80s, you had Mr. Magic. Kurt Boone: 00:27:50.315 Mr. Magic, yeah. BG 183: 00:27:50.915 And then before that it was somebody else, but that was Underground College once and then they had Mr. Magic that came on about like 11 o'clock in the PM or and then he moved over to 12 and he moved over to 1 PM. But we used to fight. My brother was one of the guys that went on a mission to record all these hip hop. So my brother was into the music, so I got into the music with my brother. So again, you had the DJ, he had the jams going on again. I'm in the South Bronx, so all those performance you see, you see for free, you know what I'm saying? You saw for free. And then you had the records, you had people dropping records. And I remember like we were saying earlier about Rapper's Delight and it came out in a year later it became in the radio and then two years later it was one of the hottest songs. And I'm tired of listening to Rapper's delight. And then you hear people saying, "Oh, you heard this soul Rapper's Delight?" I say, "Oh, that's old." "That is not old. I just hear in the radio they say this is brand new." "Well, like no, that's old, that's old." Because when you're in the mix of the culture of hip hop, you hear it way before it became mainstream and you knew-- so I was one of those guys that was fortunate that I thought all that stuff. And then my older brother, he got into gangs. So now he's part of the Savage Skulls. Steven Payne: 00:29:32.384 Oh, he's part of the Savage Skulls. Yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:29:33.514 So now, there was a-- and I think early, late '70s like '78 or I don't know how early they started, you had a guy named Comanche Steven Payne: 00:29:46.191 Oh, Comanche. I've heard of Comanche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:29:47.343 And Blackie, they was like the presidents and the one who ran the Savage Skulls. They started a Puerto Rican-- what's the name? Puerto Rican Coalition Security. Steven Payne: 00:30:06.840 Oh, the Black Skulls had something. The Black Spades had something similar. Yeah. BG 183: 00:30:11.327 So the Black had the Black Coalition, and then you had to Spanish Coalition. And they both had security license to get contract for when all these buildings was all abandoned, they went in and they're trying to make them all brand new, renovate all these old buildings. So the Spanish had mostly all the South Bronx area because it was all dominated by Spanish people. And then you had the Black Coalition that they will run Harlem at some part of The Bronx. But I remember that I don't know who was stepping on whose territory, we had to go to war. So now I'm working with that company. It was a security company. So I mean, I think it was like '79, '80. I'm working with them. They used to pay like $30 for every eight hours. And that was pretty good money, $30 during that time. And I'm working with them on the weekend. So I would do a 16-hour shift. I'll do eight hours on a Saturday and eight hours on a Sunday. And I got to meet every gang member. Because every gang members was allowed and any type. It could have been [inaudible], it could be Savage Nomad, Savage [inaudible], it doesn't really matter. You will go and work because a lot of these guys, they was probably uneducated or came out of jail, can't get a regular job, so they will go there and get paid. BG 183: 00:31:55.798 So I got to meet Fish. He was the president of the Savage Nomads, vice president. Got to meet him and we would honestly like really hanging out almost every time I go to work that was like my friend so I got to meet a guy called Machine Gun Eddie. So now I'm with the gang member but I'm also at the same time I'm dressing still hip hop. I got my hip hop gear on. I will go to work and that's how I was. it was like for me I never really saw there was violence going on. The violence was when you go to the clubs. When you go when you go clubbing always in the ending of the club, there will always be somebody or two or three people getting beat down. Why you looked at my girl, why stepped on sneakers? Why are you looking at me funny? That was it. Back then, you would walk you never gave eye contact because the person will look, " Yo, what the fuck you looking at?" "Do you have problems? What's up?" You'll be like-- Steven Payne: 00:33:15.857 I was just looking. BG 183: 00:33:17.039 What's up? What's up? and the what's up? and then you go like this, and that guy is like that and who was with who really [inaudible]. You have what I have. So that's how I was you know. So my crew had Simpson crew we was always together so we always go as a group and we leave as a group. You know what I'm saying? Again we was not looking for no girls we went for the music of the hip hop. Whoever was DJing and see who was wearing and then at the same time who was going to get robbed that night. Steven Payne: 00:33:57.822 Yeah. BG 183: 00:33:57.994 So that was like we will be in the corner like this looking and this guy's getting robbed. This girl getting her hair pulled by another girl, that this guy is fighting. This guy came through like this and now he's running scared like I thought he was tough and he wasn't. Every weekend was like that every Friday and Saturday. Kurt Boone: 00:34:22.420 So did the hip hop flyers come across your desk and did the artists [inaudible] you must have looked at the art or Phase 2 and some or the other writers were doing the flyers. So you and your brother were in the music so anybody approach you about applying? BG 183: 00:34:42.254 No, we did. We did flyers in the early 80s. We did flyers I think Bio did flyers, I did flyers, help them out do flyer but again it was like we did it and not thinking that. I probably saw a lot of Phase 2 flyer but I looked at them. Anytime they give it you, you throw it out. I know where this is at and you throw it out. You're not thinking that anything with worth or anything. And then during that time again I'm still broke like before I even started working security with these guys, I needed to make money. So again I was good artist and I used to go to these shows. I went to this to this party that I used to have every weekend I used to go there and they always just used to stamp you and that's how you pay $2, they stamp you go in and then one day I think I didn't wash my hand really good I went back and I went like this and I got in for free. I said oh shit, I got in for free. But they were using the same staff from the next day. And then and then I said to myself it took me a couple of weeks I said maybe I could draw it. So I used to ask somebody to come over. "Let me see your stamp. Oh, stay right there." And I used to draw it exactly alike to replicate it. "Okay. Thank you." [laughter] "Oh, why you want to look at my--" "Thank you." Then, I went like this, and I got in for free again. [laughter] Oh, shit. And then, after a while, my boys started saying, "How you got in?" I said, "I could draw it." "Okay. You draw mine." So I drew all my boys. But we had to wait-- you can't go in too early. You got to go in when it-- almost packed. They don't know who's in and out. Steven Payne: 00:36:35.855 When they don't pay attention. Yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:36:36.644 And sometimes they change the person at the door. So you go like this, and I was here earlier. Because back then, you was allowed to go in and come out. I know you had a stamp, you could go in and out in case you want to go to the store. So and then, I was saying, "Yo, maybe I'll go start charging people." So and then, the [jam?] was like $3, I would charge a dollar-- yeah, I think a dollar. So I made my dollar. Now, I'm making $20. I got $20 in my pocket with 20 people. Then the [jam?] was like $5. I used to charge $3. "I don't have $3." "So you're not going in. So pay $5." Then, people used to get tough on me like, "How do you know-- I'll give you the $3. But if I don't get in, I'm going to come back." I said, "You're going to get in. Just relax, walk in like nothing happened," or make you seem like you got a fake-- and then, they used to walk in, walk out, and that's how I made my money during that time with my art game. So growing up, again, it was-- What high school you went to before? And then after that, I went to James Monroe High School. Steven Payne: 00:37:43.559 James Monroe High School. For sure, yeah. BG 183: 00:37:44.641 It's one of those high school that was so bad that it was-- the reputation was no good. And for me, it was my district school. So when I went there, who I saw? Everybody from my neighborhood, so. Everyone from your block. Yup. My brother's there. I remember my first time being at James Monroe High School. They gave you a ticket to get your lunch. So I gave my ticket, and I had sat down and I had left my coat and my book bag. And then, I went to get my lunch, came back, and somebody was sitting in my chair. And I said, "Oh, shit, somebody's sitting in my chair." And I see my brother, all my friends here. And I asked the guy, "Yo, you're sitting in my chair." And then he went, "This is not your chair." Next thing, my brother said and my said, "Get up." Then, "Oh, okay. I didn't know he was your brother?" and the guy got up. You know what I'm saying? So I'm already connected at the school, so it was-- again, I think I was blessed to be connected with a lot of people that was someone, you know what I'm saying, had something going on during that time. And I think I grew up safe. I never had to worry about-- I used to wear big gold chains. I still have gold chains, but I used to have a bigger gold chain. I used to walk around in the '70s and the '80s. And I remember when people was getting shot for the eight-ball jackets. And that was-- Kurt Boone: 00:39:24.305 And sheepskins. BG 183: 00:39:25.271 And sheepskin or leather bombers. And I used to rock all that kind of stuff because [inaudible] was right there, so. Kurt Boone: 00:39:34.971 And you wasn't scared? BG 183: 00:39:36.030 No. I used to walk around. People would say, "Yo, you're crazy. Why? Yo." Kurt Boone: 00:39:42.590 Yeah, I would never wear that. Yeah. BG 183: 00:39:42.902 And then, the eight-ball-- I can get a [inaudible] like a six-month to a year that on the front page was somebody dying from a eight-ball jacket that-- he didn't want to give up this eight-ball jacket and he got killed. Because the eight-ball jacket was made out of like a shearling, sheepskin material, but it was multi colors. And these jackets, they were like from 900 to like 1,800-dollar jacket and they were custom-made, some of them. And people, hey, if I take that from him, I could sell it easy for 500, 600 dollars. That was money back then. So I was lucky that, one, I didn't travel too much away from my neighborhood. Steven Payne: 00:40:26.259 Sure. Sure. Sure. BG 183: 00:40:26.681 [crosstalk] if I did, they'd probably throw a-- I always had it like that walking around with a grilled face and I think that helped out too. And my father always showed me like when you walk, always walk like you got something in your pocket. That helped out. And then after that, it's you yourself to say to yourself like, "Okay, I could do it." The same thing when I first started and I started-- oh yeah, let me go back to James Moore High School. So with the ticket, I remember doing the ticket time, and again, I was hungry and that time there was good food with hamburgers, meatloaf, hot dogs. You don't get that in school anymore but back then, it was pretty good. So when the day-- today was number 13. So you go use number 13 and the next day, 14, the ticket. So the people that came in, they have a 13, they would throw it on the floor. So what I did is I would pick up all the 13s or all the number threes like there's 23 or 43, anything with threes on it I used to grab it and make them into eight. So I took all the threes, I just went like that with black ink and I did it really perfect that you can't even tell it wasn't an eight. So now I figured every number eight, I'm eating for free or I will sell that. Kurt Boone: 00:42:00.342 You sell the tickets. Sell the tickets. BG 183: 00:42:01.387 Sell the tickets. Because I think they were like-- I think like 75 cents to a dollar to buy. If you didn't have a ticket, you pay a dollar or something like that for lunch. So I sold them for 50 cents, [inaudible] 50 cents in high school, [inaudible], you know what I'm saying. And then people started doing it taking out a number two trying to make it into an 8 and then I think they realized that and then they started checking all the tickets. After like a year or two years after I had a good run everybody started like-- jumped in the bandwagon and so again it was like growing up and using my ability to just get by and to hustle, you know what I'm saying? It's simple hustle but it's still something that I was doing for me to continue what I was doing and-- Steven Payne: 00:42:52.046 It's interesting because even before you got into graffiti you were kind of drawn to I guess you could call like typeface or things like that. Manipulating whether with the letters or even the stamp kind of is a kind of [crosstalk]. BG 183: 00:43:04.965 That helped me out. And so then after that so-- Kurt Boone: 00:43:09.519 What year you graduate high school? BG 183: 00:43:11.459 I don't know like '83, '84. Steven Payne: 00:43:15.345 Okay. '83, '84. BG 183: 00:43:17.542 I was like a super senior when I graduated. Kurt Boone: 00:43:19.955 Super senior. Okay, now you actually-- I've seen interviews with you. You actually met some members of the TATS Crew in high, right? BG 183: 00:43:30.301 Right. Kurt Boone: 00:43:30.490 In high school. BG 183: 00:43:31.260 Right. So yeah, so when I went to James Moore High School, I had-- I was in already so as a junior year they gave me weight training, gym. So I had a gym day. So I'm in the gym pumping it up and getting kind of big and I had to bring my own locker. The locker because they allow you-- you have to wear your gym clothes and that was the shorts and something, a T-shirt [inaudible] high school short was probably too short. I don't know. I never like it, the shorts, but you had to wear it. But I remember one time when I came back for the second semester of school, I didn't have a lock. So shit. I need to put my clothes somewhere. So I looked around and looked around I saw this skinny guy with some glasses on, I said, "Yo, can I put my clothes?" and I'm like, "Can I put my clothes?" and the guy looked at me like, "Right. Right." He said, "All right" but in his mind, he probably was saying, "What the fuck. I ain't going to give you" and then, I said, "No. No. I just wanted to put my clothes." In his mind, he probably thought I was trying to rob them. I said, "No, I was really being fair. Yo, really, I want to put my clothes there. And then when we meet again and when the period is over, I would get my clothes back." So he said, "All right." Then I saw him, I waited for him, and then I got my clothes and I said, "Don't worry. Tomorrow I'll bring my lock and I don't have to use you." And I forgot again. [laughter] I think when I went home, I started hanging out, whatever the case, I went back and I saw the guy again, and he looked at me like, "Damn, man. This guy still--" I know in his mind, he says, "I don't want to talk to this guy. This guy's trying to get me." So I put my clothes back in, boom, and then the third or fourth day again, I forgot my lock again. And I was like, "Damn, I keep forgetting my lock." BG 183: 00:45:37.535 Then I remember buying it and I left it there to grab, but I left the house too early and then the third or fourth day, I didn't see the guy no more. So I just got to put it somewhere and put it anywhere. So now I'm in a major art class. They gave it because I was a good artist and I was drawing. That time was the earlier of graffiti for me. And I look and it's like 25 minutes to a period I think it was, right? Kurt Boone: 00:46:10.922 About 30 minutes. Yeah. 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. BG 183: 00:46:12.968 So I'm sitting here and there's a guy sitting in front of me. But all day, he's like this, look at this. Here you go. So all day, he's like this. Troy. And I would like-- and then after like 15 minutes of the class, I kept looking and it's the guy, did I take the-- Kurt Boone: 00:46:44.418 The lock. BG 183: 00:46:44.728 Did I share my lock? I said, "Yo, what's up? Yo, man. How you doing?" And he's looking at me, "Oh yeah, yeah. I'm doing art also." And then I look and he's doing letters. I said, "Oh, you doing letters." And it turned out to be Bio. Steven Payne: 00:46:59.855 That's crazy. BG 183: 00:47:01.082 And I said, "What you doing?" He said, "Doing my name, B-I-O." I said, "Oh, that's cool man. I'm doing my name, BG." And then the next thing, we became partners and partners in crime to this day, so. Steven Payne: 00:47:15.935 It all started out in gym class. BG 183: 00:47:17.351 Yeah. Started out in gym class then we became good friends and I kept telling him, "Yo, I want to be nice, or every day, I went on a mission to be really nice" and he say, "One of the things that you have to probably do is your hand style." So he had good hand style. I said, "Okay, maybe I have to go." So, every day, I started practicing hand style. It's like, if you go into break dancing, you have to have footwork. You can't go start break dancing without any footwork. So, in graffiti, it's the hand style before you do anything else. So you do the hand style and then you do the throw-up. The throw-up is a simple letters you fill in really fast, and then you do the simple style, then you fill in with colors in the background, and you have to wild style like phase two. And he's one of the guys that I looked up to. Kurt Boone: 00:48:11.901 So let's go back because I really want to explore early style writing, just the fundamentals in high school, right? So you meet Bio, and he's already aware of style writing-- BG 183: 00:48:26.653 Yeah. He's already because he's-- Kurt Boone: 00:48:27.534 --because the trains were already hit at this time, so he was already kind of aware. Did he introduce you to it, or how did--? BG 183: 00:48:35.169 No. No. I already had seen it. Kurt Boone: 00:48:37.516 You'd seen it too. Okay. BG 183: 00:48:38.230 I'd seen it because, again, I took the subway from where I live at James Monroe High School. Steven Payne: 00:48:43.737 [crosstalk] James Monroe. Yeah. Yeah. BG 183: 00:48:44.178 So that was a 6 line, and that was run by Duster, The Seen, UA, UBA. You had a lot of old writer like Part. That's Part of that. He was like the king of the 6 line. I didn't even know that till years later. Kurt Boone: 00:49:02.215 Two years later. Okay. BG 183: 00:49:03.224 No. I mean, years later to now that he was the king of the 6 line. He had so many pieces on the 6 line that I never really saw [inaudible]-- Kurt Boone: 00:49:12.492 But did you know it was-- okay. BG 183: 00:49:13.483 Right, because he was doing them in the 70s, and during the 70s, I wasn't really-- Steven Payne: 00:49:17.034 You weren't taking the train as much, huh? BG 183: 00:49:18.729 I was taking the train, but I wasn't aware of the graph. Kurt Boone: 00:49:21.247 Oh, the graphs, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kurt Boone: 00:49:22.453 The graph from that slate on right now, and nobody talk about graph. You would pass all graffiti walls. You won't pay attention now. But if they mention it now, you'd be like, "Oh, look. That's graffiti over there. Oh, look. That's more graffiti." Now you start seeing the name. "Oh, yeah. It's the same name I saw in Brooklyn. He's up in The Bronx here." But that's how it starts, so. And that makes you want to go, "I want to be a graffiti artist." So during that time, I was already good at finger painting. I was already good of pencils. I was good in black and white ink. I was already good in acrylic paint doing all you. I was doing still life. I was doing contour drawing. Anything that was art related, I was ready. I was really good at it already. Even my teacher taught me-- she would put a person. "Can you draw that person?" The whole day, you would draw. It was like major art. And I would draw, and I would say, "It looks nice." And my teacher would be like, "Doesn't look good." And I said, "What are you talking about? It looks good." He said, "Look, the person is tall, and you made the person on your drawing look like a midget." [laughter] The proportion wasn't good, but for me, it was perfect. She showed me. She said, "This is a circle, circle, circle, and this is how you do it. The elbow lands here, and that's it." And then that's what I started doing. I said, "Oh, oh, oh, okay." And then now, I'm on proportion, and then she will be like-- her name was Miss Jorkins. She'll be like, "Okay. Today we're going to draw this flower." So we draw the flowers. And then tomorrow will be like, "Okay. We're going to draw the flower in 15 minutes or today 10 minutes. Today, we're going to draw it in 5 minutes." And you're like, "Oh, we're going to draw it." You have people complain, "We can't do all that." She said, "Just draw it, so." BG 183: 00:51:19.207 And then she was showing me, "Sometimes you don't have to put a lot of details to make it look like a flower. You can just do a couple images, and it looks like flowers." So at the same time, she was showing me different way of art but not really physically grabbing my hand. She was saying, "Look. This is what you have to do." So all my skills was getting better. Then when the same thing when it came doing graffiti, there's no teacher for this, so you really had to learn by myself. And that's how I improve my skills. You know what I'm saying? Bio was doing his, and then at the same time, we had a couple more graffiti artists that was also the class. Kurt Boone: 00:52:05.272 In the class. BG 183: 00:52:06.342 We had Bom 5. We had Bom 5. We had another guy called Pome. This guy was really good with doing [letter?]. Kurt Boone: 00:52:15.328 How do you spell it? BG 183: 00:52:16.392 P-O-M-E, Pome. So these guys was really good at what they were doing. And I Bonfire had really dope hand style and he had a good simple style. And the Pome had almost a wicked wild style, simple style. So they were the one who was like-- I would look at their style. And then after a while, I started doing my own stuff because that's how you start. If somebody's dancing, they had a particular foot movement, you will follow that but then you add your own. Kurt Boone: 00:52:56.304 Add your own. Yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:52:57.097 You add a twist to it. So that's what I started doing. And then to get into the graffiti world-- Kurt Boone: 00:53:05.319 Because Bonfire wasn't his real name. So, obviously, in high school, was this styling by you, or was he--? BG 183: 00:53:14.091 Actually, his name is Wilfredo. So he was doing Wil, W-I-L. Kurt Boone: 00:53:20.958 And then what did you start doing? BG 183: 00:53:23.120 I was doing other name. I had a name called Gap, G-A-P-P. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. So then I had another name I didn't like. I don't remember the name I was using. So every name I didn't like-- Steven Payne: 00:53:37.972 Try them out. Yeah. BG 183: 00:53:38.993 Yeah. Then the only name that I like is because after a while, again, I was playing softball. So I was real nice. So they'll be man, second, and third. And we losing, they'd be like, "Yo, bring the battles in." So that's what I used to do like. I was so nice that I could head over first. I could have over third. I'm [going to push it?]. So I used to bring the battles in. [inaudible] Bring, Bring, [crosstalk]. I said, "Oh, Bring. That sounds like a good name." [laughter] So I started doing B-R-I-N-G, but it was too long. So I cut it down to BG. I took the first letter and last letter and put it together. And then the number came about-- So I had a guy from [James Moore?] High School called Griff. And every day we used to battle. The battle was we take any name and we do it once and we do it again two time and we do it again a third time. So we say, "Okay, cool." So I did the first time. And then the second time I changed the style. The third one I changed the style. And he says, "Do a fourth one." and I got stuck. I couldn't do a fourth style and he did a fourth. So I kind of lost that battle. I said, "Oh, man, I lost." So I went back and I practiced some more. I did maybe up to six. So we did the same thing a different name. We did the same thing. And he went up and did two more than me. [laughter] Man, this guy is really good. [laughter] And I think it was summertime I was walking home and I went by this-- I think it was this paper company that did cardboard. BG 183: 00:55:27.186 And they had these 2x3 rows, black. They was throwing the garbage, so I asked the guy, "Look, can I take this?" He said, "That's garbage. You can take it." So I don't know how much it was, 50 to 60 of them. I grabbed it and I started walking. And then one guy started screaming, "Yo what you doing? That's not garbage." The next thing you know, I'm running [laughter] with a whole bunch of paper. And I got home. He probably gave up on me. And that was where I used to-- the whole summer, instead of being-- Steven Payne: 00:55:59.152 You're practicing on that, yeah. BG 183: 00:56:00.416 And I was practicing every day. What I did is I would do a line straight in the middle and I do like cross and I do another lines. I do like three lines and I made these small rectangle boxes so I could do maybe almost like 30 to 36 of them and then I would do the style. I do one style here. Then I take that, I say, "Okay I like the way my B is looking on this one. I'm going to use that B. I don't like the G. I change the G." Then I come back again and I say, "Okay I like it maybe change the B a little bit, but I like the first G." And I keep going like that. Oh. [crosstalk] So to learn and then again, there's no money really behind me-- Kurt Boone: 00:56:49.400 Explain it. Yeah. BG 183: 00:56:50.474 --so I just took ideas. At that time there was no books yet, so there's nothing to follow. Remember there's no Internet that you could Google everything now, so. Kurt Boone: 00:57:01.624 Did you [have?] 149th Street, Writer's Bench at that time? BG 183: 00:57:05.721 The bench, yeah. Yeah, I did that. Kurt Boone: 00:57:07.827 You did that? Oh. BG 183: 00:57:08.249 Yeah, I could tell you that in the few. Kurt Boone: 00:57:09.749 Okay, cool. BG 183: 00:57:10.020 So again, I drew my name. So let me get that pen. Kurt Boone: 00:57:15.096 Yeah, here you go. Steven Payne: 00:57:15.588 Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure. Kurt Boone: 00:57:16.232 Oh, okay. Here. [crosstalk] Because [inaudible] the contract, yeah. BG 183: 00:57:18.441 So again if I did a B - so I did a BG 183. That's pretty quick. And then I take it-- Kurt Boone: 00:57:54.595 But you explain it. You got to the B and G, but you was talking about how to get to 183. BG 183: 00:57:59.874 I do like this and then what I did is I go like this and I flip it over, and you still could see a BG 183. Put it against the light. Kurt Boone: 00:58:16.875 Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Steven Payne: 00:58:17.213 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see. Kurt Boone: 00:58:18.787 I can see it. Wait. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Steven Payne: 00:58:22.384 I'll also scan it, too, so it'll show up. BG 183: 00:58:24.596 You see how you still say it still read BG183? Steven Payne: 00:58:25.648 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 00:58:27.323 So this is a way that I started teaching myself because now the style is always different. Whatever you turn it, it's a letter. Kurt Boone: 00:58:36.241 It's a letter. Oh. Steven Payne: 00:58:36.962 That's [easy?]. BG 183: 00:58:37.445 So you go like this, you get a U and over here you got a W. And then here you get all different style when you reverse the letters. Steven Payne: 00:58:47.793 Yeah. BG 183: 00:58:48.034 Here, I could say, okay this will look like a nice E. Kurt Boone: 00:58:52.760 High school, right? This was. [inaudible] BG 183: 00:58:53.686 This was in high school. This is me at home-- Kurt Boone: 00:58:56.837 At home, okay. BG 183: 00:58:57.356 --doing this and then the 183 again started with the guy, Griff. So in the end I got to beat him. He said, "You look like you got a 183 styles." Kurt Boone: 00:59:07.820 That's funny. BG 183: 00:59:08.579 So I kept the number just to mess with him. Kurt Boone: 00:59:12.117 Just to mess with him. Oh. BG 183: 00:59:13.297 183 styles, so that's how the 183 started with the BG 183. Kurt Boone: 00:59:17.315 Yeah. That's amazing story. Steven Payne: 00:59:19.330 That's wild. BG 183: 00:59:19.938 So and this is how I started. This is where if I teach somebody how to do grab, I say, "Look, this what you have to do," and they be amazed. "Oh, I didn't know. Wow, look. I could get numbers." You get numbers. You get whatever you want and that's it is. So then I started doing the 183. It doesn't really matter like what I do and just for now it's just having fun. Again, there's no erasing, it's all just freestyling. Kurt Boone: 00:59:54.580 Okay. So, you're in high school and at that time, high schoolers were out there hitting trains and doing pieces in black books so to develop relationships at 149th Street and tag other people's black books? Or did you keep your black books or how-- BG 183: 01:00:13.063 So before the 149th Street, first, you have to be accepted in the graffiti world. It's not like I'm a graffiti artist and people are going to come up to me and say, "Oh, you make graffiti? Oh." Even when I first started, it's like you're a toy. [inaudible]. No, I was a toy. Everybody starts as a toy. It's like you as being a writer doing poetry. People are not going to read your stuff. "Oh, look. I just wrote this." And they're like, "Oh, okay." But now, people see your work, they want to read it. Kurt Boone: 01:00:47.826 They want to read it. BG 183: 01:00:48.151 Each one. So that's how it started. So with me, I had the group of guys in James Memorial High School. They probably in the game for two, three, four years in the game and so I'll try to fit in. So I would go with them, smiling. They making a joke and I'm like [laughter]. I'm laughing too. And then they all say, "Okay we're going to go street bombing." And then I will follow them. They'll be like, "What are you going?" I said, "I'm going to write." "No, no, no. We don't know you." So you got to wait. Said, "Oh, shit." So I would hang-- I still would hang out with them. I'm like that guy. "Who's this guy here? Anybody know this guy here?" I was that guy. Kurt Boone: 01:01:36.453 You're that guy. Steven Payne: 01:01:36.613 Yeah. BG 183: 01:01:37.383 So they didn't want to accept me as a writer so I have to-- so, again, I go into the phases. I found a whole bunch of papers. My skill level's going up but yet I'm not getting accepted in the graffiti world and I really-- so I went up by myself. Hearing the story, first is how you paint a train. Where you go? I don't know that. Where can I go? But hearing them talk, they were like, "Oh, you could go up to a layup." A layup is like an elevated train. Then they park them in the center between two train station in the summer. Reason why they park them in the summer because it's warm. It's easy to start the train, to put them back in the express line. So I heard that and then I took the train and I saw it park after rush hour. After 7:00 PM, they would start laying them up. Steven Payne: 01:02:43.913 Yeah. Which station did you see first like that? BG 183: 01:02:45.150 From Elder to Soundview, from Soundview to St. Lawrence, from St. Lawrence to Castle Hill, and then I think it was St. Lawrence to Parkchester, from Parkchester to Castle Hill. And then you had the Middletown Row. I didn't go too far out because I was like the white graffiti artist. They catch you over there, they will beat you down. So-- Kurt Boone: 01:03:12.455 We heard stories about that. BG 183: 01:03:12.821 --the Spanish people-- so anywhere that I know I'm going to get hurt, there's no reason for me to go. You know what I'm saying? Let's be smart about this. And so I went to that and I remember I got my first-- I went to a store and I racked a total of six cans Steven Payne: 01:03:35.098 yeah. BG 183: 01:03:35.451 But I only brought two to go to the layup because-- and then I've been practicing my throw-up. I've been doing my throw-up. I've been practicing. I used to go to my backyard where I used to live at in the basement, practice, and practice. And now, I think I'm good enough to do this job. So I get to the train. I'm there by myself. I'm looking around. Nobody in the station so I jump down. And I blew my throw-up. Steven Payne: 01:04:11.403 Yeah, BG 183: 01:04:11.664 [inaudible]. My heart is pumping, ta, ta, ta, ta. Kurt Boone: 01:04:15.138 Yeah. What'd you write? BG 183: 01:04:17.691 All right. I did my throw a BG. Kurt Boone: 01:04:19.907 BG, not one in [inaudible]. BG 183: 01:04:20.996 No, not one in [inaudible]. BG, ta, ta, ta, ta. [inaudible] come up. I did. So then I went back and I went back to the group and I say, "Oh I just did trains. You did trains?" I said, "Yeah, the trains." And they were like, "Okay, cool." And I did one car boom, they said, "You did what?" I said, "They want car." They said, "You did all 10 cars." because there's 10 cars. You didn't do one car he did 10 cars. You trying to say you did 10 cars and like, "Yeah I did 10 cars." And I was like, "Okay." then I went, "Okay, [inaudible] I got to do 10 cars. So I went back by myself again, I jumped in the track and I did all like one name in each car. Steven Payne: 01:05:09.996 Wow, okay. BG 183: 01:05:10.554 And I went back. I think I spoke to the same guy again, I said, "Yo, I guess the train again yesterday, they were lay up and I did the whole set of 10 cars." They said, "You did 10 cars?" I said, "Yeah." "You did both sides or you did one side?" I said, "Oh God." Kurt Boone: 01:05:29.878 They've been hard. Steven Payne: 01:05:30.907 Got to go back. BG 183: 01:05:31.583 I had said, "Got to go back." because in bombing you got a bomb. And so you can't go and do one and you done because who's going to see? That's like, I don't know how many cars in a subway system but you're not going to see your name when nobody going to really going to see your name, so. And now I did one, I got 11 cars. Next time I went, I did front and back. So now I got front and back, and then at the same time there was not only one set of trains but there was other set of train. So you went to all of them or you just went to one station earlier [crosstalk]. So now I went back and did all the different stations. Steven Payne: 01:06:15.085 All on the 6? BG 183: 01:06:15.963 All on the 6 train [crosstalk]. Steven Payne: 01:06:17.042 Yeah. Kurt Boone: 01:06:17.331 [inaudible] you were had traffic? BG 183: 01:06:18.854 No, I'm not. This is the way of bombing. This is [inaudible]. Again, there's no book you can read it's showing how to do this. You had to really know someone that done it before and that could help you. I remember this is all underground and no one really has a faith. You don't know who's really is a bomb or a tiger. [inaudible] going to be like, "Yo I'm doing trains and publicize it to any." So the only people that knew that I knew was these guys and nobody else. And then from there I was doing trains and now I'm in like about three months doing this trains. Doing my throw-up everywhere, I'm taking the tag BG then I think I started doing the BG 183 and I couldn't see my name on the train. Steven Payne: 01:07:07.515 Yeah. Kurt Boone: 01:07:07.704 [inaudible], okay. BG 183: 01:07:08.628 I said, "Why I've been-- I'm done mourning like 200 cars or 300 cars that came, why can't see it." And then I started speaking into bio and buy and say, "Oh." And he said, "Don't worry about it. If you can't see it, somebody else is seeing it." But I said, "I got me a little happy." but now I became sad again like, "No I want to see it. I want to see what I'm doing." And then another three weeks pass by, I look up to the train, and what I see, my name. BG. Then I went up again and went up again and I buy your bio, come on man that's me and you go up. He said, "For real." I said, "Yeah come on it's me." And then me and him started going up and doing all these bombing together and he became my graffiti partner and we got a whole bunch of cans. And we said, "We're going to do my first piece on the train. So I went, "Okay." Kurt Boone: 01:08:10.741 Masterpiece. BG 183: 01:08:11.707 So it was one of the coldest days, I think it was Christmas time. So I did a BGee and I was doing B, G with two Es. So I was doing BGees. It was funky for me so I did a B-G-E-E, and I remember spraying and I was catching these drips and I was looked at nasty, it was ugly. But the colors were good but the drip was so crazy and I was really upset with it because I caught so many drips because-- that's how you could tell when somebody got experience. The way they spray, if they sprayed with a lot of drip you already know that this guy is a rookie, a toy. And I was a toy, so I went like that. I looked at it. And then I saw two other guys on the platform, they also was writers. And then when it came by they were like, "Oh my God that shit look awesome, that shit look good. Yo, you really did it," and I said to myself, "Come on, man. You joking right?" They said, "Nah, BGee you rock. You and Bio killed it, yo. Your guys rocked it." I said, "For real?" And he said, "Yeah that shit look hot. It's the hottest shit running right now." Oh yeah? And that gave me more confidence to go back out there to do more. Steven Payne: 01:09:37.003 Absolutely what was that first piece? Do you remember-- BG 183: 01:09:39.209 Yeah. Steven Payne: 01:09:39.294 --the layout? BG 183: 01:09:39.595 I actually have a-- Steven Payne: 01:09:40.849 You've got a picture, okay. BG 183: 01:09:41.010 --photo, I have a photo of it. I actually put it up on my Instagram not too long ago. So I did that and then and then you start hearing about writers going to this place called 149th Street in the Bench. I said, "Oh the Bench? What's that?" That's 149th street and Grand Concourse. You go there and the bottom level on the uptown side where the 2 and the 5 train pass is the Bench. That's where all the writers hang out. So I went there and then it was a scary place to be. People that wasn't even writers was hanging out there Steven Payne: 01:10:25.935 yeah. BG 183: 01:10:26.080 They were called stick-up kids. They were robbing people for anything. They wasn't out robbing for graffiti, they was robbing in general, a gold chain-- Kurt Boone: 01:10:33.942 Money. Yeah, money. BG 183: 01:10:35.243 --a pair of sneakers, or a coat-- Steven Payne: 01:10:37.280 [Coast?] had a story about that, yeah. BG 183: 01:10:37.606 --a jacket. You know what I'm saying? And we was like, "That's the place you go when you want to rob," because that's all the connection. You can go downtown or you go uptown and you could see the people and back then it was some stairs that you-- there was a stair there, they took it down. There was an elevator there, they took that down. You would go up to the elevator and it was an overpass and you could stand in the middle and look at the whole station, then you come down to the other side. But the whole platform got taken down. But that was the way you go from the downtown to the uptown and that's where everybody met. In the movie you see them all hanging out on the Bench and they're talking about what was new coming to the station. That's why the 5 and 2 became more like the most viewed and envied trains. So that's why I stood by the 6 train or 2 or the 5, and that's the only train that I really really hit because those are more the main stations where everybody will look at. And it was easier also to take photos because the train will run through Intervale, and Intervale was the station that you could go here and go underneath and come back here without getting off. All the rest of stations you had to physically get off and go around, so this you could connect so you had like the one [inaudible] you got the [inaudible] on. I mean [inaudible] when you had also interval that was like a platform and then the bench but people used it and took pictures there. People went there for one, you bring your black book and you have famous people coming right on your black book. If you got your black book back because sometimes you gave it and it was gone. Kurt Boone: 01:12:33.675 They take it? Yeah, they took it, like, "Where's my black book? You got my black book." I gave it to you I know but I gave it to this guy and I don't know what happened. And probably the first guy you gave it to took it but he thinks this guy I gave it to this guy he just jumped on the train with it. The book is gone. And then in a book you had like already famous people on there so your book is gone. And maybe that same guy got his book that book taken from him. It was like a time that if you was not really a tough writer or somebody was on point you got your shit taken even you gave a marker to somebody, your marker was gone. Where's my marker? I don't know I used it last, I don't know what happened to it. So that's the way it was so you got to be-- that's why I really didn't bring no black book there like I didn't want to be like damn man. Kurt Boone: 01:13:24.781 Did you save any of yours? BG 183: 01:13:26.759 I have a few, not too many. Not too many. I actually got lost one that I had and I started a new one but I never got to finish it but it just that's the way. For me I didn't even took a lot of photos on my work. I got people like Ken, Sam, this guy named Rise that he took a lot of photos of my stuff like Bio, took a lot of photos of his stuff. Mac, Sam I already mentioned him but that was the e days for people that was part of my crew, you know what I'm saying like they were making sure they were taking photos and so again we started with the TATS CRU, They put me down with TAT. Brim was the one in charge. With Brim there was Mack, Base, and Bio. So those four they met in junior high school and I met Bio in high school when he got to a high school a year later. Kurt Boone: 01:14:28.452 So you already had a crew when you met them? BG 183: 01:14:30.407 Yeah. There was already a crew, it was TAT but they were mostly like three bombers and you then buy [inaudible] doing pieces with colors but I went in there and started doing like let's do crazy pieces, you know what I'm saying? I started doing characters. So I was really doing stuff I got and now so me and Bio decided to do like a train and that's when the White Elephant came out. Steven Payne: 01:15:01.467 Oh okay okay. BG 183: 01:15:02.397 The White Elephant is the train that like the MTA said these trains if you write on these trains your paint will just fall off. So it's not going to stick yeah so there's a lot of writers that was painting in the 70s like the scene and days, CRASH. Kurt Boone: 01:15:23.482 Riff. BG 183: 01:15:24.699 Riff, they stopped writing completely and a lot of them went into the galleries. They went to the galleries. Kurt Boone: 01:15:33.470 [inaudible]. BG 183: 01:15:34.205 Yeah, all those guys went to the galleries. So the next generation, we're the third generation of graffiti artists that went into the 80s and started like-- for us it was like you know like I don't care about the galleries, all the doing canvases. I want to paint trains. I'm in the beginning, I'm really in, I'm enjoying it and then the White Elephant came out, oh my God that was like a white paper. It was clean like they're giving us a white trend. So colors would be so rich when you paint on top of them. Steven Payne: 01:16:13.003 And you could paint on them, right, despite of what they said. BG 183: 01:16:15.015 Yeah. You could. Yeah. There was no dripping. There was nothing. Kurt Boone: 01:16:19.135 So it stuck. BG 183: 01:16:20.599 It stuck like a regular canvas board. Kurt Boone: 01:16:22.839 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. BG 183: 01:16:23.736 So now you're hitting these trends, and I'm loving it. My style is improving to top-notch and my other-- and let me put down the volume. And so now I'm enjoying it. And then a lot of my crew members was like, "Yeah, Bijoux, you're the nicest one in the crew. Can you do me an outline?" So I was doing outline for my crew. I was kind of the ghostwriter. So I was ghostwriting a lot of pieces then for my crew, and I didn't mind doing it. I was like, "Wow." And then a couple of months or a year, they stopped calling me. Like, "I don't want nothing--" They got their own style. They're already improving everything, so. And life changed a little bit. Then I started hanging out with Brim, and we met with Afrika Bambaataa. And now, Afrika Bambaataa, he asked me and Brim to paint the inside of the Bronx River Center. So we painted the inside where all these people perform [inaudible]. If you look back in the videos, it's called Body Rock. You see all my graffiti that I did in the video. And there's characters, there's records, there's the Zulu Nation. We painted the Zulu Nation inside the center. So it was me and Brim that painted the inside. Steven Payne: 01:18:15.293 It's amazing. BG 183: 01:18:15.562 A lot of people don't really know that history, that I painted the whole inside. Steven Payne: 01:18:20.180 And what year was that? BG 183: 01:18:21.497 It was like '82, '83-- around there. Steven Payne: 01:18:24.255 '83, yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 01:18:26.360 So if you Google it, you see all my pieces that I did. Steven Payne: 01:18:30.245 It's amazing. BG 183: 01:18:30.523 Yeah. And the thing is again I didn't take no photo of me actually making it, but everybody knows it was me because the style-- Steven Payne: 01:18:37.788 The style, for sure. BG 183: 01:18:39.140 --was there, so. And then I did that. And then I also did the first hip-hop on TV. Because nobody haven't done any type of [inaudible] and graffiti and breakdancing. I saw almost like a TV show-- almost before MTV, before BET-- was a show called Graffiti Rock. Steven Payne: 01:19:09.331 Graffiti Rock. Okay, okay. BG 183: 01:19:10.783 So me, Brim, and Sien, we did the graffiti for that show. That was aired on a Saturday PIX Channel 11. And then they played it again a second time, but it was never picked up. They felt that it was kind of too grimy. PIX felt like, "Oh, I don't think that's going to make money," and they canceled it. So it was only one show. The show was great. You still can see it. You can still see it online. Steven Payne: 01:19:47.025 YouTube, probably. BG 183: 01:19:47.988 Yeah. You could YouTube it. It's called Graffiti Rock. So me and Brim and Sien125 actually painted this, so. Steven Payne: 01:19:55.208 Wow. BG 183: 01:19:55.919 And my movement into the craft was always there, being in the right place at the right time. We did the Scuffle of Bambara. We did the Renegade of Funk. That's a video that Shame and Brim comes out . And the first member that passed away, Dive-- not Dive, Dale. Steven Payne: 01:20:23.574 Dale. BG 183: 01:20:23.949 Yeah. My friend, Dale, he passed away and later on I actually did a memorial wall for Dale. And that was really my first time drawing somebody's face with spray paint. Like taking a spray can and drawing the eyes, the nose. And it took me like three days. The first day I finished it but they say, "Oh, maybe you come back the next day add some more." And I did that. And then the third day we went back because that time there was no time. Take your time and everything. We're doing it for ourselves. We was not getting paid to put it up a memorial wall for our friend. That's the first member of our crew that died so we did that. And then I also painted a Rest in Peace for Cowboy, for the Grandmaster Flash. So me and Brim at Bronx Coast Center, we went and we painted Cowboy. It was one of the first memorial wall for a rapper that passed away that we painted, again, in the early '80s. So during that time, life, studying and I mean getting older, I'm already 19 going on 20, it was trying to pay bills. My mom said "Yo, you got to get a job." Because I always worked. Again, I worked with the security on Nighthawk with Comanche that was making money from there. BG 183: 01:21:59.073 So I was always making but I needed a more of a steady, like a 9 to 5 job. So my father put me on to work with him. So I was working with my father for a good three years. And again, he used to work in a door company, picking up hollow metal doors and frames. And these doors and frames whatever, they were heavy. And for apartment houses-- and during that time, a lot of apartment houses was getting built in the '80s. So I was working for a company. Now what I did was just sand it down, with sand, with a machine, turn it down, wipe it, flip it, do the same thing on the other side of the door, and then hang it to be painted. And each door was about 80 pounds, 90 pounds. Some doors was like 150 pounds depending on what kind of size and the material. so I remember the first, the next two or three days, my body was aching. I couldn't close my hand because the machine was vibrating. And my mom came up to me, I was laying in the bed covered up like this and she saying, "Do you want some Tylenol?" And I'm like, "Nah, I'm good. I'm good." Trying to be tough. She said, "Are you sure?" "Yeah, give it to me." I took the Tylenol and then after a couple of days in there, it was good. I was picking up the doors. Steven Payne: 01:23:34.528 Yeah. You got used to it. Kurt Boone: 01:23:35.504 No problems. BG 183: 01:23:35.822 I was strong, I was [inaudible]. So it was a good time and at the same time I used to meet up with the guys we used to go and maybe paint trains. But it was a while we did the Ghost Yard. the Ghost Yard was on 207th Street and that was a yard that it was only us, no one else could go in. Anyone who went in, they left with their head crack and sneakers their sneakers taken, jewelry We had Steven Payne: 01:24:08.151 What line was that on? BG 183: 01:24:09.433 It was a yard, it's on the one line. Steven Payne: 01:24:12.222 On the one line, that's what I thought. BG 183: 01:24:13.339 It's on the west side on 207 and I think I don't know if it's Broadway or-- Steven Payne: 01:24:18.641 Yeah, I think so. BG 183: 01:24:19.280 Might be Broadway. Kurt Boone: 01:24:20.184 Yeah, Broadway. yeah. BG 183: 01:24:21.529 So that's on the one train so-- Kurt Boone: 01:24:23.679 So was TK like to go [inaudible]. BG 183: 01:24:26.167 T Kid was also part of the crew. You met TK? Kurt Boone: 01:24:29.501 T Kid. BG 183: 01:24:29.993 Yeah, so T Kid was a guy who was connected to the ghost yard so he was already in. So I met T Kid through Ken. I met T Kid and he introduced us to the ghost yard. And I remember painting with him and this guy was so fast because he was really old school guy from the mid 70s. So I met him in the 80s so this guy was like so fast. He was like [inaudible]. He did a train with us. It was a T Kid CanaBG 183 and he also did two more cars. I know one car but he did a boost and a T Kid. Like he did all three names while I was still working on one but I also did the characters on that train. But this guy was really, really fast. So he introduced us to go in the tour of [inaudible] so I was like one of the first member of TAT to go in there to me T Kid and Ken also got me in there also so. Kurt Boone: 01:25:39.489 Kid is from [inaudible] BG 183: 01:25:40.818 Who T Kid? Kurt Boone: 01:25:41.413 T Kid. BG 183: 01:25:42.284 Kenny with two Ns. K-E-N-N and then his partner with CEM 2. These two guys were notorious in a graff world. You hear those two guys come in, you run. Your shit was taken. There was no surviving. Everybody got robbed. They robbed Coke 2, they robbed everybody. They didn't care. They did care who you were, you know what I'm saying? And you was just I don't care. Steven Payne: 01:26:16.597 Are they still around? They still in the graff world? BG 183: 01:26:18.258 Yeah. They're still active. They're still active. You know what I'm saying. Kurt Boone: 01:26:21.870 So they were part of TAT? BG 183: 01:26:23.179 Yeah, they're part of TAT. So that's how TAT got to grow more, again when we went back to the bench at 149th Street in Grand Concourse, how cool was Big, already had a reputation and people already knew TAT was not playing. We would rob everybody, we were punching people in the face. You know what I'm saying? All the writers, they had to respect us. You know what I'm saying. Remember we was in our age like again the hip hop world was there so it was people was afraid of us. You know what I'm saying? I knew that and you had paint and that time you got to understand like when I got in the 80s a lot of the paint stores was very burnt out. So you couldn't really go racking. Because all the old school writers from the 70s up to the 80s already that's where they started putting gates behind these spray cans. Steven Payne: 01:27:30.738 So you couldn't get them. BG 183: 01:27:31.395 So you couldn't get them. So what you had to do is sometimes we had to travel. All the way to Philadelphia to Boston up Connecticut, New Jersey because those places still have the can open in a shelf. It's like you just grab it, take it, sometimes one of us didn't get back because they got caught. So it was a hard time during that time. So for us if we didn't know you as a writer and you came in, "Hey, hey, hey I'm painting over here." I say, "Yeah you painting and how many cans you got?" got like 20 cans right so leave the cast and wake up. Be like, "Huh? What are you talking about?" You know and they know my people they carry knife and they had like machete. We didn't care. We had ice picks. We didn't play. We don't need it to use it, we just pull it out . You know what I'm saying, but remember we went to Utica one time, that's in Brooklyn. We went to Utica tunnels, and we paint things and then these two riders come up to us and say, "Y'all, we're going to rob you," we're like, "Huh? You're going to rob who?" "We're going to rob all you." And if you know my boy said, "Y'all, they got a gun." And we didn't have a gun. But they said to us, "Look we let you rock, let you put your name, but leave all your paint behind." We were like,"Shit, what can we do?" BG 183: 01:29:09.653 So we painted we tried to use, how much can we use? And we took some cans, we put some full cans and put them to the side, we don't have to give them everything, but give them something. At least they'd be happy. So we gave them like at least 10 to 12 cans and we give them like really empty cans and maybe two full cans. And that time they came out and were like, "We knew cans carrying on," they came out with a color called bonfire that was like a new can line of colors, bonfire and Spanish fly. I could hear them saying, "Y'all, look at this color bonfire we never had bonfire before, but then we left, we was upset, we got robbed, we never get robbed. We got robbed but at that time, again they had a gun, we didn't and they was going to show us love, they're not going to cross out our work and the work actually ran and we did good. Steven Payne: 01:30:12.398 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kurt Boone: 01:30:13.412 So it was team strength at that time. BG 183: 01:30:16.485 Okay, so Tough Ass Team? Steven Payne: 01:30:18.764 Tough Ass Team, yeah. BG 183: 01:30:19.577 Tough Ass Teenagers, The Art Team, anything that stands for TAT. Kurt Boone: 01:30:26.865 And in the S you add it to the yard to become Todd's crew maybe explain a little bit about how that came about because you had CRMU. BG 183: 01:30:40.952 Right so the crew because bio came up with the idea, crew, because of you know he didn't want to write "crew" as C-R-E-W. So that was like slash so we can, you know we do TAT crew. We had that in the early 80s crew, always been there. Kurt Boone: 01:30:58.787 Oh, okay. BG 183: 01:30:59.289 And then so now we couldn't paint again we couldn't paint no more in the subways . It was hard . Everything was kind of locked in and plus we were getting older . Everybody's kind of like working like that. But we still would meet up and paint walls. So we were paying walls, we were painting at the Hall of Fame, the graffiti Hall of Fame, that's strictly kings and better . You had to be really good to paint there and again you wasn't guaranteed that your work would survive that long. Somebody else might come and go over it and then you had to at least take a photo and accept that you went and got over. They didn't cross you out, a lot of it, they just did something brand new. It was okay. And so we did that and then-- Kurt Boone: 01:31:48.338 What was the first wall at the graffiti Hall of Fame like 80 something 90s? BG 183: 01:31:52.271 It was in, I would say late 80s. Steven Payne: 01:31:56.817 Late 80s. BG 183: 01:31:57.483 Like '88,' 89 yes that's pretty early then we painted a lot more in the 90s, we painted there in the early 90s but we painted the outside. Kurt Boone: 01:32:12.979 The big one. BG 183: 01:32:13.682 The big one, the outside because nobody wanted to paint the outside wall because there was a chance that it got crossed out the same day or it didn't last. So then this guy, a writer called Easel. Easel took over the Hall of Fame before James Topp, before [inaudible] TDS. Kurt Boone: 01:32:39.498 [inaudible] TDS, yeah. BG 183: 01:32:40.252 You had Easel that was running the Hall of Fame because he went to the school, he wanted to paint. So he asked us, "Look, you guys want to paint?" We said, "Yeah, but we don't want to paint the inside. We don't want to be with other writers on the inside, just give us the outside wall because nobody really wanted to paint the outside wall." Everybody, "No, no, we paint the inside." So we took the outside wall and we did a nice production. Me and [Bobby Nicel?] did a nice production and it lasted a long, long time. The whole body came. People took tag on it, but it was cool because they took tag and they were famous writers. So we kept it, we never buffed it. And then we went back two or three years later, we did a new one. And I remember the one that I-- my side that I painted on, what I did is I replicated the Hall of Fame from the outside. And somebody took a photo, so I did that same-- Steven Payne: 01:33:47.047 I think I've seen that picture for [inaudible], yeah. BG 183: 01:33:47.645 --dyed one. I did that. And then when I did the-- when I was drawing the actual wall that we painting on the actual wall, I did the same thing that we did on the wall but I forgot that I had to paint it again. So I had to paint this smaller because this is the one image but I'm painting and I have to draw the same image again so I had to redraw the same image again and they got smaller. [inaudible] staying like that, and I'm going smaller than that. But I did the whole thing and everybody loved it because I did the projects and people used to come by. I went back a year or two years later and they would say, "Yo I live in that building right there." They will point to the mural and we love this mural. That's one of the best mural done, and then at the same time, [inaudible] did a nice cool area, [inaudible] did a nice cool area. So it was good. So it lasted a long, long time. Nobody was crossing out and then we went back and we trying to do a whole brand new wall and they told us-- the people in the community said, "No, don't take down the one I painted. Leave it." We like, "No, no. We have to." No, no. Leave it. And again, now we dealing with the community. So they the one who's really in charge. When we live there, the community is the one going to be in that neighborhood. So we like, "Okay, we're going to leave it. We're not going to cross it out." And we left it. So every time we painted from the ending of that mural to the end, I had to rip replicate the same mural on the wall again. Kurt Boone: 01:35:31.635 You're right. Yeah. Yeah. BG 183: 01:35:32.738 So at the same time, it started improving my skills of painting. So we're getting a lot of work. We started doing work for Coca-Cola. That was our first big contract. Steven Payne: 01:35:44.439 Wow. BG 183: 01:35:46.318 A lot of company wanted to know why a big company like Coca-Cola is hiring three graffiti artists, Latino from the Bronx. So we started getting a lot much work. And then we got a contract with Coca-Cola, we got a contract with McDonald's, and then now we painting advertising. Steven Payne: 01:36:08.870 Wow BG 183: 01:36:09.030 these walls so, but not too many like these landlords wanted to accept our work to be painted on their property. So it was kind of hard. So we started a lot of graffiti all that painted murals didn't last it in the '90s. They all were getting crossed out by all the writers, people were doing drop over them, artists were trying to paint artwork, regular artwork, they were getting crossed out, and we didn't want it to be that artist that we did work that got crossed out. So we had to put pressure on a lot of writers. We did. So we went and did house visit. We'd make sure that you know who we are. Don't cross us out because it's not going to look right. And a lot of these walls was graffiti art that was doing street bombing, but what we was telling them like, "Yo, we're not physically going over you. Don't take offense because this is not what we're trying to do. This is more business." You know what I'm saying? And the landlord's giving us permission to paint over it. It's not personal, you know what I'm saying? And we're going to buff the whole world. We're not going to leave a little piece of your name sticking out that looks like we went against you. We're going to cross everything. We're going to go over everything. And then we were getting so much work that we said to ourselves, "Maybe it's good for us to maybe start hiring all the graffiti art from this part of The Bronx, let's hire this artist from this part of The Bronx. Let's hire this artist from Manhattan." BG 183: 01:38:05.547 At the same time, we ain't trying to step [inaudible] foot so they don't feel that we're going against them. So we started doing that. Like, "Look, we got two walls for you. Oh, beautiful. To be paying $1,500 for you to do a wall." Beautiful. They went and got the wall and then we had a total maybe like nine artists in New York City are doing the work for us. So we was only subcontracting the work and pay and then we would take some for ourself [inaudible] that we already had with our wall. And everybody was like, "[Jazz Crew, Jazz Crew?]." Now they're showing us love and we're showing love right back and that's how we started doing. And after you couldn't-- then when the academy got messed up in 2000 and [inaudible]? Steven Payne: 01:38:59.809 '8. '7. BG 183: 01:39:00.417 Like '15. When nobody was making money, that inflation got hit hard. Was it all '07, or? Steven Payne: 01:39:10.676 That's when it first started, but it took a few years I think-- BG 183: 01:39:13.527 Yeah, yeah, I think it-- Steven Payne: 01:39:13.746 --to come into effect BG 183: 01:39:15.576 Yeah, you could be right. It could be '07, '09. So yeah, '07, '09. Yeah. It was so bad that we don't know how we survived. I think because we was in a location that got offices that's based in at the point. So the point with there was really good with us. Steven Payne: 01:39:40.452 And they just celebrated they're 25th anniversary, right? Yeah, yeah. BG 183: 01:39:42.727 Right. Right. So we've been there-- actually, we've been there a little longer. So I think they're around almost like 27 years. About27 years. We've been around there like 26 years in the point. So they gave us a break like, "Don't worry, we know the inflation it's not good. We love you guys to stay." Because not only that we there, we also it's good for us to be there because we also do art, and when they first started at the Point, nobody was going to the Point when they first opened up because, again, it's in Hunts Point. It's a ghetto place. It's more industrial, and [Pam?] was like, "I'm not sending my kids over there." I [better dump?] to hang out in a corner grocery store, you know what I'm saying? That's kind of even worse, but I rather not send them to the Point. So the Point was sent out a lot of like information that we got after school program. We got the theater. We got this. We got that, and nobody would show up. So we spoke to-- the Point came up to us, saying, "So you guys have any idea to bring people in?" So we say, "Yeah, we know like Bambaataa. We know Crazy Legs, and maybe these guys could come. Maybe." BG 183: 01:41:11.383 So Bambaataa came through, open up a thing, and that got too crazy. They had like 400 people going in, and then when they used to leave to Point, it was like a riot. So they had to shut Bambaataa down with that. But again that started the people coming in. Then Crazy Legs came in. We spoke to Crazy Legs. "Yo, Crazy Legs, can you know?" He says, "Yes. It's probably a good idea." So he started teaching break dancing class at the Point. So he started doing that, and then the Point came up to us, said, "Look, we have a small budget. Maybe you guys could do graffiti class." So we're not teachers. I'm not a teacher. I can't see myself as a teacher. They're like, "Oh, you could teach. " So they try to bring like elementary school kids, and they were too young. One kid ate an eraser, right? [laughter] And I see a guy going like this, "Yo. Yo, take that." And it was then they said, "Okay, maybe we bring in high school kids." And that worked out. So we did almost a year program with them. Steven Payne: 01:42:20.025 Wow. BG 183: 01:42:20.710 Two or three of them became famous after they graduated, and hired us to do work. One guy was in charge of production company for music videos, so he called us a do a video with Beyoncé. Kurt Boone: 01:42:38.824 Wow. Steven Payne: 01:42:39.345 Unbelievable. Wow. BG 183: 01:42:39.328 And [J. Cole called?] the party. Kurt Boone: 01:42:43.162 Wow. BG 183: 01:42:43.254 So we came out in the video, and he the one who got us in and got us paid to do the video. And the funny story is they kept telling us, "Guys, when you see Beyoncé, don't give an eye-to-eye contact. She don't like that." [laughter] This is the people like, "Okay." "Don't ask her for her autograph." And then later on, they told us the same story again and the third time. So now I'm painting on the wall. I'm doing this, doing the background. We're doing it at the party. And Beyoncé came. And I stood stuck. [laughter] She said, "Oh, I love it. It looks nice." [laughter] She falls for like, I don't know, two or three minutes? And someone said, "Freeze," and I just froze there. I never saw Beyoncé's face. Never looked at her. The only one I spoke to her was Nicer. And [Nicer was like?] and me and Bio, the only one stuck. Steven Payne: 01:43:51.676 Froze. BG 183: 01:43:52.322 Frozen. Steven Payne: 01:43:56.057 Wow. BG 183: 01:43:56.928 Because they kept telling us, "Don't look at her. Don't look at her." [laughter] And I thought, I believed it. [laughter] Steven Payne: 01:44:03.405 Wow. BG 183: 01:44:03.940 And so life been really good. You know what I'm saying? Me by nights have been together since high school. Steven Payne: 01:44:11.202 Yeah. Kurt Boone: 01:44:11.673 So you met Nicer in high school, then? BG 183: 01:44:13.110 Right. Then later on, I met Nicer in high school. He was the youngest one in the crew. And he used to just tag along. Steven Payne: 01:44:21.362 Yeah. Kurt Boone: 01:44:21.703 Okay. BG 183: 01:44:21.987 I'll be like, "Oh, I'm going bombing," he said, "Can I go with you all?" We'd be like, "Okay, come." Steven Payne: 01:44:25.924 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 01:44:26.304 That was cool. Yeah. I invited so many people to write with me. Even when I first started and I'd be like, "Okay." We used to do a lot of street bombing. I saw a lot of pretty sweet tags. A lot of BS 119, a lot of Blade tags. When you bombing, you start seeing all these famous people bombing. And me and a couple friend of mine that wanted to do graffiti-- that did graffiti with me, but when I took them to the tunnel, I said, "Come on, you ready to go in the tunnel?" Where? I said, "In there." They said, "It's kind of dark in there, isn't it?" I said, "Yeah, it's dark." "What about the rats?" "Yeah. sometime they go around but don't worry about it." "There's other people in there?" I said, "Yeah, there'll be some time other people but don't worry about it. Let's go." Kurt Boone: 01:45:16.745 Let's go. BG 183: 01:45:17.665 "Nah, man. I don't feel like writing. I'd rather street bomb than go in the tunnel with you." "Ah, you for real?" So not a lot of people liked that I wrote with-- you really had to go and have-- not be scared? Even when you did the layup, you had to walk the wooden platform. Steven Payne: 01:45:37.147 Sure, and some of the times the wood would be [inaudible]. BG 183: 01:45:39.415 And you could hear it. And like, "Oh shit," and you up in a third floor, second floor, you might fall. Steven Payne: 01:45:47.200 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. BG 183: 01:45:48.631 So not everybody would like to go also on the platform to do layup. They'd rather get close. [inaudible] right here or to jump into the track. They'll be scared and be like, "I'm about to third rail." I said, "Don't worry about it, though." You don't touch it and you're good. "No, no, I buy it breaks." So there was always an excuse for-- not everybody that I wrote with would go with me fully. And then after that, we started painting these walls and the streets. And you had to be extra careful what you painted, because we painted a wall-- started painting memorial walls. People that passed away. And these memorial walls was to honor or to represent that friends or family that passed away and it's to remorse the person that just died. I remember painting these walls-- painting these walls. Memorial walls. And after I painted about 12 memorial waIls, it started messing with my head. Yo, this is deep. These people are my own people. They just dying. Babies that passed away from an accident. We painted this lady, she hit her head on the escalator and she died. Old people died of natural causes and then you had-- some of them were murdered. Kurt Boone: 01:47:29.521 Street violence. Yeah. BG 183: 01:47:30.512 Street violence. And you had one guy that he was messing around with his girlfriend-- he had a new girlfriend, but the old boyfriend came back and killed him. It was kind of not-- this is in the 90s. People would just gunshot everywhere, the drugs. This is before Giuliani. You know what I'm saying? It was so bad in the street. And everybody wanted a memorial wall. Everybody. And this block saying-- they used to told us, "Oh, you see that memorial wall you did? It looks nice we want ours to look better for my boy. You know what I'm saying? For my boy that passed away. Then we were going to Manhattan doing a memorial. We was doing in Brooklyn, we went to Jersey. We was going everywhere painting, but that always was the same thing. It was death. I'm a graffiti artist. I paint graffiti, now I'm painting faces for these people that died. I saying to myself, "I can't handle this no more." I'm hearing the news. I'm doing memorial walls, people just dying left to right. And I told [Bian?] nicely, "Yo, I can't take this no more. I can't draw this." I'm painting the face and they come up to me behind me and they're talking to me. And I look, they're not talking to me. They're talking to the mural that I'm painting on the wall. Kurt Boone: 01:49:06.205 You guys became real famous for that. BG 183: 01:49:08.266 Right. So and then the media was not good for us either. The media was saying, "These guys are painting memorial walls for drug dealers, for gangsters, for people--" And then the city went and started buffing all these walls. In the '90s, they went--I think late '90s, they started taking down all these walls that we painted. "This is not good." I know the person that came. It was a lady that came through and I kept looking at her. I said, "You're a cop, right?" She, "No, I'm not a cop. I just want to know about these walls. The way she was talking to me and then after she left, all these walls were taken down. And a lot of these walls were taken down through having programs with kids. And then they would have kids come over with buckets of paint and, "Oh, we're cleaning up our neighborhood." And they will buff these walls, the memorial walls. And then they have police present in case something jump up, but that's how it was. It was taken down-- we had like at least 50 memorial walls, and I think only a few survived. Steven Payne: 01:50:30.725 That's insane. Wow! Kurt Boone: 01:50:32.904 So can you talk a little bit about TATS CRU becoming a small business in the midst of all this difficulty, right? Because you guys are working with corporations, and that takes some savvy to kind of do that. You got to go through agencies and stuff, there's contracts, that kind of thing. So how does the [inaudible] crew become this business with their art? BG 183: 01:50:58.332 Before we transition into all this, remember, we was hardcore graffiti artists, now we going into the business. So I remember we got our first contract-- we haven't established ourselves as a business. We working with each other. Me, Nice and Bob working with each other. We got a contract and now we go to a hardware store. And in the hardware store we like, "Hey, what's up?" And the guy's name was Marty. "Marty, what's up, man? We're going to buy some paint." And he became good friends with us. And he would give us the key with all the spray paint inside. So we will open up and we see all these spray can. And us three is looking at each other like, "We could steal some of this paint." And then we said, "No, we're going to start a business. We shouldn't be stealing. We have a budget for money to buying paint, let's buy paint." And that's how we did. We went in there and forgot. But again, all that, I could take at least 10 to 12 cans [inaudible] but then in end of day, and the guy was even looking. There's no camera during that time. So we like, "No, let's keep it legit to the sense that we are businessman now, now we-- so it was kind of hard. Even when we went to go look for walls to do these to do this stuff, we would go and talk to the landlord and say, "Look, we going to do a graffiti mural to-- "No, I don't want it." And we'd go back and said, "We're going to do a mural, a graffiti mural here." "I don't want it." BG 183: 01:52:51.585 And then I said, "Damn, what's going on? Maybe I have to stop saying graffiti and say art." Are we going to do a mural or a art mural here?" "Oh, okay." "Well, yeah, a little art mural." And then that's how they kind of opened up, so. And because again, the media was also saying graffiti is not good in the '90s. You be careful. Because-- Steven Payne: 01:53:16.670 And then once you gave the name graffiti too, to begin with. BG 183: 01:53:18.811 Right. In the beginning with and same thing with the word hip hop. We're really writers. But we know that story. But so it was kind of hard for us. So we started finding ways and how to really talk, be like, "Okay, look, we're going to go into your-- we want to paint your wall, your wall is already vandalized." And, "I don't want it." No, just hear me out. Maybe I could paint the wall for you for free. I'll do a mural because it's a grocery store. You could do something with Coca-Cola. And I could give you some money." Some money. Oh, you're going to give me some money? I said, "Yeah, I'm having a budget 300. We paint the wall and I just need an okay." "Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, paint my wall." Kurt Boone: 01:54:14.036 Pain my wall. Steven Payne: 01:54:14.401 Paint any wall. BG 183: 01:54:15.049 "You're going to pay now?" "No, no, no, when I come back, I got to let my client know that we're going to paint this wall and then it's okay." And I would come back a week later, "Look, here's the 300." And then from there, at least the wall has to stay up at least a little bit. At least, after two months, three months. So they started working. And then we had one wall that got buffed by the owner a month later, and I said, "Oh, I thought you were going to leave it up." "No, it's [a month?]. I only keep it up [a month?]." Then we made a contract that he signed here, I'll give you this money just say that the wall going to stay up for two or three months. And then we started doing that. And then so we started mostly the street movement that people now could paint the street and the wall would last. But back then, no mural would last. We started that movement that you allow to go over a wall that has, again, graffiti on it, you could go over it without the actual graffiti aught come back to cross you out. Do that, it's a no-no. You don't do that. So that's how we started giving out these walls to other writers, that's how it's spreading out the news that this is the way it should be, and everybody should be happy with it. It's not like we're going against yo physically. It's nothing personal. It's all business. BG 183: 01:55:45.482 And so that's how we started doing these walls and getting permission. It was hard for us. We were not making no money. We were broke in the early '90s. Really broke. There was like six months that we didn't even get a job. My wife was telling me, "You better work at McDonald's. Go to McDonald's. Go to where. I don't care. Get a a job. [he?] like, "Yeah, yeah, go get a job." [laughter] I was like, "[inaudible]" because I left my job already. You know what I'm saying? I left my job in the '90s. And how I left that job was because I was a engineer for a company called Acme Steel Door in Brooklyn. And my supervisor was like-- because I used to paint walls. I'd go to my job and then meet up with the guys about 8 o'clock at night and paint until we finish. Sometimes we finish at 3:00, sometimes we finish at 5:00 in the morning. At 6:00 in the morning I would go home, jump in the shower, drink a lot of coffee, and go to work. And then get to work and I'll be sleeping at my desk. And my supervisor came up to me. She said, "You have a choice. You could leave here or leave the other job. You can't be sleeping here." And that rang a bell like, "Oh, okay. That's a choice I wasn't thinking about." I'm thinking about working, making money. And then this will be also making money. So I'm making money both ways. I'm okay. But it wasn't like that. BG 183: 01:57:19.861 So when we started landing all these jobs, I said, "Okay, it's time to leave." So I saved up enough money. I said, "I'm going to leave my job and never look back." So I left it and never looked back. When that money ran out, there was no more money. We was like, "What the fuck are we going to do? There's no more money in the street and it's kind of hard." And then we landed another company called Crooked Eye. They were a bill distributor. They had a juice called Crooked Eye, almost like a drink, alcohol. So we started doing that. And then we started doing other small jobs and doing mom-and-pop stores. We did Shivas Regal. And during that time, we did ABC Carpet at Home. So how we started the company TATS, I mean adding the S to the TAT screw, we met Fat Joe the time that we were also doing a music video for KRS-One called Mad Lion. Mad Lion was a singer. He was doing a song. And we was actually painting in a place called The Bronx Hall of Fame. It was located on a 169th Street and 3rd Avenue behind the school. And so KRS knew about the school. And it was a perfect place because it was kind of like a backyard to a big wall away from the school. And we'd been painting there for a year or two. BG 183: 01:59:04.651 So we told KRS-One that would be a good place to do the video for Mad Lion, and now we're painting. The Mad Lion video we did a big lion. And who came along? Fat Joe. Fat Joe came, and he was like, "Yo, what's up, guys? I love you guys. TATS Crew, I love you. I love you, Guys. You guys are my idols. I love you guys." And he also was a graffiti artist. Steven Payne: 01:59:34.184 Ah, he was a graffiti artist. BG 183: 01:59:35.809 And he wrote Crack. So next thing you know, him, Brim went on a mission and became All City. They were going all over the place doing Brim, Crack, Crack, Brim all over the place. And when Joe was ready to drop his album, he came up to us. And he said, "Look guys, want to do [snikes?]. And [snikes?] are just you come on with a poster and you go through the neighborhood and you put it up, like a new movie coming out. Coming soon. So we went and we did a lot of-- I got Flow Joe posters all over. So we made up-- Kurt Boone: 02:00:24.868 We paste it. BG 183: 02:00:26.326 We pasted. We met up with Fat Joe by 11 o'clock at night. Didn't go out until like 1 o'clock. So we hit all the major fashion places like stores. We would go to Fordham road. We went to 3rd Avenue, then we hit Southern Boulevard, and then we go to 125th street. From 125th Street, we go to the Times Square, the Village. And then from the Village we go up to Queens, to the Queen's Mall, Northern Boulevard, Queens Boulevard. Then from there, we go to Brooklyn. We go to the Bushwick section. We go to Coney Island, and we would snipe up every day for like a whole month. One time, Joe was like, "Yo, it's like 6:00 in the morning," and Joe said, "Yo, we got to go-- we got to go over here and we like, "Yo." Me and Bio was like-- was looking at each other like, "Yo, Bio. I'm tired. You know what I'm saying? We got to get the fuck out of here, and Joe got us kidnapped." You know what I'm saying? So me and Bio say, "Yo, Joe man, can you pull over real quick? We gotta take a leak." So when he pulled over, me and Bio started running. And Joe knew already that we was out. We wasn't coming back, so we see the van taken out. We were like, "We got to get the fuck out of here. We've been here with you for hours and hours." But we loved it, and that campaign was so successful when Big Pun came along. He was doing the same thing for Big Pun. We destroyed Big pun. BG 183: 02:02:11.779 I think Joe got a different team and Pun with everywhere. People want to know-- the way he was doing it was like street bombing as a graffiti artist. So when you're a graffiti artist, you bomb anywhere. We do inside of the highway. We was doing everywhere. And then at the same time, [inaudible] was doing work with Coca-Cola. We're doing work for everybody and so we tagging ourselves. We putting up TATS. You know what I'm saying? What happened is, instead of doing TAT and TS separate, so we took the last T, and just added an S. We've been doing that from the beginning, you know what I'm saying? When [inaudible] had his crew, TMB, we bought TAT and B for that mean TAT, T and B. TOA, TCA. We had a whole bunch with the TAT, but we added in your first letter of your cool sided with a T, and we just connected it like that. So that's how the TS started from the TATS. We also part of task crew [inaudible]. And so we just kept going and kept doing that. We painted when Pun passed away. We had that particular wall that we painted. And me, Bio, [inaudible] and me, we had a nice wall that we painted. Bio did a [inaudible] did a character with a bulletproof vest with a Puerto Rican bandana and then he's holding up two guns and he shooting and then there's a BG 183. BG 183: 02:04:03.319 And I remember when Pun was coming out with his album, he his promotional photograph was him in front of that particular piece that he's doing the same thing, the same movement. And that was the photo that he was promoting himself to the world. So when he died, we say, "Oh, let's do that wall," and that's how that area of the Pun at Roger's place became the Big Pun wall. We also painted and Casita Maria, again, I was born and raised across you from Casino Maria. Casita Maria reached out to us to paint three hermanas and the three hermanas is actually Joe Conzo's grandmother. That we also painted another wall for his grandmother on Prospect. That got you know got taken down, but the actual print is inside the facility. So we painted a lot of stuff. I love The Bronx mural that's located on Simpson. Again, Simpson is where I grew up at. And that's how we got the wall. So a lot of these walls was because of my neighborhood. Bio was born and Bio raised up in Bronx River Project and that's how I got to meet Bambaataa because of Bio, but Bio lived in Bronx River. So we did a lot-- I did a lot of stuff in Bronx River. But it was a great time. It's a lot of stuff that we did that's still out there that you still could see, but. BG 183: 02:05:51.989 And after that, we were just taking the company in a way that not only that we do murals, we also do vinyl, we do contract for all the stuff that we do, we do lectures. And you got to show going on right now too, right? Right. I did a show at Wall Works too, the place is called Crete Hub. And I asked Crash to do-- I wanted to do a show there in 2020, thinking that I could do a show in the next couple of months. He said, "Yeah, let me look at my calendar." And he said, "Okay, 2022 of February." I said, "Wow, that's like two years from now." I said, "All right. Let's get it. Let's get it, so." But it did give me more time to produce some really great paintings. I actually dedicated a painting there for Big Pun. Steven Payne: 02:06:51.622 Yeah. I saw that. BG 183: 02:06:52.370 But this is the month that he passed away. He passed away February 7th. So it was perfect to have that particular piece in there for people to see and enjoy. I also did a self-portrait of myself, drawing. And I also do a hydrant. That's my signature that I've been doing it for the last fir years. I also found these two hydrant pieces that was laying on the floor and then I was like-- and it kept telling me, "Why you don't put it in your show?" And I kept saying to myself, "I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how can I create something with this?" So, in the end, after like a week and a half before the show, I came up with the idea and that's what I came up. I think it was a really great idea of how I did it. And this is a show that, again, I just wanted to show people, my fans, my family, that I really love art, and this is something that I was born, God gave me a gift that I'm still using it. And doing a lot of positive things with it. BG 183: 02:08:04.000 And in the end, I'm proud of the show because know, again, we got the COVID. And it was amazing that I had a leaf 250 to 300 people showing up in that show like you know. People calling me like," Y'all, I can't find parking." And it was like, for me it was like incredible that people still like the stuff that I do, I have a lot of support and a lot of people that still love what I do. So I actually have two more upcoming shows and I think it's like more like a pop-up show I'm doing and I think a lot of people are also reaching out to me, they want work to be done on canvases and I think because in the beginning we were mostly street artists that was doing street art advertising or street art mural but a lot of people don't know that I also paint canvas and now after this one show people are reaching out to me and if you guys had any more questions-- Kurt Boone: 02:09:13.068 Oh, just the last couple of questions would be to talk a little bit about the Muriel kings and how do you feel about this whole Mural movement around the world and you being a patriarch because you travel with the world and you guys are maybe the inspiration to this whole Muriel movement now because way more than tagging, it's a whole global movement called Mural. So how do you feel about the name Mural king said your courier way back and then this whole global movement called Murals being made by artists all over the world? BG 183: 02:09:51.533 Okay so when I started doing the graph you had like all this like Lee, Lee was doing incredible mural back down in the 80s. He did one that was in the train station that was like my Internet . Back then the way you saw murals is you had to travel by train. So we had one that was from, I think from 34th street to 14th street there's an abandoned four or five train station. I think it's on 27th street that's abandoned, so when the train is going slow you can see the bandit and he had this mural that he painted this Egyptian guy on a camel. It was a silhouette, so he did like yellow and orange sky and he did like some beige into browns for the sign and on the tip of the-- on a mountain of the sand he did like a camel with an Egyptian like silhouette and then he drew this like the shadow of the camel to silhouette and it was so amazing like wow, I didn't know you could do that with spray paint like you could do art like you know like people was doing art like you had like the hand of doom was Seen and then Lee did another one that I think it was the 2001 mural day, there was a lion and that was so crazy and then Lee did another painting that I saw on the train and then you had Sin doing top to bottom with colors . BG 183: 02:11:47.255 So this inspired me to like wow it's more than a piece on the train, it's like a it's a whole production that you could do. So that brought me to the thing and then in the early 90s we was traveling a little bit around the world, we traveled to France and we met a crew called Mac crew and they C crew and they were one of the best crew out there. They were doing top to bottom crew and so we needed to change our name from TAT, so I came up with the idea let's do-- I'm going to call myself the Mural King because at that time we were painting so much mural. We like, "Yo, we call ourselves the Mural King," so then we took it and we did it for our company name. "Oh, let's do The Mural King as the company, and when we started traveling, these people was doing side of buildings incredibly. Doing style, doing character, doing some stuff that it was amazing, and I don't know, it could have been from the subway art book that inspired everybody to do this graffiti. Could have been, again, the only way you saw graffiti was through graffiti magazines. You had a lot of graffiti magazine that was out there, and because of these graffiti magazine-- and again, there was getting done here. There was one or two magazine in New York City, but a lot of the magazine was coming from overseas, so they was also producing, so they took something that somebody started back here, let's say TAKI 183, and then you had the Phase 2, you had the COCO 144, the Snakes, and I was writing, but it just took off. You know what I'm saying? BG 183: 02:13:50.770 People used to interview me and say, "What do you want graffiti to be at?" and I said, "I want graffiti to be on a plane, on a side of a boat, but now it's there already. People painted plane, helicopters. It's in movie backdrop. You see a lot of music videos, and it's all over. You know what I'm saying? It's a nonstop-- We actually did total of 29 music videos that we have out there that we did from the early '80s, so when people ask us, "How long you been doing business?" we've been doing business since when we first started. It's not like we started in the '90s. Yeah, we officially went and got a copyright. Yeah, TATS Cru is now a company, but we've been doing this from early, early '80s when we first started, and today Bio is-- He's doing his heart. He's all over with the heart. Nicer's getting busy doing his characters and doing paintings, it's incredible, and then myself, I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing, and then I think when us three get together it's amazing work. You know what I'm saying? Steven Payne: 02:15:12.026 Absolutely, yeah. BG 183: 02:15:12.713 Even the new school writers, they show us so much love, and looking at their work, they're like, "Wow, your guys are way better than other." "No, no, no, your guys are the gods," and then I said, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you." Kurt Boone: 02:15:23.624 Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Steven Payne: 02:15:26.889 Yeah, for sure. BG 183: 02:15:28.872 I see myself like I'm not doing the type of work you're doing, but they're looking at me like, "You so good at it," because not only that we do-- a lot of writers, they only-- It's only a few writer that specialize in everything. There's a couple, right, that "I just do characters," and they can't do letters, and there's a lot of people that do letters, but they can't do characters, and a lot of people who do characters and letters, but they don't have a hand style, so a lot of people-- It's real different now, real different. It's a different movement, and I feel like whatever you have, whatever you have to give it's the best. It's not like you have to stop. You just continue doing what you're doing. I know we started traveling around the world, and we went to Mexico. And in Mexico, there's different art in Mexico where they-- again, the paint over there is three times as much over there because you take domestic money, and our money is about nine times, eight times. So over there, for them to get colors, this is like late 90s. BG 183: 02:16:49.193 So they take one color like a light yellow, and they take an orange, and they put two different types of cap on the spray can, and they put a straw between these two cans. So if this can is kind of empty, they spray this side, and they put a color that runs from one can to the next can to mix the color. Steven Payne: 02:17:15.351 Wow. Kurt Boone: 02:17:15.586 In Mexico? BG 183: 02:17:16.317 In Mexico. But oh, wow, this is-- Steven Payne: 02:17:17.105 That's crazy. BG 183: 02:17:18.282 You're over there and you seen this happening, like, "Wow, this is incredible." I would never guess to add two colors together. So they figured out-- so everywhere you go, it's always something new. And again, in Mexico, we noticed that there was a lot of-- the percentage of the women-- there was a lot of women graffiti artists. We were like, "Wow, this is incredible." In New York, you see them, but it's not so many. But in Mexico, about 40% of the women was graffiti artist, and 60% were men. And like, "Oh, wow, this is really awesome." So to this day, what I've been doing is just been joined almost every day. I took a trip to Brazil, and I remember there was-- 2015 or '13, I went to Brazil. And during that time, I'm painting murals for everybody from McDonald's to movies that's coming up brand new. I'm doing T-Mobile, doing AT&T. We're doing stuff for everybody, but it was like I'm doing something for someone. It was not I was doing something for myself. So it became a job. It became kind of boring to me like, "Okay, I'm doing this. I'm painting this." So used this color red, used this color blue. So it was like something that we had to do for us to get paid. It was all right, but it was nothing I felt was for me. BG 183: 02:19:01.684 So when I took a trip to Brazil, it changed my life. I'm seeing these artists. They're painting out of raw material. They're using brushes. They're taking a wall-- here in New York, we paint the whole wall one color. There, they just paint whatever image they want to throw on the wall. So if it's a person's face with a body, they're just doing a round circle and the body, and that's it. The rest is just raw brick wall cement. So when I went there, I painted with close to like 50 artists, and I'm seeing every artist kind of struggling because, again, pink costs so much money, and they're making something out of nothing. And they brought me back to how I started. And so when I left Brazil, I was a new artist. Wow. This opened up my eyes to saying like, "Don't take this for granted because you're good at what you're doing." There's always something that you always got to get there and same thing like a boxer. After a while you boxing, you winning, it gets boring. You know what I'm saying? So you always got to keep that heat, that energy in your body. Keep going. So in this solo show, this is what I did. I gave it my all. I didn't take nothing for granted. I said, look, people want to see more, I have to give them more. And that's what I've been doing. Steven Payne: 02:20:39.155 Absolutely. I got one final question for you which is, what does The Bronx represent to you? BG 183: 02:20:45.486 For me The Bronx represent everything, represent life, represent me as a person because without-- me living in The Bronx, it showed me different elements of life from being poor, from being broke, from seeing everything that was-- like when people say, "You live in The Bronx? Where? In the South Bronx?" For me it was life. We had the hydrant, we had sports, we had street games, we had everything that only in poor neighborhood would have. And we did. We had the crime rate, you had to protect yourself, you had your friends that was doing so much crime or you had your friend that passed away too early in the game that you didn't want to hear about that. And you had everything that-- like Kara once said, The Bronx keep creating it, and that's why we've been doing for many years. We create something out of nothing and that's what The Bronx represent. You know what I'm saying? If you are born and raised here, somehow you talented. And somehow and somewhere in your life if you want to be a dancer, you go knocking your next door neighbor and he's a dancer. You want to be a DJ, you go upstairs and DJ. You want to do graffiti, the wall right across the street has graffiti. BG 183: 02:22:28.755 So everything that you want is here. If you hungry, you go to the nearest grocery store. You want to go shopping, it's right there. You want to take the subway, the buses, everything is so close. The Bronx has everything. We got the museums. We have the best team in the world, New York Yankees. You know what I'm saying? You can't go wrong with that. You know what I'm saying? I support New York Yankees since the early '77 when they won back then. And the black guys. We had black guys. We have everybody. It's family. We as a Bronx family, we protect each other. If you have your son and your daughter, the next door neighbor is looking out for your kids. You know what I'm saying? People say that you got to be careful but here, I feel it's a safer place because mothers when they see something going on, they're out there, " Yo, you better be careful with my kids. That's for my kids." You know what I'm saying? So we have it all. You know what I'm saying? We have everything - You know what I'm saying? - from the board president, Ruben Diaz. He really went and he did what he had to do. He had all these people that come down. The Bronx is where it's at. Hip hop wouldn't start it because of The Bronx. Graffiti wouldn't be here because it was for The Bronx. So we make it even from breakdancing to emceeing, all-- Steven Payne: 02:24:10.270 The Latin Hustle, salsa. BG 183: 02:24:11.605 Right. Latin Hustle to salsa. Everything is all in The Bronx. You hear like when I travel the world and I say I'm from The Bronx, people will stop and ask me like 100 questions. Okay. You got the fashion that's got in The Bronx. You got everything. You know what I'm saying? How can I say? I'm glad again I'm here. I'm glad that I ran with my task crew, mash up to my wife, my kids, the whole family, the crash, the days, the lady pinks, the Lee, Mitch 77, one guy that I used to go and see one of his wall that he had by Yankee Stadium, on the wall that he had a Mitch 77 that was like my internet, [inaudible] early '80s. All the DJs that was out there, Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, these guys are still current in the game, Grand Wizard Theodore. These guys are still making hip hop, making The Bronx what it is today. Steven Payne: 02:25:29.436 Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing everything that you've shared today and I think we'll end Kurt with-- Kurt Boone: 02:25:39.632 Thank you all. The only thing we-- the last day we ask every artist is to do a tag for us. This stays in the music library. BG 183: 02:25:46.410 Oh, great. Kurt Boone: 02:25:46.980 So I have a marker. I have a marker. BG 183: 02:25:49.125 It's not a dry marker, right? Kurt Boone: 02:25:51.018 [inaudible]. Hold on. I 'll show you. It's a dry marker. Yeah. Yeah. It's a dry marker. Kurt Boone: 02:25:57.860 It's good. Okay. For a dry marker you hit it down like this and ink should come down. That's how you get blood. Kurt Boone: 02:26:08.122 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. BG 183: 02:26:18.627 Oh, see. It's already dripping. Steven Payne: 02:26:20.684 Yeah. There we go. [silence] Kurt Boone: 02:27:15.468 [inaudible]. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed BG 183 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with BG 183 Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 1, 2022 with BG 183, a member of the legendary Tats Cru, one of the most prolific Bronx graffiti crews painting whole cars and trains during the Golden Era of the 1980s and trailblazers of the contemporary global street arts movement. In this oral history BG 183 speaks about growing up in the South Bronx along the 6 line, his love and aptitude for art from a young age, his involvement in the emerging hip hop culture of the 1970s, his early days as a graffiti writer, how he got involved in Tats Cru (originally T.A.T. Cru), transitioning more to mural work during the late 1980s and 1990s, his current work as a globally renowned artist, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Stephen DeSimone, CEO/President of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.03.01 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220301 BG183 graffiti TATS Cru Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:38:56 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed COSE Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220119.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with COSE OH-BAADP.20220119 01:38:56 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the donation of Stephen DeSimone, President/CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. bxoralhistory COSE (TDS) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 cose-tds-oral-history-2022-01-19.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/6GLOmsUQmNo YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. Today is January 19, 2022, and this is the second oral history recorded for the project. Kurt, you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone: Yeah, I'm Kurt, Kurt Boone. I'm a writer, and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Steven Payne: Alright, great, thank you, Kurt. And we're really happy to be here, really honored to be here with COSE TDS, the legendary style master affiliated with TDS a.k.a. The Death Squad, and COSE is also a longtime Bronxite, really, almost from birth, since he was age 3, and COSE has his art already in a lot of places: the Museum of the City of New York has, has the largest collection of his artwork. He's been interviewed, received a lot of awards, just received recognition from, from The Bronx for all of his contributions to hip hop culture in general, particularly around graffiti writing, and we're just really happy to be here with COSE . . . In this segment, Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, introduce themselves as well as COSE (TDS), one of the most prolific graffiti artists from The Bronx during the Golden Age of graffiti during the early 1980s. Bronx County Historical Society Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Cose (Graffiti artist);Graffiti artists;The Death Squad (Graffiti artist group) 0 78 Early Life COSE: First and foremost, I want to thank you, Steven, and you Kurt. Thank you for even giving me the opportunity to express myself and give you a little brief history about who I am. And with that being said, well, my family came from Puerto Rico . . . In this segment of the oral history, COSE speaks about his birth in Manhattan, his move to The Bronx, the various schools he attended (briefly), his early days of graffiti writing, the word "graffiti" and its history, and the lack of documentation of his early work. He also goes more into his family roots in Puerto Rico, what the various places he's lived in The Bronx have been like—including differences between private and public residences—where he hung out in the neighborhood as a child, his lifelong love of nature and animals, travels, and what he did for fun around the neighborhood. Aguadilla (P.R.);Alexander Burger Middle School/I.S. 139 (The Bronx, N.Y.);Bombing (Graffiti);Brown Place (The Bronx, N.Y.);Double dutch (Rope skipping);East 136th Street (The Bronx, N.Y.);East 137th Street (The Bronx, N.Y.);Graffiti;Hip-hop;Hopscotch;Johnny On the Spot;Kick the Can;Manhattan Vocational and Technical High School;Manhunt;Morris High School;Mount Sinai Hospital (New York, N.Y.);P.S. 154 (The Bronx, N.Y.);Ponce (P.R.);Ringolevio;Run, Catch, and Kiss;Skateboarding;Skully/skelly/skellies;Willis Avenue (The Bronx, N.Y.) Arson;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Community centers;East Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Exotic animals;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Housing--Abandonment;Migration, Internal--United States;Mott Haven (New York, N.Y.);Nature;Public housing;Puerto Ricans;Rural-urban migration--United States;Street games;Voyages and travels 0 601 School and Teenage Experiences COSE: The one that really sticks out in my mind is Manhattan Vocational, because that ties into what we're doing this interview for, basically, you know, who I am, a Bronxite and graffiti art. This is where—cause there's a kid from my neighborhood that went to that school. His name is BO (OTB), BO ROCK, he's another graffiti artist, a little older, he's like two or three years older than me . . . In this segment COSE speaks about his experience in high school at Manhattan Vocational, particularly the other graffiti artists he met there, and the times he skipped school to write. He also talks about the threat of physical violence from other graffiti crews, especially white ones, his struggles with drugs over the years, episodes from his teenage years and early adulthood that he regrets but that still made him who he is, and ambitions he had during high school. 149th Street–Grand Concourse station;Bo (Graffiti artist);Bombing (Graffiti);Cap (Graffiti artist);Coats--sheepskin;Cope2 (Graffiti artist);Crack cocaine;Drugs;Fatman Scoop;Graffiti Writers' Bench (The Bronx, N.Y.);Layups (Graffiti);Lk (Graffiti artist);Manhattan Vocational and Technical High School;Messengers;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Rush (Graffiti artist);Scam 1 (Graffiti artist);Shoes--British walkers;Skeleton keys;Slim (Graffiti artist);The Ball Busters (Graffiti artist group);Zoologists Attempted murder;Drugs and addiction;Employment;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;High schools--United States;Hip-hop--Style;Racism;Robbery 0 1229 Music, Food, and Culture Growing Up COSE: Primarily, was a lot of oldies but goodies. I remember my father, my dad, he had this reel-to-reel. Damn, I'm old as a motherfucker. See, I'm old as a motherfucker. Really, I just revealed my, I said it already, but damn. So I remember that shit, and my father used to play like the Delfonics, Temptations, Stylistics, all the oldies but goodies, you know, from Motown . . . In this segment COSE speaks about the music he remembers hearing growing up, including Motown and Salsa, and he gets into the African and indigenous influences on Puerto Rican and Latino culture in general. He also talks about the indigenous culture and history of Puerto Rico. After remembering what kinds of food he ate while growing up, COSE dives into a reflection on the unique position of Puerto Ricans in relation to other Latinos, as simultaneously citizens and colonial subjects of the United States. Columbus, Christopher;Delfonics (Musical group);Gladys Knight and the Pips;Lopez, Jennifer, 1970-;Salsa (Music);Snaps;Sotomayor, Sonia, 1954-;Stylistics (Musical group);Temptations (Musical group) Arawak Indians;Cooking, Puerto Rican;Imperialism;Indigenous Americas;Latinos;Migration, Internal--United States;Motown classics;Puerto Ricans;Puerto Rico--History;Taino Indians 0 1779 Becoming a Graffiti Writer COSE: Again, that was like in the early '80s, like '81. When I went to high school that's when I really started riding trains, you know, like riding on a train. Cause, you know, I was in junior high school. I didn't have to take a subway as much . . . In this segment, COSE describes his process of becoming a graffiti writer, including his early experience writing on walls and other surfaces, his graduation to painting trains, and his first arrest on vandalism charges in 1983. COSE also talks about the different tag names he tried out and where "COSE" comes from, his first experience painting a train in 1981, what graffiti meant to him at the time, other graffiti artists he knew, and how his incarceration and subsequent drug use led to his missing out on the transition of graffiti to art galleries. He ends this segment by speaking about his crew, TDS, The Death Squad, how he got into it, memories of "racking", other members of TDS, and where the name of the crew came from. Bear 167 (Graffiti artist);Burners (Graffiti);Chain 3 (Graffiti artist);Coast (Soap firm);Cose (Graffiti artist);Crash (Graffiti artist);Daily news (New York, N.Y. : 1920);Death (Slang);Fame (Graffiti);Fashion Moda (Group);Gap1 (Graffiti artist);Graffiti Writers' Bench;Kool 131 (Graffiti artist);Layups (Graffiti);Magik Markers;Master Graffiti Artists (Graffiti artist group);Mitch 77 (Graffiti artist);Name (Graffiti);Part 1 (Graffiti artist);Quinones, Lee George;Racking (Graffiti);Seen (Graffiti artist), 1961-;Spray paint;Style (Graffiti);The Death Squad (Graffiti artist group);The Magnificent Team (Graffiti artist group);Throwups (Graffiti) Attempted murder;Drugs and addiction;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Incarceration issues;Lettering in art;Subways;Tools in art;Vandalism 0 2497 Leaving Graffiti and Coming Back Kurt Boone: So, so the, when, when, when graffiti started getting noticed as an art form, you was kind of tied up . . . COSE: I was in prison, I was in prison . . . In this segment of his oral history COSE gets more into how his incarceration and struggles with drugs pulled him away from graffiti during the 1980s. He also speaks about how art helped him achieve sobriety during the 2010s and shows a black book that documents this transition in his life. Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (Gang);Angel dust;Bo (Graffiti artist);Canvas;Crack cocaine;Delta2 (Graffiti artist) Drug addicts--Rehabilitation;Drugs and addiction;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Prisons--United States 0 2937 Latin Kings and the Legacy of the Young Lords COSE: I can talk about it, real brief. It was 1997, and I was in Rikers Island. Remember I told you my favorite subject is history and psychology . . . In this segment, COSE relates how he joined the Latin Kings on Rikers Island and conveys what he understands to be the group's mission: it is not meant to be a gang but rather an organization for the upliftment of the Latino community. He also talks about carrying on the legacy of the Young Lords and offers an analysis as to why some Young Lords stopped being revolutionaries over the years. The reason for this, COSE offers, is that the top 1% bought off a few of the more prominent Young Lords in order to maintain power. Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (Gang);Black Panther Party;Bloods (Gang);Freemasons;Guzman, Pablo;Illuminati;King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968;Luciano, Felipe;Rikers Island (N.Y.);X, Malcolm, 1925-1965;Young Lords Party Class consciousness;Class struggle;Gangs--United States;Puerto Rico--History;Rikers Island (N.Y.);Secret societies;Young Lords (Organization) 0 3354 Current and Future Plans with Art COSE: What I'm doing with my art is that, art primarily is my passion right now. I have to say this, for, to get this really understood. 'Cause there might be someone watching this who might not understand what I'm saying . . . In this segment of his oral history COSE talks about his current work and future ambitions when it comes to art. He touches on how art brings balance to his life, his aim to be in major galleries in the near future, his sense of pride over graffiti becoming a worldwide phenomenon, and the development of his current artistic style and entrepreneurial strategy. Banksy;Cope2 (Graffiti artist);Oppression;Outside the Box (Art series);Sands, Leia (Artist);Sotheby's (Firm);Trademarks Art;Art galleries, Commercial;Entrepreneurship--Art;Global culture;Graffiti 0 3768 Art Inspiration, Tools, and Innovation COSE: So, my friend, my close friend, DELTA 2, he doesn't really like to go to shows, and he's always like trying to like tell me, "Oh, I don't, I don't wanna to go to those shows." I don't go, I don't just go to graffiti shows, even though my, my origins are graffiti art. I go to all kinds of art shows. In this segment, COSE speaks about going to shows for many different styles of art for inspiration, the tools he used for graffiti back in the day and some of what he uses now, different spray paint brands and what he would use for extra caps, and how innovative early graffiti writers had to be as far as their tools went, even though outside companies now have capitalized on this innovation. He also draws parallels with the ways in which innovations in Black rhythm and blues was repackaged in part for white audiences as "rock and roll" in the middle of the twentieth century and the more recent commercialization of hip hop. 20th century rock and roll;Blick;Delta 2 (Graffiti artist);Gangsta rap (Music);Hip-hop;Krylon (Spray paint);Montana (Spray paint);One Art Space (Art gallery);Red Devil (Spray paint);Rust-Oleum (Spray paint) Graffiti;Hip-hop;Popular music--African American influences;Spray paint--Brands;Spray paint--Caps;Tools in art 0 4117 6 Line Legend COSE: 6 line. I'm a 6 line legend. In this segment COSE discusses the 6 line, which he painted along the most, the stations that he would paint at along this line, how he gained access to these stations, and more. Brook Avenue station;Cypress Avenue station;East 143rd Street–St. Mary's Street station;Layups (Graffiti);Longwood Avenue station;Middletown Road station;Skeleton keys;St. Lawrence Avenue station;Westchester Square station 6 Lexington Avenue Local;<6> Pelham Bay Park Express;Graffiti;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 4237 Collaboration with Graffiti Pioneers COSE: So I got an idea. Remember, I told you, I didn't get to express it to you. Leia, my girl, told me it's gonna take me awhile, and she's right. It's gonna take me maybe more than a year. So you tell me. Nobody's thought about this trust me. In this segment COSE speaks about a project he is currently working on in which he will be collaborating with many graffiti pioneers from the generation of artists before his own. Boots 119 (Graffiti artist);Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Golden Era (Graffiti);Outside the Box (Art series);Pioneers (Graffiti);Quinones, Lee George;Riff (Graffiti artist);Seen (Graffiti artist), 1961- Canvas;Graffiti;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 4451 TDS and Slipping Out of the Graffiti Scene in the 1980s COSE: No, it's, it's not like a gang. It's, it's, you know, graffiti crews, people, if they respect you and you put a lot of work in, they'll approach you. They'll be like, "Yo, you should put up 'TDS', or put up 'OTB'. Yo, you wanna get down with us?" In this segment COSE speaks more about his graffiti crew, The Death Squad (TDS), and how he became involved in it. He also relates a series of events in 1983 that led to his first arrest for graffiti writing and involved the infamous Vandal Squad cops Hickey and Ski. COSE reflects some on the impact of drugs on his personal life and the graffiti community during the 1980s, which led to him and many others missing out on the notoriety and acceptance in the art community that a few graffiti writers started to receive at this time. Bo (Graffiti artist);Bombing (Graffiti);Crash (Graffiti artist);Daily news (New York, N.Y. : 1920);Fleet Messenger Service (Firm);Futura (Graffiti artist);Hickey, Kevin;John 1 (Graffiti artist);Layups (Graffiti);Lesnewski, Conrad ("Ski");Motion tagging (Graffiti);Out To Bomb (Graffiti artist group);The Death Squad (Graffiti artist group);Zerega Avenue Subway station Drugs and addiction;Graffiti;Initiation;Messengers;Style Wars;Subway stations--New York (State);Vandalism;Wild Style 0 4782 Artistic Come Back COSE: I was featured in this magazine here. I didn't show you this. So, this is called the Creative Artist Magazine. This is the Spring/Summer 2021 issue, and I have a little, little centerfold in there, where I was featured. And, you know, it just makes me good that people actually put my artwork in a magazine. In this segment COSE speaks some about the amazing artistic come back he has launched over the last number of years, his current artistic habits, and how he is gaining more and more recognition. A1 (Graffiti artist);Creative Artist Magazine (Art magazine);Heck (Graffiti artist);John 1 (Graffiti artist);RW (Graffiti artist);Toxic (Graffiti artist) Canvas;Cose (Graffiti artist) 0 5020 Various Artistic Considerations COSE: One of my favorite, well I got a whole car, up top-to-bottom, but the one that I really like enjoy is a blockbuster that me and Elkay did . . . In this segment COSE talks about a variety of artistic considerations, including his favorite pieces he produced during the 1980s, the colors he's drawn to, the importance of stories behind art, and how he gets into the artistic zone right now. He also shares some of the challenges of having other responsibilities aside from art, like working as a drug counselor and raising his son. He closes the segment by speaking about how his recent reception of a Certificate of Merit from the Bronx Borough President made him feel and how this ties into his general artistic comeback. 6 line;Blockbuster style (Graffiti);Elkay (Graffit artist);Pandemic;Purple;Racking (Graffiti);Soundview (The Bronx, N.Y.);Top-to-bottoms (Graffiti);Whole cars (Graffiti) Artists' studios in art;Colors;Drug abuse counseling;Ecstasy in art;Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Music & art;Narrative and art;Single-parent families;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 5759 Final Considerations on The Bronx COSE: The Bronx for me is home, it's, it's, you know, The Bronx is home. It's the birthplace of hip hop. It's the birthplace of a lot of things, you know, but for the most part the biggest one that I can, really sticks out in my mind is hip hop. And, you know, I was there, I was part of that movement . . . In this final segment COSE reflects on what The Bronx means to him and how the borough's history is reflective of his own life, ups and downs and all. He also provides his tag. Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Tag (Graffiti) Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Drugs and addiction;Graffiti;Hip-hop 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on January 19, 2022 with COSE, a member of The Death Squad (TDS) and one of the most prolific graffiti artists in New York City during the Golden Age of graffiti during the early 1980s. In this oral history, COSE describes his time growing up in the South Bronx of the 1970s and 1980s, his time as a stick-up kid and graffiti writer during the early 1980s, his present-day artistic come-back story, and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with COSE Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on January 19, 2022 with COSE, a member of The Death Squad (TDS) and one of the most prolific graffiti artists in New York City during the Golden Age of graffiti during the early 1980s. In this oral history, COSE describes his time growing up in the South Bronx of the 1970s and 1980s, his time as a stick-up kid and graffiti writer during the early 1980s, his present-day artistic come-back story, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Stephen DeSimone, CEO/President of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.01.19 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220119 COSE graffiti TDS Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:29:35 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed SLAVE Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220209.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with SLAVE OH-BAADP.20220209 01:29:35 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the donation of Stephen DeSimone, President/CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. bxoralhistory SLAVE (The Fab 5ive) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 slave-oral-history-2022-02-09.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/wKSJ0yddDhQ YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne Welcome to The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. This is the third oral history for the project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. Today is February 9, 2022, and we're very excited to have here as our guest SLAVE, and I'll say a little bit more about him in a second . . . In this segment Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture, introduce SLAVE, the legendary graffiti artist who is a part of The Fabulous Five, the first graffiti crew to paint an operational whole subway train in 1977. Whole train (Graffiti) Graffiti;Slave (Graffiti artist);The Fabulous Five (Graffiti artist group) 0 99 Early Life and Introduction to Graffiti SLAVE Yeah, well my name's Kenneth Durant, known as SLAVE from The Fabulous Five. I originally was born in The Bronx, but then we moved to Brooklyn. I really don't remember too much of The Bronx, cause I was like 2 or 3 years old when we moved to Brooklyn . . . In this segment SLAVE speaks about his early life, including his birth in The Bronx, moving then to East New York, and finally to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, where he grew up. He also remembers his introduction to graffiti in Crown Heights and how he first got involved in writing. Crown Heights (New York, N.Y.);Dash (Graffiti artist);Facts 160 (Graffiti artist);IO (Graffiti artist);Kingston Avenue (Brooklyn, N.Y.);Layups (Graffiti);Riff (Graffiti artist);The Odd Partners (Graffiti artist group);Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist) Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.);Cartoons and comics;East New York (New York, N.Y.);Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 245 Origins of the Name "SLAVE" SLAVE I couldn't, like, think of a name. So, I, I used to work in McCrory's, when I was about like 14, 15. So we used to work, and we'd work, and we'd work, and then when we'd get the check there was hardly anything left. So that's how I came up with the name. I said, "They working me like a slave." In this segment SLAVE speaks about how he came up with his graffiti name and how he had to develop style quickly to master the first letter of the name. McCrory Corporation;Slave (Graffiti artist) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Lettering in art;Slave (Graffiti artist);Style (Graffiti) 0 308 Family Background, Adolescence, and Public School Experience SLAVE Oh, my whole family, they originated from the Virgin Islands, St. Croix. Frederiksted. And they moved up here. And, like, all my brothers and sisters, everybody, were born there. I was the only one born in New York. My mother was a nurse. My father, believe it or not, he used to drive the subway trains . . . In this segment SLAVE speaks about his family background in St. Croix and the jobs his parents had while he was growing up. His father, coincidentally, was a subway operator, though he never expressed knowledge of SLAVE's involvement in subway writing. SLAVE also speaks about his experience attending various public schools in Brooklyn, when graffiti started to become his major focus, and the sports he would play around his neighborhood. Albany Projects (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);Brooklyn Technical High School (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);Frederiksted (United States Virgin Islands);Freeman Street (Bronx, N.Y.);P.S. 182 (East New York, New York, N.Y.);P.S. 221 (Brooklyn, N.Y.);P.S. 232 Winthrop School (Brooklyn, N.Y.);Racking (Graffiti);Simpson Street (Bronx, N.Y.);St. John's Park (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);Thomas Jefferson High School (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.) Basketball;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Cartoon characters;Football;Graffiti;Migration, Internal--United States;New York City Public Schools;Saint Croix (United States Virgin Islands);Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 632 Street Gangs and Teenage Years SLAVE We had the Ghetto Brothers, we had the, the Tomahawks. Really around me were the Jolly Stompers. They, they, they headquarters were right around the corner from my house on Crown Street and Schenectady . . . In this segment SLAVE speaks about some of the prominent "gangs", or street organizations, in Crown Heights while he was growing up, including the Ghetto Brothers (he was a Junior Ghetto Brother himself), the Tomahawks, and the Jolly Stompers. He also speaks more about his experience of high school and college, before having to drop out due to work. Colors (Gangs);Crown Street (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);George W. Wingate High School (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);Ghetto Brothers;Jolly Stompers;Junior Ghetto Brothers;Montgomery Street (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);New York City College of Technology (CUNY);Queens-Midtown Tunnel (New York, N.Y.);Schenectady Avenue (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);Tomahawks Crown Heights (New York, N.Y.);Gangs--New York (State);New York City Public Schools 0 816 Various Aspects of Childhood SLAVE We used to do a lot of—I used to do them, my nephew did them, like Thor and Luke Cage, and all those. But on my wall I did like a Frankenstein dancing, and a girl with long hair, earrings dancing . . . In this segment SLAVE speaks about various additional aspects of his childhood, including the cartoons and characters he drew, the food that he and his family ate, music, house parties, and his sense of fashion. Adidas USA (Firm);Cage, Luke (Fictitious character);Cats (Gang);CONVERSE;Cooking (Chicken);Cooking (Liver);Frankenstein's monster (Fictitious character) in art;Puma;Racking;Thor;White Castle (Restaurant) Calypso (Music);Cartoons and comics;Food;Hip-hop;Hip-hop--Fashion;House parties;Reggae music;Seafood;Sneakers 0 1199 Getting into Style Writing SLAVE Oh, style letterings? Let me see. I used to always watch all the new pieces coming out. I used to see . . . But when CLIFF and them was out, well we did that one with Charlie Brown and all those . . . In this segment SLAVE speaks about his first introductions to style writing through seeing the work of individual writers and especially the crews The Odd Partners, The Fantastic Partners, and The Fabulous Five (the crew he joined). He also speaks about his time writing "RO3", what he wrote before "SLAVE", and the fact that he went straight to working with spray paint, instead of starting out tagging with markers (as was more typical). He touches on various additional basic elements of the graffiti arts movement, including racking, the brands of spray paint available during the 1970s, and where he would paint lay ups (trains resting at stations before being put back into operation). He offers his definitions of some of the standard graffiti terminology: "throw ups", "pull in and pull outs", "burners", and "pieces". 110 film;2 Seventh Avenue Express;3 Seventh Avenue Express;3 Yard Boys (Graffiti artist group);4 Lexington Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;Atlantic Avenue station;Baychester Avenue station;BI (Graffiti artist);Blade (Graffiti artist);Bot 707 (Graffiti artist);Brown, Charlie (Fictitious character);Burners (Graffiti);Cliff 159 (Graffiti artist);Comet (Graffiti artist);Dash 167 (Graffiti artist);Doc 109 (Graffiti artist);Esplanade Avenue station;Falcon 789 (Graffiti artist);IN (Graffiti artist);Insides (Graffiti);John 150 (Graffiti artist);Kingston Avenue station;Krylon (Firm);Lay ups (Graffiti);Magik Markers;Mono (Graffiti artist);Nostrand Avenue station;OG 2 (Graffiti artist);OI (Graffiti artist);Outsides (Graffiti);Pieces (Graffiti);PO 137 (Graffiti artist);Prof 165 (Graffiti artist);Pull in and pull outs (Graffiti);Racking (Graffiti);Red Devil (Firm);Riff 170 (Graffiti artist);Rust-Oleum (Firm);Slug (Graffiti artist);Solid 1 (Graffiti artist);Stan 153 (Graffiti artist);Stim (Graffiti artist);Taggin Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Lettering in art;Photographs;Spray paint;Style writing (Graffiti);Subways--New York (State)--New York;Tools in art;Writer's bench (Graffiti);Writers' Bench 0 2257 Writing SLAVE and Joining The Fabulous Five (TF5) SLAVE In '75. And I, this is where my head was at. I, I did a silver "SLAVE". The "S" was this big, but then when it got down to the "E" it was small. But in my eyes I did a bad burner, you know. I was so proud, my chest stuck out when I got home . . . In this segment SLAVE relates a funny story about his first time writing "SLAVE" and remembers how he joined with The Fabulous Five as well as various members of the crew. Blud (Graffiti artist);Cowboy (Graffiti artist);Del (Graffiti artist);Doc (Graffiti artist);James TOP (Graffiti artist);Mono (Graffiti artist);OG (Graffiti artist);OI (Graffiti artist);Pieces (Graffiti);Prof 165 (Graffiti artist);Quinones, Lee George;Slave (Graffiti artist);Slug (Graffiti artist);The Fabulous Five (Graffiti artist group);The Odd Partners (Graffiti artist group);Throw ups (Graffiti);Ti 149 (Graffiti artist);Top to bottoms (Graffiti) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Interborough Rapid Transit Company;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 2497 Artistic Process and Painting the First Whole Train with TF5 SLAVE You know, sometime I, I'd take a piece of paper and draw on it. Black books wasn't really my things because I couldn't just sit in one spot all the time. Be, had be at my house doing, like, every now and then we'd have a bunch of people over and we'd just play around in black books and stuff . . . In this segment SLAVE speaks about the process behind planning and outlining pieces, which usually involved hanging out with other writers while drinking and smoking. He also remembers hanging out at LEE's house with other members of The Fabulous Five as well as the crew's painting of the first whole train, comprised of 10 cars, over the course of a weekend in 1977. Although the train was photographed, he makes the point that it was not photographed by Henry Chalfant or Martha Cooper, because they did not start coming around the graffiti scene, he recalls, until after he stopped writing in 1978. Beer;Black books;Blade (Graffiti artist);Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Chalfant, Henry;Cooper, Martha;Doc (Graffiti artist);Dondi (Graffiti artist);Lay ups (Graffiti);Lee, Bruce;Lincoln Terrace Park (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.);Mickey Mouse (Fictitious character);Mono (Graffiti artist);Noc 167 (Graffiti artist);Pencil drawing;Pieces (Graffiti);Quinones, Lee George;Racking (Graffiti);The Fabulous Five (Graffiti artist group);Top to bottoms (Graffiti);Uttica Avenue station;Weed;Whole cars (Graffiti);Whole trains (Graffiti) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 3035 Getting Out of the Graffiti World Kurt Boone Cause LEE, LEE was the star of Wild Style, the movie, right. Were you, were you hanging with LEE when they were making the movie? SLAVE Nah, nah cause when I, in, in '79, I had bought a car. So that was the rest of it. That was that. Now I was chasing women and making money . . . In this segment SLAVE describes getting out of graffiti in 1978/1979 and eventually moving to Florida in 1983, where he stayed until 2009/2010, when he moved back to New York City. He also speculates on Dondi's stylistic debt to Noc 167, who was and still is SLAVE's friend. This leads SLAVE to speak about the general atmosphere of friendship that has reigned in the graffiti arts community since the beginning, with a few notable exceptions. This atmosphere also shaped the etiquette around going over other artists' pieces (in most cases, this was widely looked down on). He talks about missing the transition of some writers to canvas in the early 1980s as well as not being aware of Style Wars when it came out in 1983, since he was not only out of the graffiti scene by this moment in time but also out of New York City. 4 Lexington Avenue Express;Beer;Burners (Graffiti);Canvas;Cap (Graffiti artist);Dondi (Graffiti artist);Futura (Graffiti artist);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Noc 167 (Graffiti artist);Old timers (Graffiti);PO (Graffiti artist);Police Athletic League (U.S.);Quinones, Lee George;Style Wars (Motion Picture);The Fabulous Five (Graffiti artist group);The Odd Partners (Graffiti artist group);Weed;Wild Style (Motion Picture) Daughters;Divorce;Florida;Friendship;Graffiti;Granddaughters 0 3494 Early Graffiti Culture and Its Global Spread SLAVE Yeah, yeah, it's amazing to me, you know, of, of how back in the days artists didn't wanna have nothing to do with nobody graffiti. We vandals. We just messing up property and all that. Now look at them. Now they wanna be graffiti artists. They been artists all the time. Now all the sudden they wanna do letters and [inaudible] graffiti . . . but you don't have the soul to do this, you know. We know what the letter styles are . . . In this segment SLAVE starts off reflecting on the global spread of graffiti, especially its recent appropriation by the "high art" world and how some contemporary graffiti artists lack the soul that animated the movement during its early years. This leads him to a general discussion of various aspects of early graffiti culture, including style writing, the most famous writers' bench at Third Avenue–149th Street station in The Bronx, the thrill and terror of being chased and harassed by vandal cops, and the general underground or outlaw nature of the movement. 2 Seventh Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;Baychester Avenue station;Brooklyn Bridge station;Chain 3 (Graffiti artist);Colors;Doc (Graffiti artist);Global culture;Hickey, Kevin;J Nassau Street Local;Layups (Graffiti);Lesnewski, Conrad ("Ski");Mono (Graffiti artist);Part One (Graffiti artist);Pieces (Graffiti);Quinones, Lee George;Racking (Graffiti);RR Fourth Avenue Local via Tunnel;Soul;Style;The Fabulous Five (Graffiti artist group);Third Avenue–149th Street station;Writers' Bench Appropriation (Arts);Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Style writing;Vandalism 0 4135 Aspects of Artistic Work, Past and Present SLAVE Well, well, I painted when I first came back. But I, I never really painted none of my old pieces because to me it's hard to recreate your old pieces. It's more easier for me to do new pieces and new canvases and styles and stuff . . . In this segment SLAVE talks about some of the artistic work he is doing currently. He also reflects on his use of cartoon characters in pieces back in the 1970s and the ways in which his crew would lessen the chance of something going wrong while painting a piece. He circles back to speaking about his current craft, which he engages in as the urge arises. He ends by relating his experiences being in shows with other old timers from the graffiti arts movement. Art commissions;Art--Exhibitions;Beer;Brown, Charlie (Fictitious character);Doc (Graffiti artist);Futura (Graffiti artist);Keep On Truckin';Layups (Graffiti);Mono (Graffiti artist);Quinones, Lee George;Ree (Graffiti artist);Sam, Yosemite (Fictitious character);Wild style (Graffiti) Canvas;Cartoon characters;Graffiti 0 4567 Inspiration, Colors, and Other Aspects of Graff SLAVE Well, let me see. When Noc came down from The Bronx me and him used to hang out and stuff. And I used to watch some of the stuff that he do, so I'd like imitate some of it, then I'd switch it around my way, then I'd start noticing, you know, different letter patterns in, in, on the train and stuff. From, a lot of people from The Bronx, you know . . . In this segment SLAVE touches on various aspects of his graffiti practice, including his inspiration, the reputation of Bronx writers as being style masters, the colors he was drawn to, how he would acquire a supply of aerosol caps, and how he would get into various layups (Uttica, Baychester, and New Lots). He also speaks more about his proximity to the M.T.A. through his father and reflects on the fact that he mostly avoided incarceration, two-week stints aside, unlike many other graffiti writers of his generation. Baychester Avenue station;Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Cap (Graffiti artist);Cascade green;Cascade red;Jolly Stompers;Layups (Graffiti);New Lots Avenue station;Noc 167 (Graffiti artist);Racking (Graffiti);Red Devil (Firm);Rust-Oleum (Firm);Sandalwood tan;Schoolbus yellow;Skeleton keys;Style masters (Graffiti);Uttica Avenue station Aerosol caps;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Color in art;Graffiti artists;Incarceration issues;Inspiration in art;Style;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 4983 Final Reflections SLAVE Yosemite Sam, I liked that one. Let me see what else. Two, me and LEE did some burners, with, what's the, used to be these two bird characters in the, in the Mad books back in the day . . . In this segment SLAVE offers some final reflections on his favorite pieces as well as how he wants to be remembered in the graffiti arts movement and where he and his generation fit into its history. He ends with a reflection on the ways in which the movement helped those involved overcome some of the effects of racism. Burners (Graffiti);Chain 3 (Graffiti artist);Doc (Graffiti artist);Kool 131 (Graffiti artist);Mad magazine;Mono (Graffiti artist);Noc 167 (Graffiti artist);Part One (Graffiti artist);Quinones, Lee George;Racking (Graffiti);Riff 170 (Graffiti artist);Sam, Yosemite (Fictional character);Spy vs. Spy;The Fabulous Five (Graffiti artist group);Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist) Global art;Graffiti;Graffiti history;Mural painting and decoration;Racism in art 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on February 9, 2022 with SLAVE, a member of The Fabulous Five (The Fab 5ive), one of the most accomplished graffiti crews, the first to paint an entire operational train in 1977. SLAVE was born in The Bronx and grew up in Brooklyn, although he spent a considerable amount of time writing at various Bronx layups. In this oral history SLAVE speaks about many different aspects of his graffiti practice back in the day and some of what he is up to now. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with SLAVE Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on February 9, 2022 with SLAVE, a member of The Fabulous Five (The Fab 5ive), one of the most accomplished graffiti crews, the first to paint an entire operational train in 1977. SLAVE was born in The Bronx and grew up in Brooklyn, although he spent a considerable amount of time writing at various Bronx layups. In this oral history SLAVE speaks about many different aspects of his graffiti practice back in the day and some of what he is up to now. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Stephen DeSimone, CEO/President of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.02.09 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220209 graffiti SLAVE The Fab 5ive The Fabulous Five Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 02:32:04 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed STAFF 161 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220223.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with STAFF 161, Part 1 OH-BAADP.20220223 02:32:04 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the donation of Stephen DeSimone, President/CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. bxoralhistory STAFF 161 (TED) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 staff-161-oral-history-pt1-2022-02-23.mp4 1:|20(2)|30(10)|45(10)|90(2)|113(3)|164(3)|192(7)|222(10)|277(1)|306(1)|333(9)|364(1)|386(3)|414(1)|443(1)|480(2)|506(6)|537(6)|581(7)|597(7)|624(2)|650(11)|682(2)|716(8)|745(8)|775(9)|792(13)|816(12)|862(1)|890(5)|949(8)|957(8)|991(6)|1010(4)|1070(10)|1099(9)|1144(1)|1181(8)|1212(3)|1264(3)|1296(9)|1326(16)|1356(11)|1388(9)|1412(5)|1436(15)|1474(1)|1504(10)|1520(5)|1542(13)|1558(2)|1567(9)|1596(15)|1614(2)|1640(11)|1679(7)|1739(13)|1772(6)|1788(5)|1808(12)|1833(11)|1843(5)|1867(7)|1891(6)|1951(4)|1972(11)|1997(1)|2028(5)|2037(7)|2062(7)|2084(1)|2109(3)|2167(9)|2184(2)|2214(8)|2259(7)|2281(10)|2294(11)|2318(10)|2350(1)|2380(7)|2403(4)|2423(7)|2464(2)|2495(8)|2554(3)|2579(12)|2623(10)|2672(7)|2727(3)|2739(10)|2759(2)|2773(10)|2795(6)|2816(15)|2854(9)|2876(9)|2898(12)|2923(8)|2946(4)|2980(2)|3028(13)|3052(8)|3075(11)|3098(10)|3107(1)|3130(8)|3153(5)|3189(1)|3211(9)|3250(2)|3280(2)|3305(4)|3329(5)|3353(5)|3376(12)|3400(5)|3424(9)|3440(3)|3454(12)|3483(17)|3521(3)|3527(9)|3574(1)|3604(4)|3620(2)|3629(13)|3676(1)|3709(11)|3746(11)|3770(11)|3786(13)|3810(11)|3827(3)|3852(12)|3878(1)|3901(9)|3918(1)|3941(14)|3956(15)|3996(5)|4019(14)|4043(2)|4068(7)|4097(6)|4119(1)|4160(2)|4190(1)|4210(13)|4260(14)|4294(2)|4294(5) Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/7Fa8VeXPRcQ YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. Today is February 23, 2022, and Kurt, before we introduce our main event here, you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone: Yeah, I'm, I'm Kurt Boone. I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Steven Payne: Alright, great, thank you, Kurt. So we're here with STAFF 161, really a true pioneer in the graffiti arts movement, there from pretty much the, the get go, when, be-, before many people at all had started writing on subway trains, and STAFF is also the founder of The Ebony Dukes Graffiti Club, really, the, the first crew, in, graffiti crew, in The Bronx . . . In this segment, Steven Payne and Kurt Boone, the interviewers, introduce themselves as well as the interviewee, STAFF 161, an early graffiti pioneer from The Bronx and founder of The Ebony Dukes G.C., the first graffiti crew based in The Bronx. Staff 161 (Graffiti artist);The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist group) Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 70 Early Life STAFF 161: Okay, so, hello. So, my name is, is Edward. Edward is my given birth name from my mother and father. And I was born in 1956 in Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. So I was basically born and, and raised in, in the city. My first residence, my parents' first residence, and basically where they brought me when I was born was in Harlem on 117th Street and Madison Avenue . . . In this segment of his oral history, STAFF speaks about his early life in Harlem, being removed from his family to Staten Island in the foster care system at age 5, and his mother's background in St. Thomas as well as his father's background in South Carolina. He also touches on his parents' separation, how this led to him and some of his siblings being put into the foster care system temporarily, the challenges of living on Staten Island as a part of one of the few Black families during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and the initial shock of moving at age 10 to a tenement apartment in the South Bronx, where his mother had resettled while he was living on Staten Island. "Fort Apache" (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) 117th Street (New York, N.Y.);Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Civil rights movement;Divorce;Foster home care;Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Madison Avenue (New York, N.Y.);Metropolitan Hospital (New York, N.Y.);Migration, Internal--United States--History--20th century;New York (State). Family Court;Saint Thomas (United States Virgin Islands);South Carolina;Staten Island (New York, N.Y.);Tenement houses 0 634 Adolescence in The Bronx STAFF 161: This was a place, in, in, in The South Bronx, between Westchester Avenue and Longwood Avenue, by the name Hewitt Place—H, E, W, I, T, T Place. And a section of 161st Street intersected Hewitt Place. And, so that was basically in the heart of, of, of the section of the South Bronx that we referred to as "Fort Apache" . . . In this segment, STAFF describes the area of the South Bronx that he moved to at the age of 10, called "Fort Apache" colloquially. He describes the background of the name, the tension between residents and the 41st Police Precinct, and the general environment of the neighborhood as a result of housing deterioration and abandonment and arson. He also speaks about his apartment at 858 Hewitt Place, what children would do for fun in the neighborhood, the centrality of a back wall of a large church in street games and early graffiti culture, and the general ubiquity of graffiti in the neighborhood (especially when compared to Staten Island, with one notable exception aside). He reflects on his public school experience at nearby P.S. 130, the old desks in the school and how formative the writings and carvings on them were for his artistic imagination, his fascination with his younger brother Joseph's cartoon sketching, and the classes he was drawn to in school, especially History, English, Art, and Arts and Crafts. He then reflects on the de-funding of arts and music programs in many New York City public schools that took place while he was coming of age and the effects of this on South Bronx communities. "Fort Apache" (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);basketball;Bugs Bunny;Casper;Flintstones;hot peas and butter (game);Intervale Avenue station;Johnny on the Pony (game);Prospect Avenue station;Ringolevio (game);Simpson Street station;Spider Man;stickball;television;Wendy the Witch 41st Police Precinct Station House (New York, N.Y.);Arson;Art in education;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Caricatures and cartoons;Fort Apache (Motion picture);Graffiti;Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Housing--Abandonment;Music in education;New York City--street games;P.S. 130 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Southern Boulevard (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Tenement houses;Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (New York, N.Y.);Westchester Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Wood carving;Writing desks 0 1776 South Bronx of the Late 1960s and Early 1970s STAFF 161: I think, you know, in an environment like the South Bronx, and based on what the South Bronx was, was going through, and, and the disenfranchisement that was in the South Bronx of that time. The people of the South Bronx, I got to realize, in that area of the South—Fort Apache section specifically—seemed to be ostracized politically. It was like a blaming thing, like because of the high rate of fires, and the decay of the neighborhood and such, and, and the high gang, gang, street gang presence and drug addiction—you know, lot of heroin available in that part of The Bronx. And what, it seemed like that politically and in the media and such that, that those people who were living in the area were blamed for that, and I, I, I always thought that was so unfair . . . In this segment STAFF paints a vivid picture of what it was like to grow up in his section of the South Bronx during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He touches on the political disenfranchisement of the South Bronx, particularly the "Fort Apache" section, the landlord neglect of buildings and high rate of arson, drug addiction, and the presence of street gangs, and how all of these factors were used by the media to blame the people who lived in the South Bronx for all the area's ills. STAFF reflects on how he witnessed building deterioration all around him in his neighborhood, and how it often started with the disappearance of building superintendents and the subsequent cutting off of heat, which was still largely provided by coal-fired furnaces requiring daily upkeep. He also touches on the demographic makeup of his block on Hewitt Place and how some degree of housing segregation between Black and Puerto Rican residents was still maintained. He then elaborates on the atmosphere of suspicion and violence that he faced among some youth in his neighborhood as well as the positive local influences of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. He particularly remembers area locations associated with the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. He remembers the wider street gang culture that was emerging at this time, the colors and "outlaw" appearance associated with most of the gangs and the effect of this on school attendance, and his own attraction to the Youth Division of the Ghetto Brothers as a result of the group's Latin rock music and militant outlook, as well as the influence of older members Slick and Black Benjie. In connection with street clean-up, which was a focus of the Ghetto Brothers, STAFF reflects on the trash, rats, and stray cats and dogs that were a regular feature of his neighborhood. He relates the story he heard as a Ghetto Brother of the murder in 1971 of Black Benjie, who was trying to broker peace between warring street gangs in the South Bronx. "Fort Apache" (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);arson;berets;colors;cut sleeves;disenfranchisement;drugs;fighting;heroin;housing deterioration;landlord neglect;militant;motorcycle boots;ostracization;outlaw;racial segregation;street gangs Addiction;African Americans;Arson--United States;Bachelors;Beck Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Benjamin, Cornell "Black Benjie" (member of the Ghetto Brothers);Black Panther Party;Black power--United States;Black Spades;Civil rights movement;Coal-fired furnaces;East 162nd Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);East 163rd Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Gang colors;Gangs;Gangs--style;Gangs--truancy;Ghetto Brothers;Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Housing--Deterioration;Housing--Landlord neglect;Javelins;Kelly Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Latin rock music;Mongols;Peacemakers;Political disenfranchisement;Puerto Ricans;Puerto Rico--Liberation;Racism in mass media;Savage Skulls;Segregation in housing;Seven Immortals;Slick (member of Ghetto Brothers);South Bronx;Stebbins Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Turbans;Westchester Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Young Lords Party 0 3180 Getting Into Graffiti STAFF 161: So, you know, that led to a few things that I decided I was gonna do, and that was 1) to, you know, come out of that environment of, or that situation of, of being a "gang-banger", so to speak, you know, part of that gang, street gang scene there in that area; and also to more or less focus in on graffiti writing. At that point, I had acquired spray paint . . . In this segment STAFF describes the process of how he got into graffiti and gradually disaffiliated with the street gangs. He remembers the intensification of gang activity at J.H.S. 52, particularly around the handball courts, and his mother's decision to place him and his brother Adam in the Seventh-Day Adventist R.T. Hudson School on Forest Avenue, where his neighbors Danny and Betina also attended. He recalls his fascination with seeing graffiti tags on the way to this school in the interior of subway cars and the thrill of meeting taggers. He also speaks about his own early tagging with the street names of "Corky" and "Mr. Ed", as well as how he got these names. He then speaks about his first experience with spray paint in connection with his block crew stealing bikes from other neighborhoods as well as the various places—stores and the superintendents' areas in tenements—where he and others would acquire cans. He speaks about the general necessity of kids shoplifting in the neighborhood, given the general lack of money and other resources. He reflects further on the phenomenon of superintendents abandoning the basements of buildings and how this facilitated the acquisition of spray paint, on the one hand, and the proliferation of heroin dens and gang clubhouses, on the other. bike stealing;block crew;Corky;fighting;handball courts;hustling;junkies;Mr. Ed;racking;shoplifting;snap back;snapping;spray paint;street gangs;tagging;Topaz Graffiti;Heroin;Housing--superintendents;J.H.S. 52 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);John's Bargain Store (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);P.S. 130 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Powell, Colin L.;Prospect Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);R.T. Hudson School (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Savage Skulls;Seventh-Day Adventists;Spray paint;Street names;Subways--New York (State)--New York;Theodore Roosevelt High School;Woolworths 0 4235 Making His Niche Through Graffiti STAFF 161: Well, okay, see here's the thing. I'm already in the environment, and I see what it is, right? I know it's not, it's not Staten Island no more, right? And, you know, this is where I gotta, I have to be, so I have to make my niche. Now, now the first thing was, is, is learning how to defend yourself, right? So, so me and my brother seen that we were in the situation together, and we were the oldest of our siblings . . . In this segment STAFF gets into how he established a niche for himself in the early graffiti scene in The Bronx. He stresses that establishing yourself was crucial to survival in his neighborhood, remembering how he and his brother Adam (A.J.) had to learn to defend themselves and their younger siblings. He also recalls the first drawing he did with spray paint, a skull and crossbones on a church's back wall on Hewitt Place, and how this caused conflict with Hippie from the Savage Skulls, a street gang whose colors were somewhat similar. Around this time, STAFF also began to realize the contradictions of so many rival gangs being represented on his block, since he had become close with so many of these rival gang members by playing a variety of games together around the neighborhood in prior years. He realized, then and now, the social support provided by gangs, and at the time wanted to do something similar, only with graffiti. He also revisits how his daily trips to R.T. Hudson on buses and subways provided ample opportunity for exploring the emerging world of tagging (mostly interior tagging at this point in time) and opened his eyes to the possibilities of the mass transit system as a way to circulate tags. This realization, in addition to the general ubiquity of gang and political street writing and learning about the Ex-Vandals (one of the earliest graffiti crews, based in Brooklyn), influenced his decision to organize a crew on Hewitt Place specifically devoted to graffiti. STAFF also muses on the wider social significant of graffiti, particularly its potential to give voice to the voiceless, and draws a distinction between the more basic tagging of the early Signature Era and the more intricate tagging of the Stylistic Signature Era, which took off particularly in The Bronx during 1970–1972. canes (walking sticks);celebrity;colors;Corky;defense;disenfranchisement;interior tagging;Johnny on the Pony;jumping game;Mr. Ed;notoriety;ostracization;Playboy Bunny;ringolevio;skelzies;skull and crossbones;street gangs;tagging 2 Seventh Avenue Express;3 Seventh Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;A.J. (graffiti artist);Black Spades;BMT Broadway Line;Boston Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Bug 170 (graffiti artist);East 161st Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Eddie 181 (Graffiti artist);El Marko 174 (graffiti artist);Ex-Vandals (graffiti artist group);Exploration, urban;Fighting;Flint 707 (Graffiti artist);Gangs;Gangs--Social aspects;Ghetto Brothers;Graffiti;Graffiti--Signature Era;Graffiti--social significance;Graffiti--Stylistic Signature Era;Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Hippie (member of Savage Skulls);IRT Third Avenue Line;Joe 182 (graffiti artist);Kool Herc (Graffiti artist);Kool Kevin 1 (Graffiti artist);Lee 163 (graffiti artist);Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);Prospect Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Saint (Motion picture);Savage Skulls;SJK 171 (Graffiti artist);Spin (Graffiti artist);Spray paint;Staff 161 (graffiti artist);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist), 1950-2012;Street games;Subways--New York (State)--New 0 6126 Emergence of "STAFF" STAFF 161: Okay, so "Staff", "Staff" came about like, like the early part of '70, when I—in, in the culture of, the street gang culture, and in the culture of the day, you had these walking sticks. Not, now I'm doing like this, but you had the ones that you would make. Guys would walk around with golf clubs, with golf clubs, right, and, you know, you know a 9-iron, you know, a golf club, and, as a weapon, and as, as a cool thing, you know, a walking stick. And then you had guys that would make their own, you know, get a piece of tree limb and cut out their own walking stick, and shellac it . . . In this segment STAFF narrates how he developed the tag "STAFF". He remembers the phenomenon of walking sticks at the time, both as a weapon and as a result of a rising consciousness of Afrocentrism, with dashikis, Afros, and canes in vogue. He also recalls the impact of the imagery of Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments, and how this led him to carve his own large staff from a piece of wood he found in Crotona Park. Although others in the neighborhood called him "Staff" in jest at first, the name stuck, and he adopted it as his tag and identity. STAFF also reflects on the historical nature of all human behavior and culture, including graffiti, and makes links between elements of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the day—particularly Malcolm X's discussion of "slave names"—and the desire of Black and Brown graffiti writers to create their own new identity. This leads him to a discussion of graffiti as particularly a youth movement and one of the earliest elements of a nascent "hip hop" culture, the full content and very name of which would emerge only years later. "We Shall Overcome";afros;canes (walking sticks);dashikis;golf clubs (sports equipment);Mr. Ed;slave names;staffs (walking sticks);tag;youth movement Afrocentrism;Black Panther Party;Bug 170 (Graffiti artist);Crotona Park (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Graffiti--as youth movement;Heston, Charlton;King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968;Lee 161 (Graffiti artist);Naming;National Baptist Convention of the United States of America;Staff 161 (Graffiti artist);Staten Island (New York, N.Y.);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist), 1950-2012;Super Kool 223 (Graffiti artist);Superheroes;Ten commandments (Motion picture : 1956);Weapons;X, Malcolm, 1925-1965 0 6699 Graffiti, Hip Hop, and Identity STAFF 161: Yeah, so I was saying the thing with hip hop culture, as they call it now, "hip hop culture": now, just like I mentioned that on the street in that community where I was there was prevalent markings, markings that we referred to as "graffiti", graffiti is basically markings and sketching and, you know, other things that's in the public form. That was, it's part of the community, it's part of what I would perceive, the culture of that community to basically mark your turf, make your presence known by putting your mark in the community . . . In this segment STAFF speaks about the graffiti as an early component of a wider emerging hip hop culture, which he defines as a youth movement primarily concerned with creating new identities for and by Black and Brown youth. He recalls the ubiquity in his neighborhood not only of street writing but also of MCing (in the form of loudly playing records in public places) and "wild" dancing (primarily through the celebratory, sometimes drunken dances of street gangs). He also reflects on the role that the de-funding of public music and art programs had in the development of these more DIY street cultural expressions. He revisits what he sees as the intimate connection between these new expressions of culture among Black and Brown youth, on the one hand, and what Malcolm X struggled for, on the other. In connection with this discussion, STAFF elaborates on the meaning that he assigned his tag: "Seek Truth Always Faithfully Forever." As one among other new means of youth self-expression, graffiti, STAFF relates, naturally developed more intricate ways of self-elaboration, with the generation of taggers of the early Signature Era (including Kool Herc, before he got into MCing) largely fading away and the more elaborate taggers of the Stylistic Signature Era taking their place. breaking;Corky;drawing;embellishment;emceeing;graff writing;graffiti;hip hop;identity;Mr. Ed;self-expression;splif;stylistic;tagging A.J. (Graffiti artist);Art in education;Black Spades;Break dancing;Bug 170 (Graffiti artist);Dewitt Clinton High School (New York, N.Y.);DJ Kool Herc;DJing;El Marko 174 (Graffiti artist);Gangs;Graffiti;Graffiti--Signature Era;Graffiti--Stylistic Signature Era;Hip-hop;Joe 182 (Graffiti artist);Junior 161 (Graffiti artist);Lee 163 (Graffiti artist);MCing;Music in education;Saint (Motion picture);Staff 161 (Graffiti artist);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist), 1950-2012;Super Kool 223 (Graffiti artist);Taki 183 (Graffiti artist);X, Malcolm, 1925-1965;Youth cultures 0 7399 Graffiti Movement Takes Off STAFF 161: Yeah, so, yeah, so by '71, even '70 you started seeing a few tags that would be coming on the exterior of the train, and so it started to build up. Now, a lot of people—again, everything is time specific, and you gotta understand the political, social factors that happened, were happening in The Bronx, in New York City, in the world at that time, why, why these things happened. And again, New York going through a fiscal crisis and stuff like that: they weren't cleaning the trains . . . In this segment STAFF reflects on various factors that led to the explosion of graffiti as part of the wider youth culture that came to be called hip hop. He mentions the general disrepair of subways in New York City at the time as one factor, alongside the incredible resolve of youth in the South Bronx (and places like it) to create their own culture, even though public funding for cultural training and activities was being cut during the same period. STAFF also reflects further on graffiti as an integral part of what would eventually come to be called "hip hop culture", since all of the elements of this culture, at least in some form, were organically connected in his neighborhood in the early 1970s. He realizes that this was not the case in every neighborhood, and that graffiti developed in more isolation from new techniques of MCing and dance elsewhere. He also touches on the appeal in the community of rock music like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrex, Black Sabbath, and Santana, even though this was not the kind of music heard primarily in the streets. exterior;fiscal crisis;inspiration;maintenance;tagging Black Sabbath (Musical group);Break dancing;Ghetto Brothers;Graffiti;Hendrix, Jimi;Hip-hop;Led Zeppelin (Musical group);MCing;Rolling Stones;Santana (Musical group);South Bronx;Subways--Maintenance and repair;Subways--New York (State)--New York 0 7720 Formation of The Ebony Dukes G.C. STAFF 161: Very good, so. Okay, so, so by 1970, right, there, again, like I said, I recognized that there was numerous people in my community that, right, on my block—not even community, on my block, that were actual taggers. I felt a responsibility to organize them, right, and, and so we could be unified in what we were doing on that block . . . In this segment STAFF narrates the formation of The Ebony Dukes G.C. in the Spring of 1970. He mentions that leading up to the formation he had realized that there were people who were pursing tagging as a full-time activity and not just something incidental to their environment, all centered around the New York City transit system. He also remembers how instrumental the technique of "motion tagging"—doing a tag while a subway is temporarily stopped at a station—helped facilitate the movement from the interior to the exterior of trains. STAFF then recalls Birdie, his friend Danny's uncle, and how Birdie would invite him along on painting jobs, during which he would tell STAFF old war stories from the original Ebony Dukes, a gang in Harlem during the 1940s and 1950s. Fascinated by these stories, STAFF decided he wanted to preserve this history specifically through forming a graffiti crew of the same name. He also wanted to escape street gang culture and realized that the Ghetto Brothers, of which he was still a part, did not always look kindly on graffiti tagging. All of this led STAFF to form The Ebony Dukes Graffiti Crew in the Spring of 1970. The original lineup consisted of seven members, all from Hewitt Place: Staff 161, All Jive 161, Dynamite 161, Topaz 1, Hot Sauce 575, King Kool 156, and Super Slick 156. STAFF remembers making membership cards for the crew at a relatively early date, as it started to spread outside the neighborhood. He reflects on some of his motivation underlying the membership cards—i.e., inclusion of youth otherwise excluded from this kind of thing—as well as how he would produce the cards. He ends by remembering a few women involved in graffiti at the time, both within The Ebony Dukes and without, and stresses that women were largely excluded from participating in graffiti due to still prevalent notions of male chauvinism. badge;Birdie;boosting;colors;divide and conquer;exterior;graffiti;hustling;index cards;interior;membership card;motion tagging;painting;preservation;racking;tagging Adam 12 (Graffiti artist);All Jive 161 (Graffiti artist);Barbara 62 (Graffiti artist);Black Benjie (member of Ghetto Brothers);Blade (Graffiti artist);Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Clubs;Dr. Soul 1 (Graffiti artist);Dynamite 161 (Graffiti artist);Ebony Dukes (Gang);El Marko 174 (Graffiti artist);Eva 62 (Graffiti artist);Felt-tip markers;Ghetto Brothers;Graffiti;Graffiti--Women;Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Hot Sauce 575 (Graffiti artist);King Kool 156 (Graffiti artist);Kivu 1 (Graffiti artist);Line 149 (Graffiti artist);Male chauvinism;Segregation;Staff 161 (Graffiti artist);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist), 1950-2012;Subways--New York (State)--New York;Super Slick 156 (Graffiti artist);Sweet Tea 163 (Graffiti artist);The Ebony Dukes G.S. (Graffiti artist group);Topaz 1 (Graffiti artist);Woolworths 0 Part 1 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on February 23, 2022 with STAFF 161, a true pioneer of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx, and the founder of the first Bronx graffiti crew, The Ebony Dukes Graffiti Club. In this oral history, STAFF 161 describes his time growing up in Harlem, Staten Island, and the South Bronx of the 1960s and 1970s and how the Bronx context especially shaped his and others' approach to graffiti during this time period. Steven Payne Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at the Bronx County Historical Society. Today is February 23 2022. And, Kurt, Before we introduce our main event here, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone Yeah. I'm Kurt Boone and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Steven Payne Alright, great. Thank you, Kurt. So we're here with Staff 161 really a true pioneer in the graffiti arts movement, there from pretty much the the get go when before many people at all had started writing on subway trains. And Staff is also the founder of the Ebony Dukes Graffiti Club, really the first crew and graffiti crew in the Bronx. And really excited to hear about this early history from from Staff today. And Staff, we begin these oral histories by asking people to talk a little bit about their family's history and background if they know it, and some of your earliest life experiences. STAFF 161 Okay, so hello. So my name is Edward. Edward is my given birth name from my mother, and father, and I was born in 1956. In Metropolitan Hospital here in New York City. So I was basically born and raised in the city. My first residence, my own my parents first residence, and basically, where they you know brought me when I was born, was in Harlem, 117 Street in Madison Avenue, where they were living my mother and father were living together there. And so I was the first firstborn of nine children that, you know, my mother eventually had. So there, is where I got my start in the city. Eventually, I was moved from my mother's home, right. Through a court action, family court action after my parents' marriage, you know, dissolved. I wouldn't say dissolved, but they separated. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 My mother and father and my mother came to the attention of the family court with her children. I had another brother born after me by that point, my brother, Adam, and I had two twin brothers. After that, David and Daniel. So at that point, is where my mother and father had separated. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And my mother came to the attention of the family court here in New York City. And eventually, her children, which was my three younger brothers were removed from her along with myself from her and placed in foster care, which were all of us had foster care homes in Staten Island. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 At that time, right. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And we remained in foster care, at least me and my next youngest brother after me. Adam, we remained in foster care for the duration of five years before we returned to my mother's care or custody. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 Which she she was living in the Fort Apache section of the South Bronx Steven Payne Okay she moved up there. Within those five years. STAFF 161 Yes. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 That was when I returned to her. That's where we went to the Fort Apache section of the South Bronx. Steven Payne Sure, sure. And do you know much about how your mother and father ended up in New York and, you know, before they had children or anything like that, STAFF 161 okay, so my mother has a Caribbean background. She was born in, in, in the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. And she came here with her mother which my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, with her siblings, my mother had five or six younger siblings at that point, right. Now, some of her siblings were born here, but my mother and at least three of her youngest siblings were born in the Virgin Islands like her. So my maternal grandmother came here. In I would say, the, the early 50s. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 Early 50s or with her, my mother and the rest of her, her children in the early 50s from the Virgin Islands. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And basically they are residing in Harlem. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Now um after, My mother was like, she got here when she was 16. But after she was like, 19 years old, I believe she met my father. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 In Harlem. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Now my father is originally from South Carolina. Steven Payne Okay. Sure. Yeah. STAFF 161 Alright. And they, you know, got together and eventually were married. And somewhere during that time, or, or just before, I'm not sure, when my grandmother deceased, but my mother took up the care of her siblings. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. STAFF 161 And, and along with her marriage, and the resulting children that she had from my father, Steven Payne She had her hands full, huh? STAFF 161 That's what the conflict came in. And the family court came in and then saud, you know, Miss, you can't have your siblings. Right. Plus your four children. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And at that point that had created a rift between my mother and father. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And my father basic basically exited this situation. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 So here's my mother, with her four children, plus her siblings trying to juggle this, this family situation which didn't work out, of course. And so um four of our children went into foster care, including myself, and as well as two of her younger sisters. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. Wow. And what was Staten Island like when you were there for you said five years? STAFF 161 Oh, yeah. Now you got to understand now this is now the early 60s When I say the early 60s, right. I'm about 62, 63. At least. Well, even earlier than that, because I was born in 56. So by the late 50s, the court action, had probably came in like maybe in 59. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 60s right. Kurt Boone You were about 4 years old. STAFF 161 Yeah, I went into foster care when I was five years old. And I left when I was, like, 10, I returned return to my mother when I was 10, 10 years old. And that time she was living in the South Bronx. But ah, yeah, Staten Island. Staten Island was, you gotta understand the times, in the early 60s, the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Steven Payne yeah. STAFF 161 And other movements that were happening. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So Staten Island was like less than one 1% non-white? Steven Payne Yeah, very little. STAFF 161 less than 1%. Non-white, and even today Staten Island remains like a very conservative type of environment. But it was it was a little more dramatic. At that point. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So so like to two young black kids, right. I'm staying with one of the very few non-white families on Staten Island was, was a little dramatic, Steven Payne I'm sure. Yeah, STAFF 161 It was a it was a nice, middle class type of environ, working class, middle type of environment. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 But the fact that we're in the middle of the civil rights movement in this environment where there's like, a population of less than 1% non-whites, who I was a part of, it was pretty dramatic experience to me, Steven Payne I'm sure. Yeah, STAFF 161 but, soon after I say like 1965 I was returned to my mother in the South Bronx. And basically it was a whole new experience for me at that point from coming from Staten Island, Staten Island, basically a middle class working class type of environment and in a residential home house sure to this tenement environment in, in the South Bronx. That was basically a dramatic change. Steven Payne Which street did she live on when you when you moved up there? STAFF 161 This was a place in the South Bronx between Westchester Avenue, and Longwood Avenue. Steven Payne Okay, sure, STAFF 161 uh, by the name of Hewitt Place at H E W I T T, Steven Payne yeah, STAFF 161 Place, and a section of 161st Street intersected Hewitt Place. And so that was basically in the heart of a section of the South Bronx that we referred to as Fort Apache. And the reason that we referred it was referred to as Fort Apache was because the station after where was closest to my or the station that was closest to where we were living at was Prospect Avenue where the 2 and number the 5 IRT trains stopped at. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Where we live that Prospect Avenue, and the following station, going uptown would be Intervale Avenue. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And the station right after that would be Simpson. Right off of, Simpson Street, there was the 41st precinct. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And the 41st precinct was the jurisdiction in that general area. And the 41 precinct was dubbed or renamed. The Fort Apache. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 So Kurt Boone Did that slang term come from the streets? I did the movie. People come up with that name. STAFF 161 Okay, so you mentioned the movie. So eventually a movie with Paul New starring Paul Newman was, was made about that area Fort Apache, South Bronx. I believe, you know, the police. The police labeled it Fort Apache. Right. And, and I, and that was because of the perspective that I guess they had, that they had a fort that was built in the midst of a very hostile environment. Right. Yeah. For them. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it Yeah. So it became the normal label for for for that, that area, the South Bronx Fort Apache. Kurt Boone So when you were in elementary school, did you start drawing then? Or did you play sports like basketball? Baseball? football. STAFF 161 Yeah. Okay. So here's the thing, the environment. Right, was dramatically different. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Coming from this Staten Island area where I was in foster care. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 The South Bronx was was generally a slum. It was very rundown, a lot of abandoned and, empty areas of it, when I say bad and empty buildings were tore down and rundown, and some of them were demolished. Due to high occurrences of fires, Steven Payne sure. STAFF 161 A lot of fires in the area. And, and as a result of the fires, some of the buildings were demolished and had these large, empty lots for blocks and blocks. You know, so it gave this appearance that it was like a war zone. And there was like, almost like heavy shelling in the area. And and, and, you know, destruction that follows of course, after shelling, just look gave that appearance. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 Yes. Steven Payne What was your, the building that you lived in, like as far as the state of it? STAFF 161 Okay, so I was on the Westchester Street, which was the main street that ran through the neighborhood. I was on the Westchester end of Hewitt Place. Steven Payne Okay. Okay. Yeah. STAFF 161 And my building was 858. Right next to the last building on that side of Hewitt Place, which was 862. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 so 862 and 858. Right. And then there was a following row of tenement buildings on on the street. But 862 was the last residential building on that end of Hewitt Place. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Before you got to Westchester Avenue, and then you had a few commercial establishments that led into Westchester Avenue. Steven Payne Sure. Sure. Kurt Boone So so. So why you was this young kid, you know, and you see photos of the kids playing in empty, lots and doing all kind of like acrobatic stuff or couches, you do a lot of different creative games. with what they have? STAFF 161 Yeah, Kurt Boone So what was your experience? What kind of games did you like Butch Two talked about playing football on the street? STAFF 161 Okay, so, yeah, Kurt Boone Tackle football on the street. STAFF 161 Yeah, so basically, it was an adolescent mind, it will make their own fun, regardless of, of the environmental circumstances, how traumatic or bad it may be. You'll see kids usually, you know, to make their own fun. So we had games like, like Ringolevio, right. And Johnny on the Pony and Skelzies Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. We used to play stickball in the middle of the street. You know, it was a lot of games, you know, Hot Peas and Butter. You know, we used to make our own makeshift basketball hoop out of the frame for chairs. Yeah, we would make a you had this window on the street. That we was at there across the street from from the building a row of tenement buildings? Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 on my end of Hewitt Place, there was this huge church building that's still there to this day that kind of dominates that area. Huge church building. Right, that ran the course from Westchester Avenue to where 161st Street intersected on you Hewitt Place Steven Payne sure, STAFF 161 and that church building had this huge wall. Right. And that's where we were like, on one in the bars with one of the windows of of the church, we would put the, the, the frame for the chair what we used as a basketball hoop. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 And played right, you know, against that wall there. Kurt Boone Yeah. STAFF 161 That wall also served as a beginning stage of some major graffiti tagging. Steven Payne Oh, okay. STAFF 161 Okay, so now, the thing about the most dramatic one of the most dramatic things about the South Bronx, when I first you know, came into the area was the writing. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 A lot of writing on walls and surfaces in, which was it was I never really noticed that Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 to that extreme in Staten Island it was almost non existent. You know, and In Staten Island. I did have a pre-experience seeing it. When um because at the time I was living in Staten Island, they was just building the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, not too far from where I was living with the foster parents there with the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that was being built. It was in construction during that period, and I used to, you know, it was a distance from the house but I used to go over there. And like, right over in the construction area, Steven Payne yeah. STAFF 161 But basically under where, you know, the, the base of the bridge was being built. I would see some of my my first experiences seeing you know, graffiti tagging, right. Right in Staten Island that was, you know, very minimal. That was like the most, you know, biggest experience. I've you know, seeing it. But again, the South Bronx, when I first arrived, there was like, dramatic. As far as amount of writing that I saw. It was like, just about everywhere, you know, you know, the exterior of buildings and the interior of buildings. Steven Payne Sure, sure. STAFF 161 And so that was based and even in the school, I used to go my first school, public school. in um that's that part of the Bronx, South Bronx, on Hewitt Place. In Fort Apache section was PS 130, which was down the street on Hewitt Place on the other side of Hewitt Place near like, more or less 156th Street. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 But on 156 Street and Southern Boulevard. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 right. So it was, some walking distance from where I was living at 858, Hewitt Place and that was, you know, my first grades public grade school location, PS 130. And I did my first years of public school there. Now, In the school, right, there was like these wooden desks. Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 right. And, you know, I'm talking about the old school wooden desks with the inkwell. Steven Payne Oh, STAFF 161 yeah. So that's how old it was the inkwell, it's like you dip the pen in the but. So they had right the desks. And the desks were very interesting to me. I thought it'd be an understatement to say I was a little bit distracted in school. Right? Um, I just got in the habit of doodling, doodling on the desk, writing and drawing stuff. It always seemed to be somewhat of a therapeutic type of thing for me to draw or sketch things. And you had these amazing carvings and writings on those wooden desks. Yeah, and that just, you know, I would just sit there in different, you know, sometimes I'll be at this desk or that doesn't, it wasn't a standard desk that I was at. And I would just be amazed at the writings and the carvings that were in. On the desk. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 you know, yeah. And so I kind of got involved in doing those writing some carvings through the doodlings, right, Steven Payne sure. STAFF 161 Or You can carve something out into the desk, or you can just, you know, draw or write what your because you had pens and pencils. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 Yeah. So Kurt Boone that kind of writing you. maybe. I know that what I was seeing and you would say, Oh, Johnny loves Carol, or, you know, you put girlfriend and boyfriend style, you know, STAFF 161 well, yeah. Okay, so are you talking about like, like, General? General graffiti writing? Yeah. This was more or less like, um, like, some artistic renderings? Yeah, like, sketchings and stuff like that. And people would leave their names. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone Oh, STAFF 161 yeah. leave their names. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah, the romantic type things like, you know, they were there too. But this was more or less. People would like, like, draw things and carve things into those those wooden desks. Kurt Boone cartoon characters, or the famous, like spider man? STAFF 161 Yes. Stuff like that. Yeah. And, and see, um, you know, I wasn't really like, you know, very aware of the subconscious of it at that point. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Of my ability to sketch things or write things. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Because I had a younger brother that I met when I came from Staten Island to my mother's home in in the South Bronx. Right. My brother Joseph was he just was extremely talented from from a youth and he would draw things. He would draw things on sight. I never forget like, like the early cartoons. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Like your Flintstones and the Jetsons. Woody Woodpecker, Casper, Bugs Bunny, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Joseph basically was just getting out of diapers. It was amazing that he would sit in front of the TV. Right? And this time, we're talking about, you know, still black and white TVs, Steven Payne yeah, STAFF 161 And the big cabinet TVs, furniture type things with the big screen and antenna that sat on top, you know, what, you know, big antenna? Dial the antenna, and so forth. You know? Yes. So, um, Joseph we would, you know, my mother had that, you know? And, um, you know, which is, you know, a blessing in a lot of ways, you know, being, you know, a poor, a poor woman by herself at this point. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And, and I had a four, four other brothers and sisters. Right, that I'm just meeting. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Because in the interim, while I was in foster care, my mother had other children. So I came into this environment, where I'm just meeting new brothers and sisters. And Joseph being one of them. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Yeah. And other brothers and sisters. were younger, of course, we had David and Daniel, and Adam, who were in foster care with me. Right? They were just under me and in age, and then Joseph came next. And Joseph was the one that was the one that that was very artistic. In, he would, he would draw the Flintstones just sitting in front of the TV, just like that, you know, he'd get a piece of paper and a pencil. And he would just draw the Flintstones. And um Casper the Friendly Ghost, or Wendy, the Witch and, you know, yeah, Bugs Bunny, just like that. And to this day, you know, he's, you know, he still draws. So I was amazed by that. And now in Staten Island. While I was in grade school, I had some indication because there was this like that in the grade school that I was in Staten Island. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 There were desks old desks like that. But they weren't. Marked as much as these desks that were in PS 1 30. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 But they were markings. Because they're wooden desks they're wooden desks those old wooden desks. And but they weren't as marked as the ones that I saw in PS 130. And so I would say that, that was like the really beginning I didn't really start drawing too much on paper. As opposed and this is like you know, in retrospect, it kind of like doing that I started marking on surfaces like that, before I actually really got into drawing on paper. Steven Payne Sure, sure. STAFF 161 Right. So those wooden desks, those old wooden desks with that inkwell, you know, were like, basically, like, my first sketching pads, Steven Payne wow. Wow, STAFF 161 My first sketching pads, and so I quickly realized that, you know, maybe it was a genetic thing, and, but I could sketch certain, you know, basic things too, as well. So I got into, you know, sketching and drawing things to basically as a distraction in school. I was a little bit distracted in school. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 I had classes that I appreciate it more than others. Right. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 English in and writing classes and history classes. I appreciated. And, of course, art classes. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 He had these arts and crafts classes back then. That you got to be creative. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. STAFF 161 To my dismay, New York was going through a fiscal crisis at that time. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And the funding for a lot of those music and art classes. Right were taken away. Steven Payne Yep. STAFF 161 And so they ceased to exist. And I think, you know, in an environment like the South Bronx, based on what the South Bronx was, was was going through, and the disenfranchisement that was our Bronx at that time in the people in the South Bronx. I got to realize, in that area of the South Bronx, Fort Apache section specifically seem to be ostracized. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Politically Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 It was like a blaming thing. Like, because of the high rate of fires. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And the decay of the neighborhood and such. And the high gang, gang, street gang presence. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 and drug addiction, you know, a lot of heroin. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Available in that part of the Bronx? And what? It seemed like that politically, an immediate such that that those people that were living in the area were blamed for that. Steven Payne Absolutely. STAFF 161 And I always thought that was so unfair. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Because what I got from the decay of the, the buildings, the tenement buildings that were in the area, is that, okay? If those people, they're renting, that building, you know, the upkeep of the building, is the responsibility of the property management and the landlord. And that was basically non existent. A lot of those buildings, right? They were, at least most of the buildings during that time were heated, heated, you know, heat and hot water. with the old coal burning furnaces. So I remember the old coal burning furnaces where the trucks would come in, and they would have this shaft, this slide that would go down and attach into the basement of the building. And they would just just have the coal, coal slide into the basement, and remember that the superintendent that have to shovel the coal into the furnace to keep the buildings heated. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah. STAFF 161 And that seemed to dismantle, you know, very quickly you know because you had to have you had to have a superintendent that would maintain that, that those coal burning furnaces, you know, because you had to take out the ashes. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Yeah. And, you know, so it was a big job to do that plus the, to sweep and mop the building and do repairs and such like that. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Yeah. But um, this, this, this whole block here, on Hewitt Place was a was a good representation of the decay of that whole area of the South Bronx. Steven Payne Sure. Wow. Oh, yeah, sure. So what what about the people who lived in your building or on Hewitt Place? What kinds of people lived on the block? Or was your family close with? STAFF 161 Okay, so the area was generally African American and Hispanic, mostly on Puerto Rican, Steven Payne yeah, STAFF 161 Hispanics, that lived on the block. My Side of Hewitt Place including 862 was the last residential building and my building was 858 and then it proceeded to go up, you know, the street towards Longwood my side, a lot of African Americans right. And then it seemed like it was only segregated between Hispanics and African Americans on the same block. And then you had, like, in my building, you only had one Hispanic family on the ground floor. On my building. And you didn't see Hispanic families. Until you got like, towards the middle of the block near like, maybe 161st Street. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 Right. You had another Hispanic family there. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And that didn't change for a while. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. So mostly African American and Hispanic families. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Yeah. So my thing was, like, you know, I was the new kid. Me and my brother, Adam, right. Were the new kids on the block and, you know, in a hostile environment, but they it was definitely hostile. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. Um, you could be and we were, we could and we were singled out, as you know. you know targets like who, who you? Where you come from? Steven Payne The kids on the block. STAFF 161 Yeah. And so Kurt Boone this is like 10 years old, right? STAFF 161 10 years old? Yeah, we ten me and um Adam is like one year under me. So he's nine. And I'm ten. So a lot of fights. A lot of fights, especially like, in school, right? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 from going to school and back a lot of fights in school, after school, a lot of fights. And you know, you got the street gang presence as well. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 Which is starting to develop more now we're this is the 60s. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 This is like, I returned to my mother in the South Bronx in 1965. So this is the 60s or mid 60s. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements that were happening. And those movements were that were reflected in the neighborhood the street that I was on. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And I remember on Beck Street, okay, which was on the other side of Longwood Avenue, I ran across Longwood Avenue, Beck Street. But I'm on the other side of Longwood Avenue on Beck Street, you had like, like a safe house for the Black Panther Party? Steven Payne Ah, STAFF 161 yeah, Steven Payne sure. STAFF 161 And I remember like, you know, getting to know and frequently seeing those people. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And you also had, I believe, on Kelly street, a location where the Young Lords was, so you had these militant militant groups that were in the neighborhood? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 As well as on street gangs. Street basic street gangs. And when I say street gangs, the outlaw street gangs. Outlaw street gangs were like, the prototype of say, like, the Hells Angels type of appearance with Kurt Boone The Jacket STAFF 161 Yeah, with the cut sleeve, denim jackets. And the, the colors on the back, which was the rocker, top rocker, you know, and a bottom rocker, and sent the patch. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And even though that was, you know, in a lot of respects, frightening in a sense, when you would like see them? Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 It to me, it was very attractive. Steven Payne Absolutely. STAFF 161 Right. Now. Now, now, now, you might say that, that's odd, but yet, it's attractive. You know, and I've had my experiences before are kind of more or less with what I would call crewed up. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Right. I had my experiences where, you know, being the new, you know, kid in the, in the block, when I got singled out, right, being by walking by yourself as as a as a youth in that environment. Right. You get singled out by the street gang, street gangs are all like, like wolf packs, or like wolf packs, that would like single out a lone wolf or lone sheep or whatever. And you would you would get victimized. Steven Payne What are some of the names of the street gangs from that period that you remember? STAFF 161 Okay. So you had major street gangs that were in that neighborhood during that period? Like the Savage Skulls? Steven Payne Sure. Sure. STAFF 161 The the Peacemakers Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 The Black Spades. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. STAFF 161 The Bachelors. Steven Payne Yeah. The Bachelors, STAFF 161 the Turbans, the Javelins And the Ghetto Brothers had a clubhouse that was like, right around the corner, like I remember now. And on 61st Street intersected my street he Hewitt Place but 163rd Street, which was right around the corner off of Westchester Avenue. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 Right. There was a hill that went up off of Westchester Avenue 163rd Street, and up that on that right on that hill, well actually on 162nd Street. Steven Payne Sure STAFF 161 On 162nd and then you had the big hill was 163rd on 162nd Street. There was a clubhouse Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 For the Ghetto Brothers, Steven Payne Yeah, it's like a parking garage now, something like that. But yeah, STAFF 161 yeah. That was the clubhouse for the Ghetto Brothers. Now, what attracted me to the Ghetto Brothers. Other than the fact that they was right there in the neighborhood, and they would be seen frequently, right. was, um, they had like this this Latin rock band. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And they would play open jams in the neighborhood, you know, regularly, especially up on the hill on 163rd Street up on the hill. They had a bodega that was there, Steven Payne sure. STAFF 161 And they would play in front of that bodega. But they had other locations along in that area where I would see them, you know, they would plug into the light poles for their amps and stuff. And just, you know, and play, you know, Latin rock music. And that really attracted me as far as that music playing. But you would hear for blocks over when they hooked up. Steven Payne I'm sure. STAFF 161 That was that was a big, that was a big. That was a big event. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 To see that happening? You know, and I, and I would go up there and check them out. So eventually I gravitated towards them. And I started going up there to the clubhouse, right. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And when I got up there, one, one day I met on one of the older members, there. Not old, but he um Slick and he, I was talking to him he, any about? You know the music and, and, and the organization. And he invited me to come for a meeting that they were going to have. And when I went to the meeting a person who was there that had you know, very dramatic impact. On how I gravitated towards the Ghetto Brothers was Black Benjie. Steven Payne Absolutely. STAFF 161 Now Black Benjie was mostly the Ghetto Brothers were Hispanic. Steven Payne Sure, sure. STAFF 161 And Black Benjie was African American. And so and, and the first connection I made was a Hispanic guy named was Slick, right? And so they had like, what you call a youth division. Got to understand that Black Benjie was was an ex addict himself. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And he was like, like, either a peer counselor or straight up drug counselor of some sort. And, um, he was also a member of the Ghetto Brothers as well. Now in the Ghetto Brothers, they they weren't like the, to me. They weren't like the the conventional, or a regular street gang in that neighborhood. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 Outlaw street gang. They, they kind of more or less, gave me the impression. They were more or less like the, like the Young Lords for the Black Panther Party in how they approached their organization. They were more they were more militant, and aware, aware of their circumstances and situations socially and politically. A lot of them wore like, like, you know, right. Steven Payne Some of them even wore, even started wearing berets. STAFF 161 Oh, yeah, they had the berets. Yeah, they had. Yeah, they wore those berets like, similar to what the Young Lords would wear. And they were into the politics of Puerto Rico. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 yeah. And the liberation of Puerto Rico and such like that, which I didn't really understand. You know what that was all about, but their colors, alright. They had the center patch, and it had three garbage cans in the center patch. I didn't I didn't like them one of the things that that attracted me to the street gangs was the colors. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 And certain street gangs had nice colors. And what what it was was the imagery that was in the colors. And eventually because of my sketching and drawing abilities, I got into drawing different images of those street gang colors. Most of it of it being like with skulls, skulls and crossbones type things. Most of them had it like the Savage Nomads and the Savage Skulls. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 that was, you know, so I got into drawing skulls and, and bones and stuff like that. But um, Yeah, but the Ghetto Brothers had three garbage cans. And I was always like, why is it? But the thing is, is that their thing was assisting the Department of Sanitation, and cleaning out empty lots and stuff. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 for some reason, I don't know how they got into that. But that was a, I wouldn't say duties, but part of what they were volunteering to do. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 Right, in that, in that part of the South Bronx, like cleaning out empty lots and stuff, along with the Department, because it was this effort to try to clear out some of these empty lots, which I think was almost futile, because it got so bad with the mattresses and old furniture, and abandoned cars, and lots, was just strewn with a lot of garbage and stuff. You know, and along with that, you had a lot of rats in and you had a lot of stray dogs in and to this day, I wonder where did all those stray dogs go? They had a lot you had, like packs of stray dogs that would roam the streets in the Bronx. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 Packs of them. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 You know, and, you know, they would like to, like move you off, off the off the sidewalk, you know, they would come through. Like, they wouldn't run or anything like that you had, they're coming down as a pack of dogs. And you either you're gonna move out the way or they gonna move you out the way. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 So I'm not these packs of dogs and that would roam the streets and cats along with the cats. And, and, and rats, a lot of rats from the empty lots and stuff like that. So it was very like, like, you know, this, disconcerting type of environment for me to come into, you know, that I just had to, you know, I had to get you know, accustomed to it. Kurt Boone So in junior high school like Queens, that's when I really saw the gangs so the gangs would come with the colors so they'd be in the same classroom with you. You were sitting in class and you know you got members wearing their colors in class, What was your junior high school, cuz I want to lead into the, to the high school and then we kind of get into the graffiti, but you're going into graffiti before kind of like high school. But so let's just talk cause in junior high school would experience I felt was quite interesting how in Queens it wasn't as rough as they way it was up in the Bronx. But you started at elementary school you're fighting fighting in the schoolyards and stuff. But when you're getting to junior high, it takes it's more aggressive. STAFF 161 Yeah, absolutely. Kurt Boone Right. And then you run into the gangs straight on? STAFF 161 Yeah. Okay, so yeah, that's true. But um, in in this, you had some gang members that were still in school. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 But a good majority of them had left school. Right, a good majority during that month, because see, they were so they were very, they were a little more. They couldn't blend in, like, you know, what, you could probably, you know, say up of the current gang situation. They couldn't blend it because of the outlaw appearance. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 You got to understand these district gangs of that period. They had the that look, they they wore denim cut off sleeve jackets, and with the very blatant colors on the on the back of denim jacket. Right? And numerous patches. And I'm talking about, you know, patches with skull and crossbones, swastikas, and, yeah, and other things that, you know, would be like, to most people offensive. MC boots, you know, the motorcycle boots, and big flop hats. They deliberately gave this appearance of dread or terror. Yeah. And, um, you know, and like, the Hispanic ones, you know, long hair or during that period in African American kids, huge Afros. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 You know, so they were very visual. So it wasn't, so I kind of more or less, you know, copied that in a lot of ways. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So eventually, I became part of the Ghetto Brothers your younger, younger division of the Ghetto Brothers. Right. And under the tutelage of Slick and Black Benjie. So a very bad situation happened. Benjie was more diplomatic, you know, a type of person. A Very What do you call it? expressive, brother he was was able to, to relate and express himself because I don't know what his education was, but it appeared that he had some education. You know, he had he, you know, he knew how to, to converse, and to relate, and perhaps what he was doing with the counseling, brought that in hand, but he was the person that would counsel and organize. And but the main thing with him was the the peacemaking thing. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. Which eventually led to his death. You know, then street gangs were very violent. And there was a lot of rivalries with the street gangs for territory and and what happened is that there was an account of or report of a disturbance with what's a few street gangs and Black Benjie showed up with a few younger Ghetto Brothers. Right. And to this day, I, you know, I'm saying to myself, because he will bring the younger ones when I don't, you know, he, some of the older Ghetto Brothers, you know, I, you know, you know, weren't his his his main focus, he would deal with a lot of the younger members of the, of the Ghetto Brothers. And so, that's what we would be seeing with, and today that this incident happened, he was with a few younger Ghetto Brothers, and I, and I, you know, to this day, you know, and that this, I could have been there at the situation when this thing happened. Right. But he confronted this conflict, with a few gangs, you know, Javelins and other gang members that were there. And 7 Immortals. Steven Payne Mortals for sure. STAFF 161 7 Immortals Steven Payne The Mongols, maybe were in the mix somewhere, STAFF 161 yeah, possibly, but the main was Javelins, 7 Immortals, and a few other gangs that was there. And he got there wile it was already set off the situation. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 you know, and immediately, he tried to interject into the situation. Now, I wasn't there, I didn't see it, actually, myself, but the report was, he tried to interject in the situation immediately, and to separate these his rival gangs members, and it turned on him and he was eventually killed at that location. So you know, that that led to a few things that I, I decided I was going to do and that was one that you know, come out of that environment of, or that situation of being, you know, gangbanger so to speak you know part of that, that gang street gang in scene there in that area. And also to like, more or less focusing on graffiti writing. At that point, I had acquired spray paint, right when I say spray paint, you know, you know the spray paint? Steven Payne Yeah (everyone laughs). STAFF 161 So spray paint, so this is where everything set off, right? Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right now. Now, here's the thing with this, right. This was really, this really got me right here. Right? When I say this really got me. There was a few stores. There was a few stores. Remember Prospect Avenue was this train station. Prospect Avenue. What's a train station that would get off the IRT 2 and 5 Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 that the walk down to where I was living at. And by that point, right, I was, I was going to school or I had left. I left PS 130 and was going to junior high school. 52 52 right. One, one notable prior student that was 52 was Colin Powell. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Colin Powell used to go to that school. Right. That was where Colin Powell was here, you know, yeah. So um, yeah. So PS 52. was a little more dramatic. You had mentioned that IS 52 They call it but through a junior high at that in between grade school and high school. Yeah. Eventually the high school would go to would be Theodore Roosevelt. or Junior High School 52 I noticed you got a little more dramatic. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And, um, the practice it was like, you know, like these little um, handball courts and, and recreational areas that was around that school. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Where Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 specifically, like Savage Skulls and other main gangs would like, keep, you know, keep up residence right in that area. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So it got a little more, you know, funkier, so to speak, right. You know, dealing with with, with junior high school with school, period, you know, when I got to Junior High School 52. My mother took me out of that school. Right, me and my brother and put us in a parochial school situation that was run by the church she was attending, right? Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And that started me riding the trains and the bus. Steven Payne Oh, STAFF 161 right. Steven Payne Where was that high school located? STAFF 161 That was on Forest Avenue. Right. Not too far from from Morris High School. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 Right down the street from Morris High School. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. On Forest, R.T. Hudson, which was a a school that was run by the church. Right. Kurt Boone It was a Seventh Day Adventist. STAFF 161 it was a Seventh Day Adventist school that was run. Yeah. By that church. Yeah. Yeah. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 which my mother was a member of that church, okay. And she felt that was, you know, the best environment to get us out of you know, getting in trouble because, you know, a few incidences did happen in 52 You know, fights and stuff that you know, that she was called in and and things happen and stuff. So she seen, you know, some signs and she said, The best thing is to try to pull me out of that school and put me into that particular parochial school that was run by this church. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And I'm so dramatic thing now. Now all of a sudden I don't wear any uniform to school right and stuff. And but right next door to me was was Danny Danny was one of the the people the young kids of my age that was on the street, Danny and his sister, Bettina. Right. And they know we're close. friends or associates of my family. Right? Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Because they've we went, you know, similar denomination of church. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And now Danny, and Bettina is going to that parochial school RT Hudson, on Forest Avenue. That me and Adam is going to so we're traveling the same route every day, and attending the same school. So we got, you know, pretty, pretty tight. As far but here's the thing, right? On the street on Hewitt Place? Right? Something became apparent, right. Besides all the writings that were in the neighborhood, right, on the exterior of buildings and stuff, and other services in the, in that area, the public and in the interior of buildings, right. And specifically in school buildings to on the desks, And bathroom stalls and stuff like that. I got to meet some of the people who was putting the marks there. Steven Payne Ah, STAFF 161 and that was the most dramatic thing. And that's the thing that never ceases to amaze me. Or what what graffiti markings? Is that the mystique of seeing the mark continually in different places. And, and is the owner of the mark. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And what the person is like, right then and and why are they making that mark? You know, and that was a very appealing thing for me to see. Kurt Boone What did the marks say at that time? Where they different marks the same name?. STAFF 161 Yeah well, okay. Well, okay, so I would see different marks, right. Mostly. It was like gang related stuff. Right gang related stuff, you know, um, you know, in street gangs you you have to have a street gang Yeah, right, you'd have your government name, your government name, it's the name, your birth name that was given to you at birth to your parents and on your birth certificate. But you wouldn't use that name. you wouldn't use that name and in the street gang,, so immediately in the street gang, I got a nickname, Corky C O R K Y. Yeah. And that was one of the first names I used to write along with my affiliation. Right? with the street gang? Yeah, Kurt Boone That was the Ghetto Brothers you were a Ghetto Brother right? STAFF 161 Yeah. Um, but before that also had Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed, I, I'm now in the Mr. Ed factor came in because of my name is Edward. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 And, and in the mid early, early to mid 60s, they had this TV sitcom. Yeah, Mr. Ed the Talking Horse. And, you know, it was like, more or less a comedy type thing. Because, you know, he's talking horse thing, you know. But, um, so I used to get, like, you know, teased about it in school. Right. You know, it's like, in school in school during that period, especially a kid that's not that they didn't know them. The kids the kids. If the kids didn't know you their whole life. They didn't know, you know, you from being born and raised up in there. And all of a sudden, here's this like, 10 year old 11 year old kid, right? In the neighborhood. Right. Right. If you if you didn't make a name for yourself, or give them a name? Yeah. Right. They would give you a name. Yeah. Okay, or you n image right and usually it'll be something that you wouldn't like, it wouldn't be flattering. Yeah, it wouldn't be flattering. You said, because most of the time, they didn't want to give you they didn't want want to refer to you. As your birth name. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. STAFF 161 All right. Edward wasn't an appealing thing. to call somebody to them. Right. So or they would make mockery of it. So, you know, Mr. Ed the talking Horse thing came in? Right. As you know, basically they call we call we call you know, snapping. Snapping. Snapping is being in school. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Snapping is being in school. And you being made mockery of in the classroom. Right. So your only defense, right for that is, is to be able to snap back but harder, you know, what I'm saying? And embarrass people. And you know, what, see that just led to a whole bunch of fights. Steven Payne Yeah. Yeah, for sure. STAFF 161 Yeah. In class out of class continuously, right? Because that was your only defense because you in class, and you continually being ridiculed and mocked and snapped on. Right. So you got to come back, you know, hard hardcore, like with your snaps. And so I got good at that. But the only thing with that is that it led to a lot of fights. A lot of fights. So, you know, so I kind of, you know, became diplomatic with it with the whole Mr. Ed thing. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 I just adopted it. I started drawing. Right. And I and I kind of related to the theme the whole Mr. Ed with, you know, with the horse and everything I started drawing horses. Right. And cowboy type of themes. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. The cowboy riding the horse. The the cowboy hat. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 The stars. Right. Okay. You know, Deputy badge star, right. And I started throwing that around on the desk. And in the restrooms and stuff like that. Kurt Boone Oh Okay. and you wasn't moving on it wasn't on paper at that time? STAFF 161 And Stuff like that. That's what I'm saying. I'm leaving. Yeah, I'm leaving, like the desks now. Right. Yeah. And now I'm starting to put it actually on walls. Kurt Boone Yeah. STAFF 161 Mainly around the school and stuff like that. So that's my first, you know, really would say tagging experience. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 like grade school like it's PS. 130 Still, Steven Payne yeah. STAFF 161 So like, by (IS) 52 it became a little more dramatic now by 52. Right now, um, the whole thing with spray paint came in. Now, Steven Payne okay, STAFF 161 now the day would spray paint. Right now you understand that spray paint was something that wasn't it wasn't made, you know, Kurt Boone It wasn't made for art. STAFF 161 It wasn't made for writing or drawing with. Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 spray paint was made basically as a utility type tool industrial use thing. Right, you know, to do you know, no utility and industrial work with, right? Yeah. Um, I would first my first account with it right, I can remember would be that we needed spray paint to cover the identity of a stolen bike. Yeah, if the bike costs, yes, so. Yeah. So, basically, at this point, yeah. So here's what's happening right? At this point, we got this this. This block crew as Topaz liked to call it block crew. And on the block crew, you know, it's like, you know, you know, you had a couple of like, marauding kids in the block crew, including myself. You know, would go around. And we shoplift stuff. shoplifting became a major thing. And stealing bikes? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 From other neighborhoods. So what happened is that we realized that the book, you can't keep riding that bike around, if it's stolen. And if it's being looked for by by the cops. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So we got to change up the appearance of the above the bike. And so up on Prospect Avenue. We had Woolworth and John's Bargain Store. And both of them had had like, supplied spray paint. Right? And so we acquired some spray paint and spray painted the bike, right? Kurt Boone Did you rack it or bought it?, STAFF 161 No well. No, actually everything. There was no money involved. We have no money. There was no yeah. There was absolutely no money. So, so so so so shoplifting became a thing for everything, you know, for eating for clothing yourself. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And for acquiring anything. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 there was no money at all you can get right. Later on, you know, as far as hustling thing, like, he would have stuff like packing bags at the, at the a&p That was on Westchester Ave or, you know, or doing some little chore for somebody, you know, carrying bags for somebody back to, you know, from the supermarket or something like that. But in general, there was no money to be had. Right? So, shoplifting became a major factor. Right? In just having stuff and getting things. So that's the first, you know, experience with like, spray paint. And then you had, like, you know, really, there was some spray paint that was in the basement of the superintendent, where the superintendent of the building had some spray paint down in the basement for some reason. Yeah. And we got that spray paint with access to the basement, he had this whole maze of basements, and apartments down in the lower part of the tenement, and in his backyard is huge backyard, whole maze in the backyard. And, and of the tenements and, and the lower part, our basement you had these basement apartments with a boiler rooms in the basement with the boiler and the cold room, and all this was and those those after a lot of the superintendents ceased to keep maintenance in the building or they were no longer you know, taking care of the building those basement apartments where the boilers and stuff like that was became like, like shooting dens for the heroin addicts. Steven Payne Sure, sure. Sure. STAFF 161 So that was either in the basement, or it was up on the roof. Yeah, yeah. And so the apartment that I lived in with my mother and my younger brothers and sisters was on the top floor, just before we hit the roof. So there was continually junkies up on that roof landing. shooting heroin was a terrifying scene. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. So between the junkie shooting heroin in the street gangs, right, that you You know, you was always had to be on the lookout for always on, you know, on, you was always on the target side of them. Right. It was pretty dreadful environment. Kurt Boone So two questions for you. See you getting your spray paint. What age kind of like where you like cause Junior High is like 11, 12 years old? STAFF 161 Yeah. So that around that time was the spray paint? Yeah, yeah. Kurt Boone You being 11 or 12 years old? It's pretty dramatic to see all that how did how did you take that in? STAFF 161 I'm already in the environment, and I see what it is right. I know it's not it's not Staten Island no more. Right. And, you know, this is where I have to be. So I have to make my niche. Right. Right now. I'm now the first thing was, is knowing how to defend yourself? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. So, um, so me and my brother, seeing that we were in a situation together and we were the oldest of our siblings. So it's the responsibility to me to me the responsibility was that I had younger brothers and sisters. Right? That, you know, I had to defend. And I noticed that that that larger families like mine of kids, right, that the older brothers were the ones that will come to the defense of the younger brothers and sisters. Or you had to make a reputation for yourself that don't mess with his him or his brothers and sisters. because so and so will get you. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 So and I had to be what your fighting game or whatever, or whatever, you know, or, you know, or the get knocked in the head with a stick game or I'll stick you with a with a K55 or 007 game? Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 Yeah. So it was with that. So, me, me, me and AJ was like, our jumping game. Right? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Now, when I say jumping game, you know, I would like say, Yo, listen, you see that? They down on the corner right there. Right. So when we get down there? You know, I'm saying I'll give you the cue. And that dude that one particular dude we got to jump on him. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 All right. And we're gonna whip him out. And so and then the rest of them will know that we gonna do that. Now. No. So so that started happening. Now AJ became more of a fighter than me. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. My thing was, I'll hit you in the head with a stick. Yeah, that was my thing. I'll hit you the head with a stick. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone That was your brother right?> STAFF 161 Right. So but AJ will fight you. Right? Kurt Boone And that's your brother? STAFF 161 Yeah, yeah. The younger brother. Yeah. Adam, So he'll hit you in the head with a stick so. So the AJ thing was eventually would become his tag. And my tag would be Mr. Ed 161. And Staff 161 Eventually, right. Yeah. So that came eventually. But that's what I'm referring to as AJ his tag. Alright, right. So yeah, so that thing became a dramatic experience dealing with that part, hostile part of the Bronx. So spray paint came in into play. So up on Prospect Avenue, we had Woolworth and you had John's Bargain Store. John's Bargain store had had had wet-look Paint, wet-look paint. Right, which I thought was very interesting. It's supposed to give you the shine wet look type of appearance. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So the spray paint came into play. Now the church building that was across the street. That became basically my, my first public canvas. Steven Payne Sure, sure. Sure. STAFF 161 Yeah. Now. Okay, so on that street with spray paint for the first time. I actually drew something. Right. And that was early 1970. I was around. Yeah. Early 1970. I drew something with spray paint. And that was a skull and crossbones. What with a crown Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And there's the bones of the skull and crossbones were dripping. So I drew the drip. So I actually drew that on there. And that was a very dramatic thing. But the thing is, is that that brought a conflict too, because this the Savage Skulls, their colors Steven Payne yeah STAFF 161 was a skull, not a skull and crossbones. but a skull with this here Nazi helmet on. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And I never forget that. One of the major members of the Savage Skulls, which that baby Skulls its not Hippie, Steven Payne oh, Hippie. Okay. STAFF 161 Right. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 he comes to the neighborhood. Right. And he sees that skull and crossbones that I wrote. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Or drew on the on the side of that wall, that wall. Right. And he's staring at it and starts kicking in, and stuff like that. And, you know, and now so that what about that street conflict? Now, at that time? Kurt Boone Did he know you drew it? STAFF 161 He didn't know who he didn't know who drew it. Now. Now, this is just prior. This is just prior to me establishing what I will refer to as a graffiti crew or graffiti club. Steven Payne Sure, sure. Sure. STAFF 161 Now, I mentioned that there was like, at least a few people that I had became aware of, on that street on the on that particular street that were were gang members, street gang members of different street gangs. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And, but they were all that I knew. And I know, you no, um interacted with either, you know, playing stickball or a basketball and on our makeshift court, or Johnny on the Pony, ringolevio, skelzies, or whatever. Yeah, or just like, um, he would go on these like exploration. Because adventures because the whole that whole environment, there was rooftops, basements, and stuff that, you know, we would explore. So I had started to, you know, make my niche into the, the youth crew, or the peers of my age that were in that community. So, like, so it was a few people. So it was Danny that was next door. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And there was Dope. And there was a Paul. And there was Kenny, and Cookie. And Jojo. And Skeeter, and such like that, now some of these some of these guys, right. Some of these guys were like, at least two of them. Were part of the of that whole affiliation with the Ghetto Brothers with me. Steven Payne Okay, okay. STAFF 161 There was a younger division of the Ghetto Brothers, like they had the Baby Skulls. They had younger division of the Ghetto Brothers, that Slick and Black Benjie would like more or less counsel and supervise? Steven Payne Sure, sure. STAFF 161 So that's what I was a part of. And along with a few other people on my street, so that became apparent, like more dominant, because the other people that will have that would belong to other gangs like the Savage Skulls, and the Black Spades. Doug was a Black Spade. Super Slick was or Paul. Getting you know a little ahead of him. Yeah. That was his tag, so Paul, was was part of the Savage Skulls. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 yeah, I found that kind of like, you know, dis dis concerning that, you know, all these rival gangs on the same block and these guys I'm associating with, but you got to understand that the whole nature of street gangs is that if you in the community, and you're not like, associated with something that's dominating on the street level like that, in some ways, and you like traveling in different places, you left very vulnerable. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 so a lot. I understood that a lot of kids, right young youth become affiliated with those things for like a support base that they usually, or ordinarily you don't get they ordinarily don't get like either from their, their, their home, or some other community based situation, right. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 street gang can be very supportive. Right for like family things for defense. And for essentials, food, clothing, sometimes even shelter. You know, you know, companionship, you know. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And, and so I got to understand that was a major thing. And again, like I said, the Ghetto Brothers was very appealing because they were more or less like interactive socially in and as far as we want to help the community type thing. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 You know, they had social issues that they were backing. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah, STAFF 161 that that I kind of like and then the whole thing was a music band. Right, that they were playing, you know, for free in the community and stuff like that. Alright, but again, like I said, I tended the after Black Benjie, you know, being killed, I tended to, like, grav, gravitate away from that, and more or less towards, like, more graffiti writing? Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 so this is on the street. This is solely on the street now. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 but it it slowly gravitated to the mass transit system. Cause of, myself, my younger brother, Danny. And his sister Bettina riding the buses and the train to get to the private school. And so more time on the, on the trains and the buses, and being on the interior of the buses and the trains. Right. gave us the opportunity. For the to write on the interior of the trains and the buses. So the marker thing, yeah, you had markers because, you know, of school and stuff like that. But um, that's I started getting my first interior tags, specifically on Third Avenue El. Okay. And the 2 and the 5. And I can't recall the number of the bus but the bus that went up Prospect Avenue. Right, that stopped right on the corner of Westchester and Prospect, and headed, you know, uptown towards Boston Row. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Right. That bus I would take, as well as the 2 and the 5 to Third Avenue, and switch to get the Third Avenue El. to the station where I would get off to go to RT Hudson. And that ride right along along with our neighbor, Danny. We started getting our first tags. on the Third Avenue El You know, that's a defunct line now. Kurt Boone You was writing Corky and Mr. Ed? STAFF 161 I would write Corky Mr. Ed. And then eventually I got Staff Staff S T A F F. Kurt Boone And this is like right around you was like 14, 13, coming out of junior high going into high? STAFF 161 Yeah. I'm still like, like, like, like, 12 years old when I first go into RT Hudson. Kurt Boone Oh, STAFF 161 yeah. And then, you know, like, by 13. You know, I just like that we fully organized as far as graffiti on. Like I said, on that street, you had a few people. Right, that I started to realize they were the author's Kurt Boone Oh, STAFF 161 Of the tags, yeah. Again, it's that's the whole thing, the nature of tagging, you see the tag first. And you get familiar with the tag? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And it brings the question mark, who, when and how, right. And that is a very interesting factor. In the whole graffiti tagging scene is to see the tag first. And become familiar with the tag, and to to long to meet the author of the tag, so I started meeting the author of the tags on my block. So that I put that together. As far as commonality besides being, you know, on on the same block around the same age, you know, the adverse of that is that How come you belong to this gang and you belong to that gang and I belong to this gang, and so forth we on the same block. But we still supposed to be like, Hewitt Place boys? Steven Payne Yes. Kurt Boone Okay. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. Yeah. All right. We got to get something a little more in common. And that was like the graffiti tagging. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 right. And since by that point, Like, I was starting to draw things with the can. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 I didn't, I didn't make nothing of it at that point. Right. But that wasn't being done. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 As far as if it was being done, it was being done. Right. And that kind of more or less led me to draw the skull and crossbones, and with the crown, it was it is being done by gang members. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 But they would draw, you know, like, crude murals of they gang colors. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 At the handball courts, or something in their area. So that's what kind of more or less attracted me and said oh look at that, you know, either it was the gang colors themselves, or, like, the gang would like find a handball court or wall near their turf area, and draw their colors. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And so I kind of more or less, you know, got into drawing with the can because of that. Steven Payne Okay. Yeah, sure. Kurt Boone Your inspiration. So, um, so you you mentioned a step deal you know, the 1970s, and thought about developing this club? Did you? Did you already knew that it was an ex Vandal crew already? STAFF 161 Okay. Yeah. So I'm riding the trains, right, at that point, going back and forth to school now, I'm doing more commuting. Now. I'm not like, you know, going to school right there in the neighborhood, I'm leaving out the neighborhood, specifically to go to school and traveling on buses and trains. Right? I start to see tags in the interior of the trains. Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 interior of the trains, right. And these are basically, you know, wouldn't be like these, like, you know, heavy duty Marker was like the Pilots, it'd be like, like, you know, like, little dry markers, and other smaller tip felt tip markers. And I started to see the tags after a while. And so, I made the affiliation, right, based on what I seen and knew about street gangs and the tags and marking turf, that the tags were from people that was in the general neighborhood. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. For instance, Lee 163. I knew that the number referred to the area where the tagger was from Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 I kind of made that out. So I'm saying so Lee, and Lee with a very prevalent tagger. And Sweet Duke 161. El Marko 174. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 And Bug 170. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 you know, I'm starting to see these tags, you know, Kurt Boone and that's on the interior before the outside? you would see the interior of STAFF 161 the interior, mainly the interior of the train. Yeah. And this is like, like felt tip. Tags. there wasn't, there wasn't, um, you would very rarely see something marked on the outside or surface of a subway car. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. This is a 69, 70. You would very rarely see something marked on the outside of a car. you would see a lot of tags and stuff on the street. Right, depending on the area you was in occasionally you'd see something marked in a subway station. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. But not a saturation of tags on the exterior of trains. Steven Payne Sure. Kurt Boone Most of the walls were prevalent too, like you were growing up and you would see STAFF 161 in the neighborhood. Yeah. Kurt Boone On your neighborhood on the buildings on the side of your buildings. STAFF 161 Especially in South Bronx neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. And again, you know, a lot of people, you know, the gangs, they marked they turf, Steven Payne yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And then you had a lot of political graffiti and stuff like that. And it just came became a cultural thing. Right, that if you lived in a neighborhood, you got to sign it. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 I just, it its just that's the appearance that I got from that. And I could and was all on, you know, so. So, um, so And of course, you know, the, the more historical people like Joe 182 and Taki 183 Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 They started to notice them. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And of course, those those taggers, or writers are not in the general area. They're like more like Washington Heights. Steven Payne Sure. So yeah, STAFF 161 the way I became familiar with them is basically riding the subway. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 because they weren't, they didn't have tags in my neighborhood. Joe 182. And Taki 183. So now I'm I'm getting to realize that the mass transit system would carry your tag around the city. Right? And it's a good way for your tag or your graffiti name, right or handle will become known outside of your community. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 Right because the whole thing was mainly to impress people within your community, with graffiti now I also realized this in retrospect with the whole thing. All the logic and in writing, vandalizing defacement defacing your community around you. If you know, for use of a better explanation description or or term for. It has legitimate it it has legitimate meaning to it. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. As asinine as it may seem. It gives the individual that doesn't have that identity or that voice, an identity and a voice. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 A lot of people in that community of the South Bronx appeared to be ostracized, and disenfranchised. And in a big metropolis like New York City, right. Where it's, it seemed like everything was based on celebrity, and notoriety and flash and glam. And, you know, and and who you are in the city. How you place? How are you placed in the city? What do you mean, in this big place? New York, New York? The tagging thing kind of more or less gave you that, your props. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah, STAFF 161 The tagging thing gave you your props. Because especially if a lot of people gave your props because alright one of the more prevalent tags that I saw. Right. And I got, I was gravitating to. After you know a while I started to see him was Stay High 149. Right. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And the reason that I kind of more or less gravitated towards his tag is because his tag incorporated a lot of things that I really liked about tagging, or writing it incorporated drawing. He was drawing. Right. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 Sweet Duke was nothing he was drawing Sweet Duke tag Incorporated. a Playboy bunny. He drew a Playboy Bunny's head. And he had on gloves and a martini glass. He would draw with his tag in the interior. Right? Stay High's tag included. The smoker character, the stick figure. Right? And with the halo, and everything from the the 60s sitcom The Saint. El Marko. drew the, the hat character you know, from the El Marko pen felt tip pen. It had this logo with this you know hat character with two eyes, right. Which I eventually adopted myself. So I kind of took from them. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 that thing you know. Kurt Boone Okay, so Taki 183 New York Times article came out in 1971. So when in that period? STAFF 161 Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't that's the signature era. See, that's the thing. Okay, it Taki 183 Joe 182. These guys are what you refer to as the earliest of the signature era. Right? Kurt Boone This is around the time you're writing too right. STAFF 161 Yeah, yeah. Eddie, Eddie 181 Eddie 181. That's another one that and the only reason Eddie 181 kind of stood out for me was because he had my name Eddie. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 you know. And I said, you know, so Wow. There's somebody that has my name that's tagging. Right? But he had a plain tag. Kurt Boone Oh, STAFF 161 right. He got to plain tag. Right? I'm Kool Kevin One. And Kool Kevin One. And Kool Herc. right now. Now. Their tags were pretty dramatic, too, in the sense that they were drawings. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 Kool Herc drew a face with his tag, a very crude face. And Kool Kevin. He spelled it K O O L for Kool. With the O's he made eyes out of the O's with eyebrows. Right? Yeah. And, you know, and Incorporated arrows and stuff, you know, along with the tag, so the thing with Taki and Joe 182 in the earliest of the taggers. They weren't into the style of the tag, they were just writing a very, you know, brief rendering, of um print. Steven Payne Sure, sure. STAFF 161 Right. Their signature was very simplistic. Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 very simplistic. With just the name. And the number. Referring to the area that they came from the real attraction to me, I more or less came in, I more or less came in into the stylistic era of of tagging, tagging, not not piecing the signature, they had a they had the regular signature era was very simple. tags. And then it had the stylistic signature era. When you had people like El Marko 174 and Sweet Duke. And, and Phase Two, and Stay High One. Now the tags are starting to look a little more dramatic. Bug 170 and Lee 160 That's a stylistic era of signature tags. Kurt Boone And what year was was that? STAFF 161 that that that is that's that's still that's still early 70s. Early that's like, like 70, 71. Right? into 72. And even you can say, like, even like 69 Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 because Stay High was was tagging in 69. To a certain degree. I saw some of his tags. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone Was he from the Bronx or did you know where he was from? STAFF 161 He was yeah, he lived in the Bronx. Yeah, yeah. on 149th Street. And then he went eventually moved to Harlem. Yeah. When were the the Broadway train line is yard is is? Yeah. But he was he was he was initially in the Bronx. But, um, yeah, so that's another factor. A lot of Bronx people. A lot of Bronx people, you gotta understand that IRT, number 1, number 2 and number 5 train run from the Bronx into the into Manhattan and clear into Brooklyn and back. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So, um, you got a large three borough area where you would see taggers people who are writing graffiti. Right. Would would have access to those trains? The 2 and a 5 in in in the Bronx and Manhattan and in Brooklyn. Right, you would, you would know that, that and you would see that? Well, you wouldn't know exactly. Sometimes off the top, especially with like the Brooklyn guys. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 A lot of the Brooklyn guys didn't write the numbers. So you wouldn't know exactly off the top where they was from. Right, like Spin. Right. and you wouldn't know that. He was from Brooklyn at first. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. But eventually, a system came about later with more or less you could find that out. that they was from Brooklyn or Flint. Right? Right. Or, you know, people like that. Right? You had, Flint 707 and Flint For Those That Dare right. Um, you wouldn't know that they was cause the Brooklyn guys, they know, maybe it's how the streets are organized, they didn't have a number system, or they weren't really prevalent with adding a number to they tag as the people who were from the Bronx. And and Manhattan. Right. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And you had the most prevalent tagging. To be honest, right? Um, initially wasn't the Bronx, it was like, with like, the Broadway lines. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 The 2 not the 2 but the 1 and 3, Steven Payne The 1 and the 3 okay. STAFF 161 Right. Where Taki 183 and Joe 182. And those original guys were from Kurt Boone SJK SJK was number one and Mike, STAFF 161 yeah, yeah, that's it. You know, you had those. You had those people from what they refer to. WC 188. Kurt Boone Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 So Writer's Corner. 188. Right. Those those people, those people were like, the most prevalent taggers of the signature era to tell you the honest Truth. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Right. And then the Bronx was a close, a close, close second. Right. Kurt Boone So Writers Corner 188 it's Washington Heights. It's not STAFF 161 It's Washington Heights yeah And that's where you had those people Kurt Boone Less than a mile away right. Yeah, that's STAFF 161 what you had. And that's what kind of got me what the 161 thing? Because I, you know, I adopted the 161 because I said 161st Street, intersected, um, Hewitt Place Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So I had to, you know, represent, you know, my hood, that's what it was all about. So, I had to add the 161. And then I acquired Staff. Kurt Boone Alright so please, right here that was my next question. When did you start writing Staff? STAFF 161 So, okay, so, so Staff, Staff came, came about, like, like, the early part of 70, when I um. in the culture of the street gang culture, and in the culture of the day, you had these walking sticks, not what not doing like this, but you had the ones that they would make you guys who walk around with golf clubs. Kurt Boone Whoa, STAFF 161 With golf clubs, right. And, you know, you know, a 9-iron, you know a golf club, and as a weapon and as a as a cool thing, you know, a walking stick right, and then you had guys that would make their own right, you know, you know, get a piece of a tree limb and cut out your own walking stick, and shellac it and hook it up. You know what I'm saying it was part of the um, the whole thing the whole scene with the maybe the Afro central centric Look with the dashiki and the big afro. Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 And you had the walking cane? Yeah. And I thought that was a cool thing. So I attempted, I attempted to make my own walking stick. Right. Right. And, um, and I probably got a little more exaggerated with it did, then I should have, which I did. And that's because of, I was I was, I was influenced by popular culture a lot. What I saw on TV, one of the main things all the luxuries that my mother was able to afford us was that TV. Steven Payne Sure STAFF 161 that big furniture TV that was in the house with the with the big antenna on top, you know what I'm saying? And I got a lot of stuff from the TV. And one of the things like the movies that I I saw was Charlton Heston. And he's the greatest story ever told on the 10 Commandments. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 And he played the part of Moses. And to me, I like superheroes in general. Yeah, yeah. I like superheroes in general. Right. But he seemed like, you know, the more dramatic, realistic superhero because he was just like a regular like guy that was leading people but he had this this staff and the staff was this superhero weapon. Right. He was fighting this whole big kingdom headed by Pharaoh in Egypt, right. With his staff? Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 right and leading the people and He would like use that staff to open up rivers and oceans and, and bring water out of a rock. And you know, he would it would be his weapon. So when I seen the mostly the old yeah, mostly the older dudes in the community like were making these walking sticks. And so I tried to, you know, get one I believe it was Crotona Park or one of the Parks yeah Crotona Park, I got a tree limb a tree limb I got, and try to carve out, you know, my knife, pen knife, the tree limb, but the stick was too big. I didn't cut it down, like, you know, so basically, I'm holding all the walking stick. And it's like that it's a little bigger. Yeah. And you know, you know, you it's it seconded as a weapon too Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 With those those golf clubs and them walking sticks that guys were walking around with they basically were weapons too. You know? So, basically, I left it like that. Right? And so people was like, like, like, mocking me with it. Like, hey what's that your staff? Yeah. So that was the whole thing that and I started to hear that I always I already was kind of more or less focused on that I wanted to get them um a tag that rivaled what was. I would see the tags I started to see on the train right the Bug 170, Lee 163 and Stay High 149. And then of course, one of my other taggers I admired was Super Cool 223. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 right. So I had, I wanted to get a tag that was very dramatic, like that, one of those tags. So, and, of course, nobody else had, and that was Staff. Because they they started Hey, that's your Staff, hey Staff. You know what I'm saying that were starting to mock be with that. So it's stuck the same thing with Mr. Ed. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. It's the whole thing, the whole thing with acquiring a tag, is that you gotta understand again, everything is is time specific, you know, and just being that Historical Society, history has a lot to say, on for human behavior, and why things are the way they are? And where things came from. And so in history was always one of my life, subjects cause I like to know what happened before. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And why is it this way now? You know, and so, um, yeah. So the, the era of that time with the civil rights movement, and the black pow Power Movement was like, there was this focus with, um, it was Martin Luther King. And it was Malcolm X. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And they appeared to have different agendas. But it's really the same, but it's approaching it different ways. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Right. And remember, I said the Black Panther Party was right there in the neighborhood. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And when I was in Staten Island Now, going back to Staten Island, good, good. The foster, the parents that I lived with, were born into the Baptist Church. Kurt Boone Sure, sure. STAFF 161 And the Baptist Church is where Martin Luther King was Kurt Boone a pastor. Yeah, STAFF 161 yeah. He, that's what he came through in leadership in that church. And so that church in Staten Island was used as an organizing base Steven Payne Sure, STAFF 161 for some of his marches. And I actually me and my brother actually participated in a few marches in Staten Island as little kids. Yeah. What Yeah, so Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. Now, the thing was, so I had that experience marching, you know, "we shall overcome" with Martin Luther King Movement. Now, the Malcolm X perspective as far as approach to, you know, civil rights and black nationalism. Right. And, and justice, you know, and Respect, human rights, right. Steven Payne Sure STAFF 161 was a different approach. And he would say things like that kind of really dawned on me. Is that Oh! You know, we don't even know our original names. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 We don't know you have the name that you have. Right was given to you. And you don't even know that that name is is the name of your oppressor. And, and you know, you don't even have your name. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So that was another factor why I wanted to get a name. Right? Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 Or an identity and a lot of taggers don't realize that during that period, everything is time specific. It just didn't just happen just because you know how to the blues, the blue sky, there was things political things, social things happening during that period where people youth, I look at the whole thing as a youth movement. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 because, I believe there was a crossroads at that point. Not so much for the adult black and brown people of the era, but for the youth, because the youth had to get their their grip on where they're gonna go in society. So and that brings the whole question of hip hop culture. Kurt Boone Yeah, STAFF 161 yeah, so I was saying, um, the thing with like, hip hop culture, as they call it now, hip hop culture. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. Now, just like I, I mentioned, that, on the street, in that community, where I was there there was prevalent markings, markings what we referred to as graffiti, that means basically, markings and sketchings, of, you know, things that's in the public form, that was this part of the community, it was part of what I perceived the culture of that community, to basically mark your turf, make your presence known by putting your your mark in the community, either in the exterior or interior of that community. Right, it was just there, right? They didn't just like oh some single person decided, you had people that were prevalent in it, I, you know, but in that community, where I came up in, in late 60s, and early 70s, it was a prevalent thing that was this, you know, saturating the community Steven Payne sure. STAFF 161 The other thing, right, that was there, at the same time, in the community in the public was, was what they refer to as emceeing and DJing. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. People would play their music, like they people would, you know, just put speakers in the windows and stuff like that, sure. And play music and now, you know, and that's another thing that kind of was, was very, like, you know, you know, new to me you know coming from Staten. It's people playing music loud in the street, as if, you know, they are, you know, performing or doing that task. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 you know, as a duty, but the emceeing and DJing thing with the label that, you know, DJing is playing records. And of course, the emceeing is master of ceremony, someone hosting the playing of the records. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Alright. that I knew was something that was on the street, especially in the early 70s. And what people referred to as breakdancing. I knew that as a gang-bands, gangs would get together, and they would, you know, do this celebratory type of, you know, thing festive thing. And it would be this wild dancing, right? For a better word wild right where they would get out on the ground and spin and flip and stuff like that. You know, Steven Payne I heard some of the Black Spades talk about the dances they used to do to "Soul Power," but they would change at the Spade Power. And they had this whole dance routine. STAFF 161 Yeah. Yeah, when they got together, and sometimes when maybe a little intoxication or something like the dance routines would get a little wild they would get on the ground. And so I seen that I seen that, right. And again, I'm referring to this this whole social revolution for the Youth for Youth. Right. As far as the arts. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. I'm drawing right? The vocal arts and the music arts and the dance arts. Right. All right. And remember, there was a deficit in the end, because the schools had stopped, you know, hosting music and art classes. So. And then I believe there was a disconnection between the old school or older generation of those communities. And what the new generation or the younger youth of that time wanted to be represented as Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 right. And like I said, one of the things was, you know, I want my own name, I want my own identity. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. I understand ma, that you gave me, Edward. Right. And I appreciate Edward, I understand what it means lord of riches and everything. But culturally, that's really not, you know, where my ancestors came from? Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 that's, I understand that I understand lord of riches. I like it. Beautiful. Right? But, I'm not saying that. But you know, so consciously, that's what through my actions, so I appreciate the name. But I like to get my own name. And so Staff, because even Mr. Ed basically was given to me, and Corky was given to me by a street gang. And Mr. Ed was something that I got from the kids in school. That was mocking me with it, because, you know, my name is Edward. Right. But Staff is basically something that I feel that I took on for myself. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 so aligning with that whole philosophy of Malcolm X, that we don't know, our original names and our identity, he took X. Right? Because he didn't know his last name. Right. And so alright, from his cultural ancestry, right. And so, I took Staff, and I, you know, I gave it an acronym a meaning to it, because all names should have a meaning. Now, commonly be all What did you get Staff from? You know, a staff is a group of people or something like that. Right? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And yes, that's the definition and that you might find in Webster Dictionary, or, or it's, it's the apparatus where, you know, or the diagram where you put musical notes on, you know, to might music on Yes, yeah. And that's another definition. Right. You know but, you know, eventually I got I made it an acronym. Right. Seek Truth Always, Faithfully Forever. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 So that's, you know, so I made it I gave it its own meaning with separate wording. Right. So, again, taking on that identity, I believe the youth wanted to take on their own identity, the early writers, right. And be known as who they want it to be known as. And also with expressions self expression, with the dance and and with the music and how they listen to the music. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. And so you know, you know, like in 73 that Kool Herc broke off from tagging He was an active tagging right. tagged with me and my brother and we on the same got pictures with me him and and AJ on my brother on the same trains. I saw him regularly at the meeting location for writers which he didn't come to the writers bench that often but I would see him like, around Clinton High School. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 at the right on the corner in the square there. Where the bagel shop was there was a meeting place like a little writer's corner or writer's bench meeting location. For writers, so I would see see him there, Kool Herc. But he broke off early. Right? Just like some of the early signature era people like Taki 183 and Joe 182 and such like that, right? Junior 161 and El Marko 174 and Bug 170 and Lee 163. Right. That that generation that era of taggers signature early signature era taggers were kind of faded away And the more stylistic writers kind of more or less came to the front, I say stylistic writers, right? Still signature era, this same signature, but the signature the calligraphy of the writing became a lot more aesthetic. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And dramatized, like I said, drawing. So, so drawing became a big factor with me early on, or the whole whole graff writing scene. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 All right. Not so much that I wanted to be an artist, but more so that I realize it brought more attention to the tag. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 I mean, to me, it just like, Stay High 149's tag was a lot more appealing than the average tag. Steven Payne Yeah, yeah. He had an arrow, right? STAFF 161 He had he had a S with the devil tail Steven Payne Oh with a devil tail. Yeah. STAFF 161 Which I adopted. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 His tag was was was vertical stack. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And, um, he had different um, figurative things he added to it. Like he would cross his his H. With with a spliff. Right. Yeah, I like a lit spliff with a with a trail of smoke coming from it. And he had the stick figure The Saint character, The Smoker where he called it, with the halo, all that was bought with quotation marks, similar to what Super Cool used too Super Cool wasn't a dramatic drawing person. But embellishing the tag was, was is the primary thing I noticed with him with the Crown. Right. He drew the crown, he, he drew grammatical things, like Super Cool 223 he wrote a D, and exclamation point, and underlining, you know, or putting a ribbon under the 223. Drawing a cloud around the tag. So basically embellishing, that's a different, that's a different aspect of the signature era, again, the early Taki 183s and Joe 182s that's moving into more of the aesthetics and the artistic factor. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Of graffiti writing. That's even before major large pieces on the trains. Large pieces on the trains didn't even come to' 72 and Super Cool did the first one. Kurt Boone Okay, on the train. Okay. STAFF 161 Yeah, Kurt Boone outside. STAFF 161 Yeah, yeah. Yeah so yeah. So, um, by 71, and even 70, you started seeing a few tags that would be coming on the exterior of the trains. Right. And so it started to build up now. A lot of people. Again, everything is time specific. And you got to understand the political and social factors that what happened happening in the Bronx. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 in in New York City, in the world at that time, why, why these things happen. And again, New York going through a fiscal crisis and stuff like that. Right. They weren't cleaning the trains. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 All right. Not no real maintenance. Right. And that became apparent, that became apparent when if you tagged a train in 1970 or something, and in 71, 72, you can see that same tag on the train that you've seen that the same time that I put on there. Like, almost two years ago, it's still there. So then how much maintenance could he have been doing, Steven Payne yeah. STAFF 161 Right. So that's why the factors. And the other factor. Right of the explosion of it was, and I always say it couldn't happen to anywhere else. But New York City. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And, and especially, you know, in the Bronx, Steven Payne yeah STAFF 161 When I say in the Bronx, as they say that's the birth of hip hop culture. In the area that devastated area that I came up in, right, with all of the misery and the dread that was happening there with the fires, the high infant mortality rate, the drug overdoses, the gang violence and stuff like that. The the arson, you know, Steven Payne yeah, STAFF 161 it was out of control. Those people that were living in it, and especially the youth, the youth, in that community still found the resolve, and the motivation and inspiration to create their own cultural foundation, they was able to create their own cultural foundation. And that's why I can't, you know, beyond me understand why I could I do understand why some people think that, that, that, that graffiti writing is not part of hip hop culture. It might not have been called that at the time. But it's still part of that youthful youth movement. It is plain to me maybe see now I understand that maybe if you were in certain neighborhoods, and you you just, you know, adopted, tagging writing your name, that maybe you might not have an affiliation with the emceeing and DJing because it wasn't happening in your, in your neighborhood. Maybe you listening to Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones. And that's cool. But I was I was, I, you know, from the time that the Ghetto Brothers started jamming in my neighborhood, I got into all of that I've been into Jimi Hendrix. All of that you know what I'm saying? And, yeah, you know, Black Sabbath, you know, sure. I play guitar. I play guitar bass to this day. Steven Payne Okay. STAFF 161 Yeah. And I played in numerous bands and heavy metal, classic rock. You know, Santana, definitely, you know, and definitely Santana, who was the biggest one? You know, one of the major things that songs that they don't that the Ghetto Brothers were playing was Santana. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Is Latin rock band. So um, yes, I'm familiar with that music. And I've always loved that music. But I understand the music that was on the street in my community. Right. That was part of that youth movement, you youth culture movement that in compares, tagging. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 emceeing and DJing and a dance style called breaking? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And basically, that put together in a package is called Hip Hop culture. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 I understand that totally. Right. And I understand where other people might not understand it, because it just wasn't in their community. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. But you got to understand I was in the heart, the heart of that seven mile square, where they say that those things manifested and became what is now known as hip hop culture. I was in, I grew up in that. Steven Payne Absolutely. STAFF 161 I have a full insight into why, where and how that happened. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone So when did you paint your first exterior? STAFF 161 Very good. So. Okay, so, um, so by 1970, right, there, again, like I said, I recognized that there was numerous people in my community that right on my block, not in community on my block, that were actual taggers I felt a responsibility to organize them. Right. And, and so we can be like, unified and what we're doing on that block. Steven Payne Yeah. Kurt Boone Okay. STAFF 161 All right. And that happened to happen to be other things I was involved in whatever, you know, more or less, you know, not to become victimized. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Right. Right. You know, you have so many other gangs and stuff and, you know, and hostilities from it was just that, you gotta understand a lot of a lot of the Bronx, Manhattan, New York, the country was segregated. Either it racially or with street gangs or whatever there's just boundaries, you just don't go over here and over here, whatever. And I'm talking about in the next block for you. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 even in the same community. My next block over there. That's dumb dudes over here. Oh, come on. They don't go on their block, and so forth. Unless you know what I'm saying you got permission to go over there, and so forth. Because like you know what you doing over here? it was, you know, because you just had the hostility going on. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And I always kind of like was dismayed with that, you know, that's not unification. It's like, divide and conquer type stuff to me, you know? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So when I had found out about the whole system of things, that there were people who were actively pursuing tagging, as a activity, not incidental to their environment. Now, prior to that, my tagging was just incidental to my environment, as I said, it was on the street, in my community. So I would tag because it's part of what people around here do. I gotta put my tag up too I'm a be part of this, I'm not gonna be left out I could tag too. And so forth I could tag and then I put my, my customized thing on it, with drawing stuff with the tag, you know, and then later on, I realized they had other people who was drawing things with they tag Sweet Dude and Stay High, you know, an El Marko 174. You know, And them guys could draw and things with their tag too. And so, um, so. But there was this, this whole ah ah system. I noticed, eventually, of taggers, who were tagging for the sake, and only for the sake of tagging alone, and having their tag saturated through the city. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And the nucleus of that I noticed happens to be from riding the train back and forth to school. Right? Me and Danny and my younger brother, Adam, was the New York City transit system. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right, and so, slowly, and surely, I noticed that it started to leave from the interior, to the exterior of the trains. And that has to do with motion tagging. Right being in at a Station. Alright, so So some of my first exterior tags, was standing on Prospect Avenue, subway platform when the train pulled in. Right. I would wait for the train and once the train pulls in and stop was tag on the outside of the train, Steven Payne yeah, STAFF 161 with Markers. Right, and then eventually spray paint, right. It's called motion tagging. As the train, it pulls into the station, right stops to let passengers on and off, right, and then that know those few seconds while its there in the station, you can get your tag off and that that contributed to the speed of tagging. Steven Payne Okay, yeah, STAFF 161 that built out built up your, your propensity to tag real fast because you gotta to hurry up because the train gonna pull out the station. Alright, so that builds up your speed with tagging. So blue things happen. So, the Ebony Dukes. So again, um Danny, who was one of my closest peers. Right on on that street, living right next to the building right next door to me going to school with me. Right, his uncle again, the families were knew each other. His uncle, I started getting painting jobs with little hustling jobs with you know, you're ay, I'm going to do paint this apartment with me. You want to come and help me out paint today? Right? Yeah, you know, I want to paint you know, and get a little change and stuff like that. Yeah, actually, I'm gonna help you paint and I'm gonna learn something were painting too. I like to paint. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And then I'm getting into paint now and spray paint. But you know, I'm saying I was painting. Go Karts. I was painting kites. I was painting because people got to realize that I was a kid that could draw something gang colors. Kurt Boone Yeah, yeah. STAFF 161 Right. So painting, right so anything with painting I was there. And Bertie was Bertie is his name. Right? So um Bertie said. Yo, come I'm gonna paint some apartments up here. Right? You want to come help out? You know, I give you a little something. All right. You can learn something. Right? And I did. And as he's painting, and I'm working with him I'm getting these war stories about this organization, this crew this gang that he was associated with from Harlem called the Ebony Dukes? Right? And I'm just getting amazed with the war stories. And so I'll become interested and, and the name, the Ebony Dukes it just has a ring to it that, you know, I said, I'd like to know what happened to it. And the people that was in it. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 And what's going on with that name? Did you preserve it? Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right, that's a historical and preserving, you know, things that were a part of the history as a, you just gonna let that name just go away. Next thing you know, he makes the point that a lot of the people are you know no longer in contact, when he says some of them are dead, some of them went to prison and lost contact. And, you know, so, but I'm still adamant about preserving the name. So I come up with, you know, eventually I come up with the idea. Because now that I'm learning that there's a system there's a system that is, you know, maybe not as as firm, as it eventually became at that point. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 But there's a system of youth that are going through the city, right? Deliberately to put up tags. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Not as it was with me at that point. It's just part of my existence here in this neighborhood. But they would systematically go around and put up tags and started to notice that in the subway system, and on the buses, and so wanting to get away from the street gang environment, right after Black Benjie and so forth. Right. And such, you know, and everything and and what was going on with street gangs in the neighborhood and general, right. I believe Black Benjie was the conclusive thing. But there was things that happened before that. Yeah. Then I said had number one the Ghetto Brothers. Were not. Were not akin to graffiti tagging. Steven Payne Sure. Yeah, they Yeah, STAFF 161 I got that impression slowly. And that they didn't really, they weren't appreciative. Right, even though they had some stuff up too, let's say, Ghetto Brothers sons. Of certain certain division. Right. But in general, right. They, remember, they had three garbage cans as the center patch. Yeah. And they worked with the sanitation department to clean up empty lots and all that stuff in the community. And, and part of the look of decay of so to speak, was the tags that were in the neighborhood her in the graffiti. So I got the impression that the leadership in it wasn't for graffiti writing. Sure. So now, I'm coming to a crossroads. Like, why am I part of something that is not really for graffiti writing? Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. But yet, I'm doing graffiti writing. And I'm like, taking like center stage on that street with graffiti writing with all these other kids on my block that's doing graffiti writing. So we got to organize under graffiti writing. And that's when I eventually asked Bertie. Cab I used that name that Ebony Dukes to make a graffiti club? And he didn't understand with graffiti club was, he said you know, I mean, you want to use it use it. But you know, Steven Payne yeah, STAFF 161 you know, you know, but you know, don't make another gang. Now you guys are concerned about being a gang. But I said it's not gonna be a gang. We're not gonna be a gang, you know, so we're gonna be a guys that do graffiti, writing? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Okay, you know? Okay. Do your thing. So that's in the spring of 1970. Right. I established the Ebony Dukes, GC standing for graffiti crew. So that happened in the spring of 1970. And so the people the first initial people that was in that was like seven people from Hewitt Place. Oh, yeah. So that was on myself. My brother Adam. And of course Danny who was next door who wrote Adam wrote AJ One, but at that time, I was Staff 161. 161st Street intersecting the street, on Hewitt Place? So Staff 161 Right. My brother Adam, who wrote AJ which is his initials for his government name, but it also stood for All Jive 161 he also wrote Adam, Adam 12. Kurt Boone Okay. STAFF 161 Right. Kurt Boone Like a cop. STAFF 161 Yeah, but everything was in the sitcom. Remember, you gotta understand, to see how early graffiti tagging was influenced by popular culture, especially stuff and things that were on TV and everything during that period. Steven Payne Sure. STAFF 161 Again, I say everything is time specific. And a lot of people discount that and not understand that was happening socially, politically and culturally of the time. influenced what eventually happened? Right. So Adam, right, myself, Adam, Danny next door, who started to write Dynamite 161. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 right. And later on, he took on Dr. Soul One, right up the street from us. Right. What's Dub, right? Who lived on the end of Hewitt Place that was closer to Longwood Avenue. Steven Payne Okay, STAFF 161 right. D U B. No, yeah. Yeah. And so, um, eventually, he starts writing Topaz when I gave him that tag. Again here's my leadership role is coming in that I'm giving people tags now. And directing people with graffiti and stuff like that, you know, so, um, I'm kind of like, you know, assuming that role of the graffiti guy in the neighborhood. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. Under that new title, the Ebony Dukes GC. Right. So Dub becomes Topaz. Right. All right. Um, Topaz One. And then up the street was Kay. Who lived on Hewitt Place near closer to almost like 150 or closer to the Longwood Avenue. Right, but on the other side from from from Topaz. Kenny's is writing Hot Sauce 575, which had happened to have been, I believe he's hit the building number he was he was on remember. Eight sets I'm 858. So further up, and further down really? is 575. So Hot Sauce 575 or H S 575 for short. Right, was his tag. And then right here on 156 feet on who would place again, right is Kenny, who was the the Puerto Rican kid? That was part of the crew. Right, Kenny? I'm sorry not Kenny but Cookie, Steven Payne cookie, STAFF 161 Cookie, we refer to him as we knew him on the street as right he starts to write King Kool 156, Right. King Kool 156. Right. Kurt Boone I love these names. Steven Payne Yeah STAFF 161 right. And then, um, okay. Kurt Boone And that's six African Americans and one Hispanic. STAFF 161 Yes. Yeah.Yeah. Okay. Um, and then, um, last but not least, um Paul, who was part of one of the bigger families or the oldest in one of the bigger families in the neighborhood. He was a Savage Skull. He started writing Super Slick 156 So that was the nucleus of the original. The Ebony Duke Crew, Steven Payne yeah. STAFF 161 Ebony Dukes GC crew that started there on the block. And eventually, we added all members from all over the Bronx, and, and into Manhattan, and into Brooklyn, in eventually, Queens and stuff, you know, Kurt Boone So where did membership cards come from? Because you would get memberships cards like boys, the Boys Club of America card. STAFF 161 Well, It was like, um, again, um, I started to pick up on things that were on that, um, I felt like we were left out at Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 out of in those communities. And you had these exclusive clubs of the day, that or the whole idea of being in a club, and membership in a club was as seen as an honorary thing. Right, or, and to be excluded from that. Right? Or was a less than honorary thing. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 right. Yeah. Um, you know, you're not part of this, you know, you don't, you know, come to our standards of being part of this. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And one of the, the affirmations, or the credentials of being part of these special clubs is some kind of a badge, or identification. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 So, um, I wanted to, like, try to address that, right. And I came up with the idea of making membership cards. So I would hand draw, I would go to like, Woolworths and boost, or rack, these index cards, you know, index cards in the package with the lines. And, and, and color color. Felt Tip markers, and both package, felt tip markers. And I would hand draw membership cards and started to give them out. Kurt Boone Right away. or took a couple years before? STAFF 161 I did that, like, right away. Kurt Boone Wow, STAFF 161 I did that right away. Because here's the thing, right? We didn't have we weren't a outdoor street gang no more like that. So we didn't have colors? Steven Payne Sure. Yeah. STAFF 161 We didn't have we weren't wearing colored. So how do we identify ourselves? Other than the fact of our tag and we writing the tag? Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. So I said, Well, okay. To certify your membership, their membership in the crew, this rep. Okay. It didn't happen immediately on the street. It started to happen. When, um, I started getting membership outside of the neighborhood. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. And I had to, I felt it was the necessary for the existing membership, to know that the person that's saying that they're part of the crew can prove it by having my hand hand drawn membership card. Alright, so. So more or less akin to that. I'm certifying people. That is not we don't know, within our circle, yeah, that they're part of the crew. So I started drawing membership cards for people that were outside of our community. Steven Payne You know, if anyone still has one of the membership cards? STAFF 161 yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of people on Fam and has one. Yeah, others, you know, from the Uptown crew that we had uptown. I stuck up past 180th Street. Steven Payne Sure, sure, sure. STAFF 161 Blade and Crotchy and, and Comic those guys, you know. Kurt Boone I want to try on your next next round. You want to get into some writers like playing? But we didn't speak much about the women in this, but I know a few women in the Ebony Dukes? STAFF 161 Yeah. Yeah. There was on the, on the street on the street that we was at, right, eventually. They were females? Yeah, you gotta understand again, everything is time specific. And, and certain things of that time era. That you know, like, ladies, were, you know, left out of the equation, you know, this is not for you, you know, this is for guys, man. We you ain't gonna do what we doing. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 you know. So, you know, you had that type of male chauvinistic type of mentality at the time that was, again, everything is time specific. But you had like the, what we refer to as the tomboy type girls, that was like, they could fight just as much as the dudes. Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 so to speak, are all just as rough as that dudes, so to speak, and you know, and they would, you know, hell bent on that, you know, that we can do we you can do it better. Steven Payne Yeah. STAFF 161 Right. So, there was a few on the block right us. That was like that. One was Line 149 who lived in my building, right? Kurt Boone How do you spell that? STAFF 161 L I N E Steven Payne LINE okay. Kurt Boone Oh, Line 149. STAFF 161 Line 149 Kurt Boone 149 Okay, STAFF 161 all right. And there was a Sweet Tea 163. Right. Darlene. Yeah, who will became some of the first female affiliations and then later on, when we kind of branched out in the neighborhood. We had Kivu Kivu One, you know. Yeah. So, but it wasn't like a lot of females who were members at that time, but they were there. They were there. Kurt Boone Alright, so they know I'll let you go, Barbara, STAFF 161 and Eva 62 Okay, so they were basically obscure in the sense that I didn't see them a lot, but there was you know major female taggers right. That were around right during the period. Early signature era Steven Payne Yeah, STAFF 161 they didn't come in too much in the stylistic era, or the piecing era. Kurt Boone Were they members also? STAFF 161 No, they weren't they weren't part I don't remember them being part of any crew. Kurt Boone Any crew. okay. Yeah. Yeah, so I think what we're gonna do cuz you have to leave, we use have each artist to leave a tag for us for the library. Alright, great. All right, thank you. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with STAFF 161, Part 1 Description An account of the resource Part 1 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on February 23, 2022 with STAFF 161, a true pioneer of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx, and the founder of the first Bronx graffiti crew, The Ebony Dukes Graffiti Club. In this oral history, STAFF 161 describes his time growing up in Harlem, Staten Island, and the South Bronx of the 1960s and 1970s and how the Bronx context especially shaped his and others' approach to graffiti during this time period. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Stephen DeSimone, CEO/President of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.02.23 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220223 graffiti STAFF 161 TED The Ebony Dukes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:50:48 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed STAFF 161 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220323.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with STAFF 161, Part 2 OH-BAADP.20220323 01:50:48 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the donation of Stephen DeSimone, President/CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. bxoralhistory STAFF 161 (TED) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 staff-161-oral-history-pt2-2022-03-23.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/ZfvUJwbc7YU YouTube video English 0 Introduction and Membership Card Steven Payne: Welcome back to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. Today is March 23, 2022. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and we're again with STAFF 161, and Kurt Boone is also here. And, and we're looking forward to everything that STAFF will share with us today. And picking up from last time, we're gonna start off by showing a photo of an original membership card of The Ebony Dukes . . . In this segment of the second and final part of STAFF 161's oral history, Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban life and culture, introduce the narrator, the founder of The Ebony Dukes G.C., the first graffiti crew in The Bronx. STAFF also shows and speaks about a digital image of an original membership card for The Ebony Dukes, G.C., sent to STAFF by VAM. bottom rocker;cut sleeves;denim jackets;gang colors;gauntlet;initiation;markers;membership cards;top rocker;writer Gangs;Graffiti;Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Initiation;Peace symbol;Prospect Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Spray can;Staff 161 (Graffiti artist);The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist group);Vam (Graffiti artist);Woolworths 0 333 Outlaw Youth Culture of Early Graffiti STAFF 161: It, the whole thing with, the whole thing with the early writing era was that it was just more than just tagging your name. It was the fact that, that you had to be rocking spray paint. So it was like more or less, I assumed that if I saw your name up, that you was like a racking person, or basically a street urchin person bas-, and you, that you had that heart that I was looking for as part of the crew members . . . In this segment STAFF speaks about the early graffiti movement's culture, particularly its outlaw, or underground, elements and youth focus. These aspects of the culture, STAFF explains, stemmed from the reality of New York State penal law, which defined graffiti as "vandalism" or "defacement of public property" and typically assigned milder sentences to minors aged 16 and younger. The likelihood of arrest—whether for tagging, racking, or any of the other activities related to graffiti—along with fear of incarceration, particularly at Rikers Island, led many of the early graffiti pioneers to stop writing past the age of 16. STAFF himself stopped writing in 1975, at age 17, which means that his rap sheet to this day shows one charge related his graffiti activities as an "adult". STAFF also speaks about the various challenges faced by and charges brought against "juvenile" writers in Family Court, sentences that those convicted would have to serve in the Spofford Juvenile Center in The Bronx, and how all of this helped shape the original outlaw youth culture of graffiti, which, STAFF notes, has changed considerably now that graffiti has been partially institutionalized and monetized. boosting;early pioneers;heart;minor;outlaw culture;racking;rap sheet;retirement time;spray paint;street urchin;tagging;underground culture;writers;youth culture Astoria (New York, N.Y.);Bosket, William James;Community service (Punishment);Criminal mischief;Criminal trespassing;Defacement of property;Graffiti;Hunts Point (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Nanny;New York (State). Family Court (City of New York);Racking (Graffiti);Rikers Island (N.Y.);Shoplifting;Single parents;Spofford Juvenile Center (Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist);Vandalism 0 1255 Artistic Elements in Early Graffiti STAFF 161: Yeah, yeah, okay, so if you talk to any of the pioneers, early Signature Era pioneers, in writing, tagging, the early Joe 182s and the Taki 183s, and Frank 207, and Turok 161, these early Broadway guys, and basically the, the, the be-, just, the beginning stages of it. That's where it started to proliferate in New York City early on around that, those Broadway writers, earlier—we call them Broadway writers, but Upper, Upper, Upper Manhattan, Washington Heights area, a lot of those writers come from. Those writers will tell you that they, they weren't, you know, looking at themselves as artists at that time. The art thing came a little, well, a long ways after. Some of the taggers, right? Some of the taggers, as my myself, had a natural, a natural propensity to draw things . . . In this segment STAFF speaks about the various artistic elements at play in the early graffiti movement, even if writers at the time did not think of themselves as producing "art". He remembers his own sketching and drawing in black books on the roof of his tenement. He also recalls designing kits for friends and the aesthetic inspiration he found in the street gang culture in the neighborhood. For instance, his early fascination with the Grim Reaper character came from the colors of the Reapers, and his various skull and crossbones played on the colors of the Savage Skulls (much to their dismay). The transition from sketchpads and black books to drawing with spray paint ("can control"), therefore, was quite natural for STAFF. For this reason, he draws a clear line of descent from the early spray paint drawings produced by himself and others on walls and other surfaces to the murals and "street art" so ubiquitous around the world today. STAFF then reflects on the term "style" as it is used in the graffiti movement and defines it as basically the same as "art", plus a little something more, especially as connected to the letter form of the tag. From here, STAFF discusses some of the early fonts used in the early Piecing Era, particularly bubble letters, and the development of wild style lettering from the more stylistic tags of the Signature Era. The driving motivation behind the proliferation of "style" at this point in time, however, was not art, STAFF insists, but rather the desire to bring attention to one's tag. As more and more writers started to enter the scene, things became more competitive and it took more effort and embellishment to make your tag stand out. STAFF also discusses the more derivative nature of bubble lettering, which was directly influenced by pop culture, particularly cartoons and advertisements, and wild style, which grew more organically out of the Signature Era. STAFF ends the segment by drawing a distinction between "graffiti writing", an "illegal" activity someone engages in primarily to get their tag up (hopefully acquiring "all city" status), and "graffiti art", a legal activity authorized and in some cases commissioned by the powers that be, done primarily for artistic or aesthetic purposes. This is a distinction, STAFF notes, that emerged early on within the movement and is still operative today. all city;B. Boney;bombing;can control;Corky;cut sleeves;denim jacket;embellishment;gang colors;grassroots writing;kite flying;mobile canvas;Mr. Ed;pieces (masterpieces);pioneers;signature era;skull and crossbones;style;tagging;tenement houses;underground;up;wild style;writers;writing 7 Flushing Local;<7> Flushing Express;Art and graffiti;Black books;Broadway (New York, N.Y.);Bubble letters;Cartoon characters in art;Comic books, strips, etc;East 161st Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Ex-Vandals (Graffiti artist group);Fonts;Frank 207 (Graffiti artist);Gangs;Graffiti;Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Hippie (Member of Savage Skulls);Joe 182 (Graffiti artist);King Kool 156 (Graffiti artist);Lettering in art;Murals;Pop culture;Reapers;Riff 170 (Graffiti artist);Savage Skulls;Signature Era (Graffiti);Spencer 1 (Graffiti artist);Spray paint;Street art;Style (Graffiti);Super Cool (Graffiti artist);Taki 183 (Graffiti artist);Tenement houses;Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist);Turok 161 (Graffiti artist);Upper Manhattan (New York, N.Y.);Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.);Westchester Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Wild Style (Graffiti) 0 2571 Whole Cars in Early Graffiti STAFF 161: Here's the thing with that, right? It, it's, that's where the aesthetic factor, how the, your tag looks, right, came into play in the, in the graffiti, or the writing world. The shape, or the style, right, or the font of your tag, right—for instance, this is Stay High's tag there. So that's Butch, and Ralph Macdonald, and this is a brother named "Ket", K-E-T . . . In this segment STAFF talks about the transition from the Stylistic Signature Era to the Piecing Era of the early graffiti movement, noting that a primary concern running through both eras was making your tag stand. This concern was only amplified as more writers joined the movement and began taking up more space on the exterior of subway cars with "pieces", or "masterpieces". According to STAFF, the whole point of these increasingly larger and more dramatic pieces, at least initially, was making sure the tag stood out. His brother Adam, who wrote "A.J." or "All Jive 161", for instance, was one of the first to do a "married couple", or a tag that spanned two subway cars. The addition of characters to these early pieces by STAFF and other pioneers was also a part of this same process of embellishing the tag. STAFF also discusses his general avoidance of schematic drawings for pieces at the time, given the risks of being arrested with such clear evidence of your "crime". For similar reasons, STAFF and other pioneers also generally avoided taking photographs of their pieces—besides, cameras were too expensive for most youth in the South Bronx. Some of the earliest photographs of pieces along the 2 and 5 lines, nevertheless, were taken by members of the Uptown crew of The Ebony Dukes. STAFF then speaks about the different subway lines he would write along, the importance of the main Writers' Bench (and other ones) in early graffiti culture, and the significance of black books, both as a part of the social environment of "benching" and as a major influence on early subway pieces. STAFF reflects on the early days of doing pieces on whole cars and how he worked alone at first and also began doing outlines and helping out other members of his crew. benching;black books;boosting;bubble letter font;cannon;checkerboard;clouds;color schemes;dots;embellishing;graff;graff names;Grim Reaper;kickin' it willie bobo;layup;married couple (Graffiti);One-armed Jeff (Case 2);outline;pat down;Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);pieces (masterpieces);Piecing Era;Signature Era;stripes;tag;whole cars;Writers' Bench 149th Street–Grand Concourse station;2 Seventh Avenue Express;4 Lexington Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;6 Lexington Avenue Local;<6> Pelham Bay Park Express;All Jive 161 (Graffiti artist);Black books;Blade (Graffiti artist);Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Cameras;Cartoon characters in art;Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Comet (Graffiti artist);Community--graffiti;Crachee (Graffiti artist);Evidence (Law)--New York (State);Graffiti;Hunts Point station;Ket (Graffiti artist);Longwood Avenue station;MacDonald, Ralph;Naming;Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);Schematic drawings (Graffiti);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist);Subways--New York (State)--New York;Sweet Duke (Graffiti artist);The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist group);Vam (Graffiti artist) 0 3702 Graffiti, Race, and Gender STAFF 161: With the, the early writing thing, to me, it was a unifying force, a youth culture, a youth movement to bring disenfranchised youth, or, or, or segregated youth communities together, you know. That ordinarily, we, we wouldn't have interpersonal communications with each other but now we have a base thing now. We have a base thing, which is graff writing, right? Aerosol painting, use of markers, putting our tags up, right, racking paint, going on missions. This is a unifying thing, right, that bring, all, all these segregated youth communities together, from racial, to gang affiliation, to "I'm from the east side, I'm from the west side" . . . In this segment STAFF speaks first about graffiti as a unifying force for disenfranchised urban youth living in communities facing various degrees of segregation. He speaks about how race was somewhat de-emphasized in the early graffiti movement and also touches on the involvement of women in graffiti from the very start of the movement. He reflects on the contribution of these women to the movement as well as the ways that male chauvinism worked to limit the involvement of other women. camaraderie;disenfranchised youth;diversion;racking;segregated communities;unifying force;women writers;writing Barbara 62 (Graffiti artist);Charmin 65 (Graffiti artist);Dewitt Clinton High School (New York, N.Y.);Eva 62 (Graffiti artist);Feminism and art;Graffiti;Kivu (Graffiti artist);Male chauvinism;Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);Racism and the arts;S.PAT 161 (Graffiti artist);Segregation--United States;The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist group);Writers' Bench 0 4058 United Graffiti Artists STAFF 161: Yeah, absolutely. The whole thing with U.G.A. started early on in the Piecing Era. It was formed early on in the Piecing Era. When—not so much the Signature Era—in, in the early Piecing Era, we heard that there was this fellow that was around that had started a, a group with taggers to come and to paint in a, in a structured, formal setting, to come and do their "graff writing" in a structured, formal setting. Now, graff writing at that point is already structured in the sense that we have a meeting place, which is the Writers' Bench, and we have a network of writers that is grassroots, and we have protocol, and we have hierarchy . . . In this segment STAFF speaks about the formation of the United Graffiti Artists during the Piecing Era and how he and many other pioneers saw the group as part of the establishment, as opposed to an organic part of the underground, or outlaw, youth culture that the early graffiti movement represented. STAFF also draws out the ways in which graffiti's roots in both street gang culture and militant organizations made many writers and crews, including The Ebony Dukes, wary of U.G.A., in spite of the group's promise of gallery showings and supplies. STAFF remembers his shock at the time when he learned about the ultimatums handed down by U.G.A.—that members had to swear off tagging—and the new, outsider terminology coined by the group. He does not remember "graffiti art", for instance, being used too much, if at all, before United Graffiti Artists came on the scene. He recalls his confusion with seeing members of U.G.A. identified by their government names in various publications, something he viewed as completely at odds with the spirit of the early graffiti movement. Although there was always the desire for recognition among the disenfranchised youth that comprised the early graff community, the recognition was supposed to come from other writers and never at the expense of exposing your government name (and thus opening yourself up to prosecution). He reflects on the very terminology used to describe the movement, drawing out the contradictions of people who bristle at the term "graffiti", on the one hand, but align themselves with the legacy of "United Graffiti Artists", on the other. Although STAFF insists that he and other pioneers would have identified themselves as "writers" (certainly not "artists" or "graffiti artists") at the time, he realizes that in a court of law his activity was, in fact, called "graffiti" and that the illegal connotations of the term were actually central to the movement itself. "Fort Apache" (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);"graffiti art";age out;anti-graff;art;burglaries;canvas;Daily News;drug selling;establishment;exhibit;formal setting;graff writing;homicide;militant;outlaw culture;outsiders;Piecing Era;publication;recognition;robberies;street gangs;supplies;swear off tagging;tag;theater;ultimatums;underground culture;writers;Writers' Bench 41st Police Precinct Station House (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Beck Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Black Panther Party;Ex-Vandals (Graffiti artist group);Gangs;Ghetto Brothers;Graffiti;Graffiti--terminology;Martinez, Hugo, 1951-;Militant organizations--United States;Nova 1 (Graffiti artist);The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist group);Underground culture;United Graffiti Artists;Young Lords Party 0 4858 Graffiti and Hip Hop Revisited STAFF 161: And it's the same thing with the hip hop thing, right. I, I seen it, and I lived it, so I understand where it's coming from. So, so you have people, right, you have people who, who make a big thing about: "Oh, graffiti writing, or tagging, right, graff writing, writing, was before hip hop." It was before the actual label of hip hop, yes. But, to me, it's one of the elements, or aspects, of the culture, the youth movements that started happening in the late '60s, early '70s, here in New York and in South Philly. In the community, or neighborhood where I grew up in, all those activities—tagging, emceeing and DJing, and break dancing—was part of the youth culture . . . In this segment STAFF revisits a topic he spoke about at more length in part 1 of his oral history: the place of graffiti within the wider hip hop culture, which he defines as a youth movement that began to form in the late 1960s and early 1970s (even if it did not come together fully until later) and involved various new expressions of music, dance, and visual cultures. blues;breaking;DJing;emceeing;hip hop;rock and roll;soul Blues (Music);Break dancing;Classic rock;Graffiti;Hip-hop;MCing;Rock and roll;Soul 0 4995 Overcoming the North–South Bronx Division Yeah, so, those (Blade and Comet) are early members. See, most of them guys is, is known as The Crazy Five now. Vam, and Crachee, and Death, and those guys, but, again, tagging, graffiti writing, as a grassroots youth movement in, in, in the early '70s was a unifying force for segregated neighborhoods. The, the neighborhood that, that those guys lived in, Upper Bronx, was, was generally an off-, off-limits neighborhood for people who were from like the South Bronx and other places because number 1: gang affiliation and racial barriers . . . In this segment STAFF tells a story about how he and his crew worked to overcome the gang and racial segregation the reigned between the South Bronx and the northern Bronx of the early 1970s. STAFF got wind that Death, a writer from the northern Bronx, had marked over his famous cannon piece. Death was getting up, but like other writers from the northern part of The Bronx (most, but not all, of whom, were white), he rarely ventured down to the Writers' Bench at 149th Street and Grand Concourse, instead staying north of East 180th Street station. When the Writers' Bench community somehow figured out that Death was the culprit, STAFF decided to confront Death on the latter's home turf. Although Death refused to meet at East 180th Street station, STAFF agreed to meet him at his home in the Valley section of The Bronx, an area typically off limits to Black folks at the time, especially Black folks from the South Bronx. STAFF and Death sat down in the backyard, and Death explained that he had accidentally marked over STAFF's piece and vowed to fix it. STAFF then invited Death and other writers from that part of The Bronx to join The Ebony Dukes, G.C., which they did until they started their own crew, The Crazy Five. This story, STAFF stresses, highlights the unifying nature of the youth movement originally represented by graffiti, which eventually changed into something else as a result of outside influence from the establishment. cannon;community;cross out;establishment;getting up;graff writing;pieces (masterpieces);straight letter style;tagging;unifying;uptown;Writers' Bench;youth movement 2 Seventh Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;Blade (Graffiti artist);Comet (Graffiti artist);Crachee (Graffiti artist);Death (Graffiti artist);East 180th Street station;Gangs;Hewitt Place (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);King Kool (Graffiti artist);Racism in art;Segregation--United States;South Bronx;The Crazy Five (Graffiti artist group);The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist group);The Valley (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Vam (Graffiti artist);White Plains Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) 0 5555 The Ebony Dukes, Living Preservation of Graffiti History STAFF 161: Well, okay, I, I more or less look at it as what it, what it initially was, to some aspects, which is basically a graffiti, graffiti crew, right, a graffiti club, right, a graffiti fraternity, graffiti writing fraternity, grassroots, but you have some aspects of it that I look at it, it's more and more a cultural guild, yeah, you know, basically that preserves the culture and the history of what it was, right, and is . . . In this segment STAFF speaks about The Ebony Dukes G.C. as a kind of living preservation of the history of the early graffiti movement. Because of this focus, the crew has started accepting members from around the globe, including Europe, where aspects of the original underground culture of graffiti are still often front and center. STAFF then reflects on other attempts to preserve and document the early graffiti movement, including efforts by outsiders (like the well known photographs of Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant or Norman Mailer's 1974 essay) and writers themselves (like Phase 2). documentation;outside;pictorials;pioneers;preservation;underground culture;writer Baugh, Keith;Beat Street (Motion picture);Carson, Johnny, 1925-2005;Chalfant, Henry;Cooper, Martha;Graffiti;Graffiti--Denmark;Graffiti--Europe;International Graffiti Times;Mailer, Norman;Naar, Jon;Paze (Graffiti artist);Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);Stewart, Jack;Style Wars (Motion picture);Styles from the Underground;Subway Art;The Birth of Graffiti;The Ebony Dukes G.C. (Graffiti artist club);The Faith of Graffiti;Tonight show (Television program);Wild Style (Motion picture) 0 6172 Final Reflections on Graffiti and The Bronx STAFF 161: I see it, I, I, I, I admire it, you know. I mean, what can I say? You know, it's, it's more than I even, even, even imagined it to happen. See, you gotta understand, the early, the early proponents of this, from the Signature Era to, you gotta understand, what it was intended to be was this, that, something that was gonna be an underground, street art—not street art—but street writing movement, youth movement, youth movement to put your tag around . . . In this final segment of his two-part oral history STAFF reflects on the now global nature of graffiti, what the movement originally represented, and still is to a certain extent—i.e. an underground youth culture—and what it has become. He also elaborates on the role that The Bronx, especially the South Bronx, played in the formation of graffiti and other aspects of hip hop culture, drawing out both the negative aspects of the environment—the daily experiences of violence, high rates of infant mortality, mass incarceration, etc.—and the incredibly creative expressions that first emerged among South Bronx youth in spite of it all. He offers a final reflection on graffiti as originally and still to a certain extent the voice of the voiceless. This aspect of graffiti, STAFF is confident, will always remain, at least to one degree or another, even though other elements of the original movement have evolved and become part of the establishment over the years. "Fort Apache" (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);anti-establishment;can control;dread;grassroots;street credibility;tagging;voice for the voiceless;writer;youth movement Aerosol;All Jive 161 (Graffiti artist);Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Graffiti;Graffiti--Globalization;Gun violence;Hip-hop;Infant mortality;Joe 182 (Graffiti artist);Mass incarceration;Spray paint;Taki 183 (Graffiti artist) 0 Part 2 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 23, 2022 with STAFF 161, a true pioneer of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx, and the founder of the first Bronx graffiti crew, The Ebony Dukes Graffiti Club. In this part of his oral history, STAFF 161 speaks about the early days of The Ebony Dukes, the gradual development of style in the signature era, graffiti as originally an outlaw youth movement and an integral part of the wider emerging hip hop culture, and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with STAFF 161, Part 2 Description An account of the resource Part 2 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 23, 2022 with STAFF 161, a true pioneer of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx, and the founder of the first Bronx graffiti crew, The Ebony Dukes Graffiti Club. In this part of his oral history, STAFF 161 speaks about the early days of The Ebony Dukes, the gradual development of style in the signature era, graffiti as originally an outlaw youth movement and an integral part of the wider emerging hip hop culture, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Stephen DeSimone, CEO/President of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.03.23 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220323 graffiti STAFF 161 TED The Ebony Dukes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:53:13 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220519.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with DOSE MPC OH-BAADP.20220519 01:53:13 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory Dose (MPC) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 dose-mpc-oral-history-2022-05-19 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/BKfxcjy9kjA YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. Kurt, you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone: Yeah, I'm Kurt Boone. I've been writing about urban culture in New York 40 years. Steven Payne: And it is May 19, 2022, and we're very thrilled and honored to be here with DOSE, who is currently the president of the Morris Park Crew and longtime member of MPC as well. And looking forward to hearing all the stories he has to share today. In this segment the interviewers, Dr. Steven Payne and Kurt Boone, introduce themselves and welcome the interviewee, DOSE MPC, current president and longtime member of the Morris Park Crew. Dose (Graffiti artist);Graffiti;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group) 0 45 Early Years in The Bronx and Puerto Rico DOSE MPC: Well, how you doing? I'm DOSE MPC. Okay, my moms and pop come from the South Bronx, on Jackson and Fox. That's where they met, from up that way. They had, my moms had me when she was young, so she was with my pops. She lived with my pops with his family, grandparents, whatever. I was born in Harlem Hospital . . . In this segment DOSE MPC speaks about his family's history in the South Bronx and their origins in the areas around Bayamon and Ponce in Puerto Rico. He also remembers his earliest years growing up in The Bronx on Undercliff Avenue and in Puerto Rico. He recalls his first encounter with graffiti as a young child—a "7UP" on a wall near where Scott La Rock was murdered on University Avenue. He also speaks about his first meeting with a graff writer, 3D, his counselor at a community center as a child. 3D (Graffiti artist);7UP;Bayamon, P.R.;Dez (Graffiti artist);Fox Street (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Harlem Hospital (New York, N.Y.);Jackson Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);KRS-One (Musician);Ponce, P.R.;Scott La Rock (Musician);Trap (Graffiti artist);Undercliff Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);University Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Walton Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Drawing;Graffiti;Mothers and sons;Parents--Incarceration--United States;Puerto Rican experience;Puerto Rico 0 359 Moving to Pelham Parkway Area DOSE MPC: When we came back here, we came to Pelham Parkway. My uncle was living on Holland and Lydig. So we moved in with him for a minute. Couple months later, my mother found the apartment in Bronx Park East, Unionport Road . . . In this segment of his oral history DOSE MPC speaks about moving to the Pelham Parkway area with his mother and brother after returning from Puerto Rico. After living with his uncle for a short period of time on Holland and Lydig, the his family got an apartment at 1980 Unionport Road, near the Bronx Park East station. DOSE MPC remembers the high concentration of graffiti in the neighborhood, especially by members of MPC and TFP. He recalls being particularly struck by pieces on trains by BUTCH 2 (TFP) and DONDI. DOSE MPC relates that after seeing one of DONDI's pieces, he began tagging "FLAME 3", first with an El Marko marker and then with spray paint (on his kitchen window, much to his mother's chagrin). He also speaks about various writers he got to know in the neighborhood and how he eventually became familiar with members of MPC, although he was more attracted initially to TBB. He speaks about going to the one of the first graffiti-on-canvas shows, highlighting the work of NOC 167, in a gallery downtown. AD1 (Graffiti artist);Batch (Graffiti artist);Blame MPC (Graffiti artist);Bronx Park East station;Cap (Graffiti artist);Chalfant, Henry;Crash (Graffiti artist);Daze (Graffiti artist);El Marko;Flame 3 (Graffiti artist);Flash (Graffiti artist);Flink (Graffiti artist);Hand of Doom (Graffiti piece);Holland Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Lambert Houses (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Lydig Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Noc 167 (Graffiti artist);P.S. 105 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Riz (Graffiti artist);Rock 161 (Graffiti artist);Rust-Oleum (Firm);The Bus Boys (Graffiti artist group);The Fantastic Partners (Graffiti artist group);Unionport Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Dondi (Graffiti artist);Graffiti;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Pelham Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Spray paint;TBB (The Bronx Boys/The Bus Boys) (Graffiti artist group);Wildstyle (Graffiti style) 0 826 Experience of Race Growing Up DOSE MPC: My mother wanted to move out of Bronx Park East. . . . She found an apartment on Pelham Parkway, right on Wallace and Lydig. So everybody was telling me, "Yo, you're gonna have problems. You're moving to a white neighborhood." And I'm like, "What's the difference?" I mean, I mean, I didn't see, I didn't even see Black and white, at that . . . you know what I'm sayin'?" Because, remember, I came from the South Bronx, Undercliff Avenue, you can't get no more South Bronx than that . . . In this segment of his oral history DOSE MPC describes his experience of race, Puerto Ricans passing for white, gangs, graffiti crews, and the general racial boundaries of his neighborhood, The Bronx, and wider New York City during the 1980s. Allerton (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Angel dust;Black Spades (gang);Boston Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Boston Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Bronx Park East (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Ching-A-Ling Nomads M.C. (gang);Christopher Columbus High School (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Cobras M.C. (gang);Harlem (New York, N.Y.);J.H.S. 135 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Lambert Houses (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Morris Park (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Pelham Bay (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Pelham Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Satan's Soldiers (gang);Savage Nomads (gang);Savage Skulls (gang);South Bronx (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Spanish;Throggs Neck Boys (Graffiti artist group);Undercliff Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);United Artists (Graffiti artist group);Wallace Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);West 135th Street (New York, N.Y);Westchester Square (The Bronx, New York, N.Y);Whippits Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Bullying;Drugs;Gangs--New York (State);Graffiti;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Passing (Identity);Pelham Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Racism--United States--History--20th century 0 1191 Joining Morris Park Crew DOSE MPC: In '82, I was called for, by CAP. . . . He sent FLINT, FLINT and BICK, to come get me . . . In this segment of his oral history DOSE MPC recounts being called to join MPC by CAP in 1982, the respect that he had won by that point in time in his majority white neighborhood by defending himself and Black and Puerto Rican friends, being introduced to the full MPC in Bronx Park, and his experience with white-passing Puerto Ricans in the crew. Albanians;Bick (Graffiti artist);Caban (Graffiti artist);Cap (Graffiti artist);Esplanade (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Flint (Graffiti artist);Heart (Attribute);Janell Towers (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Lydig Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);P.S. 105 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Partners in Crime (Graffiti artist group);Rook 2 (Graffiti artist);Sid 1 (Graffiti artist);Tuff City (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Wallace Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) Bronx Park East (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Initiation;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Passing (Identity);Racism--United States;Respect 0 1706 CAP MPC and Going Over Pieces DOSE MPC: You see, this is one thing that I wanted to get out, and I'm glad we're doing this. It's not just CAP alone. We played the part with CAP, OK? CAP coulda not just do what he did alone. Alright? You get what I'm saying? CAP stood his ground, don't get me wrong. CAP will fight whoever. CAP went wherever. In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC talks about Cap's notorious reputation, the support and protection that MPC gave him, various members of MPC (like Cope 2) and rival writers and crews, how and why Cap's obsession with going over people's pieces started, and the unique outlaw attitude and lettering style developed by MPC. "Big Red";4 Lexington Avenue Express;Blade 1 (Graffiti artist);Bronx Park East (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Children of Destruction (Graffiti artist group);Comet (Graffiti artist);Cone (Graffiti artist);Cope 2 (Graffiti artist);Crazy Insides Artists (Graffiti artist group);Fashion Moda (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Going over (Graffiti);Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Kings Destroy (Graffiti artist group);Outlaws;Piece (Graffiti);PJ (Graffiti artist);Rock The World (Graffiti artist group);Rook 2 (Graffiti artist);Satch (Graffiti artist);Seen (Graffiti artist);Swan 3 (Graffiti artist);T-Kid 170 (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Tag (Graffiti);Tats Cru (Graffiti artist group);The Cool 5 (Graffiti artist group);The Odd Partners (Graffiti artist group);Throw ups (Graffiti);Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist) Bombing (Graffiti);Cap (Graffiti artist);Cope 2 (Graffiti artist);Lettering style (Graffiti);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group) 0 2249 Getting the Name "DOSE" DOSE MPC: Well, after "Flame" (DOSE MPC's former tag), I got approached. I had to go figure out a name. So I was with a guy that wrote "Cosmic 7" . . . Charmin 65 (Graffiti artist);Checker 170 (Graffiti artist);Cosmic 7 (Graffiti artist);Crazy Insides Artists (Graffiti artist group);Esplanade (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Flame 3 (Graffiti artist);Janell Towers (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Mosholu Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Pelham Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Rocky 184 (Graffiti artist);Ron 1 (Graffiti artist);Ronn (Graffiti artist);Sac (Graffiti artist);Sweets (Graffiti artist);Tac 3 (Graffiti artist);Throw ups (Graffiti);Wallace Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) Dose MPC (Graffiti artist);Tags (Graffiti) 0 2482 Racking Paint DOSE MPC: The racking? We, I, I was a beast on the racks. We were called the "shopping cart racks" . . . In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC speaks about racking large quantities of spray paint with other members of MPC outside of New York City. He also mentions the large heist of spray paint carried out by members of MPC at the Martin Paint Store on Gun Hill Road and various ways he would get smaller amounts of paint around The Bronx, including by finding the stashes of other writers or shaking them down for their paint. Body racking (Graffiti);Dez (Graffiti artist);El Marko;Elf (Graffiti artist);Esplanade (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);F.W. Woolworth Company;Fordham Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Gun Hill Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Heart (Attribute);Iron Maiden (Musical group);Man 1 (Graffiti artist);Martin Paint Store;Morris Park station;Pelham Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Pentel Co.;Pergament;Rickel Brothers Hardware Store;Sandboxes;Satch (Graffiti artist);Slip 3 (Graffiti artist);Stick-up kids;Testors (Paint company) Burglary;Racism;Racking (Graffiti);Shoplifting;Spray paint 0 2899 Favorite Yards for Graff DOSE MPC: Well, Esplanade, Esplanade. Burke. Bronx Park East was the main one . . . In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC remembers the yards he frequented, especially along the 2 and 5 lines, and how he would get into them. He speaks especially about the Bronx Park East station, where the Morris Park Crew had a club house ("The Founds"), and Esplanade (Morris Park station), although he mentions many others. He also recalls writing at stations outside of The Bronx with MED MPC, who would go on to found Tuff City Tattoos in The Bronx. DOSE MPC shares stories about getting busted for graff, the most vivid of which involves going back to Esplanade to help SANE, who had broken his leg, and encountering numerous cops as a result. 1 Broadway–Seventh Avenue Local;181st Street station;2 Seventh Avenue Express;241st Street station;3 Seventh Avenue Express;5 Lexington Avenue Express;All city (Graffiti);Barnes Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Brady Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Bronx Park East station;Bullwinkle;Burke Avenue station;Cap (Graffiti artist);City Hall station;De (Graffiti artist);Dez (Graffiti artist);Doc (Graffiti artist);Duster (Graffiti artist);East 180th Street station;Ed 1 (Graffiti artist);Esplanade (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Flint (Graffiti artist);Harlem–148th Street station;Key (Graffiti artist);Lay ups (Graffiti);Matthews Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Med (Graffiti artist);Morris Park station;New Lots station;Pove (Graffiti artist);Rock 161 (Graffiti artist);Rook 2 (Graffiti artist);Sane (Graffiti artist);Seen (Graffiti artist);Sento (Graffiti artist);Skeme (Graffiti artist);Style (Graffiti);Tag (Graffiti);Throw ups (Graffiti);Trap (Graffiti artist);Tuff City (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);United Artists Esplanade (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Graffiti;Med (Graffiti artist);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Morris Park station;Police--New York (State)--New York;Subway stations--New York (State);United Artists (Graffiti artist group) 0 3890 School in the Streets with MPC DOSE MPC: I used to go to homeroom. . . . I used to go to homeroom. I didn't go to school. I went to homeroom, and right out of homeroom I would come and hang out with MPC. We would be at the steps, and we were partying hardying. I used to throw a lot of hookie parties in my house. In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC remembers regularly skipping school from an early age, when he would would watch movies at home with CAP MPC (even before joining MPC). He speaks about what CAP MPC taught the crew about doing throw ups and reflects on the beginning of MPC and how the crew changed under CAP MPC's leadership. DOSE MPC also talks about SLIP 3 MPC as one of the originators of the crew and the book on MPC's history that SLIP 3 put together. 1 Broadway–Seventh Avenue Local;Agent (Graffiti artist);BG 183 (Graffiti artist);Bombing (Graffiti);Cap (Graffiti artist);Christopher Columbus High School (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Colt 1 (Graffiti artist);Dez (Graffiti artist);Flint (Graffiti artist);Ghost yard;Herbert H. Lehman High School (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);hookie parties;Out To Bomb (Graffiti artist group);party hardy;Shy 147 (Graffiti artist);Skeme (Graffiti artist);Slip 3 (Graffiti artist);Speed 3 (Graffiti artist);T-Kid 170 (Graffiti artist);The Nasty Two (Graffiti artist group);The Nation's Top (Graffiti artist group);Wedge 3 (Graffiti artist) Cap (Graffiti artist);Dose (Graffiti artist);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Morris Park Crew: The Official History (Book);Slip 3 (Graffiti artist);Throw ups (Graffiti);Truancy 0 4325 DOSE MPC's Aliases DOSE MPC: We, I used a couple of aliases. I did POISON, you know. I had a piece on Tremont. CASE 2 has, right, CASE 2 had it across the street, with SENTO . . . In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC speaks about various aliases he used over the years and recalls a particularly long-lasting POISON he did on Tremont Avenue during the late 1980s. Ail 1 (Graffiti artist);Aliases;Bom 5 (Graffiti artist);Bronx River Art Center (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Case 2 (Graffiti artist);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Piece (Graffiti);Poison (Graffiti artist);Seen (Graffiti artist);Sento (Graffiti artist);Sie 3 (Graffiti artist);T-Kid 170 (Graffiti artist);Tremont Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Trouble For Others (Graffiti artist group);Tyke (Graffiti artist) Anonymous art;Graffiti 0 4465 Fighting DOSE MPC: I'm MPC forever. Forever MPC. To death, yeah. Because it's, it was not just a crew. It was a family, and I fought for it. I fought in that. Being in a white neighborhood, you know, in a racist neighborhood, at that time . . . In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC speaks about how he had to fight on a regular basis growing up, first against racists in his majority white neighborhood and then against rival writers or crews as part of MPC. He also speaks about his reputation as a fighter and how this landed him jobs as enforcers in various drug crews, which resulted in stretches of incarceration, and how graff ultimately kept him out of much more serious trouble and brought out many aspects of his potential. Black eyes;Enforcer (Drugs);Jumping Art and human development;Drugs;Fighting;Graffiti;Incarceration--United States;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Racism--United States 0 4694 Family, Incarceration, and Racking Revisited DOSE MPC: My son's name is Dose. I didn't give it to him. His mother did, Sweets, you know what I'm saying? In this segment of his oral history DOSE MPC speaks about his children, his experience of a close-knit family growing up, and the ways that his incarceration took him away from family and friends. DOSE MPC remembers friends like fellow writer PER, who helped him adjust to new spray paint brands after his release, and MED, with whom he used to rack in various creative ways. On this subject, DOSE MPC recalls more recent instances of racking, much to his family's chagrin, in the Poconos. Aspirin;FX (Graffiti artist group);Gun Hill Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Jackson Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Krylon (Firm);Med (Graffiti artist);Money racking;Montana (Firm);Per (Graffiti artist);Poconos (Pennsylvania);Popcycle Orange;Rickel Brothers Hardware Store;Risk (Graffiti artist);Rust-Oleum (Firm);School Bus Yellow;Sweets (Graffiti artist);Tats Cru (Graffiti artist group);Testors;Tuff City (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.) Can control (Graffiti);Grandparents;Incarceration--United States;Parents;Pelham Parkway (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Puerto Ricans--Family life;Racking (Graffiti);Spray paint 0 5177 Graff Today DOSE MPC: 'Cause I was posting pictures up of the new trains, when I came home. I was hittin' them. I was going every night. I was going to Esplanade. Jumping on the tunnel . . . In this segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC speaks about the graff world today, starting with his own more recent activity hitting the newer trains since 2016 and the particular challenges of this. He expresses his amazement over what graff has become and his desire to break into galleries with his own work. He also shares various anecdotes about meeting old-time graff writers (especially at Tuff City Tattoos in The Bronx) and reflects on the various legacies of graff legends like CAP MPC, SEEN, RIFF 170, GHOST, and COPE 2. 5 Lexington Avenue Express;Base (Graffiti artist);Bio (Graffiti artist);Bronx Park East station;Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Canvas;Cap (Graffiti artist);Cavs (Graffiti artist);Checker 170 (Graffiti artist);Cope 2 (Graffiti artist);Cornbread (Graffiti artist);Cose (Graffiti artist);Dash 167 (Graffiti artist);Dome (Graffiti artist);Doze (Graffiti artist);Dyre Avenue (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Electric railroads--Third rail;Esplanade (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Euro Paint (Firm);Generations (Graffitti);Ghost (Graffiti artist);Insides (Graffiti);Ket (Graffiti artist);Kit 17 (Graffiti artist);Man 1 (Graffiti artist);Maps (Graffiti);Mark 198 (Graffiti artist);Med (Graffiti artist);Min 1 (Graffiti artist);Mission Graffiti (Graffiti artist group);Mkay (Graffiti artist);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Morris Park station;Museum of Graffiti (Miami, Fl.);Nac (Graffiti artist);Outlines (Graffiti);Phase 2 (Graffiti artist);Pieces (Graffiti);Ree (Graffiti artist);Riff 170 (Graffiti artist);Rocky 184 (Graffiti artis Art galleries;Cap (Graffiti artist);Cope 2 (Graffiti artist);From the Platform: Subway Graffiti, 1983–1989;Ghost (Graffiti artist);Graffiti;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Riff 170 (Graffiti artist);Seen (Graffiti artist);Style (Graffiti);Subways--New York (State)--New York;Tattoo artists 0 6591 Closing Thoughts DOSE MPC: Growing up in The Bronx? Well, where I'm at today, I'm peaceful, I'm happy, I'm calm. Growing up in The Bronx was the best experience in my life. I would never trade it for anything. I love The Bronx to death . . . In this final segment of his oral history, DOSE MPC expresses his love for The Bronx and his reluctance to move to Florida, where some of his family has relocated. DOSE MPC reflects on what makes The Bronx special, including its contributions to graffiti and distinctive style. He reiterates his desire to be in galleries and ends with shout outs to members of Morris Park Crew. "The" Bronx;Ad (Graffiti artist);Ail 1 (Graffiti artist);Art galleries;Bodega;Boston Road (The Bronx, New York, N.Y.);Bronx boy;Loosie;Med (Graffiti artist);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);Pelle Pelle;Tune (Graffiti artist);Yankee Stadium Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Florida;Graffiti;Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group) 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 19, 2022 with DOSE MPC, current president and longtime member of the Morris Park Crew, a notorious Bronx graffiti crew with one of the toughest reputations out there. In his oral history DOSE MPC speaks about his early years with his mom and brother on Undercliff Avenue and in Puerto Rico, the family's move during his childhood to the neighborhoods of Morris Park and Pelham Parkway, his experience of racism and encounters with white-passing Latinos in these majority-white neighborhoods (at the time), his first encounter with graffiti and first use of spray paint, how he started writing "DOSE", his induction into the Morris Park Crew, racking, MPC clubhouses, his current aspirations and activity as a writer, and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed DOSE MPC Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with DOSE MPC Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 19, 2022 with DOSE MPC, current president and longtime member of the Morris Park Crew, a notorious Bronx graffiti crew with one of the toughest reputations out there. In his oral history DOSE MPC speaks about his early years with his mom and brother on Undercliff Avenue and in Puerto Rico, the family's move during his childhood to the neighborhoods of Morris Park and Pelham Parkway, his experience of racism and encounters with white-passing Latinos in these majority-white neighborhoods (at the time), his first encounter with graffiti and first use of spray paint, how he started writing "DOSE", his induction into the Morris Park Crew, racking, MPC clubhouses, his current aspirations and activity as a writer, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.05.19 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220519 DOSE graffiti Morris Park Crew MPC Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2:52:59 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220523.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with SEN-1 (IBM), Part 1 OH-BAADP.20220523 2:52:59 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory SEN-1 (IBM) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 sen-1-ibm-oral-history-pt1-2022-05-24.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/KzUajMcXhwg YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne (SP): Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne librarian and archivist at the Bronx County Historical Society. Today is May 23, 2022. Kurt do you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone (KB): Yeah I'm Kurt I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. SP: Great thank you Kurt. And we're really happy to be here today with SEN-1, who is a legendary graffiti writer from a part of New York that unfortunately rarely gets the love as far as graffiti goes or other elements of hip hop culture. And SEN-1 is a member of the Incredible Bombing Masters, the IBM crew, among other groups leading up to that and we're just happy to be here with SEN-1. Interviewers Steven Payne and Kurt Boone introduce themselves and the narrator SEN-1, graffiti writer and artist. Harlem (New York, N.Y.) Graffiti;Sen-1 (Graffiti artist) 0 52 Family and Background SP: Why don't you start off by telling us a little about your family's history and background, and how they ended up in New York City whatever you know about that history. SEN: Well I'm raised with a single mother named Mercedes Morillo and we come out of the Island that's Haiti now known as Dominican Republic but at that time when she migrated here it had just went through the changes. If you look up the Morillo family line we actually are the original military under--it was a militia actually that ran, Morillo-Lopez, a militia that ran from Haiti to the other end of the Island, it was two militias. When the CIA the United States whatever put in Trujillo he recruited my grandfather's militia, which is where we get our military family. Sen's family background from the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, from a military family that began to flee the Trujillo-era violence on the Island. He details some of his home life, including some of the violence his mother would commit. Dominican Republic;Haiti;Harlem (New York, N.Y.) 0 433 Elementary Education SEN: I was one of those kids, my brother he was more of a genius... I was the opposite. I was getting thrown out of every school. I went to P.S. 75, I got thrown out of there, I went to P.S. 84 I got thrown out of there ... I was eventually sent to Holy Names which is a Catholic school on 96th St and I was thrown out of there. I basically made it through those schools maybe no more than a year or two before I would be thrown out. I was dyslexic, I had a lot of energy, I was always spaced out and in my own little world. I was really like a fun-going kid. Even with the teachers people were really angry back then, really aggressive. So if you were an innocent kid just want to have fun, you'd be beat up for that. Other kids would bully you or even the teachers. And back then the teachers could beat you and they would beat you. SEN's experiences in Elementary School. He cycled through a lot a different schools, being kicked out of several for behavioral issues. He speaks about the physical abuse he received from other students and from teachers, as well as how his temper became a defense mechanism that he did not learn to control until much later. 0 1109 Early Life, Gangs KB: What were those days like in New York as an elementary school [student]? Eventually you come into art and we'll get into that but you didn't go into little league baseball, you didn't play basketball, did you play handball? What was your outlet? No Boxing? SEN: Nah, when I was a kid, so my spine was like bent in, I had narrow shoulders, I was like totally not athletic like the kids were. But you had to keep up so little by little I developed. My brother was outta here. He was doing flips was doing skateboard like the zoo york stuff, building ramps, he was just out of here. Me, my mother had me like a momma's boy in a way, like kept me close, because again, I had issues, I was always in trouble... An overview of Sen's early life. We learn he was an unathletic child but taken around by his brother who was an early street skateboarder. He also goes into significant detail about the function of the gangs in his social circle. He also laments over the loss of community which he witnessed during his lifetime in his community in the Upper West Side. Zoo York Gang members;Skateboard industry;Skateboarding;Skateboarding parks 0 3580 Beginning Tagging and School SEN: Going into Joan of Arc, it was right next door to me, big building. But it was a school where---I'm in a prime neighborhood with a gang and everything---with thousands of kids and people now living. So I come up from Amsterdam up the block, now we talk about all these tall buildings, every single building is like a fucking neighborhood. It's huge, and we got multiple, and they're all new! They're all just going up in the mid-70s. So it's new, or most of these families are new, or they been in the neighborhood but they moved from tenements to these big buildings because they applied first. And then you got all these people from different areas. So now it's like this mixture already. Continued synopsis of Sen's early life, including the beginning of his tagging career, the incident where his photo was put up on a "wanted" poster as "George Graffiti". When he goes to Joan of Arc junior high school his crew really picks up. He also speaks on the impact of the 1977 blackout. We also hear about his brother's promising art career in oil paint, a founding member of zoo york, and roller skating which SEN remains incredibly proud of. 1977 New York City Blackout Graffiti;Hip-hop;Hip-hop dance;Junior high school facilities 0 5384 Beginning of SEN and Getting with IBM Crew SEN: Nicknames were already taken as tags from generations earlier. You were just inheriting nicknames. Sender comes from, we went through dictionaries and looked up words, you just looked up and went through comic books, you just went through everything looking for a word that would stand out. Because again it's not just that you're looking for a tag name, you're looking for---it's your alias! It has to fit you. It has to be cool, and there's a lot of of elements to it. So I go through a comic book, and you know how the comic books be bolding certain words, and I saw it said SENDER! Something something SENDER and I was like, and remember I'm only 12 years old something like that, 11 12 years old. And I go Sender... the sender! Like I felt like superman! The creation of IBM crew and the expansion of SEN's bombing career. We learn SEN comes from SENDER, coming from a bolded word in a comic book, which was shortened to SEN on the advice of DOZE. We also see the explosion of hip-hop culture with graffiti movies and breakdancing as a major phenomenon. IBM crew;Seen TC5 (Graffiti artist) Break dancing;Graffiti;Hip-hop 0 5539 Hip Hop, B-Boys, Wild Style, and Proliferation of Crews SEN: As I'm developing in there, that's happening. It's a movement now. So I watched it as it developed a lot earlier but the momentum wasn't there yet. Not my first year of junior high school I'm catching that wave with a crew of cats that have been groomed already by the people causing the wave. So I get blessed on that end. So boom I get down with POKE and them, he's down with that entire movement An explosion of hip-hop culture in the early 1980s including the park jams, break dancing crews, and Wild Style movie. We also learn how involved the gangs were in the early hip-hop scene, fiercely defending their territory, with only students, b-boys, and writers likely to get a "pass" into any given neighborhood. Doze (Graffiti artist);IBM (Graffiti crew);Poke (Graffiti artist) Hip-hop;Hip-hop dance;Hip-hop in art;Hip-hop in motion pictures;Hip-hop jewelry 0 6670 Style, Racking, Mops SEN: My first year of junior high school, I just got the SEN name, I'm piecing and you gotta think about it, now we feel like we're grown men now! We like IBM, we're gonna make our name, take this serious we re gonna go bomb. We didn't have a lot of cans, so again to your question: there was stores in West Side Bombay, on 98 St and Broadway, all writers went there they have ink, they had everything. There was a store called Goldens, try to rack up. ... Our era, mops which was markers was part of your status. So we used to make our own markers. So the markers wasn't an issue, the spray paint was the issue. SEN describes the techniques in play during his graffiti career. This includes the creation of mops and the subcultural importance of having a good mop (homemade ink or paint markers). We also learn about where writers would source their materials from, between stealing and salvaging. Shoplifting;Spray nozzles;Spray painting 0 7434 Crime and Culture SEN: Everybody that lived in New York knew that the last car of the train was off the hinges! If you go into the last car of the train you was asking for trouble. The last car of the train was designated for all the thugs, all the criminals, all the smokers, all the stick-up people. And that's where you went. Because you was down with that. If I was a stick-up kid I wanna be in the last car, I don't want to be with the others. But if you go in the last car they know what you about, you know what it's about, it's like prison. So if you go in the last car, you want that environment, because you're ready for that environment and they know it. But if you're a tourist or somebody or you're a civilian going for work, and you happen to get in the last car? Aw man, it's like a school of piranhas man, you asking for it! You're gonna get it! That's what happened with what-his-name Bernhard Goetz and them with the shooting. So that's the way the trains were that's the way the city was. Sen recalls the "silent rules" of New York City at the time, and how locals knew how to avoid crime, as well as the effect this had on the wider culture of the city, especially in the way young people made themselves into the tough characters they painted on the walls. He then moves to describe some of the concurrent developments in hip-hop subculture at the time, the proliferation of Nike Cortez and other shoes, rocking, etc. He argues that skateboarding and double-dutch should have also been included as hip hop "elements" due to their integration into the culture at the time. Double dutch (Rope skipping);Goetz, Bernhard Hugo, 1947-;Skateboarding Art & crime;Crime;Hip-hop;New York, N.Y. 0 7843 Intensifying Criminalization, Hip Hop as a Revolutionary Culture SEN: I wasn't like my brother, he had opportunities. By the time I was coming up, those same scholarships wasn't available anymore. The city was broke--completely broke. He was coming off the hippy movement, there was like, social workers, there was all kinds of stuff. Now, my era, nah that shit doesn't exists. So now you got these who have to figure things out by themselves. With all this knowledge though! See we're not like the kids today. Our knowledge is the Malcolm Xs, all those movements, Tupac's moms and them. We got this first hand neighbors to neighbors. The breakfast programs created by the Panthers, we were going to that every day! Sen speaks about the divestment in social programs and the increase in policing/criminalization of graffiti which occurred during the Koch mayoralty. This dramatically changed the writing scene by intensifying violence and moving train painting from yards, which were locked down by the mid-80s, to mid-tunnel layups. He also speaks about what legacy hip-hop owes to the revolutionary movements of the 1970s, as kids being recipients of programs by the Black Panthers, for instance. He sees hip-hop as a cultural revolution in that legacy. Black Panther Party;Shakur, Afeni;Shakur, Mutulu DIY;Hip-hop;Koch, Ed, 1924-2013;New Left 0 8483 First Train Pieces SEN: To be next to a train, that's why they called it the Iron Elephant, it was that. It was an elephant and you feel the power! And it would make noises. It was like, alive. It wasn't like you was piecing on a wall. The train was alive, because of the fact that it could move, it would breathe, it would make these sounds, steam would come out of it, you could see sparks still from the third rail sometimes, it would rev itself up. [Sen imitates revving sound] So it was like a living thing. So you're going down there and we looked up, and we did our first pieces me and POKE. We had to climb up, and they taught us that. You'd use the beams, and the doorway of the train has the little ledge, and they also had like a brim around the train. So we being so little our feets are only like this big. You're able to step on that and be comfortable. So you're leaning over you're doing it. And we did our first trains and that was it. Continuing from the last section, this tells the story of SEN's first time hitting a winter layup in a subway tunnel and painting a train. IBM (Graffiti group);Poke IBM (Graffiti artist) Graffiti 0 8886 Changing Street Landscape SEN: Basically everybody was a member of the Ball Busters. So every freakin' house, every kid who was in there was a member of the Ball Busters. So when they came for you, and I had beef with them, this was Familia's beef, when they came for you they came hundreds. Not twenty, thirty, they came hundreds. Hundreds would come for you. They'll come to your school and for blocks, you'll look down the street and it'll be three blocks of gang members surrounding the entire school like a riot just to get you. That's how they were. And then they ran all the drugs. At that time is when the drugs were just beginning, they began to run it all. They had the highway, the bridge, Fort Washington, they brought in this whole culture of racing cars, gambling, I mean they exploded the streets. They took whatever was in the streets to a whole different level, and they were violent as hell. Sen speaks on the changing gang landscape in New York at the time, and how his own affiliations briefly caused trouble in the tunnels as a large Dominican gang called the Ball Busters attempted to assert territorial control underground, though this was quashed after a large confrontation with other gangs including Zulu Nation/Black Spades. Afrika Bambaataa, 1960-;Ball Busters Gangs;Gangs--New York (State);Illicit and misused drugs;Violence;Violence in adolescence;Violence in art;Violence, cooperation, peace 0 9659 IBM to FC SEN: We was doing crazy shit. Just for fun we would, because we could jump into the tracks, certain stops, the train's flying, we would pull the emergency brakes and watch everybody in the train fall. We were riding the outside of the train, we were between the cars sitting up on it. It was crazy but that was just like, fun. Like I would do stuff like that without the crew even knowing. Like I'd be watching them then I would go and just do it. [mimes yanking emergency brake] "Oh what the fuck why you always doing that shit!" And then we'd have to run. And the train wasn't going nowhere so you just went between cars and jumped in the track and you ran to the next stop. And basically everybody'd be pissed. The conductor would be cursing at you, he would be like "fuck you!" And you'd be running to the next stop laughing, laughing, just laughing your guts out. It was funny. But people would fall that's when they started putting that stuff on it KB: Oh so you couldn't do it no more SEN: Yeah but that was a regular thing As the IBM crew begins to fade with SEN stepping back from graffiti and POKE becoming addicted and going to jail, they train the next generation, FC (First Class) crew which becomes a major graffiti crew. He also speaks about the function of graffiti crew names, noting the letters were more important than what they stood for, which was changeable. He also speaks about what it's like to be a kid beginning to write and "motion bomb" tagging through the system. FC (Graffiti crew);IBM (Graffiti crew) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Graffiti crews 0 9949 Move into Gang Life SEN: Even in the crew, some of the older ones didn't like that. Because it was too much power, too much egos, and too much beef coming from these two tiers. And then they would all have to get involved because Familia wasn't a big big gang. It was just a loyal gang, you were chosen. You had to grow into it, it was like a mob, a family thing. It wasn't like somebody could just get down it was impossible. SEN wraps up this part of his oral history by speaking about how he got involved with the La Familia street gang and moved away from graffiti as he lost interest growing up. Falling out with POKE and getting into more serious street crime and violence leads him away from graffiti. He ended up on a list of gang members in school before he was a gang member officially. He also details how the different generations of members had different functions within the gang. La Familia (Street gang) Gangs;Urban violence;Violence--Etiology;Violence--Social aspects 0 Part 1 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 23, 2022 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by the likes of Michelle Obama, Fabolous, and Rita Ora. In this first part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his peak activity as a graffiti writer. He shares his family's history, his own experiences in various public and private elementary schools, the presence of street organizations like Sandman and La Familia in the neighborhood immediately south of W. 96th Street, local skateboarders like his brother who were founding members of Zoo York, attending Joan of Arc Junior High School and the explosion of the various aspects of hip hop culture at the school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, how he got his tag and the process of forming the IBM Crew, IBM's activity along the 1 line and the crew's tension with the Ballbusters (a Dominican drug crew along the 1 line), joining up with La Familia, and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed SEN 1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with SEN 1, Part 1 Description An account of the resource Part 1 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 23, 2022 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by the likes of Michelle Obama, Fabolous, and Rita Ora. In this first part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his peak activity as a graffiti writer. He shares his family's history, his own experiences in various public and private elementary schools, the presence of street organizations like Sandman and La Familia in the neighborhood immediately south of W. 96th Street, local skateboarders like his brother who were founding members of Zoo York, attending Joan of Arc Junior High School and the explosion of the various aspects of hip hop culture at the school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, how he got his tag and the process of forming the IBM Crew, IBM's activity along the 1 line and the crew's tension with the Ballbusters (a Dominican drug crew along the 1 line), joining up with La Familia, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.05.23 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220523 graffiti IBM SEN 1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:44:26 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed ROCKY 184 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220524.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with ROCKY 184 (WC 188) OH-BAADP.20220524 1:44:26 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory ROCKY 184 (WC 188) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 rocky-184-oral-history-2022-05-25.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/nlPLtJv5w1U YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. Today is May 24, 2022. Kurt, do you want to introduce yourself? Kurt Boone: Yeah I'm Kurt Boone and I've been writing about urban culture for about 40 years. SP: Great, thank you Kurt. And we're here today, extremely thrilled to be here today with Rocky 184 a legendary graff writer who got her start really in the late 60s was there pretty much from the start... In this segment, Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture for 40 years, introduce Rocky 184, one of the original graffiti writers during the late 1960s and early 1970s from the famous Writers Corner 188 in Washington Heights. Graffiti;Rocky 184 (Graffiti artist);Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.) 0 46 Background of Rocky 184 SP: Why don't you start off by telling us a little about your family's history and background... ROCKY 184: Both my parents were born in New York. My mother is of Hispanic descent, her family was from the Dominican Republic, my father was of French descent... I grew up in Infamous Writer's Corner... I grew up first of all with SNAKE, STITCH was my partner, COCO 144, SPANKY 132, you know further down but in the Heights SJK, MIKE 171, K, JUNIOR Both of ROCKY's parents were born in New York. Her mother Minerva was from the Dominican Republic while her father Charlie was from France. Her father's family migrated from Germany to France and ROCKY was born in the infamous writers corner. ROCKY's father worked in the navy, post office, and had an interior painting business for restaurants. Meanwhile, ROCKY's mother worked as a waitress at the Blue Fountain, a house wife, and at the Isabella nursing home. ROCKY mentions the graffiti writers she was involved with as well as her siblings her parents had from previous marriages. Out of the two, ROCKY was closest to her father, who would often times go view the graffiti writers in awe. Due to her "tomboy" nature, ROCKY had a complicated relationship with her mother. However, this somewhat changed when ROCKY met her "first," Stitch 1, a graffiti writer. Family;Hispanic studies: culture and ideas;Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.);Writers Corner Coco 144 (Graffiti artist);SNAKE (Graffiti artist);Spanky 132 (Graffiti artist);Stitch (Graffiti artist);Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.) 0 617 Childhood SP: What are some things you remember eating while growing up in your household? And who cooked your Mom, you Dad, both of them? ROCKY 184: My mom did all the cooking, but when my mother decided to go back to work my father would cook on the weekends. When my mother cooked, it wasn't, the Spanish cuisine. That was far and in between. She would make a pernil, rice and beans, or maduros, but it was American food. She was an amazing cook. She could bake, and that's where I took an interest in baking. Growing up, ROCKY's mother did the cooking until she went back to work, during that time Charlie (her father) would cook on the weekends. Minerva would mostly cook "American" food more than Caribbean food but she was an amazing cook and taught ROCKY how to bake, a passion of hers. During the weekends, Charlie cooked foods such as roasted chicken and omelettes. When it came to musical influence, ROCKY grew up with Jazz, Frank Sinatra, and the Beatles on her father's side. ROCKY gives some insight to the cultural background of Washington Heights which was mostly comprised of Greek and Irish families at the time she grew up. In fact, ROCKY learned how to speak Greek before she learned how to speak Spanish. However, this changed when an influx of Cubans came to the neighborhood, followed by an influx of Dominicans. Growing up, ROCKY attended Catholic school such as St. Elizabeth, which ROCKY did not like because of the dresses and because of the people who went there. She dreaded going to church and when her family gave her money for donations she would spend it on candy. Out of all the subjects, ROCKY liked science and agriculture but was not good at math due to her dyscalculia—dyslexia with numbers. Food;Jazz;Latin-American Cuisine;migration;Music Catholic Church--Education;Dyslexia;Ethnicity;Family;Food;Music;School;Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.) 0 1226 Uprising of Gangs and Graduation KB: So what was it like in Washington Heights? Was it like in the 60s and 70s with gangs developing, were there gangs out there? What was the environment like? Rocky 184: When the flavor of the neighborhood started changing, and we started getting all the Dominicans and everything we started getting gangs. We had the Savage Skulls. I believe that's what STITCH was involved with. There was the all-girls gang The Hell of Five Sisters which I was in. With the influx of Cubans and Dominicans, Washington Heights started to experience the introduction of gangs such as the Hell of Five Sisters which ROCKY was in. The Hell of Five Sisters wore sweatshirts and it was Charlie who gave ROCKY her nickname, ROCKY. ROCKY graduated high school with good grades and excelled at typing which she did not like. After graduating, she landed a job with Hurst Publications which she worked at for a couple of years. Hell of Five Sisters;Saint Anthony's Commercial School;Savage Skulls Female gangs;Gangs;Gangs--New York (State);Hispanic American gangs;ibm selectric typewriter 0 1780 Tagging Rocky 184: Everyone says they came from the best block. I know I came from the best block. I grew up with the best... KB: Give us a typical week during that time... Rocky 184: Remember it wasn't the luxury of now, there wasn't the fanciness. It was tagging and that was it. I have a few of them on my Instagram page. KB: it was just that simple... Did anybody call themselves by their name, did you call SNAKE by SNAKE or did you call him Eddy? Rocky 184: No I always called him Snake. This segment gives a 'highlight reel' of ROCKY's tagging career, hanging out on 188th Street "Writer's Corner." She takes a journey going from small tags inside trains and on the platforms to larger efforts including a large roller tag on an apartment building wall, the opportunity to write which was pointed out by her father. This ultimately continues as Rocky's career dies down just as the United Graffiti Artists were spinning up with many of the people she was involved with. Bronx;riverdale;women Graffiti;Subculture;Subway;TAKI 183 (Graffiti artist);United Graffiti Artists;Vandalism 0 2602 The Bronx, Wall Writers, and Later Life Rocky: So when I got married my father got us a place up in Riverdale, because that was his route in the Post Office. KB: Riverdale In the Bronx? Rocky: Yes that's how I got to the Bronx KB: Talk about the Bronx then! This segment details some of Rocky's life after leaving graffiti, including parenting and living in Riverdale while missing Washington Heights. It moves then her ultimate return to the scene in the 2010s with the Wall Writers: Graffiti in its Innocence documentary interviews. She also details rekindling friendships with other writers including BONDI and KEON. Social media took this to a new level and connected ROCKY to the massive scene which had developed around graffiti during her absence. Art Media;Gastman, Roger CAT 87 (Graffiti artist);Riverdale (New York, N.Y.);Wall Writers (movie) 0 4391 Technique, Graffiti Life I did Writer's Corner in a Marker! Because I think everybody hit it with a marker. Well maybe it was around I just woke up to it. So it's really marker and then the paint came later. SP: So you were really already on your way out by the time paint came in Yeah, yeah. SP: Did you have a favorite brand or color of marker that you used? Black, always black. This segment goes a little into the technique that was being used by ROCKY and those around her. She says marker was the preferred instrument over the spray can while she was active, with the paint primarily coming later. She was particularly impressed with the character tag of Stay High 149, but notes that he was the only one really experimenting with characters at that time. It continues with some interesting details about which writers were associating with who and who stayed in graffiti and who left. Beyond the Streets;Felt marker drawing;Paint materials Coco 144 (Graffiti artist);Graffiti artists;SJK (Graffiti artist);Stay High 149 (Graffiti artist), 1950-2012;Stitch-1 (Graffiti artist) 0 4964 Life in the 70s and Later R: My daughter was born in the elevator of the hospital! So that's getting close. SP: Almost made it huh? R: She was delivered in the elevator. Her father delivered her. I was a very small frame and I was very active. I bike ride I roller skate, you know, so, when women say 24 hours of labor I had that one pain that one baby and that was it. Maybe if I had a little more pain there wouldn't have been four! This segment goes into detail about ROCKY's life since retreating from graffiti, including having her four kids, seeing the South Bronx deteriorate due to the fires, and becoming a corporate travel agent, which enabled her to travel to much of the world. We also learn how resorts have offered ROCKY and other traveling "old timer" graffiti writers walls to tag, which were filled up with names from all over the world. Archipelagoes--Caribbean Area;Arts, Caribbean;Dominican Americans;Dominican Republic;Paradise Garage (Discotheque);Style;Washington Heights (New York, N.Y.) Bronx;Feminism and art;Parenting;Spray painting;Travel 0 5591 Being a Girl in Graffiti, Masterpiece Era, Graffiti Legacies SP: Were you accepted completely? Was there any nonsense you'd get from any boys? ROCKY 184: No, No. And I felt like a guy. You know I know I was a girl, but I wasn't that girl. I wasn't that girly girl. You could do it I could do it. I wasn't a bad person but I just, you know, wasn't that girly girl. I was Charlie's son, like my mother would say! SP: And were there any girly-girls who were into graff at the time who you remember? KB: There was CHARMIN 65, did you know her? ROCKY: I met her years ago. I don't remember her being girly! This segment details the legacy of graffiti as an art movement as ROCKY has come to see it. She speaks about how the Masterpiece Era passed her by, completely unaware of movies like Style Wars or Wild Style which did a great deal to mythologize that era of graffiti. This made her particularly surprised at how big a movement (and an industry) graffiti had become, especially in Europe where she notes it has been easier and more lucrative to sell graffiti-based works. She also speaks about noticing the Clean Car Program beginning which took the graffiti off the trains, and expressed sadness about that in particular, which took a bit of wonder and beauty out of the city in her eyes. She expresses hope about the large-scale murals and legal walls organized by open-air galleries such as the Bushwick Collective, noting that when effort is put into a beautiful wall, it doesn't get tagged over. She graffiti as being a major beautifying force in New York at the time, that graffiti is a win-win for the taggers and the citizens. Bushwick Collective (Art Gallery);Charmin 65 (Graffiti artist);Clean Car Program;Trans (Graffiti artist) European Graffiti;Feminism and art;Graffiti;Racism;Urban beautification;Vandalism 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 24, 2022 with ROCKY 184, one of the original graffiti writers from the famous Writers Corner 188 in Washington Heights. In her oral history ROCKY 184 speaks about her parents and their French and Dominican backgrounds, her early years growing up in Washington Heights and attending Catholic schools, rebelling against common expectations for girls at the time, her relationship with STITCH 1 and other writers she knew who hung out at WC 188, her experience tagging and early tagging culture in general, moving away from Washington Heights to The Bronx to start a family, getting back into the graffiti scene about a decade ago and meeting KEON, SLAVE, and other writers from back in the day, and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with ROCKY 184 Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 24, 2022 with ROCKY 184, one of the original graffiti writers from the famous Writers Corner 188 in Washington Heights. In her oral history ROCKY 184 speaks about her parents and their French and Dominican backgrounds, her early years growing up in Washington Heights and attending Catholic schools, rebelling against common expectations for girls at the time, her relationship with STITCH 1 and other writers she knew who hung out at WC 188, her experience tagging and early tagging culture in general, moving away from Washington Heights to The Bronx to start a family, getting back into the graffiti scene about a decade ago and meeting KEON, SLAVE, and other writers from back in the day, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.05.24 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220524 graffiti ROCKY 184 WC188 Writers Corner 188 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:37:30 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed KEON Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220601.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with KEON (Ex-Vandals) OH-BAADP.20220601 1:37:30 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory KEON (Ex-Vandals) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 keon-ex-vandals-oral-histopry-2022-06-01.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/uiFcI2HhTLE YouTube video English 0 Introduction SP: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My Name is Steven Payne [SP], Librarian and Archivist and the Bronx County Historical Society. Today is June 1, 2022, Kurt do you want to introduce yourself? KB: Yeah I'm Kurt Boone I've been documenting urban culture here in New York 40+ years. SP: Great and we're very excited to be here with graffiti pioneer KEON, an Ex-Vandal. A really prolific artist working with sculptures and really across a lot of different media as well. In this segment interviewers Steven Payne and Kurt Boone introduce themselves and the subject of this oral history, KEON ONE. Keon (Graffiti artist) Graffiti 0 42 Family History and Background KEON: My family background is my father is from the Bronx originally. His father was a police officer. His father was one of six brothers who have all passed away. My mother is from the midwest from Iowa, a natural corn girl. They both started in their history in television at CBS. My father was a television on the Captain Kangaroo show, Walter Cronkite's news show, the NFL Today before he switched all into sports. His father was shot and killed when he was 18 by the mob up in the Bronx. And he told me never to be a hero and mind your own business. My mother on the other hand started as the secretary to Arthur Godfrey. And she traveled all with Arthur Godfrey all over the place and was his private secretary. Basically she was a housewoman but she worked all the time. And I have two sisters and I'm the oldest, and the prettiest if you haven't noticed already! This segment details KEON's family history and his early life experiences growing up in Flatbush. He describes some of the games he played with his friends, made easier by growing up on a dead-end block where there would be less traffic. Ball games;Children's games;Outdoor games;Subway stations Bronx;Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)--Social life and customs;Flatbush (N.Y.);Iowa 0 386 Education KB: So what was your elementary school years like? Keon: My elementary school years--my elementary school was not good because I've never heard of people outgrowing it, but I had a severe dyslexic problem with they did not catch and socially promoted me until the 10th grade when I finally got kicked out of school and then went to a 600 school where you were allowed to in Manhattan... which I'll get back into that a second. So school was a little bit hard for me. And it kind of gave you this rebellious attitude a little bit. You know people calling you stupid. Savage Skulls (Street gang) Education;Education, Primary--Activity programs 0 693 Early Graffiti Experiences KEON: When I got into visual arts that was more writers that I met there. That was Eric Haze, Keith Haring had gone to school there for a year but he was not a friend of mine in school, and left. I think that Barry Applebaum KE-3 was my first [writer friend]. I wanna go back to grammar school because there was a kid who lived in Cobble Hill and his name was Ian Phillips, he was in my class and he was the first guy I saw piecing on a piece of paper during class, and I kind of looked over to him and before you know it I was kind of doodling with that too. This segment details KEON's experiences in high school, first encountering, and beginning to write graffiti. (D) Train (New York City subway line);Joust-1 (Graffiti artist);Min One (Graffiti artist) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Local transit--New York Metropolitan Area;MTA;Skateboarding 0 1279 Changing Landscape KB: What crews were around at that time? KEON: Well the big crew for me in high school was RTW Rolling Thunder, and I forgot to mention Andy, Zephyr, who was a huge influence as far as someone who had wired that craft of lettering and color and bits and shapes to me back them and we both had an in-common girlfriend up there the Stern sisters, which one of them is dead now for ODing, but she ended up having a roller skate rental out on the Eastern End of Long Island it had some of the bars. And I remember Andy coming out to her store and did a huge, and I wish I had the picture of it now, because it was an insane piece, and it said sun skates, which was the name of the store... The other big crew was BYB This segment details which crews KEON knew and were up in his childhood, as well as his changing life at the same time. Art--Technique;Graffiti artists 0 1793 Art Teaching Career and Later Writing KB: During those years you wrote KEON? Did you put pieces on trains? Did you tag trains? KEON: I wrote KEON. No now that I've listened to a lot of people talk about what they did and didn't do, how much is belief what is not belief. Graffiti for me stemmed from a rebellious alter-ego. I was not a piecer on the trains, I was a street tagger, truck tagger, station tagger. I had some tags on the trains but I was not a piecer. I am just a guy that was part of the culture, from the early 70s watching it, through the teenage years, through high school, and into college. And when I went to college and finished college the School of Visual Arts gave me a job as a TA in the sculpture department. The likes of some kids like Aaron SHARP [Goodstone], LUSTER from the Village, STASH-2 from the Village, and ELF MPC from the Bronx, they were all my students. So they come to their first year and there's a mandatory sculpture class... This segment relates to KEON's time as a Teaching Assistant at SVA after his graduation from the institution, and how he came to teach a number of other young Graffiti writers. He also speaks at length about his personal influences, the first writers he remembers seeing, and early encounters with the Ex-Vandals. Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group);School of Visual Arts (New York, N.Y.) Art in education;Disciplines in art education;Education in art;Graffiti 0 2116 Ex-Vandals KB: So what was your introduction to the Ex-Vandals, and while we're at it, do you have any photos of your early tags? KEON: Well I do but we'd have to put that on pause so I can look find them on the phone, which runs our life, and it might take me a while to find those things. You know I find it really cool how people have pictures of their stuff. All I know is that myself and JOUST did not have a camera, we did not have a cell phone, I know I threw my beeper up against the wall when I had to call someone back and go to a phone booth and didn't have a quarter, the beeper was another thing. My introduction to the Ex-Vandals, who were my all-time favorite crew, and first crew that I knew that I was watching their graffiti. Intimidating is the word! When graffiti is in a neighborhood it's intimidated. This segment details KEON's introduction to the Ex-Vandals. We learn that he was not a member at the height of their street tagging, but that since that time the Ex-Vandals expanded their breadth and became a more general worldwide art group and it was at this time KEON was let in. He sees it as ironic that a "white kid from the neighborhood who grew up looking" at their stuff is now running with them. Erasmus Hall High School Ex-Vandals (group);Neighborhood leaders 0 2396 1980s and Transition to Professional Art KEON:It got very hard and dangerous to do in the 80s that which the kids did in the 70s. And remember in the 80s graffiti had morphed into more of the shaped and stylized letters. And you will see shades of that morphing with guys like BLADE, who, say what you like about him, was the most innovative guy along with LEE who brought in--even the thing that came out of the Village Voice that famous picture of his swinging BLADE letters. Keon speaks on the shift in style and complexity in the 1980s. The greater risks associated with graffiti in that decade led to more whole cars and larger scale projects. He says he doesn't expect his writing career to be particularly remembered by others, but that the lessons from graffiti were brought into his sculpture and painting work. He also speaks on his sculpture career using found objects and the difficulties associated with being a professional artist. The East Village art scene also features. Blade (Graffiti artist);Quinones, Lee George Art and style;Graffiti;Sculpture;Sculpture, Modern--20th century;Sculpture--Technique;Spray painting 0 3038 Graffiti's Reception by the Art World KEON: Whether you're an artist, a "good graffiti artist," which got deemed also by the bougie crowd. And I'm not gonna start naming people that have documented graffiti because I know them and they're friends of mine or their collectors of mine (with my canvases not my graffiti canvases). But when people write about anything they write about it from Manhattan. They're always talking about Manhattan because Manhattan is the Mecca. It's New York. The other boroughs where you see these great writers where these kids come out of other boroughs the way we talk about in the early 70s, they're not recognized because they're from Staten Island they're from Brooklyn they're from Queens. The commercialization of graffiti from KEON's perspective, speaking on issues of global differences in reception, the focus on Manhattan, and canvases. He also speaks on technique in graffiti and the early techniques that he used and recognized on the street. Spray painting Art galleries, Commercial;Commercial art 0 4561 Writing for the First Time SP: What was it like picking up a spray can and trying to write with it for the first time? KEON: You know it was just a tool that seemed to come easy to me. You know I was a scared little nelly so I did it fast. I usually went solo except for JOUST when we got a little older. It wasn't a hard thing you know it was a can of spray paint it wasn't like I was doing it on a unicycle. This segment returns to KEON's early days of writing. He speaks on his very first experiences, as well as telling us how racking became a non-issue for him because he had a friend who worked in a hardware store that could leave the gate open and insure KEON and his friends could get their paint without significant risk of arrest. He also writes about how the art world has changed recently, especially with its expansion into Brooklyn. Spray painting Graffiti;Shoplifting 0 5050 Personal Life KB: In your personal life in your struggle, did you raise a family? KEON: Well, I did. It's a subject that I am not going to talk about. I was married for a long time to a high school sweetheart, and had two kids. One is 20, bless her she has a full scholarship to USC. I hope she's doing well we don't speak, nor do I speak to my son and ex-wife any longer. It's a court thing, it's a monetary thing, the wife poisoned me that kind of thing. But now I'm in a very happy relationship and happen to love Roxanne, Rocky 184. This segment briefly details KEON's personal life outside of graffiti. His marriage and two children is a sore subject for him, but his recent relationship with ROCKY 184, whom he met in old-timer writers circles fulfills him greatly. Rocky 184 (Graffiti artist) Family life 0 5178 Skateboarding SP: You've talked a lot about it being a kind of underground youth culture similar to skateboarding, why don't you talk a little more about skateboarding because that's clearly a large part of your childhood as well? Where you'd skate, that kind of thing. KEON: Yeah that was really large. It was a big thing. Nobody did it when I was doing especially down Flatbush Ave. KB: Andy Kessler was the pioneer KEON: Well they called him the pioneer because the boards had changed. The guys in California were the real pioneers. But we were, and I'm speaking of Andy Kessler and I'm speaking of a lot of other people that you wouldn't know. But our stomping grounds was in Central Park because of the hills there and because there was an audience. If you ever go in the streets whether you're in SoHo or Williamsburg, there's always a bunch of kids showing off. Why? Because they want to be seen. Kind of like a graffiti artist. Writes the name because they want to be seen. KEON's experience with early New York skateboarding, including where it was happening, why, and what brands and styles of equipment he preferred. zoo york Skateboarding;Skateboarding--Equipment and supplies 0 5410 Graffiti Movies KB: Where were you when Wild Style movie came out and Style Wars? KEON: Style Wars came out in the 80s. I was working at the Roxy, which means I was roller skating, I has just started Visual Arts, I had just gotten my studio. KB: You know something? I saw the movie Wild Style, you know I saw Wild Style first. And to this day I have never seen Style Wars. [points to self] Is that a fuckin' knucklehead? But you know something I know those people and I know the history. So I don't really need to see the movie! Because my DVD player broke! Kurt asks KEON where he was when Wild Style and Style Wars came out, and what their impact on his was. Much to the surprise of both interviewers, KEON says he still hasn't seen Style Wars! Style Wars (film);Wild Style 0 5497 The Bronx KB: You're in the Bronx, we're at the Bronx Historical Society. What do you think of the Bronx? KEON: Well I'll tell you what. The Bronx closes up early, so does Brooklyn for that matter. The Bronx is a lot like Brooklyn that it's (not now) but it's a lot of separation over a bridge or the Bruckner expwy to Manhattan. It's always quieter. Like I remember taking the train from Manhattan to Brooklyn and crossing the bridge. Back over the moat. Brooklyn had a different flavor. And all ethnic areas, Downtown Brooklyn now especially is built up to cosmopolitan heights I can't afford to live there. I don't want to live with a bike lane anymore. The bike lane hasn't come up to the Bronx yet. So it's kind of similar in that it's a borough that isn't clustered Manhattan. But the Bronx is a little more mellow the way Brooklyn used to be. KEON's thoughts on the Bronx in comparison to his native Brooklyn and Queens. His only youth experience with the Bronx was visiting his Aunt in Parkchester. Parkchester (New York, N.Y.) Bronx;Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.);Manhattan (New York, N.Y.);Queens (New York, N.Y.) 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on June 1, 2022 with KEON, an early graffiti writer from Brooklyn and a member of the Ex-Vandals (among many other crews). In his oral history KEON speaks about his family background of Bronx Italians and mid-westerners, growing up in Flatbush, his early rebelliousness in school, the underground cultures of graffiti and skateboarding around his neighborhood and wider New York City, early graffiti writers who influenced him, graffiti crews he was a part of or associated with, his career as an artist working in various mediums and how graff did and did not influence his artwork, his love for ROCKY 184 (WC 188), and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with KEON Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on June 1, 2022 with KEON, an early graffiti writer from Brooklyn and a member of the Ex-Vandals (among many other crews). In his oral history KEON speaks about his family background of Bronx Italians and mid-westerners, growing up in Flatbush, his early rebelliousness in school, the underground cultures of graffiti and skateboarding around his neighborhood and wider New York City, early graffiti writers who influenced him, graffiti crews he was a part of or associated with, his career as an artist working in various mediums and how graff did and did not influence his artwork, his love for ROCKY 184 (WC 188), and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.06.01 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220601 Ex-Vandals graffiti KEON Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 02:38:55 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed TKID 170 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220815.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with T-KID 170 OH-BAADP.20220815 02:38:55 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory T-KID 170 Boone, Kurt Crespo, Pastor Jr. Payne, Steven MP4 t-kid-170-oral-history-2022-08-15.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/JbUANB9wSxo YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne, director of the Bronx County Historical Society. Kurt and Pastor you wanna go ahead and introduce yourselves? Kurt Boone: Yeah I'm Kurt Boone and I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. Pastor Crespo: I'm Pastor Crespo, Jr. and I am the research librarian for the Bronx County Historical Society. Steven Payne: Great, thank you both. We're very happy, thrilled to be here with the legendary graff writer and world renowned artist from none other than the BX. T-KID, Terrible T-KID 170, goes by a few names but really most people know him as T-KID. T-KID's gonna get into all kinds of things, he came up during the golden age of graffiti and a force of nature really ever since in the graff world and beyond the graff world. Steven Payne, Kurt Boone, and Pastor Crespo, Jr. introduce themselves and the narrator, T-KID 170 world-renowned graffiti writer and artist from The Bronx. T-Kid 170 (Graffiti artist) Graffiti;Oral history 0 61 Family History and Background TKID: So, you know, my father wanted to take me for a weekend and he kidnapped me and took me to Peru. SP and KB: Oh, Wow! TKID: Yeah when they were separated, when they weren't together. Back then you could leave the country with no passport, but you couldn't come back in. My father's plans was to keep me in Peru. And there are pictures in my family archives of me in Peru as a little kid, you know, I wanna say I was about 2 years old, I think my mother was pregnant with my brother at the time. No bullshit, I was 3 years old then and my mother had my brother, now that I remember. And there's some pictures of me in Peru with some of my Peruvian family which I barely know any of. T-KID discusses his family's history and background in the Bronx. His mother was from Puerto Rico who came to the mainland in the 1950s with her mother (T-KID's grandmother) who worked in a fishing net factory. His father immigrated from Peru and moved to New Jersey, trained as an accountant and working as a house painter on the weekends, but dreamed of being an ironworker which he did eventually become. Shortly after they were married their two kids were born, T-KID and his brother. However the marriage rapidly deteriorated as T-KID's father developed a drinking habit and became physically abusive to his mother and to T-KID, leading to a divorce early on in T-KID's life. We also learn about how T-KID was taken to Peru by his father as a toddler while on visitation, essentially kidnapping T-KID as he did not have a passport to reenter the country, but an (apparently legally empty) threat by law enforcement scared his father into coming back to the US. Hunts Point Palace;Kidnapping;Kidnapping victims;Parental kidnapping Children of immigrants;Foreign workers, Peruvian;Immigrants;Immigrants in America;Immigration & society;Peru;Puerto Rican experience;Puerto Ricans;Women immigrants;Women immigrants--Abuse of--United States 0 792 Early Childhood and Education TKID: We used to hustle back then! And before I get into that story these are the hustles that we had: We used to go to the supermarket and carry the shopping bags for the old ladies. I'm not gonna say what race or whatever, you know, I'm just gonna say there were certain type of people who gave us a penny, the other people who gave us a nickel, the people just like me gave us a quarter! And that was one of the hustles, so I was always hustling. The Bronx Hustle, kid! I remember the hammer trucks. People used to get sodas, like soda water delivered to their houses. And trying to steal it, let me tell you they used to be like hawks watching those things. Cause you take a bottle they come running around and chase you up the block and stuff. Then I found out you could return bottles, you'd get 2 cents or whatever it was back then. T-KID speaks about his early education experiences and what activities he remembers doing at that time. Popular games included skellies, a popular board game played with custom playing pieces derived from various salvaged materials. Another game, Off the Point, involved bounding a ball off a curb and seeing how high it would reach. He also speaks about how as a child he was hustling for spare change, for bottles, to carry groceries, and so on. One time, a worker for the Police Athletic League lured an approximately 6-year old T-KID in with the promise of a number of bottles to return for the deposit, and attempted to rape T-KID, only thwarted by being walked in on by another person. T-KID reflects on this, noting how lucky he was and that was how his neighborhood could be then. He furthermore speaks about how he met his best friends because they fought every day. Adult child abuse victims;Skully (game) Ball games;Early childhood education;Friendship;Fun and Games;Games;Games people play;Games--Equipment and supplies;Games--Rules;Games--United States;Milkcap games;Rape 0 1510 Home Life: Food, Music, and Finances Ah, the music. Everything from salsa to whatever was happening. My mother loved music, my mother loved to dance. So she was constantly listening to music. My grandmother on the other hand she would listed to the old-school Puerto Rican music. What do you call aginando [sic] aguinaldo, the old jíbaro music she would listen to. T-KID's life at home as a young kid: the food Puerto Rican food he ate his mother and grandmother made. He especially remembers the Cod Fritters and fruit juices. His mother and grandmother had different taste in music, with his mother liking anything she could dance to but his grandmother preferring classic Puerto Rican jíbaro music. He also remembers the facts of poverty: manufacturing jobs shutting down, hiding goods so that welfare inspectors would not find them, and expansion of gangs. Guiro;Jíbaro (Puerto Rican identity) Cooking, Puerto Rican;Dance music--Puerto Rico;Folk music--Puerto Rico;Popular music--Puerto Rico;Popular music--Puerto Rico--1971-1980 0 1810 Neighborhood Gangs SP: So you mentioned the Ghetto Brothers already why don't you speak a little about some of the gangs you were seeing in your neighborhood in like the late 60s? TK: So when we lived in University I remember the Ghetto Brothers because the guy, this kid named Alex, or was it Tommy? No it was Alex. And he was a Ghetto Brother. And we used to play baseball in the convent, there was a convent next to my building and there was a little park. And we used to play baseball right in there. And I remember they used to call me "Johnny Bench with the Pussy in the Chin" because I had a cleft and I was always the catcher. And I had a cleft and they used to call be Johnny Bench. And this guy Alex used to call me, "Hey! Johnny Bench with the Pussy in the Chin!" So he lived in the basement right on the corner of 170th and University he lived in the building, in the basement, and his mother used to sell Limber. Now Limber is a cup of frozen, let's say kool aid, it's just frozen, it's an ICEE. Different flavor ICEEs. But they made it with let's say fruit juice and they freeze it. And that's it; it was a nickel. So we were always there. And one day we seen he comes up and he has these colors on. And we were like "oh shit what's that?" "Oh, I'm a ghetto brother blah blah blah" and we were like "Oh, yeah cool!" T-KID discusses the gangs he remembers, their rise and changing nature. He especially discusses the Ghetto Brothers, members of which he was friends with and became involved with eventually. Ghetto Brothers Gangs;Outlaw Gang 0 1927 Growing Up, Moving Around TK: So I remember on one trip, on one weekend, my mother, we were supposed to meet my mother at my grandmother's house on 192nd and Aqueduct, right? And I remember she decided, because she was still married to the guy in Queens, and I remember going there and she was like "alright let's go" and we took a cab from 192 and Aqueduct to Queens and she caught the man in bed with another woman! Yo my mother flipped on the dude, man. She fuckin' flipped! So you see my childhood was fucking insane! You PTSD bro I never stood a chance man. And I'm not even getting into the shit I saw that my father did to my mother. I'm not even gonna get into that. But I remember my mother taking a knife, man, breaking up all the furniture chasing the fucking woman out of the house, talking about how she wanna kill this mother fucker, man. And I'm laughing like "yeah you fucking prick!" SP: So he got his ass kicked by both your parents! TK: No but listen, listen, listen! So after that we end up back at my grandmother's house. And I don't know a couple of months down the road that's when she met Frank Payne, and that's my sister's father. An incident of abuse by T-KID's father causes his mother to move the family to Puerto Rico, beginning a period of turmoil in his young life. She goes back to New York and eventually remarries, calling the children to her in Queens. Eventually, an incident with his mother's new husband occurs and T-KID runs away to his father's house back in the Bronx. His father beats up his mother's new husband and takes both kids to the Bronx to live with him from then on. He gets a new group of friends and plays Ringolevio. During one such game he witnessed a kid get killed by a moving car. He also began attending the Catholic school system on his father's insistence. He would continue to see his mother on the weekends, who eventually caught her new husband in bed with another woman leaving him as well and moving back in with T-KID's grandmother (her mother). She eventually starts dating a man named Frank Payne, who worked for Con Edison and is the father of T-KID's sister. T-KID developed a strong relationship with Frank, who taught him how to box and supported T-KID. T-KID also describes the competitive relationship his father fostered between T-KID and his brother, which transferred into a competitive spirit in almost everything T-KID would do from then on. Pedestrian accidents;Tag games Family violence 0 2968 First Graffiti and Gang Experiences TK: Now I'm hanging tough in Harlem and coming home later and later and my father's starting to, you know. And I remember coming home late one day and stripping me naked and checking my body for needle marks he thought I was shooting up heroin. And that was a time in the couple incidents that had already happened where my father really got physical and abusive with me. At one point a couple of years prior he put a fucking gun to my face. He was drunk, you know. I think I walked in and averted a suicide. I didn't know it at the time. I thought I walked in, my father was drunk in the living room. He had these heavy curtains that darkened out the whole place and he had a recliner. I remember walking in and he had the Beretta in his hand, fucking bottle of whiskey there and shit. I turned on the lights and, "Shut off the lights" I go "Woah Dad what's going on" I saw the gun and oh, shit. We knew he had the gun. My father used to teach us how to shoot, shooting into the corner of the bed that's in the room. KB: That's loud! TK: Yeah and it was a 9mm Beretta man. You know? It was like, I remember I walked in on that and I remember he told me to shut off the light and I said no, Dad. And I'm like looking and I'm like, "what the hell is going on?" I remember he got up and he puts the gun to my face and he goes, "I don't know if I should blow your brains out and kill myself or just blow your brains out." And he put his hand down and said, "you remind me of your mother." And he went back and he sat down. T-KID and his friends became hugely into doing tricks on the swings, and competing with other crews who could perform the most impressive tricks. After a particularly impressive battle T-KID gets the moniker "king of the swings" and begins writing KING 13 as his first graffiti name. This is also when was pressed into joining the neighborhood gang. He was initiated at Monroe High School and was involved in the gang but did not appreciate the choice of who they robbed, including older people and a beloved local shop owner. Ultimately he left that gang and left the name KING 13 behind with it. At this point he started writing SEM 102 and gets in with a crew in Harlem called the Renegades. He also around this time walks in on his father, drunk and with a gun, which T-KID now believes may have been a planned suicide attempt. His father threatened T-KID with the weapon, scaring T-KID deeply, and so T-KID stole the weapon from the bedroom, hid it away, and kept it for himself. Heroin;Renegades of Harlem;Suicide Abuse;Family violence;Gangs;Gangs--New York (State);Gangs--United States;Swings 0 3892 Accidentally Shooting Himself TK: Anyway make a long story short, man, this is what happened, man. I ended up shooting myself with that gun. You know. I ended up shooting myself. You know I wrote a different story and I say a different story to everybody because it doesn't sound as exiting, but the truth of the matter is, is I did shoot myself with that gun and Satch saved my life. And that was in Crotona Park and I was 16 years old. September 26th it was like 2 months after my birthday. My 16th Birthday. KB: In your arm or your leg? TK: In my groin. KB: That's gotta be painful! TK: Yeah they said I wouldn't have kids. I got a daughter, I got a son. And I got another kid I don't know if she's mine or not but she says she is! She don't look nothing like me! Every time I go for a blood test they disappear, so. But she does get checks from me every once in a while. KB: So what did your dad say? TK: He disowned me. Nobody came to see me. Nobody from the gang came. This is when Lincoln Hospital was brand new. The new Lincoln Hospital on 149th. I mean it was packed in. They had a trauma center there was a lot of gunshots going on. Now this is between us here... but it's in the archives ok because if you really do the research you'll find out. T-KID accidentally shoots himself with the same gun he stole from his father to protect him and his brother. With the gun cocked T-KID goes to stash the pistol in his waistband and sits down on the bench, causing the hammer to release and hitting T-KID in the groin. When none of his gang members come to visit him in the hospital, he is disillusioned from gang life and swears it off for good. Crotona Play Center (New York, N.Y.);Lincoln Hospital (New York, N.Y.) Accident victims;Gangs;Gunshot wounds 0 4479 Creating T-KID, Leaving Gang, Becoming Dedicated Writer TK: They used to call me big T because I was tall and skinny. By now I'm tall. By 16 I just shot up like a fucking week, right? But I was skinny! When we used to play football on the block, 2 hand touch, remember that? I used to say oh! throw me the ball [spreads arms straight out]. Satch used to laugh "oh look at that big T over there." Called me a T and shit. And Kid because I was always the youngest. Everybody was older than me except for my brother so they called me kid. So when I was in the hospital I was doing big T and KID. And then I saw T-KID. So in 1977, right after I got shot, I came up with the name T-KID. And that's when I decided, that's it man. Fuck this gang shit, I ain't with this gang because all I could think about was nobody came to see me, we was supposed to be fucking brothers, ok. All I could remember was them fucking robbing fucking Cheap Charlie, a place that I liked! And then fucking stealing fucking welfare, not welfare checks, social security checks. They used to wait by the check cashing place and wait for people to cash checks and rob em. I dedicated myself to graffiti. While recovering in the hospital, T-KID comes up with a new graffiti game combining two nicknames he acquired: "Big T" and "The Kid." With not much else to do T-KID used the supplies his brother brought him to start sketching out this name, the tag, and a few pieces and resolved to make graffiti his raison d'être from then on. Hip 1 (Graffiti artist);John F. Kennedy Senior High School;Padre (Graffiti artist);Rep 2 (Graffiti artist);Set 149 (Graffiti artist);Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Pseudonym library 0 5021 Developing Technique KB: I'm always fascinated on you guys getting spray paint cans and being able to paint with it! Right, so how does skill get developed? Did you learn something from Tracy or did you learn by experiment. TK: You learn by trial and error, everything was trial and error. Like once I started hitting the fucking trains man I started to learn that if I spray with the regular cap it would take me forever and doesn't come out real cool. So what I started to learn was that there was these things called Jifoams and Niagaras and those were fat caps. You come in and do the outline and fill it in with those. And if I remember correctly the Jifoam were for rust-oleums and the Niagaras were for everything else otherwise the paint would go all over the place. Also for doing the outlines I learned if you let it get clogged a little bit a skinny line would come out. T-KID speaks about the process of trial and error in developing technique in spray painting. For instance, the process of discovering what caps work best for fill-ins: the cap from Jifoam oven cleaner worked best for Rust-Oleum paint as a fat cap, while Niagara spray starch worked best for other paint brands. Art techniques from pencil to paint;Paint--Testing;Rust-Oleum (Firm) Aerosol propellants;Art & technique series;Art--Technique;Graphic arts--Technique;Spray painting;Technique 0 5205 Crews and Prominent Writers, TVS KB: Now did you get involved in any crews? TK: I started my own crew man The Nasty Boys back in 1977 man. The Nasty Boys that was my crew I started that in 1977. But I was always Wild Style, Tracy [168] had put me in Wild Style. So I was down with Wild Style. And before that it was FTW - Fuck The World! Everybody wrote that shit, man. You know that wasn't necessarily a crew it was more of a statement. KB: So who was in The Nasty Boys? TK: The original Nasty Boys was myself, PESER, was PESER he also wrote INT 1 and he was down with TMT that was my connection to SKEME and them and CHAIN. The Magnificent Team. So that was my connection with them, was PESER. T-KID discusses the crews he was down with in his writing career, including two he played a foundational leading role in: TNB - The Nasty Boys and TVS - The Vamp Squad. Chain 3 (Graffiti artist);Peser (Graffiti artist);Skeme (Graffiti artist);T-Kid (Graffiti artist);TMT - The Magnificent Team (Graffiti crew);TNB - The Nasty Boys (Graffiti crew);Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist);TVS - The Vamp Squad (Graffiti artists) Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 5664 Getting into Yards KB: You hit a lot of trains over the years, so what was your technique getting into the yards? TK: It didn't matter man! I remember when they came up with, they were talking about we're gonna start putting dogs in the yards. We were like, "how the fuck are they gonna put dogs in the yard?" You know? We just saw, like, they did it in the Bedford Yard, they had dogs in that area and shit. So all we did is come down from the top of the tracks where the dogs weren't and you'd jump into the track. When they did the razor wire, we invented wirecutters! What we learned quickly is when you cut razor wire it has the tendency to spring. So you gotta watch it. So you cut it and watch it spring. So you'd take a board and put it like that [holds an imaginary board in front of face/wire. You know we'd come up with whatever way. It was just your imagination you were limited by your imagination. If you wanted to get into a yard bad enough you could get into a yard. T-KID discusses how he and his crew mates would get into layups and yards after security tightened up. The dogs and razor wire wire turned out to be not too much of an issue, but when police showed up they were known to be caught. Koch, Ed Breaking in;Trespass 0 5739 Relationship to "Fine Art" Graffiti TK: He did an interview for that hip-hop magazine and said the T in T-KID stands for Tracy's Kid right after that's when he did that because he's been mad at me for that shit ever since. I mean Tracy's ego he wouldn't let me sign my name next to him, his ego was so big. And you know that's typical of artists, especially geniuses 'cause he's a fucking genius and I get it and I understand it but the truth is I heard this fucking ego so forever he's got this grudge. And one this I always tell him, I am Wild Style, you made me Wild Style. I will forever be Wild Style. You know? And Wild Style, one thing about Wild Style it's not about letters! You know these guys Zephyr and them think Wild Style was about letters. No, Wild Style was a way of life! It's how we live in the Bronx. T-KID speaks about his experiences with the move that his peers were making into the galleries. He was separated from the gallery scene, feeling that the move into the gallery was in effect the culture being hijacked by money. He nonetheless knew them, with Henry Chalfant at one point asking T-KID to narrate Style Wars, which T-KID eventually turned down due to beef with CAP. This is an attitude that T-KID now says he regrets, and was influenced by a bad headspace at the time and cocaine addiction. Quinones, Lee George;Tracy 168 (Graffiti artist);Zephyr (Graffiti artist) Commercial art 0 6529 "Ghost Yard" Story KB: So you got a couple of infamous stories out there that you can tell us what you want. First is this Ghost Yard story. That's the first one. Then this event with Cap, you and Cap had this fight SP: At fashion moda right? TK: Which story about the Ghost Yard there was a bunch of them? KB: Tell me about you running it? TK: Ok so yeah man the thing with the ghost yard was I found the perfect place to paint. And I protected it. Basically what I was doing is I protected it because at the time you had all these new writers, guys like COPE who would come in and bomb. Not only would they bomb which is ok, but they would break the windows, fuck shit up. You know they didn't give a shit. They didn't see it like I saw. Cause finding a good place, and I had beef with the Ballbusters in the 1 tunnel so I couldn't go in the 1 tunnel because they almost killed me there, right? And then I found the ghost yard and I was like ok, this is my fucking spot. So I protected it, you know and I was very limited to who I brought in there. And whoever I would catch in there, this is, by this time I had met MAC and them and shit man, and BIO and those cats, you know they came up to St. James park where I was hanging out and ask permission to go to the ghost. And I took em to the ghost! T-KID speaks about how he was able to control the "Ghost Yard", the 207th St. Repair Station which was the perfect place to paint due to the variety of trains that came into the yard, how it was typically inactive in terms of workers, and outside of the territory of the Ballbusters street gang. He decided who would be allowed into the yard and made sure they were respectful enough to the trains and the yard in order to make sure the spot remained ideal. He also was the one who let Bio TATS Cru in for the first time, who would end up being the next crew to hold a monopoly on the Ghost Yard. Bio (Graffiti artist) Graffiti 0 6864 Fashion Moda and Fight with Cap TK: Fashion Moda. So what led up to the fight with CAP was COPE. Little COPE2. So I remember we're hanging out in St. James' Park right. St. James' Park is right off of 192nd and Jerome between Fordham Road and Kingsbridge. And you got St. James' Park, right? That was my hangout because I lived in 192nd and Aqueduct. So we're hanging out, we're chilling you know. Smoking weed, you know. Suddenly, you know, there's a layup between Fordham Road and Kingsbridge, and we hear doors opening. Someone said it was COPE2. T-KID tells the story of how he ended up in a fistfight with CAP at a Fashion Moda (an art space/storefront that served as a hub for the international art scene's interest in graffiti) event. After cornering COPE2 coming out of the tunnels, T-KID and his crew demand COPE stop writing for Morris Park Crew (MPC) due to its leader CAP writing over everybody's pieces. After COPE tells CAP, CAP decides to confront T-KID and stick up for his young crew member, but ends up on the ground at Fashion Moda. Cap (Graffiti artist);Cope 2 (Graffiti artist) Fashion Moda (Group);Morris Park Crew (Graffiti artist group) 0 7268 Travel KB: Let me, before I get into the book, you travel quite a bit. When was your first trip overseas for graffiti? TK: My first trip was, I had mentioned it before, Henry had hooked that up. That was 1986 which was for TDK Cassettes a company called Newton and Godwin an advertising agency that had the account from London, actually out of Tunbridge Wells, UK. And they had approached Henry. At that same time was when they did the Freedom Train, right? And I was the only one who actually did a sketch for the freedom train. That's when CRASH, PINK... And I didn't get accepted for that Freedom Train project that they painted I think it was in Philadelphia where they got an actual train and Crash and Lady Pink and Art and Tracy and these guys they painted on that train. I was the only one excluded from that, and I was the only one that actually did a sketch! So Henry kinda felt bad so these people had reached out to him and he hooked me up with that gig. T-KID talks about the importance of travel to him. His first trip overseas was a mural gig Henry Chalfant hooked up for him for TDK Cassettes, which he got paid $1,000 plus airfare. He also got hooked up with the European graffiti scene. Bando (Graffiti artist);Mode 2 (Graffiti artist) Graffiti;Mural painting and decoration, European 0 7853 Creating the Book TK: I saw the interest in my artwork, and I met this guy named Nick Tarkov who said yo you should do a book. I said I got a bunch of shit. He said, "you got it with you?" I said no, I didn't come there for that, but if you come to New York I'll show you. Guess what, he came to New York. He saw my portfolio I said my wife was gonna throw this shit out. He said, "damn, bro you got a gold mine here! All this shit is from back then?" I'm like yeah, because I had this big giant portfolio full of fucking sketches, drawings, all my ideas man. I sold a lot of it, I have a lot of it, I have half of it from that portfolio but on top of that I have my blackbooks and all the artwork like folders in a box that my mother kept in Chicago. KB: Wow you blessed. You know how valuable it is! TK: Yeah I know. A lot of that shit is for my kids man. T-KID explains the impetus behind and the process of creating his "Terrible T-KID" book which showcases his art and writing. He wanted a book that was more than just a bunch of photos, and was able to create a book that showcased his developing art style and outlook on life with plenty of his own words. Books, publishing, and libraries information guide series;Folio art books 0 8592 Documentary TK: I was doing the book tour when I first met Carly. I was doing the book tour, I was in California LA, doing this shop. That's when you see me, I got the red devil shirt on? That was Carly interviewing me that's when I met her, I met Brian Grazer... So, you know she wanted to do an interview, she wanted to interview me, man. I'm lying I first met her in San Diego when I was doing the San Diego book signing. And I was heavier. I had just come back from Europe for the tour... She loved that interview so much she wanted to do a movie based on that interview. T-KID speaks about the creation of the T-KID documentary about 10 years after the publication of the book. He met the filmmaker while on the book tour. He ultimately never made any money on the movie due to the contract terms, but he's been able to use the movie in order to promote himself and his art. Autobiography;Documentary film experience American movies;Digital filmmaking series;Graffiti 0 8837 Graffiti as a Global Phenomenon SP: How do you feel about, kind of, graffiti becoming this global phenomenon now. I mean you know, I'm sure back in the 70s and even in the 80s you woulda had no idea it would've become this huge thing. But what are your thoughts toward the global nature of graffiti these days. TK: It's funny because like I said man, I thought graffiti should've remained underground and it became this big tool that's not just used as artistic expression, but to promote, to advertise. One of the things I always said is that graffiti is art and I've been a strong supporter of that, the fact that graffiti is art that it's pure expressionism, that it was for kids by kids. The graffiti that we did in New York on trains, not graffiti in general which is from the beginning of time. T-Kid reflects on how graffiti has changed since he started, having become a global phenomenon that exceeded the bounds of pure juvenile expression into a commercial and artistic tool for the entire world. He has somewhat mixed feelings. He's happy that it's kept alive but worries that it is in danger of losing its foundation. He also speaks about the Bronx and the culture of the Bronx with the enduring legacy of hip-hop. Advertising;Art collections of Europe Art and globalization;Arts and globalization;Graffiti;Street art 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on August 15, 2022 with T-KID 170, a legendary graffiti writer from the Golden Age and world-renowned artist. In his oral history T-KID speaks about his family background in Peru and Puerto Rico and how his family ended up in The Bronx, the various neighborhoods he grew up in, street life in his neighborhoods and early years, his involvement in gangs, and how he first got involved in graffiti. He also speaks about pivotal events in the graff world in which he was involved, including his famous Fashion Moda fight with Cap (MPC), and the many amazing places his career has taken him in the subsequent years. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, director at The Bronx County Historical Society, Pastor Crespo, Jr., research librarian at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with T-KID 170 Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on August 15, 2022 with T-KID 170, a legendary graffiti writer from the Golden Age and world-renowned artist. In his oral history T-KID speaks about his family background in Peru and Puerto Rico and how his family ended up in The Bronx, the various neighborhoods he grew up in, street life in his neighborhoods and early years, his involvement in gangs, and how he first got involved in graffiti. He also speaks about pivotal events in the graff world in which he was involved, including his famous Fashion Moda fight with Cap (MPC), and the many amazing places his career has taken him in the subsequent years. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.08.15 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220815 graffiti T-Kid 170 Terrible T-Kid TKID Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Suzanne Ross Video Memoirs Description An account of the resource Pending Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ross, Suzanne Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930s–2022 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wood, Nat Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AV-ROSS Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:12:29 Media Embedded media file for non-oral history recorded sound and moving images. <br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kVnIHjiVkwo?si=3K4W1_AVKm6kVghF" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In this recording, part of a larger video memoir project, lifetime activist and educator Suzanne Ross narrates her family's background. Her father was born to a poor religious Jewish family in Nuremberg, Germany that had migrated from Poland. His mother, Ester Rivke Engelmeier Weber, had rabbis and well-known cantors in her family. Suzanne's mother was born toa more comfortable family, part of the Gere Chasidic clan in Lodz, Poland. Her father was Mordechai Perle and her mother Zisa Borenstein. Both parents died during World War I, when she was six, victims of a typhoid epidemic. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ross, Suzanne Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wood, Nat Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You can, without permission, copy, modify, distribute, display, or perform the Item, for non-commercial uses. For any other permissible uses, please review the terms and conditions with the organization that has made the Item available. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP4 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Video memoir Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AV-ROSS.003 Title A name given to the resource 1-03. Introduction: Germany, Poland, My Parents' Background Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Chasidic Eastern European Jews Hasidic Poland Suzanne Ross Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2:01:55 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed SEN 1 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20230118.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with SEN-1 (IBM), Part 2 OH-BAADP.20230118 2:01:55 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory SEN-1 (IBM) Crespo, Pastor Jr. MP4 sen-1-part2-oral-history-bgadp-2023-01-18.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/d5lPgnlVIIY YouTube video English 0 Introduction Pastor Crespo (PC): Today is Wednesday January 18, 2023 and we are at the Bronx County Historical Society Research Center at 3313 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx. I am Pastor Crespo, Jr. the research librarian and archivist, and I am joined for Part 2 of an Oral History for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project with SEN-1 IBM also known as George Morillo a legend within the graffiti community and an original member of the Incredible Bombing Masters IBM. His art has transitioned from NYC subway tunnels and yards to sharing fine art gallery space alongside renowned international artists such as Pablo Picasso. Interviewer Pastor Crespo, Jr. introduces himself and the narrator, SEN-1. Artists--Anecdotes;Artists--United States;Artists--United States--Biography;Contemporary artists;Graffiti 0 91 Afro-Caribbean heritage SEN: The Afro-Caribbean thing is because if you know your culture and you know your history of the Caribbean, you know that the slave trade of America was the slave triangle, which the slaves that were brought in from Africa were transferred into the Caribbean prior to coming to the Americas, so you had the slave triangle and then back to Africa so the ship routes. So the Caribbean is highly influences by our original Arawak people, which people like to say Taino and different tribes, Ciboney and all these other tribes, but when it comes down to the bloodline, our bloodline runs through South America, Central America and so on, and Africa of course, and being that melanated people originate from where? Africa. So also in my blood trait I have the sickle cell anemia trait. Sen discusses his family and ethnic background, how the history of the Caribbean from its indigenous peoples and importance to the Atlantic slave trade has had an enormous impact on his personal consciousness. Arawak Arts, Dominican;Dominican Americans;Dominican Republic;Dominican Republic--Biography;Dominican Republic--History--1961-;Dominican Republic. Policía Nacional (1936- );Haiti;Haiti--Boundaries--Dominican Republic 0 251 Upper West Side/Harlem PC: So what neighborhood did you grow up in? SEN: I grew up in what's like the borderline of what the beginning of what Harlem is. Even though a lot of people consider 110th Street to be Harlem, but my area like 96th Street and Broadway was the Mecca for Afro-Latin Jazz growing up. So pretty much I was born on 95th/94th Street and Amsterdam, I was living in a tenement there, and I would move up to 93rd Street and Columbus. But that area was always under what they would call "Urban Development." So we went through the burnt-down stuff like the Bronx did obviously that was a way of clearing out areas and taking also---people also don't understand that when New York was burning down in the 70s it was part of a bigger plan of taking away property from people of color. Sen describes his neighborhood and its changing landscape over his lifetime. He speaks about how the Upper West Side above 90th Street was more connected to Harlem and the Bronx ("Uptown") than is commonly understood. He speaks about how urban renewal changed his life significantly while living in the neighborhood, as well as why he believes it took place. Its location makes it a unique neighborhood, being equally close to the Bronx as to Midtown. New York (N.Y.). Office of Development. Urban Renewal Unit;Urban renewal--United States Cosmopolitanism;Gentrification;Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Upper West Side (New York, N.Y.) 0 462 La West Side Familia PC: Can you talk about your association with La West Side Familia, how did that begin and your various roles and involvement with them? SEN: Absolutely, that's a major part of my life from youth to now, to this day. So La West Side Familia just to give a quick breakdown is an outlaw gang. It was an era in New York when every community had an outlaw gang. So up here you had everything from the Savage Skulls to the Ching-a-Lings and on and on. The entire city was carved out in sections. The reason this happened is originally, as people of color migrated in a lot of these communities they were not received properly. It was really hostile. Whether it was an Italian community, a Jewish community, whatever it was. They didn't want us there. Sen discusses his relationship with La West Side Familia, an outlaw gang he is a member of. Founded as an offshoot of the Brooklyn La Familia organization, it was part of an era of New York City where there were outlaw gangs in nearly every community. He credits part of its endurance to the fact it was a "mafia-type" organization where members were vetted over a very long period of time before being "made" as members. Its activities, however, extended far beyond the criminal, and included a radical political milieu including the legacy of the Young Lords. Young Lords Party Crime;Crime and race;Gang members;La West Side Familia (Street gang);Outlaw Gang 0 1726 Cyril Innis, Black Panther Party, Politicization PC: Now, an individual you know well. How did you meet Cyril Innis, and what was your involvement with the Black Panthers over the years? SEN: Oh, man Cyril Innis that's Bullwhip man. I got goosebumps. I have many teachers. I've been blessed in my life and cursed in a lot of ways because I've been put into situations, even with La Familia and different things and even with the Graffiti thing, and going further back. I've come across many souls that are amazing, and that's probably why I'm still here. Even when I was a kid and not having a father figure like I said and being on the streets young. I've met people that have been killers. You could consider them from the 70s hit men. You could probably consider them serial killers that are no longer with us. But they were the ones that would see me as a kid in the street and educated me. That taught me things that told me things. That knowledge is something that I carry with me forever and it's probably the reason why I'm alive through everything. Not probably, it's definitely the reason why I'm alive. Also knowledgeable about the stuff that's around me. So getting into that Cyril Innis is an original Black Panther member and Black Liberation Army member from the New York chapters. So he was in the front lines with Afeni Shakur and that whole generation... Sen speaks about his introduction to Cyril Innis, an original Black Panther, as well as their joint role in founding the Black Panther Collective, which SEN was a member of for nearly a decade. SEN also speaks broadly about the relevance of the 1960s and 1970s revolutionary movements to his own politics and the culture at large. Innis, Cyril;Shakur, Afeni;Shakur, Mutulu;Young Lords Party Black Panther Party;Zulu Nation 0 2412 Return to Art SEN: The universe is funny this way. I had hit a low in my life in which everything was falling apart. My mother had passed away, I was losing the job I was at, my marriage was falling apart. Basically everything was coming back to me, the dirt, the karma you could say, was coming back at once. I was at a really low spot. And what happens is my brother gets married for the third time and his wife is a top designer for Diane von Furstenburg whatever her name is and who built that whole campaign for her. And because her name was so hot as a designer, her name is Heather Harlan, she ended up getting this deal with Rachel Roy who was a big designer of color. I hate using black and all this stuff. Back then considered to be the biggest black designer, woman designer, at the time. I like to say melanated. But she was Damon Dash's ex-wife. She was also the one who was also like Michele Obama, Oprah, all them was wearing her dresses, outfits, they were really expensive high end. She got a deal it was bloomingdal---or Macy's deal she ended up getting a deal to make a low, what they would consider a lower end type of fashion which was more for the population that could be in their reach. And she got a complete deal from shoes all the way to bags, everything. It was a complete deal with everything in it. So Heather got hired and the brand was called Rachel Rachel Roy line. She got hired as the top designer because as you guys know these people's names are brands and not necessarily the designers they have people that actually design the stuff for them and they just get credit for. So Heather has this idea, this is back in about 2009, has this idea about graff. Graffiti wasn't hot the way it is right now. Especially not in fashion at all Sen talks about his reentry into the art world through a commission by his brother's wife to paint graffiti for a fashion line sold at Macy's which began anew his art career. Fashion and art;Macy's (Firm);Macy's, Inc. Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Harlan, Heather;Roy, Rachel 0 3104 Developing an Artistic Voice SEN: They were like, the subways of that era to give people an idea. Because I don't think people understand what we was dealing with. Like people nowadays look to a street, let's say graffiti piece, whether it's on a freight train or whatever. Even the ones that come from out of town and they do the New York City trains, these are all clean trains. These are all like, clean canvases. We didn't have that. I'm from the last generation with trains. We had a couple decades of trains being bombed out by the time we got it. Not only were they bombed out they were old they were falling apart, they were rusty. And they were being acid washed by Koch. Every week they were being acid washed so the trains were actually being eaten away by acid and then you had pieces under pieces underneath for decades and tags and all kinds of stuff. You had to actually, like, if it could be visible you couldn't go over it really. That would cause a conflict that was the rules of the street. And there was also a priority. Tags were at the bottom, throw-ups were basically, people didn't really do throw-ups. That was to us, especially out of IBM we skipped that part. That was considered a waste of paint and a waste of space, doing those bubble letters on trains. We went straight to burners and that's why IBM was so famous: characters and burners. Sen describes his development as an artist, and how developing his art into a number of series, including graffiti abstracts and his flag series allowed him to become a career artist. He also describes at length how his experience as a graffiti writer, especially the unspoken rules and conditions of painting trains affected his artistic style. Abstraction Art and style;Graffiti;Sen-1 (Graffiti artist) 0 4454 Galerie d'Orsay Boston SEN: I was out there on a trip, I was with the girl I was dating at the time. She was on a business trip. We was out to dinner with a coworker... I saw them strategizing. These two women strategizing some meetings the next day that had to do with million dollar deals. I'm sitting here at the table and I'm like damn, I'm feeling the pressure! And the hustling comes out of me like damn I'm sitting at this table with these women and they're talking about how they got three meetings lined up tomorrow... I'm sitting here like I gotta up my game! I gotta up my game! The story of how SEN cold-visited Galerie D'Orsay in Boston while visiting the city and was able to develop a relationship with them to the point that they are now the sole distributors of SEN-1 work. Boston (Mass.) Commercial art;Galerie d'Orsay 0 5060 Becoming President of a Mitchell-Lama SEN: I actually ride the ride of, at this age I go with the universe. If it's something bigger than me that I'm supposed to be doing, then at this stage of my life I just do it I show up for it. And it's also my mother's legacy this is what she did. So in a way I think she's also guiding a lot of this madness. In a good way! But I'm proud of it actually! I'm really proud. I've been told we've done more in this short amount of time there than almost anything in the past. And I credit that to my experience in the Panthers stuff. The organizational skills and everything came into play. How Sen-1 became the president of his Mitchell-Lama program rental building. He saw a number of misdeeds being committed by the management and by advocating for his fellow tenants found himself being nominated and ultimately elected. He has been proud of the quick change they have already been able to complete. Mitchell-Lama;New York (N.Y.). Community Planning Board No. 7 0 5317 Community/Charity Involvement PC: Could you just touch on your community work with charitable organizations? SEN: Absolutely that's been part of my beginnings, because that's been something, like My neighbor had Goddard Riverside which is a community center but I had a summer camp when we was kids. It also has legal housing, legal departments that deal with the community, so they have a lot of community outreach program stuff so I work with them and the beacon program. We created a program called arts on kick where we do the chucks [taylor]. Because of that curriculum I was able to open the center up for individual grants which now they use for individual artists. So they've backed me up a lot too even with the issues, and they're powerful! Sen outlines some of his recent work with charitable organizations in his community and beyond, volunteering his skills and time with the Goddard Riverside center to Tanzania. This has especially taken the form of art education to variously disadvantaged youths. SEN has been especially invigorated by his work in Africa, where he felt a "welcome home." Children's Village (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.);Children's Village (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.). Work Appreciation for Youth Program;Goddard-Riverside Community Center;Sierra Leone Art in education;Art therapy for youth;Arts and youth;Charitable giving;Charities;Charity;Poverty--Tanzania 0 5753 Thoughts on Hip-Hop and Street Art Going Global and Commercial SEN: I think when we talk about the graff I always see it as one big union with hip-hop. 'Cuz they all elements, well, what people know today, because it wasn't originally part of hip-hop. Hip hop obviously comes after these elements already pre-existing including b-boying b-girling. Like all these elements came together, right? But for what the world knows as the graff styles and even the breakdancing styles and dress styles that's all hip hop. Because the graff before hip-hop wasn't the same graff everyone fell in love with. The colors even the mentality. Sen gives his perspective on the significance of the globalization of graffiti, which he sees as a part of hip-hop as a global movement. Controversially among some of his peers, he's positive about the commercialization of hip-hop because of the opportunities and lessons it has given to youths often with so little. Break dancers;Break dancing Graffiti;Hip-hop;Hip-hop in art;Hip-hop--Influence;Street art 0 6442 Relationship With Brother SEN: My Brother, man, Ricky Mujica, we have different fathers, but we didn't know our fathers we was raised by our mother. So you will never ever hear us say half brother, ever. That doesn't even exist. He's seven years older than me. I'm happy he's still in my life always. My brother is my everything, man. He's been my father figure, he's been my big brother figure. He's been the one even when I went off the road a lot in my life, because I'm the black sheep, he's been the light of what I could me. And it was hard as a young kid because I was the one that couldn't learn things. Sen speaks about his brother, Ricky Mujica, whom he is very close with. Ricky's success was a guiding light for Sen even when Sen was struggling. Though, as kids, Sen found the comparison very hard because he could not keep up with his brother in school, athletics, or "coolness." Their mother would force Ricky to take Sen along to wherever Ricky was hanging out, which included the early days of New York Skateboarding with Zoo York. Sen also speaks about how their experiences differed, with Sen's generation being much more violent and pressured, whereas Ricky's generation were more mischievous at worst. Kessler, Andrew;Kessler, Andy;Zoo York Mujica, Ricardo Jose;Sibling attachment;Sibling rivalry 0 7167 The Bronx, Uptown PC: What does the Bronx mean to you? SEN: Ah man, the Bronx is everything because, like I said, for my neighborhood we only have a little bridge that separates us. I spent a lot of time in the Bronx as well. But the Bronx influenced our neighborhood tremendously especially when it came to culture. And because we had so much similarity from the burnt-down stuff. And again, like I said, Harlem, even when you listen to the Black Spades documentary they talk about their chapters with the South Bronx but also in Harlem. So it was never, we never had, when it comes to the other boroughs because Brooklyn and Queens and them were so far away, the Bronx and Manhattan was never, especially uptown, was never really divided like that. We would say "uptown." Uptown made---It was all in one. When you said uptown it meant north of 96th street up. Like, or the 90s up into the Bronx. Sen underscores the connectedness of his neighborhood on the upper west side to the Bronx, and how the creativity coming out of the Bronx influenced his life. Harlem River (N.Y.);Zulu Nation Boroughs;Bronx;Bronx River (N.Y.);Harlem (New York, N.Y.) 0 Part 2 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on January 18, 2023 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by "Hip Hop U.S.A. and an umbrella of grassroots organization's including Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!""initiative. In this second part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his family's Afro-Caribbean roots from the island of Quisqueya (the Dominican Republic) and/or Ay-Ti (Haiti) as it was known by the indigenous Taino people. He shares his association and experiences with the outlaw gang "La West Side Familia", his rise to a leadership role within La West Side Familia, and other street organizations such as Natives-Chapter 50 of Zulu Nation and the trials and tribulations of "street-life". SEN-1 discusses his quest for knowledge and his 6-year association with The Black Panther Collective, an off-shoot organization stemming from the original Black Panther Party. He speaks of his reintroduction to graffiti and his crossover to fine art, the challenges of street art acceptance into the fine art world, his commissions from the Macy's Department Store, and the art expo circuit where he sold his first piece of fine art. Finally, SEN-1 discusses his entry into the world of fine art where his artwork, presently, shares gallery space alongside internationally renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with SEN 1, Part 2 Description An account of the resource Part 2 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 23, 2022 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by the likes of Michelle Obama, Fabolous, and Rita Ora. In this second part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his family's Afro-Caribbean roots from the island of Quisqueya (the Dominican Republic) and/or Ay-Ti (Haiti) as it was known by the indigenous Taino people. He shares his association and experiences with the outlaw gang "La West Side Familia", his rise to a leadership role within La West Side Familia, and other street organizations such as Natives-Chapter 50 of Zulu Nation and the trials and tribulations of "street-life". SEN-1 discusses his quest for knowledge and his 6-year association with The Black Panther Collective, an off-shoot organization stemming from the original Black Panther Party. He speaks of his reintroduction to graffiti and his crossover to fine art, the challenges of street art acceptance into the fine art world, his commissions from the Macy's Department Store, and the art expo circuit where he sold his first piece of fine art. Finally, SEN-1 discusses his entry into the world of fine art where his artwork, presently, shares gallery space alongside internationally renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso. The interviewer is Pastor Crespo, Jr., librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023.01.18 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20230118 graffiti IBM SEN 1 SEN-1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01:57 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview BUTCH 2 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed SCRATCH Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20230328.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with SCRATCH OH-BAADP.20230328 01:01:57 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. bxoralhistory SCRATCH Butch2 MP4 scratch--oral-history-2023-03-28.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/V48DzcKqYi8 YouTube video English 0 Introduction Butch II (B): Welcome to the Bronx Graffiti Arts Documentary Project. My name is Butch2 and I am joined by Jenny SCRATCH. Please introduce yourself! SCRATCH (JS): Hi I'm SCRATCH, I'm originally from Stockholm, Sweden and I started writing graffiti in 1989. Interviewer Butch2 introduces himself and the narrator SCRATCH, a graffiti writer and muralist from Stockholm. Oral history Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Scratch (Graffiti artist) 0 22 Family Background B: Can you tell us a bit about your parents? Family history? JS: Yes so my mom is Swedish, my dad is Italian. I was raised by my mom in Stockholm so I don't speak Italian. Scratch introduces her family and her early life in Sweden. She was raised in Stockholm by her Swedish mother. Her Italian father did not live with them and thus she does not speak Italian. She comes from a blended family which gave her 7 total siblings. Her mother worked nights as a Nurse Assistance, while her step-father, who she was living with, was a Computer Programmer. As a girl she went to horseback riding lessons and spend summers in the country where her grandmother lived. She was a very active student. Experiences in high school led her to do an intensive one year of university and got a certificate in advertising which brought her to New York with an internship. Education, Higher--Sweden;Stockholm (Sweden);Stockholm (Sweden)--Buildings, structures, etc. Education--Sweden;Girls--Books and reading--Sweden--History--20th century;Sweden 0 497 First Graffiti Experiences/Graffiti School B: Now I wanna backtrack for a minute and ask you about that "Infamous Graffiti School." Could you tell me about that? JS: So back in 1989 back in Stockholm, Sweden, around February they opened for the public. B: Who's they? The Infamous Graffiti School you're talking about? JS: Right, so what they did was, it was a few different organizations who went together and they somehow came up with this idea to do this school, I don't remember if it was a writer. Someone came up with the idea to do it. B: Was it something like what the Hall of Fame is like? They just had big walls for everybody? Nothing like that? JS: No, so what they had was they started it and they hired one artist that was kind of considered like a street artist. He started and he got like a bucket and brush and paint on the walls in Stockholm. His name was the Hulk, the Swedish name for the hulk, Hulken. The Hulk in English. And they hired some other artists to help, to teach, right? So they gave us a space it was an abandoned school, cause they figured, you know, there might be some destruction I guess. They have us like an old workshop school classroom that we were in and they gave us paint, you know. Scratch was working in advertising as an art director for a graphic design firm. In Sweden, a few different organizations created a graffiti school which hired artists to teach graffiti to youths in an abandoned school and sponsored by paint companies and the swedish transportation authority (which did not quite achieve its goal of keeping graffiti off the trains). Back then she painted solely panthers and when she went bombing she wrote PANTHER. At the time SCRATCH was a purely legal-wall name. When she came to New York she passed the Five Pointz building and was put on to the spot. Every day she would stop by and practice on a particle board. Five Pointz;Graffiti;Stockholm Graffiti School (1989-1990);Swedsh Graffiti 0 1030 Five Pointz Graffiti Classes B: Were you ever into racking paint? Did you ever rack paint? JS: Well, remember back then you used to have all those big bomber jackets and you know [mimes throwing cans inside jacket] and then you'd walk like this [waddles] So yeah I might have done that. Scratch talks about the free "graffiti classes" Meres would put on at the Five Pointz which is where she really learned how to do her letters. Shoplifting Cohen, Jonathan;Five Pointz;Meres (Graffiti artist) 0 1205 Being an Immigrant B: Let me ask you though, coming to the US through the school program, did you have any problems with immigration or trying to get your visas? J: I mean it's a process, I mean I had I don't know how many hoops to go through. People don't understand how expensive it is. Cause you need to get the lawyer. And then it's like first you need this form, then you need this one and then this one and you need that. And it's a lot of money. I spend probably 10s of Thousands of dollars to get my papers. Scratch speaks about the difficulties she encountered while immigrating into the United States. The primary difficulty she mentions is the financial cost: she paid over $10,000 in the 1990s to get all the necessary papers. Immigration consultants--Legal status, laws, etc.;Immigration issues for the 1990s;Immigration issues in the United States 0 1271 Hall of Fame JS: I met James first at Five Pointz. B: There's another Five Pointz now did you know that? JS: Yeah, well, you know Bushwick Collective also used to be called Five Pointz? ... For me there's only one five pointz, when I was there. Call it something different it's not Five Pointz. That Five Pointz doesn't exist anymore. To go back to the Hall of Fame, I had contacted James about something, and then he was like, "hey, we have this Hall of Fame meeting you should come." And I went to the meeting and I ended up getting a spot. Scratch speaks about her involvement with the graffiti hall of fame, where she painted multiple times. She met James Top (who ran the hall) at Five Pointz. She went to a meeting for the graffiti hall of fame and ended up getting invited to paint. Typical for graffiti, she mentions how hall of fame spots always caused drama. Top, James Graffiti;Graffiti Hall of Fame (Harlem, N.Y.) 0 1515 Connection back to Sweden B: I wanted to ask you about what did your family feel about you leaving Sweden? Did anyone come with you? Did you open the doors for anybody to come through? JS: No I'm the only one. I'm the only one. My dad did not like it, he tried to stop it. It did not work, because I'm more stubborn than he is. I was like, "nope, I'm going!" Scratch is the only one of her family to make the journey to the United States, and actually her family did not originally approve of the move. Swedish American artists;United States--Emigration and immigration 0 1561 Living in New York B: So when you got here where did you first land? I mean you came here to New York, your first apartment? JS: So when I first came here, because I was in school, we were in a dorm in Brooklyn Heights and I went to Pace University. We used to walk over the bridge to save tokens, it was still tokens back then. Scratch speaks about where in New York she has lived and what she remembers from the early days of her time in New York. She first lived in Brooklyn Heights and eventually moved to East Harlem, and been in the same apartment ever since. She recalls fondly the token days of public transport. Brooklyn Heights (New York, N.Y.);East Harlem (New York, N.Y.) International Student Exchange;Pace University 0 1715 Style Inspirations B: As you see new artists come on the scene you wanna know where they're from, what inspires them. When you paint just off the top of your head do you have any inspirations other than your panther? Any other things you like to draw like scenes, lettering? JS: Yeah so I always loved comic books and fantasy and I'm almost inspired especially way back by how creative the graffiti artists were. Because in Sweden we don't call it graffiti writer, we call it graffiti painter. That's how the translation [is]. And some of them they were so talented they had calendars, they had full production walls on buildings back then! So I always wanted to learn how to do production walls, the characters, the letters, everything. And now you see crews like Tats Cru, FX crew, and UW like all those production walls. Scratch speaks about her inspirations in style and in content. She speaks about how graffiti for her is art first, which comes from her experience in Sweden where graffiti writers are not known as writers but as painters [målare]. Large scale production walls which she saw from her childhood were what drew her to graffiti, and she wants to legitimize them as a major part of the practice of graffiti instead of a illegalist purism where tags and throws are king. Tats Cru (Group) Graffiti;Mural painting and decoration, Swedish 0 1887 Involvement in the Scene B: You've been involved with a lot of things. You're involved with a lot of crews, you've painted a lot of walls. JS: Only one crew! B: What crew is that? JS: TOP. That's it, probably. 'Cause James put me down with TOP because I used to help him with a lot of shows. I used to do the posters for him, like the flyers and stuff. So I used to help him with doing that. I used to help him with a lot of shows, I don't even know how many shows over the years. Scratch speaks about her connections in the graffiti world. She has only ever formally been down with one crew, TOP, which is headed by James Top, who runs the graffiti hall of fame. She used to do the posters for James and he repaid her in kind by featuring her in shows, in the HOF a number of years, and generally keeping her connected. She also used to have a close relationship with FEVER. Fever (Graffiti writer);Top, James Art -- Expertise;Art--Influence 0 2942 Becoming an Educator JS: And I also do, now what I've really started enjoying doing, is a lot of graffiti workshops and live painting at events. I do a lot of those and then you work with kids and they don't want you to post that stuff because parents don't want their kids on social media. I've done a lot of those. B: How'd you get plugged into that? JS: So it's also through my friend Angel. She used to do this for this company in Brooklyn. She moved to Florida so she recommended me so I ended up doing it too. So it's kind of cool actually yeah! Scratch speaks about her present engagements, the biggest of which is her educational work doing graffiti workshops and live painting, mostly with children. Art education in action;Art in education 0 2998 Favorite Walls B: So what's some of your most proud work that you've done? What have you done that impresses you? JS: One of my favorite walls that I've done is I did a Ninja Turtle wall at the Hall of Fame in 2014. Because usually when you get a spot and that's it. And for some reason this year I had this idea and I showed it to James and he gave me this little spot. And then suddenly it was a little more, and then a little more, and then a little more, and then I'm like alright! So I just went in and did a full production all by myself. So that was kinda cool because the character, the background, the piece. That was my favorite. I really like that. Scratch speaks about her favorite examples of her own work. The number one is the Ninja Turtle wall she painted in 2014 at the Graffiti Hall of Fame Graffiti;Mural painting and decoration--21st century 0 3157 Creative Firecracker B: I got a question for you. Could you tell me about that Creative Firecracker? JS: Yeah, so Creative Firecracker is my company I started in 2005 to do freelance work and contract work in art direction and graphic design. But then lately I've started getting more art projects, you know do murals, so I kinda just expanded on that. I think my experience as an art director and as a graphic designer in the advertising really helps when you do murals. Usually you get commissioned to do it and they want you to communicate a specific message. Scratch speaks about the company she founded, Creative Firecracker, which she uses to do graphic design, art direction, and murals. She also speaks about how her experience in the advertising industry has affected her artistry. Advertising;Advertising agencies Commercial art;Mural painting and decoration 0 3356 Importance of the Bronx B: OK let me ask you one more question. This is my last question to you. What does the Bronx mean to you? Bronx, New York. JS: Bronx is the birth of graffiti and hip hop! I mean come on that's where it started. For me it's actually one of my favorite places to paint. There's just a different feel when you paint in the Bronx than when you paint anywhere else. I've been fortunate to paint a few different spots in the Bronx. There's a different feel how people respond. Scratch speaks about her feelings on the Bronx. To her, there is a different feeling painting in the Bronx and it is one of her favorite places to paint. It is also of chief importance because of its role as the foundation of hip-hop. Scratch stood out from her peers in Sweden because she preferred hip-hop to the metal which was popular among her age-peers and is grateful to the Bronx for originating it. Graffiti Bronx;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Hip-hop 0 3439 Tag Scratch writes her tag for the archive and briefly discusses the "Bastard was here" that she sometimes adds to her name. 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 28, 2023 with SCRATCH, a Swedish graffiti writer from Stockholm who currently resides in Spanish Harlem. In her oral history SCRATCH speaks about her family background, life growing up in suburban Stockholm, and her introduction to graffiti in Sweden. She talks of her scholarship to Pace University, the U.S. immigration process, her transition to East Harlem and her career in the New York City Graffiti and Art scene. The interviewer are Butch2, pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP) is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with SCRATCH Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 28, 2023 with SCRATCH, a Swedish graffiti writer from Stockholm who currently resides in Spanish Harlem. In her oral history SCRATCH speaks about her family background, life growing up in suburban Stockholm, and her introduction to graffiti in Sweden. She talks of her scholarship to Pace University, the U.S. immigration process, her transition to East Harlem and her career in the New York City Graffiti and Art scene. The interviewer is Butch2, pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP), a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023.03.28 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20230328 graffiti SCRATCH Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:04:35 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview BUTCH 2 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed OLGA Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20230331.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with OLGA OH-BAADP.20230331 01:04:35 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. bxoralhistory Olga Correa Butch2 MP4 olga-correa-baadp-oral-history-2023-03-31.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/aD9ZTXRFTzU YouTube video English 0 Introduction B2: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary, my name is Butch II (Two), on my right we have Pastor Crespo, and I believe in the house we also have Steve, Steve Payne and we got a couple friends sitting and watching. And I'd like you to introduce yourself to everyone. O: Hi my name is Olga Correa, I'm a native of the Bronx, and I'm excited to be here. B2: Thank you Interviewer Butch II introduces himself and the project, the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, as well as the oral history narrator, OLGA. Art;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Correa, Olga;Graffiti 0 30 Coming to the Bronx, Family Background B2: When you say native of the Bronx, you were born here in the Bronx? O: I was born in Puerto Rico but I came here when I was less than two years old. B2: How did that happen? O: Looking for work, you know, the Bronx... A lot of Puerto Ricans migrated to the Bronx. And it was factories. My grandmother and my mother were seamstresses so it was a big industry in the Bronx when it came to the factories where there were women who were seamstresses. B2: What year was that was this the 50s? O: It was sixty- B2: Oh early sixties O: 'Sixty-Five Olga discusses her birth in Puerto Rico, her parents coming over to New York for work, and settling in the Lower East Side and then eventually the Bronx. Her mother and grandmother worked in the textile industry which had many factories in the Bronx in the mid-60s when they came over. Her father had a mechanics shop in the lower east side. Puerto Rico Art, Puerto Rican;Bronx;Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.);Puerto Rican children;Puerto Rican women 0 238 Education B2: What about your Junior High School, Public School? O: Across the Street! Still there. B2: What school is that? O: I started at PS 60. That's between Prospect and Rogers Place. And then I went to I.S. 116 which is right on Tiffany so I was literally right across the street. And then when we moved to Simpson my mother made sure that I applied to schools in Manhattan. She wanted me to be a little bit more cultured and have that opportunity. B2: That must've been an early influence for you. O: Oh absolutely. She made it a point. There was no if, ands, or buts about it. B2: And you wound up at what High School? O: High School of Art and Design. Olga surveys her educational history beginning with the schools she attended in her neighborhood. When she was old enough to be applying for High Schools, her mother insisted that she attend school in Manhattan to "be closer to culture." A teacher recommended that she do something with her interest in drawing, and collect a portfolio to apply to High School of Art and Design, which she eventually attended and set her on the path to the world of commercial art and design. High School for Art and Design (New York, N.Y.) Education;New York City Schools;Public Education 0 673 Introduction to Hip Hop and Graffiti O: The first jam that I went to was Grandmaster Flash and it was Theodore. They used to jam at Casita Maria. So that was my introduction. B2: Where is that at? O: On 163rd Street in the East Side of the Bronx. While they plugged in at the block party and then we brought it inside to the community center, I was there! That was my first job at that community center. Olga speaks about her introduction to Hip Hop at a jam at Casita Maria Center, a community center, where Grandmaster Flash and Grand Wizzard Theodore were spinning. Incidentally, Casita Maria was also her first job. Olga grew up alongside Hip Hop and speaks about what a strange experience it was to have Hip Hop evolve along with her life. Grand Wizzard Theodore;Grandmaster Flash;Livingston, Theodore Community centers;Hip-hop 0 891 Joy and Life in the "Burning Bronx" B2: You were there for the burnt-down Bronx! O: Yeah, absolutely. B2: Yeah, I was too, but it wasn't a bad thing, just what we had! Played in the vacant lots... O: Yeah, I got scars in my knees to prove it! You know, that was our background. The dirty mattress, that was our trampoline. The fire escape, we used to sleep there and all our friends would come up and put pillows, put the little TV there in the window. The whole summer we could chill! Olga discusses her experience of the so-called "burning Bronx," and how while everyone else seemed so horrified by the condition of the South Bronx at the time, her childhood memories remain quite joyful. She reminisces about the mattress-trampolines, and summers hanging out on the fire escape and swimming in the mobile pool truck, known as Swimmobiles. swimmobile Bronx;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Summer Activities 0 1034 Later Education B2: How did you move from Art and Design to Fashion? Well first you made it through Art and Design! O: I am a graduate, thank you! A lot of people, you know... B2: A lot of stuff is going around. That's a plus O: I had to. It was the only way I was able to elevate to where I was. I had to. My mother sacrificed, my family sacrificed. B2: Did you ever sit down with her and discuss the mission? What we doing here and what we gotta do or what we need to do to get where we going? Did you ever have that conversation? O: No, back then we just listened to your parents. Listen to what you're supposed to do. B2: No reason, just O: You don't talk back! Olga discusses graduating from Art and Design and attending the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). She also speaks about how her experience being raised by her community as a whole in the neighborhood shaped her own goals in achieving at school and her career. Her mother's profession as a seamstress also brought her into the fashion world. Garment Industry;Seamstress;Sewing Bronx;Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, N.Y.);neighborhood 0 1320 Professional Career in Fashion O: So I graduated in June, I got my first fashion design job in August. B2: Where at? O: Elco Imports. So we was an importer. So we would get––I did a lot of men and boys, so Bugle Boy, French Toast, all those designs were mine. We did a lot of department stores: Sears, back then Woolworth's had clothing so I would do all the baby lines and whatever. So we had import from just different factories. And then one of my bosses, Eliot [unk.], his wife worked at J. Crew so I got to do a women's line at J.Crew! After graduating from FIT, Olga gets a fashion design job with an importer. She had a number of prolific designs with clothes sold at Sears and Woolworths but because the designs were owned by the company and officially corporately authored, she was never credited. Some of her high-profile work included a women's line at J. Crew and the Ocean Pacific silkscreens, including a life is a beach design based on california, a place she had never been. Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, N.Y.);J.Crew Advertising--Clothing and dress;Children's clothing industry;Clothing factories;garment industry 0 1490 Picking Up Graffiti B2: So when did you first get the graff bug? When did you wanna pick up some spray paint? O: Funny enough, 2019. B2: Recently! Well that's not recent but it's recent. O: Yeah! Because after the 15 years working as a fashion designer, I had my first child. And in art, in fashion, in practically every part of art there's no health benefits. And living in the Bronx there's a high percentage of asthma. So she was born with asthma and here goes all of my funding trying to pay for medical expenses. So a college friend of mine said, "why don't you come work for the city?" You know she had not wanted to do anything with art so she went into the social service. And at that time the benefits were phenomenal. And there was a pension! So I said alright let me do it for two years. And that's how I landed in the department of social services. Olga speaks about how she got separated from her artistic outlet in her job when she came to work for the city. What was meant as a temporary job in order to reap the health benefits for her asthmatic child turned into a 25+ year career. Going to art shows again and introducing herself had her old friends wondering where she had gone off too. Her lunchtime drawing notebooks became a portfolio shopped to galleries had Olga in a solo show in no time at all. Support from Wallworks assured she sold all of her pieces. New York (City). Department of Social Services. Department of Services Art Gallery (New York, N.Y.);Graffiti;Mural painting and decoration;Painting--Technique 0 2024 Show and Tell B2: What you got––the little goodies you brought? O: Oh yeah, so this is my diary! B2: And in there is all drawings yeah! O: It's all drawings for every night or... B2: And that's consistent. That's what keeps you up that consistency. O: Well you know a woman I work with at social services she says I need a release. If I'm not dining in a fancy restaurant having my dinner, I sit home. So sometimes I'll do colors of it where I express myself at all that. Olga shows off some objects from her personal collection, including her sketchbook diary and keychain-sized blackbook she helped popularize. 0 2286 Reflection On Art and Mentorship O: I'm doing workshops at libraries I have two coming up. B2: Where? O: Morrison and I can't remember the other one. I usually put it on my instagram because they give me the fliers. So I love doing workshops with kids because I make sure that the kids understand that big brother is watching. Do not tag up. Like I'm prideful that I graduated from college, I graduated from high school, I wasn't a teenage mom, I don't do drugs, I never went to jail. All of the above still living in the south bronx. Olga speaks about the importance of mentorship in general as well as in art specifically. She speaks as both a mentee and mentor. Having that support is, for her, incredibly important for children to actualize themselves, for instance to turn their tag into a logo and sell t-shirts. This is a lesson she already applied to her own daughters. She, for instance, enabled both of them to start tattooing on the side. Surveillance in art Business and education;Early childhood education;Mentor 0 2566 Family and Puerto Rican identity B2: OK so what do you consider yourself? You already said you were born in Puerto Rico and you came to America at 2 years old, moved to Tiffany Street, junior high school, and public school. What do you identify as? Are you Puerto Rican, Nuyorican? O: Yeah I'm Puerto Rican. I'm Puerto Rican. Both parents were Puerto Rican. Um, if you see my parents they're dark-skinned. It's funny because I relate more with black, but back in the 60s and 70s Puerto Ricans and Blacks didn't divide. So I don't understand this culture where we divide. Like I don't understand because Puerto Ricans are black, but, you know that's a whole other––So when people ask me what are you, both my parents are from Puerto Rico, I was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York but I don't call myself a Nuyorican. If you wanna classify me––In Puerto Rico they classify me as Nuyorican because I speak really bad Spanish hahaha! Olga discusses her ethnic and racial identity. She describes herself as Puerto Rican, but she also identifies with Black because in her upbringing there was no divide made between Puerto Rican and Black. She does not consider herself Nuyorican, but Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico do, due to her poor Spanish skills, which she only picked up when starting her social service job. Puerto Rico Ethnic identity;New York (N.Y.)--Race relations;Nuyorican;Puerto Rican experience;Puerto Rican women 0 2862 Skeme B2: I got one more topic that I was gonna probably bring up. You talked about mentoring but from what you say mentors come in disguise all through life. O: I would say that yes. B2: Someone that sticks by you and really wanna guide and put you under the wing. You had brought up a mentor in graff is that your graffiti mentor? O: Skeme is, absolutely. B2: What did you learn? O: Oh my god, so when I had my solo show Skeme hit me up on DM and he said––and I had met him at his solo show when he had–– B2: Was that that little spot on Twelfth Street... 212 Gallery? O: Yes. And then I think maybe two years later I had my solo show and he follows me on instagram and I didn't even though and he said, "I really wanna put you under my wing," because me and him have similar styles. We have our name and then a character that represents us. That's us. And he's like, "I think it's phenomenal and I need to support women. We never take them under our wing like we should. I going to Chicago you wanna go?" I'm like are you serious? Olga discusses the role of Skeme in mentoring her career in graffiti art. He saw that they worked with similar styles and wanted to support more women in the scene, whom he felt had been neglected by the veteran men up to that point. He brings her to Chicago and immediately asks for 30 canvases for a show and guided her through the process. He instructed Olga on how to take her art to the next level with huge canvases and found street objects, which she excels at. Art galleries, Commercial Graffiti;Mentoring;Skeme (Graffiti artist) 0 3193 The Bronx B2: I got one more question: What do you think I say The Bronx; what do feel about the Bronx? What is the Bronx to you? O: Culture. Music, dance, graffiti, fashion. We started it all, stop playing! Everything: Food, community, everything. This is where it started. So this is to show that every country is teaching that in their schools as part of their curriculum because they are so fascinated by what is the reason for that. It's home! Olga speaks about the significance of the Bronx to her. It is primarily an impressive site of culture for Olga, the origin of so much important world fashion, music, and art. It also is, of course, her home and she is incredibly proud to live here. Graffiti Bronx;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Bronx County (N.Y.) 0 3270 Tag and discussion of Upcoming, BG183, and Bronx Terminal B2: I wanted to ask you to tag my book! O: Let's go! B2: I'll give you a page. Closing up, as the culmination of this project we're gonna have a big block party. Have you seen the Bronx Historic––that little house across the street? O: Yes B2: They're gonna do the landscaping and clean up the yard. There's gonna be DJs, there's gonna be art. I think BG might be a part of it. O: I got a lot of love for BG. B2: I saw a picture of him going back and I was like, wow now I think I know this dude! O: Yeah we lived in adjoining buildings. Man, his work has improved 1000%. While presenting a tag for the BCHS archives, Olga discusses upcoming shows and projects. She is excited about her role as a judge for a competition marking the celebration of a street renaming after Black Benjie, whose death sparked the 1971 New York City gang truce. She also speaks about her close relationship with BG183 who opened up space for her in the Bronx Terminal space he is involved with. Tats Cru (Group) Bronx;Graffiti 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 31, 2023 with OLGA, a Puerto Rican born graffiti writer raised in the South Bronx where she currently resides. In her oral history OLGA speaks about her experience applying to Art & Design high school, graduating from Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and the influences that helped mold her into the artist she is today. OLGA talks about her career in the fashion industry working for high-end clothing lines and her 25-year career working for the City of New York while continuing to pursue her art career. The interviewer Butch2, a pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP) is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with OLGA Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on March 31, 2023 with OLGA, a Puerto Rican graffiti writer raised in the South Bronx where she currently resides. In her oral history OLGA speaks about her experience applying to Art and Design high school, graduating from Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and the influences that helped mold her into the artist she is today. OLGA talks about her career in the fashion industry working for high-end clothing lines and her 25-year career working for the City of New York while continuing to pursue her art career. The interviewer is Butch2, pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP), a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023.03.31 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20230331 graffiti OLGA Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:06 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview BUTCH 2 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed REE Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20230406.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with REE OH-BAADP.20230406 0:58:06 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. bxoralhistory REE (Fred Vilomar) Butch2 MP4 ree-vilomar-oral-history-baadp-2023-04-06.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/aWdjHDz59hc YouTube video English 0 Introduction B: Welcome to the Bronx aerosol arts documentary project. My name's Butch 2, and I am joined by REE. Welcome Ree. R: Thank You, welcome to be here. B: Please introduce yourself! R: Hi, my name is Ree, A.K.A. OPAL, PRAD 174, PULL 174, UNIT 2, I did so many different names that I'll go more or less giving you the history on their stories. Narrator REE, a graffiti pioneer and founding member of the MTA (Mad Transit Artists) Crew and Interviewer Butch 2, another graffiti pioneer and liaison for the Bronx County Historical Society, introduce themselves. Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Ree (Graffiti artist) Graffiti 0 31 Family History B: Tell us a little bit about your parents: family history, background. R: Family history, um, I came to the Bronx in 1967 of November. And I came to my mom's house. My father stood back in Dominican Republic. I was raised by my moms, my uncles, and cousins, and aunts: family members on my mothers side. B: Give us a little breakdown, like tell us about your aunts and uncles. Was it a big family? R: It was a big family! As a matter of fact one of my oldest brothers he wrote RAY 179. Ree describes his early life in the Dominican Republic. He was raised by his great grandparents until the age of 5 when he was sent to live with his mother in the Bronx. He discusses playing a game with an explosive ball, as well as and the circumstances around his being sent to live in the US. migration Dominican Americans;Dominican Republic 0 268 Growing Up in the Bronx B: Tell us about growing up on Daly, I know Daly. R: Growing up on Daly Avenue, I don't know if you noticed it or pictured it this way; Daly Avenue runs from 180th at the edge of the Bronx Zoo all the way to the Cross Bronx Expressway, which is still a One Way Street. I lived at 1891 Daly Avenue at the very edge of the Cross Bronx Expressway. B: That like 174th R: No, No, 174th is further down, it's 176th. Right where the Cross Bronx is done. And by growing up in that particular building it was to me, early 70th and late 60s all I have is good memories of being out there. Playing Ringolevio, Pony on the.... Anything that was meant to be played before 7:00 we was out there playing it. B: Right. Skelsies, R: Skelsies, Crack Top, Spin the Bottle, anything that was a game. Ree discusses his early childhood in the Bronx on Daly Avenue. He would often play Ringolevio and Skelzies with the other neighborhood children. The only radio station he can remember listening to was the Soft Rock on WABC. He attended P.S. 6 and P.S. 118 Lorraine Hansberry. He listened to a lot of R&B and Salsa. Ree first saw graffiti on a wall, and then could not stop seeing it everywhere. He was from then on compelled to tag. He began writing in 1973 but the height of his writing career was 1975-1977. He credits the relative affordability of graffiti compared to other outlets of artistic expression to graffiti's popularity in the Bronx. When graffiti became a felony offense in 1977 Ree stopped painting to avoid a much more severe penalty than he had been risking. Children--New York (State);Cross Bronx Expressway Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Children's Games 0 733 Early Writing B: Alright well tell us about your early years of graff. What were the first times in the yard, anything. R: I started off on Broadway, and coming in from the 1 yard which is very difficult. You had to jump in and out. That 1 yard was located on Van Cortlandt Park. And it was elevated and the rest was flat. So for me to get to that 1 yard I had to go through an obstacle course. Meaning I had to get past certain individuals to make it up that hill. To come down that hill to go across. So, it wasn't easy! And I still have tags inside the 1 yard. And then I learned about the 1 tunnel, that was a piece of cake! That was, going there for lunch, come out, go back in there again, spend the weekend in there if you had to! That's how wonderful and skillful that area was. Some of Ree's earliest writing was at the 1 train yard, which was a very difficult yard to enter. He soon began to prefer the 1 tunnel, which was comparatively easier to enter. He also speaks about his relationship with Chino Malo, the president of MTA, who was Ree's writing partner through the height of Ree's writing career. MTA––Mad Transit Artists (Graffiti group) Graffiti 0 1176 Train Accident B: There was a story about a friend that you had that was struck by a train in the 70s. R: It was me! B: MEAN? R: Me! Me! B: Right. You were struck by the train? R: I was struck. B: I never knew that R: See that scar that I have on my head? B: I see it. R: That scar was, I think, I could be wrong, 75-76. It was me, POW, TED, LIZ, Z28, POLE. The thing was we all worked together. [inaudible] MOOSE 106... We all worked for the Youth Corps and yeah so we never took care of the kids the kids took care of us. All we did was give them lunch so haha. That particular day we were supposed to meet up by my house and catch the train going into the city so we could all meet up. The rest, the kids and everything were going to Bear Mountain. So I get on at Tremont Ave and before I hit 174 I had this scar across my head. While he was being medicated, he slowed down, but picked right back up. Ree discusses his experience with a train accident as well as the dangers of painting in the tunnels in general. He was struck between Tremont Avenue and 174th Street while riding the train. He was sticking his head out the window trying to get a good look of the tunnel graffiti and was hit by a signal. He didn't lose consciousness and made it home on his own power. He was mostly worried about his mother being mad, which she was and he got an earful, but got to Lebanon hospital where he received over 40 stitches. Subway accident;Subway stations--New York (State) Accident victims;Subway line;Subway stations;Subway tunnels 0 1509 Crews –– MTA B: What about some of your crews, man? Mad Transit Artists? Stuff like that they go way back. R: Well me and Chino came out with Master Taggers Association. And it was just local until it got to the point where I told Chino, yo, we gotta take it up––take it to the next level. We'd been going to Broadway, we'd been tagging it up, but let's make statements. And Chino says, "well, you know, we can do it it's just that we don't have enough guys." I said just you and I doing it! We don't need no more everyone else will just follow suit. And that's exactly what took place. And he listened to me from that point, he was very happy with it. ... B: Any other crews? R: Yeah yeah yeah, at that point when I started moving on up like they say I ran into different crews, crew members, and they gave me their blessings of taking place with their crews. I met a lot of guys along the way such as yourself. Ree discusses the formation of MTA, as well as his role in the leadership of it. According to REE, CHINO MALO did not believe they could go from a local to an all-city crew without recruiting, but REE convinced him to just start, and the recruits would follow. This did occur, and REE had a much bigger role in MTA from then on. He remained vice-president, however with CHINO being the president. He also mentions some other crews. MTA––Mad Transit Artists (Graffiti group) Graffiti;Graffiti artist groups;Graffiti artists 0 1601 Piecing Technique B: Alright well, you know what, walk us through the process of doing a piece, like if I wanna be a writer. R: The process of doing a piece. You want it in the yard? In the Layup? In the tunnel? Because it's different heights. People don't realize the wheels play a big factor in the game. If I'm in the 1 yard the wheels were up to my chin, so I had to either step on the third rail to get a good height from window-down to make it work. If I'm in the 2 layup, I worked the 2 layup and you've worked the 2 layup as well. I worked station to station. I found the bad way that painting in between stations you constantly have to be alert. Meaning the uptown train is gonna be coming every half hour. So from the corner of your eye you gotta constantly keep an eye out for that light. It's not like painting in the station because once that train pulls up into that particular station, I'm here. I have to find a safe place to be, meaning under the car or in between cars just to let that train go by so I can continue painting. It was a process. Now painting on the station was cutting the process down in half. Meaning I don't have to hide under the car no more I can come back and stand on the platform and be on the platform. And on top of that in the middle of the station there's two bars on each side on the uptown side and the downtown side. Stand on top of the bar, which you pulled off a lot of top-to-bottoms from there, I said to myself this is great! I don't have to be short no more I'm the same height or maybe a little smaller depending on the height that we are. And I felt that more exciting because yes you're paying attention but you're also paying attention to the people on the platform. Ree speaks about all sorts of issues of technique, including getting into yards, finding ways to get up to the height of the trains, transporting paint, and so on. We get a lot of detail about actually navigating in the tunnels. For instance, working through the different tubes and internal elevation changes. He preferred painting on trains pulled into a station because it offered an ease of access to the deceptively tall trains that is not available deeper in the tunnels. It also offered excitement in the form of an audience on the platform. New York (N.Y.). Transit Police Department;Racking;Subway line;Subway stations;Subway tunnels Art--Technique;Electric railroads--Rolling stock;Graffiti;Railroads--Rolling stock 0 2339 Documentation: Photos and Blackbooks B: I have a couple of categories: taking photos and blackbooks. Did you ever get into photos, the little yellow instamatics? R: I got into photos late in the game, but I wasn't good at it because I'm not a photographer. I wasn't skilled to be a photographer. It was just, you know, oh hey [makes shutter sound]. Whatever came out came out because it wasn't digitized like it is today. Again, that was another racking day. I went to Alfred E. Smith High School. Korvettes was on 3rd Avenue. So I used to go there to get my film. And on that film, 35 to 110 to 126. On the back came an envelope to mail it out. So that was just another tool of the trade to know as you went through the racking business. B: All right, blackbooks. Tell me about blackbooks when did you first save them, give them to someone to hit, when did that hit? R: Blackbooks, with me, I wasn't a blackbook person because of what I experienced, what took place at the bench. At the bench you, B: They might've took your book. R: Well to me it didn't matter because I wasn't a blackbook person, but I have seen guys, "Yo take my book" and two months later, "yo what happened to my blackbook?" "Oh that was yours, man? I passed it to Moe and Moe passed it to Curly and what do you know you're not getting it back." Butch asks Ree if he had any experience with the graffiti photography and blackbook aspect of writing culture. Ree says he did do a little photography but found he had little talents in it. His blackbooks kept getting stolen so he stopped getting them and getting other writers to hit them. 80's sketchbook;Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.;Sketchbooks & albums Instant photography;Instant photography--Films;Racking 0 2531 Preferred Brands B: Any particular colors or brands of spray paint or markers that you preferred? R: Well when it came to spray paint, to me, Red Devil was the ultimate paint for me. The reason why I felt: I made mistakes, plenty of mistakes. But the Red Devil always seemed to cover my mistakes. There were some yellows, some oranges, and some pineapple looking colors from Wet Look that you put it on and if it doesn't have a good outline on it that's gonna look like garbage. I trusted a lot the Red Devil can to give me a good outline. But, I also love Rust-Oleum. Rust-Oleum to me, the marlin blue, the cascade greens, all federal safety colors, we to me the ultimate crime weapon. Meaning every time you go to rack them they're not there no more! It was search and destroy! Ree preferred Red Devil spray paint above all other brands due to its supreme opacity. It was able to cover up mistakes that other brands would still leave visible. Ree also appreciated Rustoleum, however for their range of colors, which became rare because of how desirable they were. Jifoam oven cleaner;Niagara spray starch;Red-Devil spray enamel Rust-Oleum (Firm);Spray paint;Spray painting 0 2622 Graffiti Then and Now B: Whatcha working on now? What have you been up to lately? R: Lately I have been working on canvases and also, you know, keeping myself occupied. Painting within legal walls and stuff like that. B: You have any paint partners today? R: Paint partners? I have a few that keep me up and going. CLYDE, and Frankie FTD 56. They're still with me and doing our things/ Ree talks about what he has been doing lately, and the people he has been doing it with. He speaks about the differences in his graffiti experience from the outlaw day to the legal art scene he is a participant in nowadays. He also discusses the role of gallery art in the wider graffiti movement, and how he sees himself fitting in that scene. He keeps busy painting legal walls and the occasional canvas, but he's slowed down on gallery shows. Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 3275 The Bronx B: One question: What is the Bronx? R: The Bronx is home. The Bronx has been in my life ever since it came into my life. Like, I live in Jersey, yes but my heart still stays in the Bronx. B: A lot of guys are going to Jersey. How, if you don't mind, how did you have the privilege or luck to get to Jersey? R: The privilege or luck of how I found my way to Jersey was 9/11. When those two planes hit the towers, I was living in Flatbush, Brooklyn. At the scene what I saw with my own eyes and I couldn't move from where I was to that place. Meaning I was working on 14th St. but I couldn't get to work because all the trains were being shut down. So once my wife's brother explained to me, listen, you could live in Jersey but it doesn't have to be deep into Jersey. B: Right on the other side of the Bridge, beautiful. R: Right across the Bridge. The Bronx, for Ree, is home more than anything else. It's a place of culture and of origination, but as Ree moves around the word he associates with the Bronx without a second's hesitation is "home." He also tells the story of how 9/11 precipitated his move to New Jersey on the suggestion of his brother-in-law. Bronx County (N.Y.) Bronx;Bronx (New York, N.Y.) 0 3417 Tag Ree writes his tag for the Bronx County Archives. Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on April 6, 2023 with Ree, a pioneering graffiti writer and artist. REE is a Dominican-born immigrant raised in the South Bronx. In his oral history, Ree talks about immigrating from the Dominican Republic with his mother and four siblings in 1967 and growing up on Daley Ave. He speaks about his introduction to graffiti, his development as a writer, and his personal "golden years" of graffiti writing from 1975 to 1977, and his decision to stop racking when he turned 18 years old to avoid the felony charges as an adult. He speaks of "Chino Malo" as a major influence to his graffiti writing and his ventures getting in and out of train yards and tunnels. Ree details an incident where he was struck by a train while he was still in junior high school. He also speaks about his future exhibits with other pioneering graffiti artists and his continued work on canvas today. The interviewer Butch2, a pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP) is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with REE Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on April 6, 2023 with Ree (Fred Vilomar), a pioneering graffiti writer and artist. REE is a Dominican immigrant raised in the South Bronx. In his oral history, Ree talks about immigrating from the Dominican Republic with his mother and four siblings in 1967 and growing up on Daley Ave. He speaks about his introduction to graffiti, his development as a writer, his personal "golden years" of graffiti writing from 1975 to 1977, and his decision to stop racking when he turned 18 to avoid felony charges as an adult. He speaks of "Chino Malo" as a major influence to his graffiti writing and his ventures getting in and out of train yards and tunnels. Ree details an incident where he was struck by a train while he was still in junior high school. He also speaks about his future exhibits with other pioneering graffiti artists and his continued work on canvas today. The interviewer is BUTCH 2, pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP), a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023.04.06 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20230406 graffiti REE Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 02:50:02 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed BOM 5 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20230413.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with BOM5 OH-BAADP.20230413 2:50:02 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. bxoralhistory BOM5 Butch2 and Pastor Crespo, Jr. MP4 bom5-oral-history-baadp-2023-04-13.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/dFNow4M61Po YouTube video English 0 Introduction PC: Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Pastor Crespo, Jr., Research Librarian and Archivist here at the Bronx County Historical Society. And I am joined by pioneering graffiti artist Butch II for this oral history. Today is Thursday, April 15, 2023 and we have the distinct honor of documenting this oral history with BOM5. Welcome BOM5, please introduce yourself. BOM: Thank you. This is BOM5 from the boogie-down Bronx, which we used to call the burnt down Bronx. Interviewers Butch 2 and Pastor Crespo introduce themselves and give a chance for BOM5, the narrator of this oral history and pioneering graffiti writer to introduce himself. Bom 5 (Graffiti artist);Butch 2 (Graffiti artist);Oral history Bronx;Bronx (New York, N.Y.);Bronx County (N.Y.);Graffiti;Graffiti artists 0 57 Family History and Background B2: Ok, BOM5, talk to us about your family history, background, where your parents are from? BOM: I was born in Puerto Rico. My father is African, My mother's Puerto Rican. My grandfather came to Puerto Rico for work. He found work in Puerto Rico and brought his kids over there. His kids met my mother and started having kids in Puerto Rico. Then we moved to New York and my brother and sister were born there. There's 10 of us all from the same mother and father. When we came to this place called New York, they just had to change their paperwork and stuff because New York when you came from Puerto Rico you could get help from the government. BOM discusses his family background and early life. He was part of a large family, on of 10 siblings. His father moved to Puerto Rico for work and settled there, meeting BOM's mother. The family moved again to New York, where again his father found work until he was murdered in a racially motivated attack. This left only BOM's mother to take care of all 10 kids. He also describes his daily life, including music listened to in his house and meals cooked, as well as loading all the kids up into the family station wagon to go to Orchard Beach. Arts, Puerto Rican;Cooking, Puerto Rican;Murder victims' families;Puerto Rican young men;Puerto Rico Bronx;Children and violence;Hate crimes;Hate crimes--United States;Violence--Sociological aspects 0 916 Schooling PC: Take us through the schools you attended and take us through each of them from public school on up. BOM: Yeah I went to school at 174, I had got––I went to the school for a while and then got kicked out and had to go to P.S. 105 at Pelham Parkway. I was getting into too much trouble and my mom got me into that school with an address with my cousin... so then my brothers and sisters younger than me started going there too. BOM gives a history of his schooling, from Public School, one of which he got kicked out of, to eventually dropping out then finally getting his GED, which he passed immediately. GED tests Public education series;Schooling 0 1174 Getting into Gang and Graffiti PC: Do you remember when you first saw graffiti? Was it in the staircase, at school, the train? What was it, and how did it influence you at the time? BOM: First of all I didn't even know it was graffiti. I was in a gang. My cousin SEE 2 S-E-E 2 and uh, he's the one that got me into the gang. I used to look up to my cousin, he was almost five years older than me but my cousin was my cousin he was like my brother. He is my first cousin and he was a badass. I mean I'm telling you when I'm 9 years old and joining this gang, and this guy is already 13 but he was like stocked. I'm like yo! He said "Pushup! Pushup! Pushup! Chinup! Pushup!" I was like yo show me! Show me! I remember him having muscles like we was 10 years apart! This dude was always built like that! ... I found another family in the street. You know in Tiffany Street, and they gave me the name Spider. I had to go through the whole thing to join the gang. The main thing I remember when I was proud when Hollywood said, we're gonna pass you a name, you're fast, your hands they can see it you're a fighter" there's a lot of things they test you. I had to rack up in the summer some quarts of beer for them. They said, "Go in the store and bring us something!" And like what am I gonna bring? They said to bring something me like to drink. I went in there and racked up two quarts. So what I did was I went in the back, looked around, make sure no one is watching, and I ran out. The first experiences BOM5 had with graffiti was within his outlaw gang, the Savage Skulls. He would put up his gang moniker, 174SPIDER, as well as SAVAGE SKULLS, and the block name with paint stolen from the superintendent of his building on the rocks outside. Soon, he was introduced to other writers who opened his eyes to the wider writing culture, which BOM quickly took to. Savage Nomads (Street gang);Savage Skulls (Street gang) Gangs--New York (State);Outlaw Gang 0 2024 Technique and Development PC: I wanna take you back to when you first started writing. What did you use? What markers? Did you do homemade markers? What did you do about that? BOM: That's where the next part comes in. As a gang member I was doing good, but as a human, I was not doing good. So my cousin said, "look, you got too much skill. You dance good, you draw good, you got like opportunities. You're getting too bad, you're gonna end up hurting someone bad and you're gonna wind up going to jail and I don't want that for you. You know that's not in your life." And I was angry with him because it took me almost 4 years and now I'm in the gang, and I'm with the gang. It's going into my fifth year and I'm strong, I'm better, and you know I just love my life in that gang. Never brought the colors to my mother's house, never wore it around my mother, out of respect for my mother. Every time I got home I would fold it up and put it under the staircase or on the roof. So now he forced me, you gotta get out or I'm gonna beat the shit outta you. I didn't have to fight to get out of the gang because my cousin said, "let him go." ... I see my cousin Chino at a birthday party, at a family birthday party, and he's got a shirt like painted. And that's like with a shirt like painted? I'm like oh, yo, what's that? I could do that! BOM's cousin kicks him out of the gang in order to protect him from getting into serious trouble and encourages him to find opportunities with his many talents. Chance encounters lead him to focus seriously on graffiti where he learns from established names the tools of the trade and where to find the Writers' Benches. One mentor BOM was introduced to at this time was BILLY 167, an Irish writer who took BOM under in wing in a number of ways, including having BOM over for dinner. It surprised BOM the degree to which racial animus lessened (but by no means disappeared) among writers, and his friendship with Billy helped heal the wound of his father's death. Education in art Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Mural painting and decoration--Technique 0 3890 Names B2: What other tags have you written, and do you still write any of them? BOM: My tag started from my gang name, 174SPIDER, and then my first graffiti name was from a movie I saw at the time, it was called SPARTACUS, with Kirk Douglas. I loved how he was strong in that movie, and I wanted to be that strong guy. Not in a gang way anymore but in a writing world way. So I got SPARTACUS. The name was too long! So I cut it down to SPART 174. After I got that name it felt good. I had the name. But then I started noticing at the time a lot of writers was replacing letters for characters. So I was like, oh! I need a name with an O! So I started looking. And I said oh, BOMB. I told BILLY and he said oh, ok that's good! But when I went to see my cousin CHINO, he said wait, I go to school with BOMB1! My cousin went to art and design and I went to music and art.I'm like what, ah man. He said no no no! I would go there after school and meet him after school over there After briefly using the name SPARTACUS, BOM wanted a shorter name and something with an O so that he could draw a character in place of the vowel. BOM settled on the graffiti name BOMB, but was discouraged when BOMB1 (Al Diaz) continued writing the name after agreeing to retire. In order to differentiate himself, BOM omitted the final B and added 005 to the name, becoming forever more BOM005. Anonyms and pseudonyms;Anonyms and pseudonyms, American Graffiti 0 4361 Layups/Yards B2: Which stations did you get into for layups? BOM: Oh, boy. Wow, so many. They had underground layups. The 6 layup, you know. St. Lawrence, 223rd-225th. Sometimes they'd lay it up in Bronx Park East on the Pelham Parkway. For the Bronx. Then we had 183rd, we had Kingsbridge, we went to Kingsbridge many times the G boys I got down with them. But I even went to like, layups on the 7 Line, Junction Blvd (Jackson Heights). My story don't stay in the Bronx. Early on I was traveling. I started going to the different writes bench in Queens, in Brooklyn. I befriended one guy, my brother who passed away STIM 1. BOM lists the layups underground and elevated, and yards he liked to paint in. A favorite was Esplanade where the elevated section of the 5 train heads underground between Morris Park station and just before Gun Hill Rd. Station. He would travel to other boroughs to find new lines to paint on, including Junction Blvd and different layups in Brooklyn. He went as far as Long Island and Staten Island. This travel, enabled often by relatives such as a cousin in Jamaica Queens who introduced him to Grandmaster Flowers and Pete DJ Jones. He also speaks about difficulties in getting in and out. Early on it was just walk-in but later as policing became heavier there was a lot of difficulties and chasing. Sunnyside Yard (New York, N.Y. : Railroad yard) Graffiti;Law enforcement 0 4951 Crews B2: Alright can you talk to us about the Mad Writers, how did that begin and what were they most known for? BOM: That was a crew I made in 1978. But before that in 1976 I made my other crew. ... I saw a movie called 5 Fingers of Death. So I made a crew called 5 Death Writers. And Death was a big word back in the day. People say "Oh, Def you don't know nothing" Oh? how do you spell it? "D-E-F" No it was D-E-A-T-H back in the day. To be Death you wrote the whole word out. So sometimes I would write SPIDER174 is DEATH. So after I saw that movie it influenced me to make a crew but it was just me. I was like alright I gotta get five friends into graffiti! So I finally got five friends together and we had a crew called 5 Death Writers. BOM speaks about his experience creating crews, first the 5 Death Writers and then the Mad Writers. He goes into the history of the word Death as a positive adjective (later shifted to Def). 5 Death Writers;Mad Writers Graffiti artists;Graffiti crews 0 5132 Piecing B2: Walk us through your process of doing a piece. Do you plan it out in detail? Do it in the blackbook? Do you wind it? do you get help from other people in your crew? BOM: Goes like this: When you become a writer, most of the time you go with one other person. Unless you go by yourself. Then, the whole thing doesn't matter if you're with a crew or not. It depends on what you're gonna do with that crew, if you're gonna do a production together... Sometimes not all the colors work out to do the exact production you want to do.So you just go racking. The main thing: you get your paint. Because you already know your sketch if you're already writing. You've practiced you past sketches your outline you got stuff. Even Pathmark had spray paint at one time. BOM lays out his process for completing a piece. For BOM, the piece starts when racking––what colors can you get? He details a lot of his routine for racking. For a big crew production they'd need an army duffel bag to hold all the paint. Then transporting the paint which is difficult itself. Then comes the outline which you already have from experience. Having a fat cap was also a necessity. Mural painting and decoration, American;Mural painting and decoration--Technique 0 6796 Zulu Nation PC: We're gonna switch gears on you. How did you become involved in Zulu Nation? Tell us that backstory. BOM: It was all the influence of being around Sisko King and all them guys. The first time I ever met Bam was I was in the Savage Skulls and they tell me about Bronx [inaudible] and I'm from 174th they have a Bridge that goes over to Bronx River Projects. So I knew about Bam through graffiti first he used to write BAM117. So I met him on the Bridge. I didn't have colors, he didn't have color and we met. He's taking a tag, I take a tag, we meet on the bridge and we become friends. The funny thing about that. Two days or three days later I'm riding my bike through Bronx River and I see him with a group of dudes. They got the Black Spades colors and I'm walking around with my vest on my bike Savage Skulls. And I'm like, that's that same guy that motherfucker! So I start throwing bottles at them, and they start throwing shit at me and they started coming at me. So I had to get back on my bike and ride my bike away. They were throwing like rocks at us and stuff, so I had to get away. But I threw bottles at them first because I was like, I thought you was my friend, but you know he was someone I just met. I just wrote my gang name on the bridge but I didn't put no SS. BOM speaks about meeting Afrika Bambaataa and how he was present for some of the early conversations involved in the founding of Zulu Nation, despite some initial friction due to Bam's Black Spades affiliation. BOM was involved in Zulu Kings, the B-Boy group of Disco King Mario, the Black Spade DJ, which also became affiliated with Zulu Nation when that spun up. Afrika Bambaataa, 1960-;Zulu Nation B-boy;Hip-hop 0 7172 DJing & B-Boying PC: Now DJing: What drew you to become a DJ and do you still spin? BOM: Yeah yeah. Still spinning still doing my thing. I slowed down for a little bit because I got the tinnin–tinnining? PC: Right Tendonitis? [note: Tinnitus meant] BOM: Yeah that's from years of having the headphone on and being in clubs. You know we'd have these jams rocking with loudspeakers in these small community center rooms blasting the music. Going deaf but you're not feeling it! When you get older all of a sudden you got a ringing in your ear. BOM speaks about how he got into DJing. He met some mentors and was able to prove himself. Some of his biggest mentors mentioned were Disco King Mario, Junebug, and DJ Hollywood. Later on, BOM would have something of a falling out with Hollywood due to Hollywood not wanting to be associated with the juvenile Bronx hip-hop culture, insisting on a mature harlem disco audience. BOM gives a lot of credit to the disco DJs and makes sure to give them their due credit in contributing to hip-hop, but he insists that what Kool Herc and other early hip-hop DJs were playing the music differently, even though the line between disco and hip-hop was very blurry early on, with many hip-hop crews (including BOM's own) incorporating "disco" into their names. D. J. Hollywood;DJ Kool Herc Disco dancing;Disco music;Hip-hop;Hip-hop--Influence 0 9058 Hip Hop Culture Courses PC: Now tell us about the hip hop culture courses that you give at area charter schools. Are you allowed to talk about that? BOM: I could talk about just what I've been doing my whole life! Ever since the 80's I've been going to centers teaching about graff, about the culture of writing. My culture when I talk is first about the Bronx, and then about how I spread it in New York. And my spread went from New York to all around America, and then when I got tired of America then I went overseas. BOM speaks briefly about the classes he gives to student-aged community members in schools and community centers about hip-hop culture and graffiti. He emphasizes how the culture mirrors himself in ever more expanding opportunities. It is rooted in the Bronx but took him all over the city, then the country, then the world. Culturally relevant pedagogy;Education in art 0 9579 What does the Bronx mean? PC: We like to end the interviews with this one question: What does the Bronx mean to you? BOM: My family. My family, my community, the place that made me who I am to this day. And that's a good person. 'Cause I had been a bad person in another way. So it made me a good person and gave me knowledge. All the education and things I learned from the Bronx I can spread through the world. The Bronx holds a personal meaning for BOM as the community which made him a good person, which educated him and put him in a place to educate others. He attaches this fact to his Afro-Puerto Rican identity, but says that his experience with members of all ethnic communities in the Bronx also convinced him of the unity of the human race. Bronx 0 9655 Tag BOM5 does a couple of passes at writing his tag for the Bronx County Archives 0 Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on April 13, 2023 with BOM5, a graffiti writer and artist. BOM5 was born in Puerto Rico and migrated to the Bronx with his parents as a young child. In his oral history, BOM5 speaks about his family's migration to New York City in search of work and a better life. He discusses growing up on 175th Street and Hoe Ave in the east Bronx and his families adjustment to their new home. He speaks of his first experiences, as a 9-year old, writing gang graffiti as a young Savage Skull member, interactions with other gangs, both good and bad, and learning how to tattoo. BOM5 recalls racking not just spray paint but also food items and clothes to help support his family of 10 siblings. The interviewers Butch2, a pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP) and Pastor Crespo, Jr., research librarian and archivist for The Bronx County Historical Society. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with BOM 5 Description An account of the resource Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on April 13, 2023 with BOM5, a graffiti writer and artist. BOM5 was born in Puerto Rico and migrated to The Bronx with his parents as a young child. In his oral history, BOM 5 speaks about his family's migration to New York City in search of work and a better life. He discusses growing up on 175th Street and Hoe Ave in the east Bronx and his family's adjustment to their new home. He speaks of his first experiences as a 9-year old writing gang graffiti as a young Savage Skull member, interactions with other gangs, both good and bad, and learning how to tattoo. BOM 5 recalls racking not just spray paint but also food items and clothes to help support his family of ten siblings. The interviewers are BUTCH 2, pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP), a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library, and Pastor Crespo, Jr., research librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023.04.13 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20230413 BOM 5 graffiti Savage Skulls Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Suzanne Ross Video Memoirs Description An account of the resource Pending Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ross, Suzanne Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930s–2022 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wood, Nat Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AV-ROSS Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:43:43 Media Embedded media file for non-oral history recorded sound and moving images. <br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BYqVhAYdrCA?si=vkJfTkL3wTvh4w7Y" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 2-04. Family History and Childhood: Escaping Belgium during the Holocaust Description An account of the resource In this recording, part of a larger video memoir project, lifetime activist and educator Suzanne Ross narrates her immediate family's escape from the Holocaust. Much of her family did not make it out of Europe alive. Suzanne reflects on the relationship between her direct experience of this genocidal history and her white skin and educational privileges. Suzanne narrates her family's travels from Germany to Belgium to France, Spain, North Africa, Portugal, Mozambique, Palestine and ultimately the United States, where she and her family arrived on December 25, 1945. From Suzanne: "Born in 1937 living with an extended family on maternal and paternal sides in Antwerp Belgium. By 1940 the Nazis invade and most of the family tried and even succeeded in leaving. My parents, brother, and I along with different aunts, uncles, and cousins parted ways with some headed for Portugal, some for Palestine, and other remaining in France or Belgium. Traveling for about a year from France to Spain to North Africa, to Portugal and eventually Mozambique, we found a haven in Mozambique for three years, until the colonial power (Portugal) gave us a deadline by which we had to leave. This was now 1944 and we were able to go to Palestine where we remained for a year before we were able to get the visa we needed to go to the US, my parents’ dream. We arrived in the US on December 25, 1945 and soon became part of an orthodox Jewish community in Queens, Far Rockaway. My brother and I attended the Yeshiva, I loved the chaos of this school, with the students able to challenge the adults, and impose a certain student power. In addition to the students ability to disrupt regular routines, the Hebrew education was excellent, especially the training in Talmudic logic and debate which served me in good stead for many subsequent decades of schooling. By the time I went to public high school I was increasingly losing interest in religion and focused more and more on intellectual interests and wanting to go to an elite college." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ross, Suzanne Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Wood, Nat Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You can, without permission, copy, modify, distribute, display, or perform the Item, for non-commercial uses. For any other permissible uses, please review the terms and conditions with the organization that has made the Item available. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP4 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Video memoir Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AV-ROSS.008 genocide Holocaust Suzanne Ross https://digital.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/files/original/4c4309bc81cd91ee2d4ff1c8b50f65fe.pdf c5f4ddf5c454af733d318cd13683d336 PDF Text Text THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL Volume LIX Numbers 1–2 Spring/Fall 2022 The Bronx County Historical Society JOURNAL ��The Bronx County Historical Society JOURNAL Volume LIX Numbers 1–2 Spring/Fall 2022 EDITORIAL BOARD G. Hermalyn Elizabeth Beirne Jacqueline Kutner Patrick Logan Steven Payne Gil Walton Roger Wines © 2022 by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. The Bronx County Historical Society Journal is published by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. All correspondence should be addressed to 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, New York, 10467. Articles appearing in this Journal are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Periodical Source Index, and Recent Scholarship Online. The Journal and its editors disclaim responsibility for statements made by the contributors. ISSN 0007-2249 Articles in The Bronx County Historical Journal can also be found on EBSCO host research databases and on our website under “Collections.” www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org �THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY TRUSTEES Jacqueline Kutner, President Anthony Morante, Vice President Patrick Logan, Treasurer Gil Walton, Secretary Steve Baktidy, Trustee Robert Esnard, Trustee Mei Sei Fong, Trustee Dr. G. Hermalyn, Trustee Joel Podgor, Trustee Lloyd Ultan, Trustee Jac Zadrima, Trustee EX-OFFICIO Hon. Eric Adams Mayor of New York City Hon. Vanessa Gibson Bronx Borough President Hon. Sue Donaghue Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation Hon. Laurie Cumbo Commissioner, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs STAFF Dr. G. Hermalyn, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Steven Payne, Director Teresa Brown, Chief Administrative Officer Clarence Addo-Yobo, Museum of Bronx History Senior Interpreter Pastor Crespo, Jr., Research Librarian Roger McCormack, Director of Education Chris Padilla, Bookstore Manager Valerie Blain, Archival Intern Kathleen A. McCauley, Curator Emerita Dr. Mark Naison, Bronx African American History Project Consultant ii �Volume LIX Numbers 1–2 Spring/Fall 2022 CONTENTS A Note from the Editors.......................................................................................................v ARTICLES Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty..................................................1 Edited and introduction by Steven Payne Kingsbridge Vignettes............................................................................................................19 By Richard Baum Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s........................................................................................29 By Robert Weiss A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters.............................................39 By Mark Naison About the Authors..................................................................................................................44 FROM THE ARCHIVES Afro-Cuban Jazz in The Bronx......................................................................................45 From the David M. Carp Papers on Latin Jazz REVIEWS Cope, Power Hungry (2022)................................................................................................69 By Pastor Crespo, Jr. Sammartino, Freedomland (2022)...................................................................................72 By Roger McCormack iii �ENDOWED FUNDS The Bronx County Historical Society encourages the establishment of named endowment funds. Funds may be created to support the many different programs of The Society or may be established for restricted use. The funds appear permanently on the financial records of the Historical Society in recognition of their ongoing support of its work. Named endowment funds are established for a gift of $5000 or more and once begun, additional contributions may be made at any time. The following funds currently support our work: Astor Fund Bingham Fund Elbaum Fund Fernandez Fund General Board Fund Gordon Fund Gouverneur Morris Fund Halpern Memorial Fund Hermalyn Institute Fund Isabelle Fund Khan Fund Lampell Fund Library Fund Parisse Fund Sander Fund Ultan Fund For further details, contact: Mr. Joel Podgor, CPA Treasurer Emeritus 718-881-8900 �A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS Volume 59 of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal represents a milestone in the history of this storied periodical, which has been published continuously since 1964. In many respects, the COVID-19 pandemic hit The Bronx County Historical Society with a vengeance. Our two historic house museums were closed for the majority of 2020 and the entirety of 2021 and only started to reopen on a limited basis in 2022. Revenue from museum visits, tours, and inperson purchases all experienced a sharp decline and are only beginning to bounce back. Yet on other important fronts, particularly those of collection acquistion, archival processing, and oral history recording, The Society’s activities picked up as never before. The Society recorded over 100 oral histories during these pandemic years across The Bronx African American History Project, The Bronx Latino History Project, and The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. The Society acquired 43 new archival collections during this same period, and over 100 of the 163 collections currently housed in The Bronx County Archives were fully processed and inventoried and are now available to researchers and the wider public. This volume of our Journal contains some of the first fruits of these pandemic labors, including an edited oral history collection from the Bronx Latino History Project around the life and legacy of Dr. Evelina Antonetty (1910–1984), a pivotal Bronx human rights activist, and an archival manuscript of a lengthy but groundbreaking study of Afro-Cuban jazz from the David M. Carp papers on Latin jazz in The Bronx County Archives. This volume, while longer than many previous volumes, is meant to highlight the recent work of The Society while motioning towards our ever-expanding role as a world-class center of community-based historical documentation and scholarship. v �ISABELLE HERMALYN BOOK AWARD IN NEW YORK URBAN HISTORY Presented annually to an author of a distinguished work in New York urban history. 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 Annotated Primary Source 2009 Documents, vol. 2, Roger McCormack 2008 BASEBALL The New York Game, Anthony Morante Hudson’s River, G. Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, The 2007 Bronx County Historical Society Concrete Jungle, Niles Eldrige 2006 and Sidney Horenstein, University of California Press Digging The Bronx, Alan 2005 Gilbert, The Bronx County Historical Society 2004 The New York Botanical Garden, Gregory Long and Todd A. Forest, Abrams Books 2003 The Bronx Artist Documentary Project, Judith C. Lane and 2002 Daniel Hauben An Irrepressible Conflict, 2001 Jennifer A. Lemak et al., SUNY Press Supreme City, Donald Miller, 2000 Simon & Schuster Humans of New York, 1999 Brandon Stanton, St. Martin's Press The Impeachment of Governor 1998 Salzer, Matthew L. Lifflander, SUNY Press 1997 Freedomland, Robert McLaughlin and Frank Adamo, Arcadia Publishers Band of Union, Gerard T. Koppel, Da Capa Press Manahatta, Eric W. Sanderson, Abrams Books The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway, Herbert Harwood, Indiana University Press Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University Press Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning, Jonathan Mahler, Ferrar, Strauss & Giroux The Devil’s Own Work, Barnett Schecter, Walker & Co. The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto, Doubleday Capital City, Thomas Kessner, Simon & Schuster Tunneling to the Future, Peter Derrick, NYU Press The Monied Metropolis, Sven Beckert, Cambridge University Press Bronx Accent, Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, Rutgers Press The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn, John Manbeck and Zella Jones American Metropolis, George Lankevich, NYU Press Elected Public Officials of The Bronx Since 1898, Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx County Historical Society �TITI: AN ORAL HISTORY OF DR. EVELINA ANTONETTY EDITED AND INTRODUCTION BY STEVEN PAYNE I. Introduction Dr. Evelina Antonetty (1922–1984), a proud Bronxite, was among the most prolific human rights activists of the twentieth century. Over the course of more than four decades of activism, Evelina struggled for an end to racial and national discrimination against Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and other racially and nationally oppressed peoples; quality, affordable housing for all; culturally relevant and bilingual public education; full employment with livable wages, especially for youth; robust funding for after-school programs and community centers; healthcare equity; peace and disarmament; and much more. On the occasion of Evelina’s centenary, as part of “Evelina 100,” a week-long celebration of her life and legacy, on Friday, September 16, 2022, The Bronx County Historical Society screened TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty, an edited oral history collection, at Pregones/Puero Rican Travelling Theater in The Bronx. Section 2 of this article provides a brief biography of Evelina to orient readers who might not be as familiar with her work. Section 3 contains a list of narrators included in the edited oral history collection, together with references to the full-length oral histories recorded by the Historical Society for the Bronx Latino History Project and the Bronx African American History Project. Section 4 reproduces the transcript of TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty in its entirety. Although representing only a sampling of the significant oral history collecting that is taking place around Evelina’s life and legacy, the selections transcribed in the final section of this article demonstrate the multi-layered, complex, emotionally laden, and politically significant impact Evelina continues to have among Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 1 �family members, friends, and the wider Bronx community. Although physically absent, Evelina continues to shape the way that The Bronx and its people struggle for and think about a more livable, sustainable present and future. II. Brief Biography of Dr. Evelina Antonetty Dr. Evelina Antonetty (née López) was born on September 19, 1922 in Salinas, Puerto Rico.1 Her mother, Eva Cruz, raised Evelina and her two younger sisters, Lillian and Elba. Evelina’s aunt and uncle, Vicenta and Enrique Godreau, had relocated to New York City in 1923. A decade later, in 1933, they sent for Evelina to live with them. Evelina left Puerto Rico soon after her youngest sister Elba was born, on September 10, 1933. After arriving in New York on El Ponce, Evelina lived with her aunt and uncle in El Barrio until her mother and sisters could join her. This they did two years later, in 1935, and the entire family lived together in successive East Harlem apartments. Vicenta and Enrique—known to most simply as “Godreau”— had already established extensive ties within the community by the time Evelina’s family arrived. Vicenta was a political activist with close ties to the LaGuardia and Roosevelt administrations. Godreau was a music promoter and numbers runner who regularly socialized with the likes of Machito and Tito Puente. Those close to Evelina while she was growing up remember her as actively engaged in transforming the world and her place within it 1 For longer biographical treatments of Dr. Evelina Antonetty, some more reliable than others, see, for example, Nicholasa Mohr, All for the Better (Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn, 1993); “Guide to the Records of United Bronx Parents, Inc 1966–1989 (Bulk 1970s–1983),” Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, CUNY, 2005 https://centropr-archive.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/faids/ubpf.html; Nélida Pérez, “Antonetty, Evelina López (1922–1984),” pp. 48–49 in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006); and Nydia Edgecombe, “‘The Hell Lady from the Bronx’ Evelina López Antonetty, el activismo comunitario de una puertorriqueña en la diáspora del Sur del Bronx” (PhD dissertation, El Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y El Caribe, 2018). 2 STEVEN PAYNE �from an early age. One of her friends from childhood, Dolores Roque, remembers a pageant that she and Evelina organized in elementary school in Puerto Rico. It was the largest pageant in the school’s history up to that point.2 In New York City, at the age of sixteen, Evelina joined the Young Communist League, the youth wing of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a formidable force in the 1940s in progressive, anti-racist, labor, and anti-colonial struggles. Evelina was speaking at mass meetings citywide by the time she was in her late teens. Her youngest sister Elba, for instance, remembers Evelina speaking at a large American Labor Party rally in New York City during the early 1940s in support of the U.S.’s anti-fascist war efforts (as World War II was explicitly characterized at the time). During this rally, as a testament to her ability and reputation, a young Evelina was on the rostrum with Jesús Colón (1901–1974), one of the leading Puerto Rican activists of the day and more than 20 years Evelina’s senior. Evelina also worked very closely with Vito Marcantonio, a progressive Italian politician from East Harlem who built close ties with both Italian and Puerto Rican communities in the neighborhood and around New York. Evelina became a postal worker for a period of time during the war, and it was during these years that she met and married her first husband and moved to Jackson Avenue in The Bronx. Evelina gave birth to her first daughter, Lorraine, in 1943. For a number of years after the war, Evelina worked for District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), one of the more militant unions that fell under close scrutiny during the McCarthy era.3 Evelina recruited for the local among Puerto Ricans and other people of color who were still discriminated against in many unions 2 See Section 4 below for the transcription of this story from Dolores Roque’s oral history recorded for the Bronx Latino History Project. 3 District 65 of the RWDSU eventually merged with the United Auto Workers (UAW) and became a local affiliated with that union. For a historical overview of this union, see “Guide to the United Automobile Workers of America, District 65 Records WAG.006,” Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, NYU, 2019, https://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/ html/tamwag/wag_006/bioghist.html; and Minna P. Ziskind, “Labor Conflict in the Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 3 �at the time. By this point, Evelina’s mother, two sisters, and some of her extended family had also moved to The Bronx, settling nearby on Concord Avenue. During these years, Evelina divorced her first husband and married Donato Antonetty, with whom she had her second daughter, Anita, and her only son Donald. Navigating the public school system with her three children and other parents in the neighborhood convinced Evelina that education advocacy was an urgent and much needed area of struggle, both in The Bronx and citywide. With community and family members, Evelina founded an organization called United Bronx Parents (UBP) in 1965 in order to train Bronx parents to advocate for their children’s language, cultural, and nourishment needs. Additionally, UBP organized bilingual adult education classes, served as a community center, offered a variety of employment and job training opportunities to youth, became involved in local struggles for healthcare justice, and fought for the people of The Bronx in a variety of other ways. UBP quickly grew to become one of New York City’s leading community organizations. By the early 1970s, UBP was distributing two meals a day to thousands of children in all five boroughs for the city’s new free summer breakfast and lunch program. Both through UBP and independently Evelina was deeply engaged in her community. After youth involvement in gangs experienced an uptick in The Bronx during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Evelina began approaching known gang leaders, befriending them, arranging for their employment, and supporting them throughout their rehabilitation. Additionally, Evelina and other community members drew attention to the abhorrent healthcare being provided at Lincoln Hospital and other “ghetto hospitals” (as they were called at the time). She and others, including groups like the Young Lords and Suburbs: Organizing Retail in Metropolitan New York, 1954–1958,” International Labor and Working‐Class History 64 (2003): 55–79. 4 STEVEN PAYNE �the Black Panthers, advocated for community control of these healthcare facilities.4 Evelina also supported Dr. Helen RodríguezTrías (1929–2001) and others at Lincoln Hospital who opposed the appointment of Dr. Antonio Silva, a doctor with a known history of mass sterilization of women in Puerto Rico.5 When the South Bronx and its people were depicted in racist and dehumanizing ways in films like Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981), Evelina hit the streets in protest, always sticking up for her community.6 In short, Evelina was a loving sister, mother, and aunt, a fierce fighter, a mentor to many, an incredibly active and brilliant human being who loved The Bronx, its people, and all oppressed peoples worldwide. III. Oral History Narrators TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty contains selections from the oral histories of the following narrators, alphabetized by last name, all of whom have recorded at least one oral history for either the Bronx Latino History Project or the Bronx African American History Project. References to these oral histories are provided to facilitate further research about the life and legacy of Dr. Evelina Antonetty. ANITA ANTONETTY is the daughter of Evelina and Donato Anto4 For recent treatments of struggles for community control of healthcare facilities in The Bronx, see Rachel Pagones, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (London: Brevis, 2021), especially chs. 1 and 3; and Johanna Fernández, The Young Lords: A Radical History (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 271–304. 5 For a general history of mass sterlization campaigns among Puerto Ricans, see Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 142–161. A biography of Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías can be found in Joyce Wilcox, “The Face of Women’s Health: Helen Rodriguez Trias,” American Journal of Public Health (2002): 566–569. 6 See box 1, folder 3, “Committee Against Fort Apache,” The Gelvin Stevenson papers on Arson and Housing Abandonment, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 5 �netty.7 DONALD ANTONETTY is the son of Evelina and Donato Antonetty.8 ELBA CABRERA is the youngest sister of Evelina.9 JOE CONZO, JR. is the grandson of Evelina and the son of Lorraine Montenegro, who was the oldest daughter of Evelina.10 CARINA MONDESIRE is the daughter of Paul Mondesire, the granddaughter of Elba Cabrera, and the great niece of Evelina.11 PAUL MONDESIRE is the younger son of Elba Cabrera and a nephew of Evelina.12 ANTONIO MONDESÍRE-CABRERA is the older son of Elba Cabrera and a nephew of Evelina.13 7 “Oral History of Anita and Donald Antonetty,” April 13, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 8 “Oral History of Anita and Donald Antonetty.” 9 “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 1,” November 16, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 2,” November 30, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 3,” December 6, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 4,” December 14, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 5,” December 22, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 6,” December 28, 2021; interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 10 “Oral History of Joe Conzo, Jr.,” May 9, 2006, interviewed by Mark Naison, The Bronx African American History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 11 “Oral History of Carina Mondesire,” December 14, 2021, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 12 “Oral History of Paul Mondesire, Part 1,” February 1, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 13 “Oral History of Babá Antonio Mondesire-Cabrera, Part 1,” June 16, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne; “Oral History of Babá Antonio Mondesire-Cabrera, Part 2,” September 22, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne and Pastor Crespo, Jr., The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical 6 STEVEN PAYNE �DOLORES ROQUE is a childhood friend of Evelina who went to elementary school with her in Puerto Rico.14 CLEO SILVERS is a community and labor organizer who was mentored by Evelina as a young activist in the South Bronx in the late 1960s and early 1970s.15 VIVIAN VÁSQUEZ IRIZARRY is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who frequented UBP when she was growing up.16 IV. Transcript of TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty The transcribed oral history collection below is organized into three sections: 1. Evelina’s Life, which includes selected narrations of different aspects of Evelina’s life, from early childhood through adulthood; 2. Evelina’s Struggles, comprised of selected narrations of activist struggles Evelina engaged in from the 1940s until her passing in 1984, with pride of place falling to UBP; and 3. Evelina’s Legacies, which contains selected narrations of the many legacies left behind in Evelina’s wake—from a passion for education to gang rehabilitation to mentoring and inspiring generations of community activists, family members, and Bronxites in general. Society Research Library. 14 “Oral History of Dolores Roque,” February 11, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 15 “Oral History of Cleo Silvers, Part 1,” February 21, 2007; “Oral History of Cleo Silvers, Part 2,” March 12, 2007; interviewed by Mark Naison, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 16 “Oral History of Vivian Vásquez Irizarry,” February 18, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 7 �1. Evelina’s Life ELBA CABRERA: Well, I came to this country in 1935. My sister Evelina had—I was born, I was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. And the day I was born, Evelina left to come to New York. She actually saw me— she saw my mother giving birth to me. And she said it was the hardest thing for her to leave, to leave her new baby sister. But my aunt [Vicenta Godreau], who had come to New York from Puerto Rico in 1923, had sent for her. And so, she was leaving. And that was actually September 10, 1933 that Evelina came to this country. And she was with my aunt. She landed in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, I think it was. And the boat was the, El Ponce. That was the name of the boat—boat or ship. When, when Evelina came, she went to live at 117th Street, in East Harlem. And it was, I think, off Fifth Avenue, I think. Because, you know, this is all what I’ve heard, you know. I wasn’t around. And so anyway, two years later, my aunt sent for us, sent for me and my mom and Lillian. And we came on the same ship and landed in Brooklyn as well. And we went to live with my aunt, and this was extended family living in Spanish Harlem. ANITA ANTONETTY: Well, how my mother [Evelina Antonetty] and my father [Donato Antonetty] ended up in The Bronx: well, my mother, when, when she came to this country, she lived in El Barrio in Harlem, East Harlem, New York, with her aunt, and then I believe what she told us was that when she, she got married to her first husband, she, they moved to The Bronx. That seemed to be the place people were going, a lot of people were coming to the Bronx, so they were in the South Bronx, Jackson Avenue. So, and then after she divorced her first husband, she and my, my sister Lorraine, were still there in Jackson Avenue. And her mother and her two sisters followed her to the, to The Bronx. That’s Elba 8 STEVEN PAYNE �and Lillian. And they lived on Concord Avenue, which was a block away from Jackson Avenue. My father came later, I think, around ’55 or so, came to New York. And, and his family also had come to, some of them had already come to New York—my aunt Santos and my other aunt Margo, came, came to New York. Santos lived in the same building, Jackson Avenue. Margo lived in Concord as well. So, we had, we had, we had family all around us. There was other friends also that lived [in] Union Avenue: Tini, Carmen. Carmen Muñoz was godmother to Donny. My, my godmother, Celia Avilés, at the time, lived in, in Jackson Avenue, 625 Jackson, [inaudible], too. So, it was a real family neighborhood, you know, besides being blood relatives, we were close to everybody. It was a very mixed neighborhood. It was, you know, Puerto Ricans, African Americans that came from the South. There were others: Irish; Jewish, mostly from, from Russia; and Chinese. There were Chinese people that lived in the neighborhood, too. So, it was a very mixed neighborhood, very working-class neighborhood. PAUL MONDESIRE: So, the anchor of our family was Titi—everybody called her “Titi.” That would be Dr. Evelina Antonetty. Titi and her family, when I was really, really, really young, they lived, I think it was there on Jackson Avenue. The address I’m remembering: 625 Jackson Avenue. But we used to go visit them all the time. We used to visit Aunt Lilly a lot. She and, she and my grandmother lived in the then new Bridge Apartments, there at 111 Wadsworth, in, you know, technically that’s Man-, Washington Heights. The Bridge Apartments at that time were brand, brand new. They, this was before they kind of turned into a sewer, you know, because that, that turned into a very harsh neighborhood. But Aunt Lilly moved out of there before then. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 9 �But, so, we would visit Titi and Aunt Lilly a lot. Lorraine and her kids. I mean, well, Titi was kind of the, she was the fulcrum. So, everybody went to Titi’s house, no matter what. Right? So, you know, holidays were spent going to Titi’s a lot. DOLORES ROQUE: Let me tell you: one time I went to get together, and we tried to make a pageant. And we made a pageant. And I say, “You know what? We’re gonna have Alma.” Alma was a girl, she was very nice, cute, but she had a cross-eye, and was cross-eyed. Her mother was separating from her father. But Titi and me, we decided to make the pageant. And I made the pageant. So, this man, he was a big man with money, like Alma’s father. They worked in the, in the corporation that then built [inaudible]. And this guy came over to me, and he says, “How much money do you need to make my daughter the queen?” The ticket was two cents —two cents, the ticket! Just [to] buy the stuff for the pageant, and, you know, for the—. So, and then we say, “No, we want to have —Alma will be the president.” And I said [to Titi], “You’re gonna be the, the princess.” So, we made the pageant, okay—the teacher doesn't know anything about it. We’re doing everything behind the teacher’s back. But it happened so that was the biggest event the school has, okay? Titi was the princess, and we made Alma the queen. That was Evelina and me in school, okay? They had a garden. And there we had a, they had a teacher. Mostly for the boys. For teaching gardening and stuff like that. And Titi and me went to see how they seed, plant the tomatoes, just to see. We don’t want to do it, but they don’t allow girls. It was only for the boys. We had to do something else. And Titi and me were there looking to see. And then I said, “I can do it.” Titi said, “I can do it.” 10 STEVEN PAYNE �2. Evelina’s Struggles ELBA CABRERA: This [pointing to a photograph] was during World War Two. We used to have rallies for the war effort, and Evelina was one of the main speakers [for an American Labor Party rally] with Jesús Colón, and two other women. And I have a cute story about that. I was, I was about, I don’t know, maybe seven, eight years old. And I was in the audience with Lillian, with my sister Lillian, and all of a sudden, the rains came. And I had this, they had given me like a costume with crepe paper, color, and the rains came, and all this dye came all over me. And I started crying out for Evelina. We used to call her “Titi.” I said, “Titi!” And, and Lillian says, “You can’t, she can’t come down, just stay with me.” But I’ll never forget that day. Above: Dr. Evelina Antonetty, 1980, Frank Espada, photographer, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquisition made possible through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 11 �PAUL MONDESIRE: I think the most important thing to recall about those years was Titi’s attitude was not by any means necessary. It was by every means necessary, okay? She worked with city, city administrations. She worked with folks that had less than savory reputations in certain places, because that’s what you had to do. But her personal integrity on this was unquestioned. Like I said, she wouldn’t mess around with those SEBCO [South East Bronx Community Organization] people, and they wouldn’t mess around with her. Think about, think about that. The mob wouldn’t f—k with Titi. The mob would not f—k with Titi. And yeah, I said it just like that. Yeah, that’s the kind of powerful person that she was. When she started United Bronx Parents [in 1965], it was first United Bronx Parents, as the, as the, you know, education advocacy organization. Then she started the daycare center, and the daycare center grew into, you know, ultimately serving, you know, all kinds of populations, you know, the, you know, folks that were, you know, recovering from drugs. And later on, when Lorraine was running the organization, she got into helping, you know, creating the women’s shelter. I don’t know as much about the details there. ANITA ANTONETTY: Besides being at Bank Street, after school, we were in United Bronx Parents. And, and since my mother’s consultations moved out of the house, we had to learn how to answer the phone properly. Take messages, all of that. And then in, in, in the office, we, if there was an event going on, and flyers were being run off, we, and we needed to collate material, it was all done by hand, machines, at the time, to do it. So, we were put to work. And we also learned how to sit at the switchboard and transfer calls and all of that. DONALD ANTONETTY: And Elba was the, the office manager. 12 STEVEN PAYNE �ANITA ANTONETTY: The office manager. DONALD ANTONETTY: She was a drill sergeant. ANITA ANTONETTY: She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t take anything from anybody. But we had, we had the run of the place pretty much. But we were in the middle of everything. DONALD ANTONETTY: But we were always expected to work. Always. Matter of fact, my father used to tell us, you know, since this is, you know, since it’s family-run, you’re expected to do more than anybody who was an employee there. Okay. Okay. Always. Always. ANITA ANTONETTY: [Our father] was integral to the operation. DONALD ANTONETTY: He used to translate all the documents into Spanish—like from Spanish to English, or mostly English to Spanish. So, all the, all the materials for the parents organizing, organizing, he would translate it. We always put out everything in English and Spanish. ANITA ANTONETTY: And by hand because it was two dictionaries and two thesauruses, and then just going back and forth. He would spend, spend nights doing that. And then if anything broke, he was fixing it. The machines broke, he would fix them. If, if something had, shelves had to be built, he was building them. But what was good about him is that he was working with people, and especially younger people, and showing them how to do: this is how you measure, this is how you cut, this is how you put it together, and all of that. Estella Rodríguez was the fiscal officer for the organization. She was a good friend. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 13 �DONALD ANTONETTY: She knew where every penny was. ANITA ANTONETTY: She made sure every penny was accounted for. Because in those days, you had to, because otherwise they’d shut you down in a minute. And I, I remember, she, one day her outrage, because they said, you know, they wanted all of the records. The next day, like nine o’clock in the morning, outraged that it was, anything would be wrong, but she made sure everything was right. Every payroll was met. Never, never missed the payroll. DONALD ANTONETTY: They had a great relationship with the banks, a great relationship with the banks. VIVIAN VÁSQUEZ IRIZARRY: Well, the main community center that we were a part of was United Bronx Parents. So, I remember when we were young, we would go to St. Mary’s Park, and, you know, swim in the swimming pool at certain times of the year, but our, my, our main place was UBP. UBP—and, and for a little bit, St. Margaret’s, but not so much—UBP was a place where my sister, my oldest sister, worked year-round. And I worked there as a summer youth employment. But even going before that, you know—and I had not made this link until long afterwards—was that UBP provided free lunch, free breakfast and lunch. And so there were times during the summer where my mother would say, “Okay, go over there and go to 1-, PS 130. And get your lunch and your breakfast, you know, and bring, take—.” So, there were five of us. So, the five of us would go and, and get our sandwiches and our lunch. And you know, it was really great. And, you know, at that time, I don’t think I knew where that was coming from. But then eventually, you know, as I worked for the Summer Youth Employment Program, I think I worked for UBP, summer, maybe three years. And, and you know, we worked, we cleaned up the park and we, we went on trips, and it was the first 14 STEVEN PAYNE �time I think I went to Coney Island. You know, we were exposed to different places throughout the city. We had what I’ll call counseling sessions. At that time, they were called “rap sessions,” you know, where the older employees at UBP, the, the counselors would sit us down and talk to us about what was going on in our lives and, you know, build relationships with us so that I guess we could feel safe. I feel like that was important, you know, looking back, going to a safe place every day in the summer, you know, making friends, having fun, being engaged in, in fun activities, was, was important, was really important to me. DONALD ANTONETTY: But also, when they, you know, they, there was some mass sterilization program going on in Puerto Rico. The one heading that program, when he left there, he went to be the director of Lincoln Hospital. Keep up the “good” work. So, there was a lot of protest about that, a lot organizing about that. ANITA ANTONETTY: And then the stereotypes from Hollywood, so —that’s Fort Apache. That was a big deal, too. We were in the street every single day, every single day. DONALD ANTONETTY: It was the filming crew. One time we saw Paul Newman downtown. We chased him, saying, “Stop the racist movie!” 3. Evelina’s Legacies ANTONIO MONDESIRE-CABRERA: And Titi and Aunt Lilly, through embracing education—education is a universal, when we start understanding other people’s cultures, history, you get past all this stuff. Titi was very much influenced by [Vito] Marcantonio from, from, and LaGuardia, from East Harlem, Italian-American men who had a vision of a larger expanse. She loved Malcolm X. Don Pedro Albizu Campos. So, and of course, Aunt Lilly exposed me to so much. So, I’m trying to say is my formative years were very Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 15 �diverse, very rich, and allowed me—I’m very blessed, man. And I would like, I like to pass that on to people, because we’re living in very testy times now, very testy times. JOE CONZO, JR.: My grandmother never shunned or ran away from any community problems. And yes, there were a lot of gang problems at the time. She took in people like Benji Melendez from the Ghetto Brothers, the president of the Ghetto Brothers, she took in people from the Savage Skulls, all these community people. So, I knew them growing up. She, she involved them in her work and gave them their jobs, gave them jobs. Benji Melendez, you know, who, who had a brigade of, of gang members, who in, you know, a couple of thousand, will tell anybody today how Evelina Antonetty walked into their gang house, pointed them out, and said, “You want a job? Go home, take a bath, shave, and come see me.” And gave him his first job. But that’s how, she—she wasn’t afraid of anybody, because she was doing something for her people, her community. ESPERANZA MARTELL: I began doing activism in The Bronx with, I guess, the, the—’cause I’m trying to really place myself, right? So, in the late, I would say like in the late ’60s. When folks were fighting for community control, bilingual education, and childcare, basically. So, folks like Evelina Antonetty was the leading person in a lot of those struggles. She did a lot of coalition work, and was part of Brown vs. [Board of Education], right? So, you know, I was young, I was in my early 20s, or late teens, and I would come and support actions. CLEO SILVERS: Evelina Antonetty was the leader of United Bronx Parents. She organized all around the South Bronx [for] better education. Now, she had a team of people that worked with her. Ellen Lurie and Kathy Goldman. And Ellen and Kathy did the research. They gave the information to Evelina. She [made it where] parents could understand it and organized around absolute 16 STEVEN PAYNE �conditions inside of the schools, inside of the classrooms—they had information about what was going on inside each classroom. It was one of the most wonderful experiences that I had with Evelina. ELBA CABRERA: The losses for me, you know, my sisters, you know, it’s been really tough. It’s, it’s been a little hard. And especially when I start talking about them. But I have such good, good memories. So yes, so, at any rate, let me, let me backtrack a little bit with Lillian and Evelina, cause it’s important. They, they were my role models. And they, they felt that I, that I could do anything, but I didn’t feel that way. You know, they really, you know, nurtured me and helped me, and I appreciate that till now and forever. So, when Evelina comes to The Bronx now, you know, she’s already, she’s an adult, and she’s very clear as to what’s to be done. So, she gets, you know, she got involved with people, especially when she went to work at the union, too. Because she also was recruiting, recruiting Puerto Rican and other Latinos to work in the industries that they serviced. And she, she was there for quite a few years. I would say something like four years. Before that she had worked in the post office as well. Yeah, during the war. And then she worked at the union. So, you know, she was pretty active in, in her thoughts, you know, because she, she really, you know, I think she was born with, with her knowledge of people and what had to be done, I really do. I don’t think people can learn that, I think it has to come within you, you know, has to be something, your passion. And she had the passion for people. CARINA MONDESIRE: Really, where a lot of the voices [for change] are going to come from are, you know, really, from, like, people like Evelina, you know, who were out here speaking up for us, to make it better. So, I, it’s, maybe I, maybe I [should] just follow in her footsteps and start talking more, you know, but it’s, I don’t know. I guess it’s, it’s like I’ve seen, you know—again, I wasn’t, I wasn’t born Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 17 �for a lot of the struggles that they had to, you know, I wasn’t around a lot of the struggles they had to deal with. So, in a way, I’m ignorant, because I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t here. And I, you know, I’m lucky enough that, like, my family, you know, for the most part, we haven’t had to have been in the situation where we’re seeing the really hard times that you can face. I mean, the pandemic also showed a lot of that to me. You know, and I, and this is when I started hearing more stories of people struggling. So, I think that like, the hope is that we continue to, I guess, grow, but I don’t know if that’s the right word that I’m looking for. But it’s like we need better, and I—for sure Evelina was on track, and my grandmother [Elba] and Lillian for what they contributed, for sure, are, you know, some of the catalysts for creating that change. And I think we definitely need to keep going, you know. It’s one of those journeys, one of those journeys that doesn’t stop, you know, it’s like we have to keep going, and there’s gonna be a lot of things that we, I guess, face that, you know, are I guess—I guess “adversity,” if that’s the word? And, I mean, I don’t want to say that it’s okay. But that’s a part of it. So, going forward hopefully it’s just better, you know. 18 STEVEN PAYNE �KINGSBRIDGE VIGNETTES BY RICHARD L. BAUM I. Home Number 3P, 225 West 232nd Street—the three-room apartment located in the Kingsbridge section of The Bronx, where I grew up with my parents and two sisters from the late 1940s into 1959, was often without heat in the winter. Cold enough that I slept wearing extra layers of clothing and heavy socks. On many winter mornings, my mother would ritually bang on the steam pipes in the vain hope that the super would see fit to raise the level of heat or repair the errant coal furnace. In 1959, after many years in 3P, we moved up, literally, into apartment 6D, a four-room apartment on the sixth and top floor, at the monthly rate of $100.12, a not inconsequential sum at that time. There had been an earlier opportunity to get a four-room apartment. Some years before, my father left a deposit with the building’s super for an apartment that had become available. Shortly thereafter, during my father’s weekly Gin Rummy card game, he mentioned his imminent move to the other players. Not long after, the super returned the deposit, stating that someone else got the apartment. This person turned out to be Mr. Rogers, an electrician, who had been one of the Gin Rummy players. Our new sixth-floor apartment allowed my parents to move out of the living room into their own bedroom. By this time, we were four souls, as my eldest sister Vilma had married two years earlier. Though Vilma missed the joy of this sunny, spacious apartment, our new living space had disabilities that 3P had not had, and Vilma escaped suffering these. The environmental conditions in this sixth-floor space were more Kingsbridge Vignettes 19 �severe than those in 3P. The new apartment was at the southeast corner of the building and overlooked a large open area that was intersected by the Broadway IRT elevated line. When we first moved in, the sound of the trains running along the track, up and down Broadway, interfered with both my studying and sleeping. After some time, I was able to develop the skill of filtering out the clickity-clack of the subway cars running along the glistening steel tracks. If a train was off schedule, however, its delay caused me to look up from whatever I was doing and anxiously wait for the sound of its approach. It was as if the world was out of balance without the sound of the train’s rhythmic passage occurring on cue. In the summer, the new apartment’s orientation, together with its open windows, allowed a crosswind partially to cool the apartment, which was excessively heated by the tarred roof directly above our apartment’s ceiling. The building’s electrical wiring was insufficient for window air conditioning, which was not yet common. Instead, we augmented the crosswind with a water-fed air conditioner that sat on a stand in the middle of the living room and cooled things a bit but added to the humidity. Despite the crosswind and the airconditioner, summer days in that apartment felt as if one were living in a broiler. The winter brought radically different conditions. Perversely, the refreshing summer crosswind was transformed, even with the windows closed, into a malevolent, howling wind that conspired with the rotten wooden window frames to cause severe freezing conditions in the apartment. It was as if there were no windows at all! Stuffing towels along the edges of the window frames seemed to have no measurable effect. On one particularly cold morning, after I had the courage to stick my head out from under my blanket, I scanned the room through the fog of my breath, and my gaze fell upon a square pane of glass. It 20 RICHARD L. BAUM �was frosted over by Jack, hanging by one corner from a wooden slat, swaying lazily in the breeze. Rather than take the chance that I might knock the pane to the street, I called my father. He casually entered the room while tucking his starched white shirt into his pants, immediately sized up the problem, cinched his belt, and slowly reached for the glass pane. As his fingers closed around the glass, the pane, as if in spite, suddenly slipped. Before he could react, it plummeted to the street six stories below, tumbling, flat-end over flat-end, into the distance. Luckily, it was about 7:15 in the morning, and only one person was on the way to work. To our relief, the pedestrian, who was on the opposite side of the street, did not react to the sound of the glass shattering on the sidewalk. II. Play On school-day afternoons, my friends and I would play in front of our building, which was sandwiched on a steep hill between Broadway on the east and Kingsbridge Avenue on the west. The girls would jump rope (sometimes double-dutch) to the rhythm of sung doggerel, or play Potsy, a variation of Hopscotch, tossing house keys into numbered rectangles chalked onto the sidewalk. The boys devoted their free time either to curb ball or to hide-and-seek. Other kids donned roller skates, consisting of four metal wheels, metal tabs, extending outward from the base of the skate, fitted onto the soles of one’s leather shoes (sneakers would not work) and tightened in place with a key. Every now and again, while we were peacefully engrossed in play, kids from Godwin Terrace, sensing an opportunity, would gather into a mob and run full tilt toward us in an attempt to disrupt our fun. Godwin Terrace was perpendicular to our street and, invariably, we spotted the growing mob and would run into the lobby of our Kingsbridge Vignettes 21 �building, locking the heavy iron and glass door behind us. There came a time when I was fed up and, as the mob galloped down Godwin Terrace towards number 225, I refused to flee, despite the entreaties of my friends cowering in the lobby. Just as my friends slammed the heavy metal door shut, the gang rolled over me, like an ocean storm wave, pummeling me with projectiles from peashooters and zip guns. I was hit in the face but stoically kept my ground, standing upright and facing my tormentors, too small to hit back effectively. III. Halloween Halloween was a particularly risky time to be on neighborhood streets. In 1952, when I was eight, I happened to have an early evening dentist appointment with Dr. Cacecci, whose office was on the northwest corner of Kingsbridge Avenue and 231st Street (in later years it became the community office for Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz). The route to the dentist, south along Kingsbridge Avenue, took me past a row of bushes, directly opposite Naples Terrace, that concealed an empty lot. In late October it was already dark at 5:00 PM at that latitude of The Bronx. The depth of the darkness was compounded since that area of the borough is in a valley formed by the Riverdale Ridge to the west and the Fordham Ridge overlooking Bailey Avenue, east of Broadway. I was alone on the avenue. As I approached the darkened lot, the bushes ominously rustling by the breeze, I was overcome by a sense of foreboding. With images of the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane haunting my thoughts, I increased my pace to get past the shadowy bushes. Forewarned too late by muffled giggling coming from behind the bushes, I was set upon by several boys armed with pastel chalk who proceeded to throw me to the ground. They held me down while they basted me from head to toe, front to back, with purple, green, red, blue, and yellow pastel chalk. Not an inch of 22 RICHARD L. BAUM �my clothing, hair, hands, or face was spared. Satisfied with their handiwork, the boys let me up. Otherwise not worse for the experience, I scurried off to a worse fate at the dentist. IV. Neighbors In about 1951, during the Korean War, a Chinese family, consisting of two parents, a daughter, and a son, moved into the neighborhood, opening a laundry a short distance west of Broadway on the north side of 232nd Street, just as the street began to rise toward Kingsbridge Avenue. I became friendly with the family’s son. On his birthday, soon after the family had moved in, his parents decided to buy him a miniature gas station he had spied in a candy store on the northern side of 231st Street, just east of Kingsbridge Avenue. I was invited to come along with the entire family on their buying expedition. The parents wanted to take the short route to the store that would take them up (i.e., south) along Godwin Terrace and then down a flight of steps to West 231st Street, rather than walking south along the busier Broadway to 231st Street and then west to the candy store. I tried to dissuade them from the Godwin Terrace route, as I was well aware that the kids on Godwin Terrace did not take kindly to outsiders. However, due to the parents’ not taking a child’s concerns seriously, they confidently led our little group along the most logical path. As we passed along Godwin Terrace, I continuously glanced left and right, on the lookout for trouble. The outbound trip turned out to be uneventful. However, the brutes that lived along our route had been alerted by the passage of our defenseless squad. While returning, our small party being distracted by the birthday toy gas station, the “Godwin Terrace Gang,” now organized, pounced. We were forced to flee towards the laundry with projectiles buzzing through the air. It was only upon entering the store that I saw my friend’s mother bleeding profusely from a cut in the fleshy part of her face just below her eye. She was lucky: a Kingsbridge Vignettes 23 �little bit higher and she might have lost that eye. With the assault continuing, I ran from the store in an attempt to get help, but not being successful, I rejoined my friends to share their fate. A few days after the assault, I returned to their store to visit. The store was dark and deserted. Sadly, the Chinese family was gone. V. School Public School 7 is the successor to Grammar School 66. Located at the northwest corner of Church Street and Weber’s Lane, today’s Kingsbridge Avenue and 232nd Street, PS 7 opened for classes on November 11, 1895. This structure was made of what appears to be, to a non-geologist such as myself, reddish-brown sandstone. There was a medieval-looking tower dominating the main entrance. When I attended the school, beginning in 1949, the school had clearly been expanded. There was an enclosed, brick bridge connecting a brick building to the old sandstone structure. The entire complex was raised above street level and accessed by twin staircases leading to two large schoolyards. The school grounds extended from Kingsbridge Avenue west to Corlear Avenue and north to 233rd Street. If one looked carefully, one could see that some doors leading into the school had the word “Girls” inscribed over it, and others were labeled “Boys.” The north yard was the boys’ yard where they lined up every school-day morning waiting for their teachers to lead them to their classrooms. The south yard, known as the girls’ yard, was where the girls lined up for classes. Only the youngest children were intermingled, boys with girls. On rainy or snowy days, we lined up in the indoor yard, the boys on one side and the girls on the other. The indoor space doubled as the hot-lunch room and always had a strong, almost nauseating, smell of oranges and tomato soup. Most children walked home for lunch, since families in which both 24 RICHARD L. BAUM �parents worked were in the minority in the neighborhood. Those few children who could not go home were doomed to eat in that odiferous atmosphere. Sometime in the 1950s the influence of our Puritan past began to wane, and boys and girls were allowed to line up together in the south yard. The north yard was reserved for the upper grades. It was a great thrill when I was finally old enough to be in the north schoolyard. I was fascinated by the large, faded, white circle painted on the north yard’s pavement, with the names of countries printed along its radii. I was instantly attracted to the name Turkey, which I was certain was a bird! To my knowledge, neither teacher nor students ever used this circle, which lay there, mute, like an ancient artifact, its function lost to the ages. Above: View looking northwest to the corner of Kingsbridge Avenue and 230th Street, a couple blocks south of the author’s apartment, 1981. From the AF705–Kingsbridge Avenue–230th St. folder, Photograph Collection, The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Kingsbridge Vignettes 25 �A fence of black, cast-iron bars stood guard around the perimeter of the school’s two concrete yards. The tip of each bar was shaped into a spike to discourage trespassers. After school and during summer, when the gates were closed, the local kids, myself included, undiscouraged by the quiet threat of the spikes, would confidently climb over the spiked fence to get into the schoolyard in order to play either basketball or stickball. The schoolyard was the site of the sole neighborhood basketball hoops. Stickball could not be played with pitching in the street because the ball would be too easily lost. In the schoolyard, we played stickball by pitching a pink Spalding —pronounced in the local vernacular as “spaldeen”—against a wall which was inscribed with a chalked rectangular strike zone as a backstop. During my earliest years at the school, I learned how to churn butter in Miss Minahan’s class, went on nature walks around the neighborhood, and listened, enthralled, to stories read by my teacher in the quiet of the cool, shady children’s library, then on Kingsbridge Avenue adjacent to St. John’s Church. Each school-day morning I would look forward to arriving at PS 7, a short walk from where I lived, because it was always warm there. After the mid-morning milk break, it was my task to collect and carry the students’ empty waxed cardboard half-pint milk cartons to the basement coal-burning furnace for incineration. The janitor always allowed me to sit on an upturned wooden milk crate placed in front of the furnace’s open door and luxuriate in the warmth of the heat radiating from the glowing orange-red stones of coal that were uniformly spread on the furnace bed. After a few short minutes I had to be on my way back to the classroom, otherwise I would be missed. By three in the afternoon, however, it was a great relief to be crossing Kingsbridge Avenue and heading eastward down the hill towards home. 26 RICHARD L. BAUM �I walked to school with Stanley and Peter. These two boys lived in my building and were my best friends. Each school morning, as we reached Kingsbridge Avenue, a half block from where we lived, we had to wait for the school crossing guard to allow us to cross. The guard, an older boy, wore a broad white belt that wound its way around his waist and diagonally across his chest, and to which was attached an official, gleaming metal badge. The crossing guard was responsible for the safety of children crossing the intersection. One autumn school morning, the raw gusts of wind swirled brittle brown leaves around our feet as the three of us approached the Kingsbridge intersection. The traffic light changed from green to red. The guard dutifully put his arms out to prevent us from crossing. Peter, a sensitive boy, became upset at having his path blocked and began to cry and scream for his mother. He turned and ran hysterically down the long hill toward Broadway, which his mother was approaching after having just left us in front of our building. Peter’s mother, with Peter in tow, walked the two blocks uphill to where Stanley, the crossing-guard, and I were standing, stunned and frozen in place at this unfathomable display. His mother, on reaching us, calmly asked me for an explanation and then, satisfied that nothing untoward had caused Peter’s upset, said goodbye and went on her way, leaving us to finish our trip. Peter later attended MIT and went on to obtain a PhD in Physics from Brown University. One of the most profound lessons I learned at PS 7 occurred on the first day of school, at the start of fifth grade, in the north schoolyard. In a moment of idleness and indiscretion, while waiting on line with the other students to be escorted to our classroom by our new teacher, Miss Scanlon, I puffed up my cheeks! Miss Scanlon took umbrage at the pair of distended organs, distorting the otherwise perfectly straight line of children, and declared that if the culprit did not reveal himself, the entire class would be kept after school. Kingsbridge Vignettes 27 �Mean-spiritedness, pettiness, group responsibility for the acts of individual members of the group, and the threat of peer revenge were the lessons of the day, distasteful lessons that I have not yet forgotten. In the sixth grade, I achieved a score on the Iowa Achievement Exam equivalent to that expected in the tenth grade in English and in the twelfth grade in Mathematics. My teacher, Mrs. Curley, surprised at this result (as was I), called me to her desk in the front of the room and charged me with cheating by copying from Richard C. This was patently absurd. Richard C. was illiterate. At dinner that night, I told my father what had happened in the childish expectation that he would be enraged and defend my honor to the death. However, without raising his head from Life Magazine, and between swallows of his evening fare, he calmly, and with then unappreciated wisdom, advised me to tell the teacher to give me the test again. Mrs. Curley declined his suggestion. At the end of the term the good teacher assuaged her guilt at making a false charge by presenting me with an award, signed by the principal, Carmela Nesi, for the student who improved the most during the school year. At home, I was about to tear up the award when my mother grabbed it from me and kept it for herself for decades. I found it among her papers after she passed away. In respect of her wishes, I have continued to preserve the award. 28 RICHARD L. BAUM �ALLERTON IN THE 1940S AND 1950S BY ROBERT WEISS The time period about which I am writing encompasses the midforties to the mid-fifties. Much of which characterized that period, for the most part, has been swept away by time, never to return.1 I. Streets Allerton Avenue was bordered on either side by perpendicular side streets bearing such names as Mace, Barnes, and Holland. I never knew how these streets were named. To the east, Allerton crossed Boston Road, a very busy road, the crossing of which required pedestrians to take their life into their hands. Walking under the elevated train tracks, heading in a westerly direction, one would encounter Bronx Park, our neighborhood’s lush, flora- and faunafilled boundary. The avenue and perpendicular side streets broke the neighborhood up into blocks. The actual size of the avenue covered an area of about 24 of these rectangular blocks. The whole thing could easily be walked in a relatively short time. Two blocks were divided in half by alleyways. Bordering either side of these dirt roads were the rear entrances of the block’s row houses, gardens, and garages. The alleys also permitted the Allerton Avenue inhabitants to take a mid-block shortcut by car or foot. For us kids, they were our country dirt roads. II. Hanging Around A well-known singing group performed a song entitled “Old Folks,” the lyrics of which paint a vivid picture of elderly people sitting on park benches, enshrouded in oversized overcoats with newspapers 1 This article is excerpted from selections of an unpublished manuscript by the author about his childhood growing up in the Allerton section of The Bronx. Readers interested in obtaining additional selections or the manuscript itself should write to the author at BRRS137@AOL.COM. Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 29 �blowing around tips of high black shoes. These lyrics captured what I would see in my neighborhood on almost any winter’s day. Wooden boxes, however, were more the seat of choice, primarily because of their portability and easy access. These boxes could be strategically positioned in front of neighborhood stores or a sunny avenue spot. The tops of these crude seats were usually covered with newspapers, providing some degree of cleanliness and protection from splinters, the titles of which included: The Daily News, The New York Post, The World Telegram and Sun, The Freiheit, The Daily Worker, The Forverts (The Jewish Forward), The Herald Tribune, The Daily Mirror, or The New York Times. In addition to newspapers, other convenient forms of printed material were drafted into service. Above: Allerton Avenue, looking west from Barnes Avenue, 1993, showing various more recent shops. Although the kosher delis and appetizing stores have disappeared, along with much of the Jewish community in the neighborhood, Allerton Avenue is still lined with stores and restaurants to this day. From the AF19–Allerton Avenue–Barnes Avenue folder, Photograph Collection, The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 30 ROBERT WEISS �These crude seat boxes usually weren’t schlepped home. Rather, they were left behind to provide another elderly person with a place to perch. III. Kosher Deli Then there was the Kosher delicatessen or deli, as it was commonly called. Such delicacies as pastrami, hot dogs, corned beef, mustard, and sauerkraut were available to be ordered by a waiter and eaten off a square table. The waiter would walk up to the table. Usually he was a gray-haired, balding, old guy. He wore a white apron with stains. The waiter was boss. He would look down at you and command, in his heavy accent, “So vot do you vant?” As he reached across the table, distributing metal eating implements, his sleeve would ride up, sometimes exposing numbers across his wrist. At that time, I never knew where he got the number tattoo. Regular hot dogs might be wrapped in two types of casings. One was real cow’s intestine and the other casings were made in a plastics factory. “Specials” were super-duper fat hot dogs. Both hot dogs and “specials” were attached to their own kind by either string or twisted extensions of the casing. This enabled the franks to be hung along with the Kosher salami on the rear wall behind the counter man. Should you decide “take out,” the accompanying deli mustard was stored in a stiff cone-shaped piece of shiny, stiff paper. To release the spicy yellow-brown mustard, the rolled-up tube was squeezed while the tube tip rested on whatever was to be covered. Sour pickles were found on all the tables, which caused the whole joint to wreak of garlic. Kosher salami seemed to contain about thirty percent meat, seventy percent fat. After eating a salami sandwich on rye with mustard, it might be stored in the body for an untold period of time. You were reminded of this by the repeated belching and acidic regurgitation during repetitive garlicky heart-burn episodes. Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 31 �A favorite side dish was something called kishke, the more sophisticated Jewish name for stuffed derma. Kishke was made by stuffing cow’s intestines with some kind of yellowish, grainy, fatty, garlickytype of substance. It was served as fried slices. The casing was eaten along with the stuffing. Again, a health department genius came up with the idea that eating cow intestines was not good for you. Consequently, most kishke factories, like the hot dog factories, replaced the animal intestine with a casing made of plastic. Before consuming the kishke, the plastic had to be peeled off and placed on the side. I am sure that at some time, in some deli somewhere, this plastic caused choking or inadvertently was used as dental floss. In addition to laws preventing the shaking of dust mops and the burning of leaves, and doing away with intestine casings, a law should have been passed stipulating a label to accompany plasticwrapped delicacies. The label would have read: “Warning! Remove the plastic ring before eating the kishke or hot dogs or you run the risk of dying.” Before the lights went out, there would be an old man in a dirty apron standing over the gasping patron making a loud official announcement: “Pay up front.” As previously mentioned, people never gave much thought about eating healthy. If you wanted to see an unhealthy, happy person, go to a Kosher deli and look at the regulars. They often tipped the scale at about 300 pounds. “Spit Puss” owned the only Jewish appetizing store on the avenue. The Legend of Spit Puss originated with the recognition of the accumulation of foamy spit at the corners of his mouth. He never seemed to object to the name. It was almost a form of homey marketing. Spit Puss’s appetizing store was about the size of a large walk-in closet. The outside of the store had windows opaque with filth. If the name of the appetizing store wasn’t written on the front, one would think that an illegal card game was going on the other side of the front wall. 32 ROBERT WEISS �Looking through the front during a hot summer day, I could see old people, the women with their house dresses and the men clutching their wife’s shopping list. The women all had raised fists grasping shopping lists, eagerly trying to push in front of the other 99 patrons. The floor creaked under the load. The place was always wall-to-wall people as the merchandise hung or fell off the rickety shelves. The shelved packages consisted of canned foods, cellophane bags, and bottled liquids. When you walked through the entrance of the store, immediately to your left was something like a counter with glass display cases. Only a limited area of about five feet was used for business transactions. Inside the display cases were such exotic delicacies as smoked sturgeon, smoked carp, lox, pickled herring in sour cream and onions, pickled herring without sour cream, just onions, jars of salmon caviar, smoked white fish, and sable. There was no doubt that the display case contained the body or body parts of dead animals. Some of the smoked fish still had their heads, sunken eyes, gills, mouths including teeth and fins. The guts were removed prior to the smoking process, as viewed through an abdominal slit. Also, occupying space behind the counter sat bulk cream cheese, something called pot cheese, butter, and farmer cheese. Except for the caviar, all others were out of package lying in pans or on clean white pieces of packaging paper. I remember the store, stinking of a pungent fishy, pickley, garlicy odor. No other store on the avenue could claim that distinct stink. The Jewish deli odor was far different from the scent of stinky feet imported from Italy. Spit Puss would yell over the counter, “Vot you vant?” Behind the counter display cases, Spit Puss marched back and forth with his belly polishing the steel molding of the counter as he fulfilled the orders shot at him from the opposite side. The orders were to Spit Puss like a starting gun to a runner. He would run from one section of the counter to the other with a “clop! clop!” sound emanating from the soles of his feet as they struck the wooden floor boards behind the counter. The sharp eyes of Spit Puss’s customers could Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 33 �clearly see what they were ordering. In heavy accents, you could hear, “Dalink, you should slice me quarter pound lox, a nice piece of carp, not the end, the middle, and I vant a small vite fish.” “Dalink, the lox you should give me: Belly, not Novi. It’s too expensive.” “Don’t give me any bleck pieces and the vite fish, not dat vun, da fet vun.” The orders were put on the scale and a price was determined. The items were then wrapped in yellowish white wrapping paper and secured with cellophane tape. They were handed across the counter or placed on top of the display case. “So how moch I owe you?” the customer would yell out. A tally was made by using a pencil, pulled from Spit Puss’s ear. The numbers were scribbled and summed up on the brown paper bag, into which the filled order was to be placed. A monetary exchange, and “Next!” Spit Puss yelled out. Sometimes, this started an all-out war. Mostly, the women would start bellowing phrases such as, “Vot are you doink, it is my toin.” “No it’s not your toin.” “I’m next!” a voice somewhere in the crowd would spring forth from the crowd. “I was here foist,” someone else would yell. A brief skirmish might ensue. In the name of fairness and to break up the log-jam, a small jury would form, providing patrons the opportunity to invest their two cents. “I tink she vus here foist,” an arbitrator would announce. The offended customer would respond with a, “I neva hoid soch a thing!” “Next!” Spit Puss would once again yell out to his audience. He was protected by this no man’s land of counter space and display cases. Spit Puss never got involved in the store wars. Everyone knew where Spit Puss’s appetizing store was located. The whole front of the store and somewhat extending outside was a stink that no other avenue store possessed. On the sidewalk, in front of the store, were these four-foot-high, brown, grungy-looking wooden barrels. One barrel contained very sour pickles, another barrel contained not-so-sour pickles, and the third barrel contained a 34 ROBERT WEISS �powerfully strong, fishy-smelling stuff. Floating in this barrel were what appeared to be rotten fish in an equally putrid looking liquid. This was the schmaltz herring barrel. The last barrel contained madjes herring. The contents of this barrel contained what looked like reddish-colored schmaltz herrings. It had the “fency” name: “Herring in wine sauce.” Eventually, the health department deemed that the outside uncovered barrels were a health hazard. It did make some sense. The fact that they were open to the public made the barrels a target for all kinds of foreign stuff. Should anything be thrown or dropped in, like bird shit, no one would have been the wiser. Spit Puss was now required, by law, to store all barreled products inside closed plastic containers inside the store. The familiar and odd aroma that diffused from the appetizing store and into the neighborhood declined significantly. This was a small price to pay for the fact that the people of our neighborhood, both consumers and just plain “sniffers,” were, once again, saved from some horrific disease. Allerton Avenue was getting safer and safer as a result of these various health regulations. Everything in the Jewish appetizing store took on its unique garlicky odor, including the people who worked there. A good friend, Dave Leher, may he rest in peace, worked all day in an appetizing store. After work, he would drop by our clubroom, of which he was a member. This was usually a pre-shower visit. He wore the same stained apron from work into our subterranean clubroom. The air was unusually close, in that the basement room had no windows. Needless to say, when Dave paid us a visit, he brought with him every possible garlicky, fishy stink that pervaded his workplace. Upon his entrance, the appetizing molecules would release themselves from Dave and diffuse into the surrounding clubroom atmosphere. This would create a great uproar punctuated by a barrage of curses such as, “Dave, get the f—k out of here.” Dave Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 35 �would stand his ground with a self-satisfied toothy grin on his face. We couldn’t decide whether to kick him above ground, rip his clothes off, or put him on a bagel with cream cheese and eat him. IV. Our Bronx Park Oasis We lived close to a New York oasis rivaled only by the forests, fields, streams, and lakes of Central Park in Manhattan. What Central Park was to Manhattan, Bronx Park was, and still is, to The Bronx. All we had to do was walk six blocks west from my apartment house to the Bronx Park perimeter. The park stretches approximately two-thirds the length of The Bronx. The northern part sits close to the borders of suburban Westchester. Southern Bronx Park dipped into what might presently be described as the more congested and industrial area of The Bronx. Most of the buildings consisted of old, pre-war apartment houses interspersed with private homes. Going back in time, the inhabitants were made up of Black, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants. Many were poor, lower-middle-, and working-class people. It could be said that Bronx Park was an emerald-green oasis that was divided into three main sections. The northernmost part is Bronx Park proper. Traveling southward, the park included the Botanical Garden, which merged with the Bronx Zoo. The Bronx Zoo had fences that defined its borders. Bronx Park proper and the Botanical Garden had no such barriers of demarcation. Each melded into the other. I could ride my bike and enter without paying a penny through Bronx Park proper and continue “freely” into the Botanical Gardens and finally into the Bronx Zoo. Within park sections, one could find small lakes, large rock outcroppings, caves, streams, a river, swamps, fields, waterfalls, forests, ball fields, playgrounds, bicycle paths, hiking paths and handball courts. Bicycle paths enabled us to gain access to everywhere. 36 ROBERT WEISS �The lakes and the surrounding parkland contained various forms of animal life. Varieties of fish included perch, eels, bass, sunfish, carp, and minnows. Amphibians included frogs and salamanders. Reptiles included varieties of snakes and turtles. Many of these beasts were caught and kept as pets. We frequently saw mammals rushing the leaves such as water rats, musk rats, plain-old rat rats, mice, moles, rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks, and finally birds, the listing of which would be too numerous. V. The Grand Finale As time moved on, values and behaviors changed frequently. These changes occurred subconsciously. It was after Buzz’s and my high school graduation, when he turned to me and said, “We are getting to be too old to do some of the things we use to do.” After all the sloppy kisses and well wishes finished, we ran home, pulled off our suit, tie, and fancy shirt and replaced them with old jeans, sneakers, and tee shirts. RoRo, the family dog, was leashed, and off to the park we went. We ended up at the bank of the Bronx River. Sitting on the shore, we spotted a muddy and rusted cement bin, the kind construction workers mix cement in. After a moment of planning, we slipped it into the river and each of us, including RoRo, gingerly climbed in. With a stick, we pushed off from shore. Slowly we drifted downstream, for the first time seeing the park from a different vantage point. Here we were, the three of us together, “Rub a dub, dub, three schmucks in a tub.” Suddenly, for some reason, only the golfball-sized brain of the dog understood. RoRo decided to abandon ship. In his enthusiasm to leap, he flipped the cement bin. While on board, a careful balance was maintained. Once the dog left, there was no more careful balance. Buzz and I became a part of the floating wood, leaves, and other debris in the river. It was easy enough to get to shore. The river was never very wide. Climbing onto shore was another matter. The bank was slippery with muddy, grey silt. By the time we reached a solid grassy area, we were soaked, Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 37 �but even worse, we were covered from head to toe with caked mud. Outfitted in our muddy attire, we walked right down the center of Allerton Avenue. It was a spectacle that captured a lot of attention: muddy me, Buzzy, and RoRo. Here we were, high school graduates, looking more like smelly rock people that appeared in an old Flash Gordon movie. It would be impossible for me to describe the expression on Lena and Mom’s face when they confronted the three of us in the street. Lena laughed. Mom, with a serious, straight face asked, “When are you kids going to grow up? You’re too old to be doing this nonsense. Look how filthy you are, and you stink!” 38 ROBERT WEISS �A TRIBUTE TO BOB GUMBS AND HARRIET MCFEETERS BY MARK NAISON I. Bob Gumbs (1939–2022) Bob Gumbs was a brilliant graphic designer and publisher who played a pioneering role in the Black Arts movement in the 1950s and early 1960s, and then 40 years later, played a central role in the creation of The Bronx African American History Project. Brought up on Lymon Place, a small street in the Morrisania section of The Bronx that played an important part in American jazz history because jazz pianists Elmo and Bertha Hope resided there and Thelonious Monk visited regularly, Bob was part of a small group of young Bronxites who sponsored jazz concerts in the borough in the middle of the 1950s to call attention to jazz as an art form of African origin. Even in later years when he moved to Harlem and became a graphic designer whose work highlighted Black history and culture, The Bronx held a special place in his heart, and when he read an article about a Fordham professor who started an oral history project with Black residents of the Patterson Houses, he contacted that professor to urge him to include Morrisania, which he called “The Harlem of The Bronx.” This began a 20-year collaboration that turned The Bronx African American History Project into one of the premier community-based oral history projects in the nation. Bob helped organize over a hundred oral history interviews, participated in scores of community tours, was responsible for landmarking several streets and parks in the Morrisania neighborhood, and collaborated on Before The Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s (Fordham University Press, 2016), which transformed the dominant narrative of Bronx history to include Black experiences and perspectives. Bob also appeared on numerous radio and teleA Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters 39 �vision shows highlighting Black contributions to Bronx history, and helped create an exhibit at The Bronx County Historical Society with that as its theme! Finally, at a time when the world honors The Bronx’s role in the creation of hip hop, Bob made sure, through his joyous but relentless activism, that the world also recognized The Bronx’s contribution to jazz from the mid ’40s through the late ’60s, not only as a place where the most important jazz artists of that era performed regularly but also where many of them lived. Bob Gumbs was one of those rare individuals who changed the way people defined themselves and interpreted their own histories. As a creative artist and community historian, he helped people see The Bronx as a site of unparalleled cultural creativity and a true melting pot for peoples of the African Diaspora. The Bronx African American History Project would not have had a fraction of its influence and historic reach without Bob Gumbs’s guidance. He will be sorely missed by family, friends, and all his collaborators in the Black Arts movement and The Bronx African American History Project. II. Harriet McFeeters (1926–2022) Harriet McFeeters was one of The Bronx’s greatest educators and a driving force behind the creation of The Bronx African American History Project. A graduate of Hunter College who lived her entire adult life in her family’s brownstone on 168th Street between Union and Prospect Avenues in the Morrisania section, Harriet was a fixture in Bronx schools for almost 50 years, serving as a teacher, principal, staff developer, and assistant district superintendent. 40 MARK NAISON �Harriet, who was as passionate about learning as she was about teaching and who was deeply committed to the children of The Bronx, left an indelible mark on everyone who encountered her. More than 300 people, most of them fellow educators, came to her 90th birthday celebration several years ago and spoke of her with reverence and affectionate humor, as Harriet was a person who commanded every room she was in. But though Harriet radiated intellect and power, she also was a kind, generous person who created a sense of community among those she worked with, and her friends represented every cultural group in The Bronx. My own connection with Harriet came in the spring of 2003 when we started The Bronx African American History Project. I was put in touch with Harriet by her brother, Jim Pruitt, former director of the Upward Bound Program, who told me that Harriet, who had recently retired, was passionately interested in Bronx African American history and would have a lot to contribute to our research. That proved to be a considerable understatement. Once she discovered what we were trying to do, Harriet literally took command of The Bronx African American History Project’s research on Morrisania, helping us recruit interview subjects, identifying important community institutions, and holding events at her home on 168th Street, where she took a particular interest in the brilliant young research assistants I hired, to whom Harriet became a surrogate grandmother. Along with Bob Gumbs, another brilliant product of the Black Morrisania community, Harriet helped recover the lost history of a Black community in The Bronx, which produced several generations of professionals in a wide number of fields and created as many varieties of popular music as any neighborhood in the United States. It was Harriet who introduced us to Valerie Capers, the great jazz pianist, educator, and composer, whose concerts and performances became a fixture for The Bronx African American History Project’s A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters 41 �staff, and who alerted us to the significance of St. Augustine Presbyterian Church and its brilliant minister Rev. Edler Hawkins, who mentored so many of the great leaders who came out of Morrisania. Until her health began to falter a few years ago, Harriet was a fixture at The Bronx African American History Project’s conferences, concerts, and interviews at Fordham, where she was as commanding a presence as she was in Bronx public schools. She also made a huge contribution to the Project via our fundraising, both through her individual donations and by encouraging others to contribute. As I write this tribute, with tears in my eyes, I will close with this final comment. Although Harriet’s degrees were in education, not history, and although she spent her life working in public schools, Harriet was as much a historian as any professor working at our most distinguished universities. When I first learned that Morrisania was the community where The Bronx African American History Project should concentrate its research, it was Harriet who told us how the community evolved, who its most important leaders were, which schools and churches we should focus on, and who we should interview. Of the more than 100 interviews we did with Morrisania residents past and present, more than half came through Harriet. Without her guidance, the Project would not have had the fraction of the influence it ultimately attained. We can learn so much from the example Harriet McFeeters set. Harriet was passionately devoted to learning about and teaching Black history. She fought hard to have it included in public school curricula and made it an integral part of her pedagogy. But she did so in a way that drew everyone around her in, insisting that Black history was everyone’s history, that learning it would uplift all who possessed that knowledge and would help people from all backgrounds better understand their American journey. That is one of the reasons why so many teachers who were Jewish, Italian, Irish, 42 MARK NAISON �and Puerto Rican joined their Black fellow educators in paying tribute to Harriet at her 90th birthday celebration. Harriet spread knowledge but she also spread love. She embodied the highest values of The Bronx and its people. She may have passed on, but her spirit lives in the tens of thousands of people she touched as an educator and in the publications and digital archive of The Bronx African American History Project, where Harriet McFeeters’s vision of community history has been brought to life. Above: Members of The Bronx African American History Project at Harriet McFeeters’s family home on East 168th Street in Morrisania, December 2003. Pictured in front row, left to right, are Michelle Tollinici, Harriet PruitMcFeeters, Joyce Tolliver, and Kevin Ross. Pictured in back row, left to right, are Bess Pruitt, Mark Naison, Claude Mangum, Bob Gumbs, Patricia Wright, and Candace Lee. Courtesy of the author. A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters 43 �ABOUT THE AUTHORS STEVEN PAYNE is Director of The Bronx County Historical Society and social historian whose interests in Bronx history span community activism; underground music and art cultures; organized labor; race, class, and gender; housing struggles, and more. He records oral histories for The Bronx African American History Project, The Bronx Latino History Project, and The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. RICHARD BAUM grew up in the Kingsbridge section of The Bronx during the 1950s and 1960s and writes about his experiences growing up in the neighborhood. ROBERT WEISS, who came of age in the Allerton neighborhood of The Bronx during the 1940s and 1950s, has authored an unpublished manuscript about his childhood in Allerton, selections of which are printed here. MARK NAISON, Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University, is the c0-founder of The Bronx African American History Project, one of the largest community-based oral history projects in the nation. Dr. Naison has authored seven books and over 300 articles on African American politics, labor history, popular culture, and education policy. �FROM THE ARCHIVES A HISTORY OF AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ IN THE BRONX FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ Editor’s Note: The below piece comes from an untitled, unpublished, and unatributed manuscript included in the David M. Carp papers on Latin Jazz in The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Slight edits have been made for style and clarity throughout and are indicated by text in [brackets].1 I. Introduction New York City is among the most ethnically diverse places in the entire world. Since it was founded, New York has served as the chief center for immigration in the country, and its population continues to grow and diversify. Without a doubt, the largest percentage of immigrants in New York speaks Spanish. In the borough of The Bronx, Latinos make up half of the population, far more than any other demographic. Latino immigrants have always blessed New York City with their culture and traditions, music and art. The story of Afro-Cuban jazz in Manhattan and The Bronx illustrates the marriage of traditional Latino customs and the native music of New York City. During the early years of the twentieth century, music in Cuba was a 1 A note at the bottom of the manuscript reads: “All information used for this ar- ticle came from interviews from the David Carp Collection, courtesy Bronx County Historical Society. The following interviews were conducted by David Carp unless otherwise noted: Mario Bauzá, 2/8/89; Mario Bauzá, 4/18/91; Willie Colón (undated); José Curbelo, 10/3/93; Graciela Pérez (interviewed by Max Salazar), 5/10/85; Joe Orange, 2/6/99; José Mangual, Jr., 11/8/98; Eddie Palmieri, 8/13/98; Frank Rivera, 6/8/97; Mark Weinstein 11/24/96.” A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 45 �way of life. Parents would teach their children the basics of Cuban music as a birthright. The people of Cuba would take up every street corner, playing congas, timbales, and bongos. Children would buy sheep skins from local markets and stretch them over drums made by hand. Cuba was music. By embracing their African roots, Cubans would distinguish their music from the rest of Latin America by making the terms “Cuban roots music” and “Afro-Cuban music” synonymous. Musicians from the most prestigious conservatories as well as working men and women who relaxed on the street with a conga or djembe—all began to embrace the sounds of Cuban son and danzon. By the 1920s and ’30s, American musical influence would begin to find its way to Cuba. Radio stations from Miami and New Orleans would start to become popular on the island. Music fans would tune into American jazz stations on short-wave radio to try and absorb the latest musical trends. Musicians and music fans would begin to collect records from the United States and remind anyone who ventured north to bring the latest jazz albums back to Cuba. Shortly after, the finest musicians from the most prestigious conservatories and orchestras would slowly [immigrate] to America’s birthplace and home for jazz, New York City. Jazz would never be the same. Cubans, or Afro-Cubans, made a huge impact on American jazz. Jazz had a huge effect on Afro-Cuban musical traditions as well. Before long, a new type of music would emerge and take New York City by storm—Latin jazz. Not exclusively drawing from Cuban musical traditions, Latin jazz would incorporate traditions from all over Latin America and would inspire [traditional] jazz bands to expand their repertoires and include more global sounds. Eventually, the scene was huge. Ballrooms and dance halls like the Palladium and [the] Savoy in Manhattan and the Hunts Point Palace and Tritons Club in The Bronx would serve as key centers for jazz acts from 46 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �Charlie Parker to Tito Puente. Latinos in The Bronx would be affected forever. Following the closing of the Palladium, the major Latin jazz scene would pick up in The Bronx. Kids on the streets would embrace Latin jazz and appreciate the African roots behind it. Bands and orchestras would spring up all over The Bronx, and the borough would soon produce some of the most prominent names of Latin jazz in all of New York City. From a couple of key figures moving from Cuba to New York in the ’30s, through the Palladium era, to Latinos setting up crude drum sets and playing along with the radio, Latin jazz remains a vital part of life for many Latin American immigrants today as well as New Yorkers and music fans. II. Afro‐Cuban Jazz Begins in Cuba: Mario Bauzá, José Curbelo, Graciela Pérez The story of Afro-Cuban jazz in New York begins in Havana. Music was everywhere in the ghettos and crowded streets of Cuba’s capital. Street vendors would line the markets with animal skins for drums, musicians would play on the street, and families would sit on their porch and jam with bongos, congas, and hand drums. Classical forms of Cuban music mixed European instruments with African drums, embracing traditions from both the African slaves and rich Europeans who inhabited the colony of Cuba since it was founded. As years developed, more variations, new instrumentation, and a finer-tuned orchestration would build on the rich foundation of Afro-Cuban traditions. Pioneers like Arsenio Rodríguez would add new elements to traditional Cuban son, like African percussion and A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 47 �syncopation. Eventually, Afro-Cuban music became the music of the people and Cubans were introduced to this tradition at an early age. This is the setting in which Mario Bauzá was raised. Bauzá, who would later become the most important figure in the fusion of Afro-Cuban and American jazz, started in Havana as a child. I tell you how everything happen. I was about five years old. My godfather used to teach the kids in my neighborhood in Cuba solfeggio. And I used to hear the kid try to sing those lesson, good intonation. And they have so much problem. So, one day I said to my godfather, “How come those kids have so much trouble with that lesson.” He say, “How do you know?” I said, “Well I think I know all those lessons.” He said, “You know lessons now?” I said, “Yeah, I think I know.” . . . He said, “I don’t want you to be an ear musician, so I’m gonna get a teacher for you.” So, he got me a teacher, I was in solfeggio for two years. And then I went to the Conservatory and . . . the first instrument they give me was the oboe. I didn’t like it. I heard the man play the clarinet, and I fell in love with the sound he produced. I said, “I would like to play that instrument.” And that’s how I become . . . a clarinet player. With Bauzá learning more and more music, his special ability became more apparent. Bauzá would excel at the Havana Conservatory and began to gain esteem from his colleagues. Soon, his teachers and fellow musicians helped him cultivate his talent. When I was a graduate, the Havana Philharmonic, they need a bass clarinet. And they approach me, I say, “Well, I’m willing to play, but somebody have to buy the instrument.” So, they sent to France for a bass clarinet. So, they brought it, they give it to me and say, “You practice, when you think you ready, let us know.” So, I 48 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �took my bass clarinet home, I start fooling around, it was the same thing, embouchure a little different and sound was kind of peculiar. When I thought I was ready, I came to one of the rehearsals . . . that’s how I (became) a bass clarinet and a clarinet player. Mario Bauzá was not the only person at this time to truly embrace his musical talents. A few years down the line a woman singer would join Bauzá’s Machito Orchestra in New York. Graciela Pérez would sing along with her brother Machito over the unique Afro-Cuban jazz sound Bauzá perfected. Graciela Pérez also began her music career at a young age in Cuba. Her father, an avid musician, would constantly have musicians to his house, and one day Graciela stayed up past her bedtime to enjoy one of them. I was born in Cuba. In Havana, el barrio Jesús María. . . . There were six of us. When I was four years old . . . there was a lot of music and (my father) bring some cantadores en la casa like (vocalist) María Teresa Vera . . . and the other kids in my house are still in bed . . . and then María Teresa Vera sees my finger doing the clave and María Teresa Vera said to my father, “You see, Graciela is going to be a singer.” Pérez’s father was reluctant, at first, to allow Graciela to sing. However, he would continue to inspire his daughter by having more and more musical guests come in and out of the Pérez home. Graciela remembers Septeto Nacional, in particular. Septeto Nacional . . . was to play because my father, the only party (that) was at my house was my mother’s birthday, and at my house was Septeto Nacional. . . . They was in my house, in my neighborhood nobody came then, you know, in that time. In my house was Nacional. As they grew up, Pérez and her brother Machito began to nurture A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 49 �her gift little by little, until she had completely been absorbed by the music. Pérez would sing everywhere she went and join several groups thanks [to] Machito’s familiarity with the local music scene. Still, her father didn’t want her to sing professionally, and Graciela would have to sneak out at nights. One night while working as a delivery man, Pérez’s father recognized the voice coming from a club across the street from where he was working. He was staying over there, and he sees me singing and everybody applauds me. “Ohh, Graciela!” And then (at the house) he don’t say nothing to my mother, to nobody. Then he was waiting when I go hiding, when I go to working and (he said), “I know Chela, she’s singing in Alai de Libre in El Prado because I heard her last night. It’s alright, she sings beautiful.” Graciela Pérez had her father’s blessing and began to truly excel as a singer free from any restrictions. She would travel to South America with Al Anacaona and eventually move to Harlem in the 1930s, where she would meet up with Bauzá and Machito to start the AfroCuban Orchestra. A third key figure in the fusion of Afro-Cuban and American jazz is José Curbelo. Curbelo, who would manage and book Afro-Cuban jazz bands, was among the top performers in New York City during the Palladium Era. Curbelo’s uniquely vibrant sounds would place him in the highest echelon of Latin jazz performers along with Machito, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez. Curbelo, the son of a musician, started as a classically trained pianist and musician in Cuba. I (was) born in Havana, Cuba (on) February 18, 1917. Pedro Menéndez was my teacher, piano teacher in Cuba. He used to be the piano player in my father’s orchestra, at one time. So, he was my private teacher in piano. . . . I went to the school of music in Cuba, to the Academy of 50 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �Music to study. And I had different teachers like in voice and harmony and whatever, you know, different types of technique, et cetera. . . . My father was a fine violinist, he played for the Philharmonic Orchestra in Cuba, first violin. And . . . he was a bandleader, he had his own orchestra where he played all the famous nightclub and supper club and casino in Cuba. . . . I’m talking (about) the late ’20s and the early ’30s. And then he play the most typical Cuban music, with the charanga music that used to be played, what they call in Cuba the “Academias.” . . . The real Cuban music at that time was charanga bands. It’s not with saxophones and trumpets. . . . Cuban music is the charanga sound—violins and flute and rhythm. That is what the real nitty-gritty of the Cuban music is. . . . And it’s really Afro-Cuban music. Because the Negro slaves that came to Cuba from Africa, they brought the rhythm. And in Cuba they put the voicings out, the melody and harmony. . . . But that was, still is, the real Cuban music should be called not salsa [but] Afro-Cuban music. Curbelo would develop into a finely trained musical genius. He began to master the curriculum of the Academy of Music and decided to enter Cuba’s prestigious Molinas Conservatory. Like his contemporary Mario Bauzá, Curbelo became fascinated with new forms of music, in particular American jazz. His understanding and love for music fueled his passion for exploration, and American jazz was exciting and fresh. Curbelo and Bauzá both became obsessed with jazz. In the ’20s I was a very young kid. But I always was a fan, and my favorite music always has been jazz. . . . I find that jazz is the most interesting music that is, as far as popular music is concerned, I love it . . . in Cuba I used to have records from Chick Webb where Mario Bauzá, A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 51 �when he came to United States, he was the first trumpet. Bauzá remembers listening to his favorite American jazz musicians on the radio in Cuba. Duke Ellington used to (broadcast) almost every night from the Cotton Club. And I used to catch that in Havana through short-wave radio. And that music was so fascinating, was so different. All different jazz— completely different. And I always said, “That’s AfricanAmerican music, that’s Africa.” The sound of the music, the way he uses harmony, he give you that color. And I was dying to get into New York. Bauzá would get a taste of the New York jazz scene shortly after, by happenstance. He got his break after going into his favorite music store in Havana and meeting bandleader Antonio Romeu. I used to go practically almost every day. I go to the music store to see what new records came and what piece come. So, when I got there, the head man said, “Mario, I want to try this clarinet that just came out from France, a Buffet Crampon, I want you (to) try.” So, I was practicing clarinet over there, you know, testing the clarinet, and Romeu was there. . . . He said, “You don’t mind play this one with me?” I said, “No.” He said, “But do you know how to transpose from clarinet to—?” I said, “Oh, yeah.” So, I played the danzon with him and he was (amazed). . . . About two weeks later he found my telephone number and called my father. He said, “I would like to take Mario to New York to record with me, my orchestra.” Bauzá went to record with Romeu and his orchestra in New York and was blown away by the live jazz musicianship he encountered. Upon seeing saxophonist Frankie Tumbaur, Bauzá’s attention shifted to a new instrument. He fell in love with the saxophone and 52 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �would take it up immediately upon returning to Cuba. The saxophone would provide an outlet for Bauzá to grow musically, and it provided more opportunities to gain exposure in the Havana music scene. Though it was hard for a dark-skinned musician to find work, Bauzá still managed to make a name for himself. He recalls the racial inequities in Havana at the time. When they heard me play . . . that’s when I got the opportunity to get a first-class job in Havana. Up to then, no, because the average musician on the big-time job over there was white. . . . That country is no different than Mississippi was . . . not much different. We had that problem, still have that problem, and gonna have that problem. . . . So, we are still fighting those problems . . . the only discrimination there in those days when I was a young kid, like you go in the interior of Havana and the colored people walk on . . . one side of the park. Don’t allowed to go on the other side with the white people. That’s the way, you know. You go in the barber shop, you had to go to the Black barber shop. But the trouble with my country is so much mixture. Because after all, how the Cuban race was produced? By Spaniard and African womans. After finally gaining acceptance in the Havana music scene, both Curbelo and Bauzá would look to the future. Each of them saw himself as a jazz musician waiting to break out and creatively explore his musicianship. Both Curbelo and Bauzá decided the only way to truly embrace their passion for music was by going to [the] hottest music spot in the world, the home of jazz, New York City. Everybody talk about Mario, Mario, Mario, clarinet player and saxophone player. So, I said, “Well the next stop gotta be the United States,” come to the Mecca of jazz . . . nothing else I can learn in Cuba. A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 53 �III. Cuba Comes to New York: The Palladium Era Once in the United States, Mario Bauzá’s first order of business was to learn yet another instrument. It was rough because when I got here it was in the heart of the Depression. And I’m lucky that I was, I met Benny Carter and he gave me advice . . . (and) there was another fella that came here on the boat with me with the Don Azpiazu Orchestra by the name of Antonio Machin. . . . So, I used to go into his house every day, to listen to rehearsals, (one day) I say, “I have no problem to play the music the way you want to. . . . I don’t play trumpet, but I think if you buy me a trumpet, I think I can do the job.” So, we went to the pawnshop and bought a cheap trumpet for fifteen bucks or something like that. So, I took it home and I start, I knew the positions and all I had to do was to get some embouchure, and that was that. Said, “Mario, I only got . . . fifteen days to recording.” I said, “Well, you ain’t got nobody. If you give me the opportunity, I think I can do it, otherwise I wouldn’t even talk about it.” So, I start practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing. So finally, we go into the recording. . . . Then I fell in love with the trumpet. And then I figured I had a better chance with the trumpet than I did with the saxophone to join one of those jazz bands. Bauzá quickly became known around jazz circles, and his rise to prominence was fast. First, Bauzá joined the Chick Webb Band, where under the wing of bandleader Chick Webb he would gain a vast knowledge of jazz. Webb opened up doors for Bauzá and introduced him to some of the biggest names in the New York jazz scene. Bauzá played with countless musicians from Webb to Cab Calloway to Ella Fitzgerald. All over New York from the Apollo to 54 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �the Savoy Ballroom, Bauzá spread his love for jazz as he collaborated with a myriad of jazz legends. In addition to the various collaborations that were taking place, another tradition of the era was the Battle of the Bands. Two bands would play the same hall or ballroom and try to show one another up. This is when Afro-Cuban rhythms really stood out, earning Afro-Cubans a reputation for their showmanship. Mario Bauzá remembers battling Benny Goodman in the late 1930s with the Chick Webb Band. The Savoy Ballroom was pack(ed) around five o’clock in the afternoon, they had to close the door. . . . Benny Goodman playe(ed) the first set . . . they close with “Big John Special.” So, Chick say, “What’choo gonna play?” I say, “How about the same number, gonna play ‘Big John Special’ . . . and close with ‘Harlem Conga?’” . . . The battle of music was through in the first set. The band was too powerful for Benny. Benny’s band was too light for that, that and especially with that crowd. When that band hit, it was something else. This period of the 1930s was essential to the birth of Latin jazz music. Pioneers like Bauzá were becoming big names and starting to influence the music scene. By adding elements from their [strong] background in Cuban music, people like Bauzá, Curbelo, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez would usher in a new form of music —Afro-Cuban jazz. In 1940, Bauzá hooked up with his brother-inlaw, Machito, and together they created Machito’s Afro-Cuban Orchestra, along with Graciela Pérez. Despite initial skepticism about the use of the name “Afro-Cuban,” Latinos, Blacks, and even whites would enjoy the music. When I started Machito Orchestra, whole lot of Puerto Rican people reject my music. They say I use bongo and that was a disgrace, that was “nanigo” music, “Negroes A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 55 �from Africa” music. They didn’t go for that. But in the new generation, Puerto Rican born in New York begin to like what I was doin’. Soon there was a huge following for the acts and the premiere venue was Manhattan’s Palladium Ballroom. The Palladium was an important institution that would operate from 1949 to 1966, delighting fans of mambo and jazz alike. Celebrities like Marlon Brando and Bob Hope as well as everyday working-class immigrants would crowd the Palladium. With unparalleled integration, it became the single most important place for Latin jazz music in New York City. The rise of the Palladium marked a turning point in New York’s music scene. Tastes were beginning to change and people were becoming more and more intrigued with the new Afro-Cuban jazz sound. Afro-Cubans were gaining acceptance and earning respect. Along with Afro-Cuban jazz, many of the Latino musicians involved collaborated with American jazz artists. Bauzá himself broke in legend Dizzy Gillespie, with whom he teamed up Machito percussionist Chano Pozo. And then I brought Dizzy into the band. . . . I went and got a hold of Dizzy: “Dizzy, bring your trumpet with a mute. I want you to play anything you want on top of that.” . . . Rhythm crazy. And he can dance. I got a videotape they made in Havana. . . . And when he came out there and dancing, dance a rumba. It’s amazin’! And Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy’s, Dizzy all right! Helluva fellow. . . . I love the guy, my son. The language barrier illustrates the connection Afro-Cubans made with American jazz musicians. Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo made terrific music and rose to the top of the jazz world in New York City, but Pozo didn’t speak a word of English. 56 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �You know the only word that Chano (could speak) to Dizzy? “Hundred dollar.” That’s all. Despite the cultural differences and language barrier, Gillespie found a niche in Latin jazz. In 1947, the two were set to perform a number called the “Afro-Cuban Drums Suite” at Carnegie Hall. The show was instrumental in bringing Latin jazz into mainstream awareness. Additionally, Gillespie’s improvisation added a whole new dimension to jazz. Gillespie’s musicianship became the groundwork for later improvisation such as bee bop and the music of greats like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. By 1950, Machito, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez were among the biggest names in all of New York. Collaborations would continue, and Charlie Parker would get into the act, teaming up with pianist Norman Granz and Bauzá on one of the best examples of Latin jazz, “The Peanut Vendor.” Charlie Parker made a very big impression on Bauzá, and that would lead to partnership on the song “Mango Mangue.” People might think that Charlie Parker play because he was high, or—no, no, no, no. He knew everything he would do in the music, and nobody told him how to do it. That was his own creation, his own mentality, his own approach about music. . . . He says, “Oh man, play anything, let me hear the arrangement.” . . . When we play the arrangement, he say, “I like that.” I said, “But it’s a vocal.” He say, “All you gotta do, when the vocal supposed to be sing, tell ’em ‘don’t sing’ and gimme the cue, I’ll play.” . . . He went through that number like nothing, back to the montuno, and . . . “Oh my goodness!” I say, “this man is a genius!” As Afro-Cuban jazz’s popularity grew, more and more great bandleaders would emerge, and great musicians would flourish in the new form. José Curbelo’s orchestra was one of the bands that A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 57 �benefited the most from the success of the other Afro-Cuban performers. Curbelo’s success came at a time when the music that was originally confined to Harlem began to spread downtown to places like the Palladium and uptown to The Bronx, again thanks to the success of Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez, but mainly because of Bauzá’s Machito Orchestra. Curbelo explains the phenomenon. That was Machito and his Afro-Cubans . . . because when you hit Broadway you did the biggest, the Broadway show, the Strand Theater, the Capitol Theater, the Paramount Theater. All the big theaters, the big ballrooms, the Roseland, the Arcadia, everything was on Broadway between 42nd, the Astor Roof, and 54th, where the Palladium was. And the first band, Black, to come from El Barrio . . . was a great accomplishment. After Machito broke through to the mainstream, Afro-Cuban jazz exploded. The 1950s saw more and more Afro-Cuban jazz bands sprouting up, and the phenomenon became insanely popular. The Palladium was at its peak as a venue, consistently packing the house to see Tito Puente or Machito. At the height of the Palladium era, people of all races, backgrounds, and ethnicities came together to enjoy the music. IV. The Late Palladium Era: Afro‐Cubans in The Bronx The exposure Afro-Cuban jazz was experiencing affected all of New York, but no borough embraced the tradition like The Bronx. Just over the river from the “Mecca of Jazz,” Harlem, The Bronx served as the next major center for music in New York. At that time, clubs and dance halls in The Bronx would attract the biggest names in Afro-Cuban jazz, mambo, and American jazz. Venues like the Hunts Point Palace, the Tritons Club, and the Rockland Palace would put The Bronx on the map as the place to see Afro-Cuban music. While the main forum was still the Palladium, many people would look no 58 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �further than The Bronx for a quality Afro-Cuban jazz experience. Bronxites would go to have a good time, get down, and listen to some amazing music from the greats. Machito, Tito Puente, José Curbelo (before becoming a manager), Tito Rodríguez, and even Charlie Parker would play at Bronx clubs during the late 1950s. New bands started to come out of the borough as a result of the developing Afro-Cuban jazz scene in The Bronx. Young Bronxites would pack the clubs to get a glimpse of their favorite bands, go home, and try to imitate their sound. Afro-Cuban records were played from every window in every Latino neighborhood in The Bronx, and a new generation of Afro-Cuban jazz lovers would emerge. This new wave of Afro-Cuban jazz buffs would see music any chance they had. Joe Orange, Bronx native and jazz trombonist who played with Herbie Mann and Eddie Palmieri, recalls students at his high school going all the way downtown to see Afro-Cuban music. When I was going to Morris (High School) there was a whole group of kids that used to go to the Palladium and they used to come to school talkin’ about, “Man, last Saturday night at the Palladium. Tito Puente did this and Tito Rodríguez—.” And I (was) kind of like, “Give me a break!” But there was a real strong interest in Latin music. Even the non-musicians, Latin dance was like a craze that was going on you know, ’57, ’58, when I was in high school. The Bronx would serve as a breeding ground for some of the freshest talent in Latin jazz and this was, in part, due to the emergence of Afro-Cuban jazz’s popularity in the latter half of the 1950s. Willie Colón, one of the foremost innovators of Latin music in the late 1960s, remembers going to the Hunts Point Palace when he was thirteen. In those days you had to have a cabaret license, so I had a A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 59 �friend who was older and he had one, (gave) me his and we kind of doctored it up and put my picture in it. . . . I grew a mustache as soon as possible, and I used to smoke cigars to try to look older, you know. I even used to put frosting on my hair sometimes, it must have been pretty pathetic but I got away with it most of the time. And yeah, we used to go to the Hunts Point Palace, which is now like an office building. . . . They would have like fourteen bands and the poster, you know, just looked like a checkerboard, it had so many faces and stuff on it. . . . And you would go in and I think you’d pay something like five dollars, and you’d be able to see twenty something orchestras. . . . There was a big boom at one time. The popularity of the local venues was apparent by the amount of talent that came onto the Afro-Cuban scene in the late 1950s and early ’60s. One of the premiere acts that came from The Bronx at the time was Eddie Palmieri and his conjunto La Perfecta. My mother arrived in New York in 1925, that’s how it all starts. . . . She came here with an uncle and an aunt, and there was another uncle and aunt here. . . . And then my father followed a year later on a boat. . . . In 1926, they married, my brother was born in ’27, and I was born in ’36 . . . on 112th Street . . . between Madison and Park. We moved from there when I was five years old, and then we went right to Kelly Street between Longwood and Intervale, known now and later as the South Bronx. Palmieri’s extended family had also immigrated to The Bronx and would introduce Eddie to music as a child. His uncle had his own traditional band and encouraged Eddie and his older brother Charlie to take up the piano but emphasized the importance of traditional Latin percussion instruments. But Eddie Palmieri was a piano player. A prodigy, Palmieri played Carnegie Hall at the age of eleven. By 60 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �thirteen he had joined up with his uncle, as a percussionist. By the time I was fifteen I sold my timbales back to my uncle, (and) went back on the piano, which I’m still playing to this day. Like Willie Colon, Palmieri also gained a lot of musical knowledge by going to shows in The Bronx. Palmieri attributes his start as a serious pianist to seeing bands and orchestras at Bronx clubs and dance halls in the 1950s. I saw Charlie Parker, and that was at the Rockland Palace. He would get gigs like that because he used to work for a promoter, that was a Black promoter called Cecil Bowen. At the Hunts Point Palace I know I saw Charlie Parker and I didn’t know who he was but I saw rubber bands and band-aids on the saxophone, alto. I saw different groups but my main interest was to try to play the piano. ’Cause I hadn’t been reading music, I was playing timbales with my uncle, folkloric band, and then it was very difficult to get back to reading. Palmieri would get his break in 1955 playing with Eddie Forrestier’s Orchestra and would even play with the legendary Tito Rodríguez for a year before starting La Perfecta in 1961. Palmieri’s orchestra was fresh and new, replacing trumpets with trombones. The innovative La Perfecta became the key attraction in Latin music during the 1960s. By assembling some of the greatest musicians in all of New York, the Bronx-based conjunto was wildly popular and virtually unrivaled for the better part of the decade. To a large degree, the success of La Perfecta was truly a group effort, and the band incorporated one of the most influential musicians in the history of New York, trombonist Barry Rogers. Described as a true “renaissance man,” Rogers came out of a Jewish community in The Bronx and was an avid car mechanic, musician, writer, and most A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 61 �prominently, a lover of all music. Mark Weinstein recalls Barry’s knack at instrumentation well beyond the trombone, including the folkloric double string guitar from Cuba known as the tres. “Barry was a great tres player. Barry was one of the better tres players in the city of New York.” Peers remember the late Barry Rogers spending hours upon hours listening to records and playing music. Rogers’s distinct trombone sound was of paramount importance in the development of Latin music from Afro-Cuban revivalist jazz to salsa. Known for his incessant writing, and re-writing, of charts, almost obsessive personality, and perfectionism, Rogers put all he had into Latin music. When asked about the influence Barry Rogers had on him, Eddie Palmieri remembers Rogers’s uniqueness. Those trombones, when they used to get into a riff behind the flute they don’t stop, and then Barry just takes off and keeps going and we just kept pushing and pushing, and that instrument is not an instrument to be able to do that with and they did it. . . . (I remember) his preparation, his musical knowledge, of all different kinds of music. With Rogers’s innovation and virtuosity with the trombone and Eddie Palmieri leading the band behind the piano, La Perfecta soon found themselves playing with the greats. Eddie Palmieri remembers the circumstances in which he played alongside legends at the Palladium. Oh, Machito, Tito Rodríguez, Tito Puente, La Perfecta dealt with each and every one one-on-one. No quarter taken. There was four sets, you did sixteen sets a week at the Palladium for 72 dollars, before taxes. . . . They had lost their liquor license and now they gave me 90 engagements, so once they give you the 90 engagements, then anybody that wants to book you out would have to 62 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �pay more and that was the deal, you know, and José Curbelo handled that pretty well. La Perfecta continued to thrive during the 1960s and played all over New York City, from the ritziest hotels to the local clubs of The Bronx. La Perfecta illustrates a rich history of music in The Bronx. While the music scene had always been big in places like Morrisania and Hunts Point, La Perfecta was one of the first real successful jazz bands to come out of The Bronx during the era. Mark Weinstein, second trombonist (with Barry Rogers) remembers playing in different clubs all over New York City. You couldn’t buy a second microphone, man! I mean the Hunts Point Palace, I don’t think they owned two microphones . . . and the trombone players would sweat, sweat blood. . . . Barry would catch the edge of the microphone by pointin’ his trombone towards (it). But because we were always playing during the montunos, the singer was in the way. . . . The Hunts Point was one of the bigger rooms, there were a couple other places. . . . The Palladium was a great room—Palladium was the best room to play, I loved the Palladium. . . . We played Birdland a couple of times, I mean then we’d have microphones. La Perfecta’s popularity soared in the ’60s. New Yorkers identified with both the jazz sound and the Latin roots. La Perfecta would draw from many musical traditions to form their unique sound. Mark Weinstein remembers The Bronx as one of the hottest spots for Afro-Cuban music. It was Cuban revivalist. I mean the amazing thing about playing with Eddie’s band was playing Latin music for people of Latino heritage, and this was basically the A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 63 �cultural revival that occurred at the Triton Club, I mean the Triton Club was the center of it . . . in The Bronx, Southern Boulevard, right next door to the Hunts Point Palace. . . . And the model of the trombone improvisation came from the way . . . the soloist would play against the trumpets. But then Barry extended that. That was the model. In 1966, La Perfecta played the Palladium for its final show. The Palladium Era had officially ended, but Latin music would continue to gain steam up in The Bronx. V. The Bronx and Latin Jazz: The 1950s, 1960s, and Beyond With the Palladium closed and other Manhattan dance halls following suit, Latin music still thrived in one place. The Bronx was now the center for Latin jazz in New York and would become a hotbed for talent. The biggest names in Latin music were coming from The Bronx because communities were raising their kids on music. The Bronx in the ’50s and ’60s was rich in musical traditions from all over Latin America, and residents would expose different types of music to one another. Vibrant neighborhoods like Hunts Point, Morrisania, and Longwood became a breeding ground for musical talent. The public schools provided instruments for students, neighbors sat on their stoops and jammed, and Latin and jazz music blared from every street corner. Frank Rivera was a resident of the Longwood community in the ’50s and ’60s and remembers the neighborhood as well as developing a love for dancing. It was real nice and everybody knew everybody in the neighborhood. . . . Some of ’em became teachers and musicians like Joe Loco, he lived in the corner by the drugstore . . . when we went to (PS) 42, that’s when they started to open the school at night and that’s when we 64 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �started to have parties and dancing. . . . At that time it was more like they call “mambo”—mambo, not salsa like they call it now. Joe Orange, a longtime resident of Morrisania, remembers hearing music all over The Bronx when he was growing up. I was always hearing it. . . . I was always around it. My brother played conga. And there were all these bands, over at PS 99 they used talent shows. . . . You know, bands in junior high and high school, there were Latin bands all around me. . . . They used to have a place up in The Bronx on Boston Road that was really a great place for jam sessions when I was a kid. I was in high school and I would go in and listen . . . right where Boston and Prospect Avenue meet, and it was down in this little basement and I would sneak in there . . . it wasn’t open for very long but it was very popular. Orange contributes the large number of musicians who came out of The Bronx to a surrounding culture that nourished young musicians and helped to develop the talents of the community residents. I think the programs in the public schools had a lot to do with it. I started in (PS) 40, most of us started in 40 or one of those junior high schools. . . . PS 99 had that afterschool community center. We used to have talent shows once a week, some great things came through those talent shows! Because of the rich cultural environment, young kids on the street would aspire for musical greatness. Latinos and African Americans would all embrace the various sounds of Latin music, thanks to the diversity of The Bronx, and lively musicians would surface all over the borough. Willie Colón was one such musician. A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 65 �The South Bronx in the ’50s . . . was exactly like a town in Puerto Rico or any other Latin American country. . . . There were domino games on the sidewalks and there were bembes, which is a group of guys playing congas . . . and we’d sing choruses and maybe some of the hit songs of the day. From that upbringing, Colón embraced both Puerto Rican and Cuban son, and became a trombonist in his own band. Mark Weinstein attributes youth interest in Latin music to the popularity of Barry Rogers. There was LeBron Brothers and there was Willie Colón, I mean both Barry and I were very, very arrogant about what was happening with the trombone. ’Cause both of us had come to Latin music from very rich trombone traditions whereas all the kids who were comin’ up had learned to play trombone by listening to Barry essentially. Regardless of who influenced him, Willie Colón was a young upstart trombonist and he teamed up with a beautiful voice, [a] soñero named Héctor Lavoe. The two delighted fans with songs like trombone anthem with a Panamanian sound “La Murga,” or with the album El Malo, named after the persona Colón would embrace as a rough kid from The Bronx. Ushering the newly dubbed “boogaloo” style, El Malo and Lavoe would travel all over the world with their exciting, trombone-driven sound until Lavoe unfortunately fell victim to heroin and began showing up late for gigs and acting out. In 1973, Colón was forced to fire Lavoe, ending their six-year partnership. Colón would continue to write and record music, and his name became synonymous with salsa music. Colón has written socially conscious songs like “El General” and “Si La Ves,” has sold over 30 66 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ �million records worldwide, and has amassed fifteen gold and five platinum records since his humble beginning in The Bronx. VI. One Last Word From the start in Cuba, through the coalescence with jazz in Manhattan, to the popularization in The Bronx, Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz has become one of the most important cultural phenomena in the history of New York. The various musical forms from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, and other Caribbean nations illustrate the diversity of the city. The story of Afro-Cuban music’s popularity in New York is a microcosm of all the wonderful things that make the city uniquely diverse. The way this music was embraced by native New Yorkers as well as [more recent] immigrants is an amazing tribute to the capital of the world, New York. Musical geniuses brought their incredibly well-trained and knowledgeable background to New York, where they mixed with the native population of jazz musicians, and history was made. The importance of The Bronx in all of this cannot be emphasized enough. It’s because of the borough’s love for Latin music that other musical forms could thrive and be introduced. The music served as a familiar reminder that The Bronx was a place for all people from all over the world. Though many, like Mario Bauzá, detest the term “Latin jazz,” the music itself tells the important story of two cultures merging to form great art. A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 67 �BRONX BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE YEAR AWARD Presented to Bronx business leaders who support the humanities and the arts. 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 Ram Gupta, Chatam 2000 Management Co., Inc. Michael Max Knobbe, BronxNet 1999 Richard Legnini, Bronx Ad Group 1998 John Calvelli, Bronx Zoo James H. Alston, McCalls 1997 Bronxwood Funeral Home Steve Baktidy, S&T Auto Body 1996 Shop 1995 Matthew Engel, Langsam Property Services Greg Gonzalez, Manhattan Parking Group Steve Tisso, Teddy Nissan Joseph Kelleher, Hutchinson Metro Center Adam Green, Rocking the Boat Anthony Mormile, Hudson Valley Bank Lenny Caro, Bronx Chamber of Commerce Katherine Gleeson, Goldman Sachs Sandra Erickson, Erickson Real Estate Cecil P. Joseph, McDonald’s Frank Cassano, New Bronx Chamber of Commerce Dart Westphal, Norwood News James J. Houlihan, HoulihanParnes David Greco, Mike’s Deli & Caterers Peter Madonia, Madonia Brothers Bakery 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 John Reilly, Fordham-Bedford Housing Corp. Mario Procida, Procida Construction Corp. Veronica M. White, NYC Housing Partnership Dr. Spencer Foreman, Montefiore Medical Center Monroe Lovinger, CPA Gil and Jerry Beautus, Walton Press William O’Meara, Greentree Restaurant Larry Barazzoto, Soundview Discount Muffler Gail McMillan, Con Edison Susan E. Goldy, ERA Susan Goldy & Co. Mike Nuñez, Bronx Venture Group Mark Engel, Langsam Property Services Carlos Nazario, Metro Beer & Soda Joel Fishman, Nehring Brother Realty Co. Michael Durso, Dollar Dry Dock Savings Bank Elias Karmon, EMK Enterprises �REVIEWS Cope, Suzanne. Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2022. 304 pp. ISBN: 9781641604529. $27.99. Suzanne Cope’s expertly written, extensively researched book chronicles the Civil Rights Movement in the United States through the lived experiences of two unacknowledged Black women champions of the movement, Aylene Quin and Cleo Silvers. Cope is a writer, professor, narrative journalist, and scholar. She earned a PhD in Adult Learning from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, where she is a “food studies scholar with a focus on food as a tool for social and political change.” Cope’s work illuminates the stories of “unsung leaders . . . mainly women of color who are left out of history,” individuals who “elevate women’s work” through their uses of food as a “political tool.” Cope does a magnificent job at presenting this historical survey of the Civil Rights Movement in an easy-to-read manner that metaphorically transplants the reader to a stool at Aylene Quin’s food counter. In 22 short and detailed chapters, Power Hungry recounts the dual narratives of Aylene Quin’s community organizing and voter rights’ activism out of her McComb, Mississippi restaurant and tavern South of the Border during the Freedom Summer of 1964, on the one hand, and Cleo Silvers’s organizing in the South Bronx, first through VISTA1 and then with the Black Panther Party shortly after the start of the New York Chapter’s Children’s Free Breakfast Program in 1969, on the other. Cope argues that the two womens’ significance to the Civil Rights Movement is not reflected accurate1 VISTA: Volunteers in Service to America, part of President Johnson’s AntiPoverty program and predecesser to today’s AmeriCorps. Cope, Power Hungry 69 �ly in the historical record, in which such activity as cooking, if included at all, occurs as footnotes. As a tribute to the scholars whose research has inspired and informed her own work, Cope provides the bibliographical citations preceding her prologue. Aylene Quin, or “Mama Quin” as she was affectionately known in her community of McComb, Mississippi, was a pivotal figure in the local and state-wide civil rights and voter registration efforts. Power Hungry vividly recounts Mama Quin’s story through the events of 1961 leading up to the Freedom Summer of 1964 and beyond. The book captures Mama Quin’s personal sacrifices in preparing and delivering meals to activists jailed, in one case for attempting to stage a sit-in at the McComb Woolworth’s food counter and in another for participating in a high school walk-out and march to the County Hall. Although a visible staple of the community, Mama Quin even took part in the latter as a show of support, alongside her daughter Jacqueline. Cope details the many other civil rights actions supported by Mama Quin, like holding secret meetings of the local Black middle-class and business people at her restaurant (who would arrive in the back of delivery trucks) and feeding civil rights workers, such as the SNCC Freedom Riders, and the community at large. 2 Cope describes Mama Quin’s efforts at feeding civil rights activists and the wider community as “community building, done around the kitchen tables rather than on the front lines.” As Cope emphasizes, Mama Quin’s independent “financial means,” as a self-employed business owner, gave her the ability to support the movement without direct consequence to her employment status (which was not the case with many others). Cope introduces Cleo Silvers in chapter 4. She affably details Cleo’s beginnings in her hometown of Philadelphia while growing up enjoying Sunday meals at her grandmother’s house. The experience of social gatherings around meals influenced Cleo’s love for what 2 SNCC: The Student Non-Violenct Coordinating Committee, one of the leading student groups of the Civil Rights Movement. 70 PASTOR CRESPO, JR. �Cope describes as “culinary diplomacy.” Cope expounds on the myriad ways that Cleo hosted and prepared gatherings around food at her apartment in the South Bronx (and elsewhere over the years), not only to garner financial support for the Black Panther Party but as a mentoring tool for what Cleo called her “Black and Brown cadre.” Cope cogently presents the lessons that Aylene Quin and Cleo Silvers provide as the “power of community organizing” and “the power of food to help create community among activists and local people.” At the same time, Cope takes care to ensure that the reader understands Cleo’s accomplishments in the contexts of navigating patriarchy within the Black Panther Party, on the one hand, and enduring extensive FBI efforts to “neutralize and destroy” the Party’s leaders and the brutality of local law enforcement, on the other. As Cope eloquently posits, “This is the insidious nature of white supremacy, particularly when it infiltrates every nook and cranny of governmental power.” Drawing attention to Mama Quin’s context in Mississippi, Cope warns also of the terroristic lengths white supremacy is willing to go to maintain a racist system—drive-by shootings, drive-by bombings, firebombs, and economic sanctions. Power Hun‐ gry is a testament to the strength and perseverance of countless unknown, unrecognized, and uncredited African American women leaders and their use of varied foodways to build and feed the community. This is an absolutely captivating book that is a must read. Pastor Crespo, Jr. The Bronx, New York Cope, Power Hungry 71 �Sammartino, Annemarie. Freedomland: Co‐Op City and The Story of New York. Ithaca/London: Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2022. 320 pp. ISBN: 9781501716430. $32.95. As its title suggests, Freedomland: Co‐Op City and the Story of New York frames the history of Co-op City, the largest cooperative housing development in the U.S., as a microcosm of wider twentiethcentury New York City history. Co-Op City was constructed at the end of the 1960s in the far reaches of the northeast Bronx, carved out of swampland along the Hutchinson River. The title derives from the ill-fated amusement park, Freedomland, which during the first half of the 1960s occupied a portion of the land on which Co-Op City was built. At the same time, the title evokes the promise of Co-Op City: a place where affordable housing and a cohesive community life would be available to residents without necessitating a move to the suburbs. Here was a place where working- and middle-class New Yorkers could flourish and share in the American dream of home-own-ership. The cooperative housing movement in New York City, of which Coop City was a part, emerged in the early twentieth century among progressive Jewish and other trade unionists. Tenants, or “cooperators,” would purchase equity shares in an apartment upon move-in and would receive the amount back, plus interest, when vacating the apartment. Early cooperative housing in New Yorkwith pronounced leftwing influence such as the Allerton Coops in The Bronx had some of the first racially integrated housing in New York City. Other cooperatives had a less than stellar record in this regard, and this is a part of the story of Co-op City as well. Co-Op City was built by the United Housing Foundation (UHF), a nonmarket housing corporation known for cooperative projects like 72 ROGER MCCORMACK �the Amalgamated Housing Co-operative in The Bronx, opened in 1927, and Rochdale Village in Queens, opened in 1963. Co-op City, whose first apartments opened in 1968, provided middle-income housing at a time when many middle-class New Yorkers had decamped for the suburbs. All of these UHF developments served as crucibles for the inexorable demographic and economic changes buffeting New York City in the second half of the twentieth century —not least because in the late 1960s the UHF was mandated by the state to conform to non-discriminatory housing policies. Racial integration was not without tension in these developments, particularly as the original goals of the cooperative movement lost their luster amid rising crime and the racialized perception among many that an influx of Blacks and Puerto Ricans to Co-Op City heralded the demise of the neighborhood in the late 1970s and 1980s. According to Sammartino, however, Co-Op City never succumbed to New York’s vituperative racial politics to the same extent as Rochdale Village did, with the latter coming apart over busing and integration in the 1970s. UHF initially stressed a homogenously middle-class community at Co-op City and refused to jettison the middle-income requirement to appeal to more Blacks and Latinos, who were on average employed in jobs that paid them less for comparable work done by whites and experienced higher rates of unemployment. The approach of UHF created tension with prominent city agencies and Mayor Lindsay’s administration, which advocated—at least on paper—various policies to uplift Black and Latino populations in the 1960s. According to Sammartino, the common socio-economic level of Co-Op City nourished racial integration, subduing racial tension and rancor at a time when such tensions were high elsewhere in New York. Sammartino argues for Co-Op City’s unusual role within New York City: problems found in the rest of the city, though perceptible in Co-Op City, were diminished by the middle-class character of the development and the ideology of the “cooperators” or residents of Co-Op City, stressing, Sammartino, Freedomland 73 �as it did, shared ownership and the diminution of the profit motive in real estate. Other critics of Co-Op City at the time drew attention to its “Towers in the park” model. Towering residential skyscrapers, these critics argued, contributed to urban alienation and malaise. In this telling, Co-Op City would never be able to achieve a spontaneous community. Architectural and urban planners—chief among them Jane Jacobs—celebrated the community life of old, smaller-scale neighborhoods and were quick to denounce massive urban development projects like Co-Op City. Sammartino argues that this portrayal of Co-Op City was false, citing a number of anecdotes from her own life and from other residents highlighting the robustness of community in Co-Op City. Community life was, in fact, celebrated by people of varying ethnicities and backgrounds, most notably Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who moved to Co-Op City as a young girl. Here, Sammartino probably overstates her thesis. While her anecdotes of vibrant community life in Co-Op City are nonetheless true, the development to this day remains isolated from the rest of The Bronx and New York City (many plans for a subway line to Co-Op City have proved abortive), making the development convenient primarily for automobile drivers. Sammartino masterfully describes the ethos of the cooperative’s founders, the United Housing Foundation, and their utopian aims for cooperative housing, desiring nothing less than a wholesale reevaluation of how New Yorkers envisioned housing. She is also unsparing in detailing the corruption of the Mitchell-Lama program (and probably the UHF) and the enormous cost overruns during the construction of Co-Op City, overruns eventually paid for by increases in “carrying charges,” or rents, by the development’s residents. The increase in carrying charges and resentment towards the UHF’s 74 ROGER MCCORMACK �perceived corruption culminated in the rent strike of 1975–1976, the longest and largest so far in U.S. history. Led by the bombastic labor organizer Charles Rosen—dubbed by the Village Voice “the Lenin of the North Bronx”—Co-Op City cooperators eventually gained board control of Co-Op City but remained bedeviled by the same financial problems the UHF faced. The strike destroyed the UHF: it would never build another cooperative housing complex after the imbroglios involved in the construction and maintenance of Co-Op City. Here, Sammartino uses the example of Co-Op City to chart the history of New York’s social welfare apparatus, where robust funding was provided for education, housing, and a variety of other urban programs in the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1970s, this model was in desuetude. Instead, the ruling governing philosophy became “neoliberalism,” which Sammartino defines as market-based solutions to urban problems, and austerity, encapsulated by the federal government’s refusal to bail out New York City during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s (and symbolized by the New York Post’s famous headline, “Ford to New York—Drop Dead!”). Co-Op City, though, founded just prior to the high-water point of these policies in New York City, offered a rival conception of housing, with its roots in the social welfare model of the 1930s and ’40s and the tenant activism of the Lower East Side and The Bronx of this same era. Initially a safe-haven for Jews leaving once prosperous ethnic neighborhoods in the West Bronx, Co-Op City was widely seen as part of The Bronx and yet distinct from older neighborhoods not only because of its far-flung location and towering skyscrapers but also because of the absence of crime and urban blight. Complicating narratives of white flight and twentieth-century urban histories, Sammartino argues against Co-Op City as having a decisive destructive impact on the west Bronx. According to a standard narrative, Co-Op City exacerbated white flight from west Bronx neighborhoods and was one of the main contributors to urban decay in the borough. But, Professor Sammartino notes, many Jewish Sammartino, Freedomland 75 �residents of the Grand Concourse had already left for the suburbs of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut before the construction of Co-Op City was finished in 1968. In her view, Co-Op City simply reinforced a social trend already underway. The book also benefits from Sammartino’s measured appraisal of the reasons for the Jewish exodus from the west Bronx. Many previously storied west Bronx neighborhoods had begun to experience decreases in city services and overall building maintenance, and new arrivals to Co-Op City cited actual crimes and a perceived decline in their old neighborhoods. For a time, Co-Op City was seen as an escape from such blight. Unlike many other scholars of this period, however, Sammartino is similarly careful to weigh the largely manufactured fears of white residents of an increase in crime in Co-Op City in the 1980s and 1990s. Sammartino concludes her commendable volume with a paean to Co-Op City’s multicultural identity, even as demographics in the development have shifted, and to its continued existence as a middle-class neighborhood for newer populations of Bronxites. Roger McCormack The Bronx, New York 76 ROGER MCCORMACK �SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND GIFTS OF THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY The below items, and additional publications and gifts, are available for purchase in-person at any of our locations; by mail, through writing to The Bronx County Historical Society at 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, NY 10467; or online, at www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/store. Life in The Bronx Series Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Birth of The Bronx: 1609–1900 $30.00 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx in the Innocent Years: $25.00 1890–1925 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, $25.00 1935–1965 Lloyd Ultan, The Beautiful Bronx: 1920–1950 $25.00 Life in The Bronx, four-volume set $90.00 History of The Bronx Nicholas DiBrino, History of Morris Park Racecourse $10.00 Allan S. Gilbert (ed.), Digging The Bronx $25.00 G. Hermalyn et al., A Historical Sketch of The Bronx, 2nd edition $15.00 G. Hermalyn and Thomas X. Casey, Bronx Views $12.00 G. Hermalyn and Anthony Greene, Yankee Stadium: 1923–2008 $22.00 G. Hermalyn and Robert Kornfeld, Landmarks of The Bronx $15.00 Kathleen A. McAuley, Westchester Town: Bronx Beginnings $15.00 Kathleen A. McAuley and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: Then and Now $22.00 John McNamara, History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names (encyclopedia), 3rd edition $30.00 John McNamara, McNamara’s Old Bronx $20.00 Rubio P. Mendez, A History of the Riverdale Yacht Club $20.00 Michael Miller, Theatres of The Bronx $5.00 �Lloyd Ultan, Blacks in the Colonial Bronx: A Documentary History $18.00 Lloyd Ultan, The Bronx in the Frontier Era $20.00 Lloyd Ultan, Legacy of the Revolution $15.00 Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough: A History of The Bronx $28.00 George Zoebelein, The Bronx: A Struggle for County Government $15.00 History of New York City Elizabeth Beirne, The Greater New York Centennial $20.00 Peter Derrick, Tunneling to the Future $20.00 G. Hermalyn, Morris High School and the Creation of the New York City Public High School System $34.00 George Lankevich, New York City: A Short History $20.00 Lawrence Stelter, By the El: Third Avenue and Its El at Mid‐Century $20.00 History of New York State G. 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Hermalyn, The Study and Writing of History $20.00 Samuel Hopkins, West Farms Local History Curriculum Guide $15.00 Alonso Serrano, Latin Bicentennial, comic book $5.00 The Bronx County Historical Society Journal Back issues of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 1963–2021, are available for purchase for $15.00 an issue, excepting special issues like the Centennial of The Bronx issue, available for purchase for $20.00. Research Center Dominick Caldiero et al., Newspaper Titles of The Bronx $15.00 G. Hermalyn, Publications and Other Media of The Bronx County Historical Society Since 1955 $5.00 G. Hermalyn et al., The Bronx in Print $10.00 G. Hermalyn et al., Education and Culture in The Bronx $20.00 G. Hermalyn and Laura Tosi, Genealogy of The Bronx $10.00 Kathleen A. McAuley, A Guide to the Collections of The Bronx County Archives $20.00 Laura Tosi et al., Ethnic Groups in The Bronx $20.00 Laura Tosi et al., Index to The Sheet Map Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $20.00 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Elected Public Officials of The Bronx Since 1898 $15.00 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Atlas Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $10.00 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Microfilm/Microfiche Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society $10.00 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Media Collection $10.00 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Video Collection $10.00 �Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, a documentary on DVD $20.00 Elizabeth Beirne, Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham $20.00 Kathleen A. McAuley, Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham $15.00 Special Interest Peter Derrick and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx Cookbook $15.00 Remember The Bronx, Bronx history calendar for 2023 $12.00 Gifts The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $7.95 The Bronx Afghan, washable cotton blanket, 50" x 65" $50.00 The Bronx River Parkway, c. 1915, poster, 20.5" x 29.5" $20.00 Edgar Allan Poe coffee mug The Grand Concourse, 1892, poster, 25" x 12" $7.95 $20.00 The Bronx Comfort gift set, includes The Bronx Cookbook, the Bronx Afghan, and The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $60.00 �THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESIDENTS Jacqueline Kutner, 1993– Robert R. Hall, 1986–1993 Raymond F. Crapo, 1976–1986 Robert Farkas, 1976 Lloyd Ultan, 1971–1976 Ronald Schliessman, 1969–1971 Roger Arcara 1967–1969 Thomas J. Mullins, 1964–1967 George J. Fluhr, 1963–1964 Ray D. Kelly, 1963 Fred E. J. Kracke, 1960–1963 Joseph Duffy, 1958–1960 Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff, 1955–1958 LIFE MEMBERS Dr. Elizabeth Beirne Louis H. Blumegarten Adolfo Carrión Sam Chermin James Conroy Dorothy Curran John Dillon Dan Eisenstein Mark Engel Natalie and Robert Esnard Ken Fisher Fordham Hill Owner’s Co. Katherine Gleeson Greg Gonzalez David Greco Robert Hall Daniel Hauben Dr. Gary Hermalyn James Houlihan Marsha Horenstein Dr. Reintraut E. Jonsson Cecil P. Joseph Joseph Kelleher Mark Lampell Douglas Lazarus Maralyn May Kathleen A. McAuley Steven A. Ostrow Alan Parisse Jane Mead Peter Joel Podgor Steve Baktidy Marilyn and Morris Sopher Elizabeth Stone Henry G. Stroobants Susan Tane Lloyd Ultan Van Courtlandt Village CC Jac Zadrima HONORARY MEMBERS Robert Abrams Jorge L. Batista Michael Benedetto Lorraine Cortez-Vazquez Gloria Davis Hector Diaz Ruben Díaz, Jr. Jeffrey Dinowitz Eliot Engel Carmen Fariña Dr. Joseph A. Fernandez Fernando Ferrer George Friedman Robert T. Johnson Stephen Kaufman Jeff Klein Joel I. Klein G. Oliver Koppell Jeffrey Korman Lawrence Levine Harold O. Levy Michael M. Lippman James J. Periconi Ricardo Oquendo Nathan Quinoñes Roberto Ramírez Carl E. Heastie Lee Holtzman Gustavo Rivera Joel Rivera José Rivera Ninfa Segarra José E. Serrano Stanley Simon Thomas Sobol ��THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 3309 Bainbridge Avenue The Bronx, New York 10467 718-881-8900 www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org The publication of this volume was made possible, in part, through the generous support of The National Realty Club Foundation. The Bronx County Historical Society is supported through funds and services provided by: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Historic House Trust of New York City New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation The Bronx Delegation of the New York City Council The Office of the President of the Borough of The Bronx The Bronx Delegation of the New York State Assembly The Bronx Delegation of the New York State Senate The H. W. Wilson Foundation The Astor Fund The Isabelle Fund The Elbaum Fund The Ultan Fund The Lucius N. Littauer Foundation The S. Hermalyn Institute The New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund, Inc. The Susan Tane Foundation The New York Public Library The New York Community Trust The National Realty Club Foundation �THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL Volume LIX Numbers 1–2 Spring/Fall 2022 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx County Historical Society Journal Description An account of the resource The repository for digital editions of the full run of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 1962–present, the premier publication on Bronx history and culture. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx County Historical Society Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Bronx County Historical Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966–present Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource © The Bronx County Historical Society Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Periodical Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BCHSJOUR Periodical Text Any textual data included in the document The Bronx County Historical Society JOURNAL The Bronx County Historical Society JOURNAL Volume LIX Numbers 1–2 Spring/Fall 2022 EDITORIAL BOARD G. Hermalyn Elizabeth Beirne Jacqueline Kutner Patrick Logan Steven Payne Gil Walton Roger Wines © 2022 by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. The Bronx County Historical Society Journal is published by The Bronx County Historical Society, Inc. All correspondence should be addressed to 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, New York, 10467. Articles appearing in this Journal are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Periodical Source Index, and Recent Scholarship Online. The Journal and its editors disclaim responsibility for statements made by the contributors. ISSN 0007-2249 Articles in The Bronx County Historical Journal can also be found on EBSCO host research databases and on our website under “Collections.” www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY TRUSTEES Jacqueline Kutner, President Patrick Logan, Treasurer Steve Baktidy, Trustee Mei Sei Fong, Trustee Joel Podgor, Trustee Jac Zadrima, Trustee Hon. Eric Adams Mayor of New York City Hon. Sue Donaghue Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation Dr. G. Hermalyn, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Steven Payne, Director Teresa Brown, Chief Administrative Officer Clarence Addo-Yobo, Museum of Bronx History Senior Interpreter Pastor Crespo, Jr., Research Librarian Roger McCormack, Director of Education Chris Padilla, Bookstore Manager Valerie Blain, Archival Intern Kathleen A. McCauley, Curator Emerita Dr. Mark Naison, Bronx African American History Project Consultant Anthony Morante, Vice President Gil Walton, Secretary Robert Esnard, Trustee Dr. G. Hermalyn, Trustee Lloyd Ultan, Trustee EX-OFFICIO Hon. Vanessa Gibson Bronx Borough President Hon. Laurie Cumbo Commissioner, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs STAFF ii Volume LIX Numbers 1–2 Spring/Fall 2022 CONTENTS A Note from the Editors.......................................................................................................v ARTICLES Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty..................................................1 Edited and introduction by Steven Payne Kingsbridge Vignettes............................................................................................................19 By Richard Baum Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s........................................................................................29 By Robert Weiss A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters.............................................39 By Mark Naison About the Authors..................................................................................................................44 FROM THE ARCHIVES Afro-Cuban Jazz in The Bronx......................................................................................45 From the David M. Carp Papers on Latin Jazz REVIEWS Cope, Power Hungry (2022)................................................................................................69 By Pastor Crespo, Jr. Sammartino, Freedomland (2022)...................................................................................72 By Roger McCormack iii ENDOWED FUNDS The Bronx County Historical Society encourages the esta- blishment of named endowment funds. Funds may be created to support the many different pro- grams of The Society or may be established for restricted use. The funds appear permanently on the financial records of the Historical Society in recognition of their ongoing su- pport of its work. Named endowment funds are established for a gift of $5000 or more and once begun, additional con- tributions may be made at any time. The following funds currently Astor Fund Bingham Fund Elbaum Fund Fernandez Fund General Board Fund Gordon Fund Gouverneur Morris Fund Halpern Memorial Fund support our work: Hermalyn Institute Fund Isabelle Fund Khan Fund Lampell Fund Library Fund Parisse Fund Sander Fund Ultan Fund For further details, contact: Mr. Joel Podgor, CPA Treasurer Emeritus 718-881-8900 A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS Volume 59 of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal represents a milestone in the history of this storied periodical, which has been published continuously since 1964. In many respects, the COVID-19 pandemic hit The Bronx County Historical Society with a ven- geance. Our two historic house museums were closed for the ma- jority of 2020 and the entirety of 2021 and only started to reopen on a limited basis in 2022. Revenue from museum visits, tours, and in- person purchases all experienced a sharp decline and are only beginning to bounce back. Yet on other important fronts, particularly those of collection acquistion, archival processing, and oral history recording, The Society’s activities picked up as never before. The Society recorded over 100 oral histories during these pandemic years across The Bronx African American History Project, The Bronx Latino History Project, and The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. The Society acquired 43 new archival collec- tions during this same period, and over 100 of the 163 collections currently housed in The Bronx County Archives were fully processed and inventoried and are now available to researchers and the wider public. This volume of our Journal contains some of the first fruits of these pandemic labors, including an edited oral history collection from the Bronx Latino History Project around the life and legacy of Dr. Evelina Antonetty (1910–1984), a pivotal Bronx human rights activist, and an archival manuscript of a lengthy but ground- breaking study of Afro-Cuban jazz from the David M. Carp papers on Latin jazz in The Bronx County Archives. This volume, while longer than many previous volumes, is meant to highlight the recent work of The Society while motioning towards our ever-expanding role as a world-class center of community-based historical docu- mentation and scholarship. v ISABELLE HERMALYN BOOK AWARD IN NEW YORK URBAN HISTORY Presented annually to an author of a distinguished work in New York urban history. 2022 Annotated Primary Source 2009 Documents, vol. 2, Roger McCormack 2008 2021 BASEBALL The New York Game, Anthony Morante 2020 Hudson’s River, G. Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, The 2007 Bronx County Historical Society 2019 Concrete Jungle, Niles Eldrige 2006 and Sidney Horenstein, University of California Press 2018 Digging The Bronx, Alan 2005 Gilbert, The Bronx County Historical Society 2004 2017 The New York Botanical Garden, Gregory Long and Todd A. Forest, Abrams Books 2003 2016 The Bronx Artist Documentary Project, Judith C. Lane and 2002 Daniel Hauben 2015 An Irrepressible Conflict, 2001 Jennifer A. Lemak et al., SUNY Press 2014 Supreme City, Donald Miller, 2000 Simon & Schuster 2013 Humans of New York, 1999 Brandon Stanton, St. Martin's Press 2012 The Impeachment of Governor 1998 Salzer, Matthew L. Lifflander, SUNY Press 1997 2011 Freedomland, Robert McLaughlin and Frank Adamo, Arcadia Publishers 2010 Band of Union, Gerard T. Manahatta, Eric W. Sanderson, Abrams Books The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway, Herbert Harwood, Indiana University Press Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University Press Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning, Jonathan Mahler, Ferrar, Strauss & Giroux The Devil’s Own Work, Barnett Schecter, Walker & Co. The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto, Doubleday Capital City, Thomas Kessner, Simon & Schuster Tunneling to the Future, Peter Derrick, NYU Press The Monied Metropolis, Sven Beckert, Cambridge University Press Bronx Accent, Lloyd Ultan and Barbara Unger, Rutgers Press The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn, John Manbeck and Zella Jones American Metropolis, George Lankevich, NYU Press Elected Public Officials of The Bronx Since 1898, Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx County Historical Society Koppel, Da Capa Press TITI: AN ORAL HISTORY OF DR. EVELINA ANTONETTY EDITED AND INTRODUCTION BY STEVEN PAYNE I. Introduction Dr. Evelina Antonetty (1922–1984), a proud Bronxite, was among the most prolific human rights activists of the twentieth century. Over the course of more than four decades of activism, Evelina struggled for an end to racial and national discrimination against Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and other racially and nationally oppressed peoples; quality, affordable housing for all; culturally relevant and bilingual public education; full employment with livable wages, especially for youth; robust funding for after-school programs and community centers; healthcare equity; peace and disarmament; and much more. On the occasion of Evelina’s cen- tenary, as part of “Evelina 100,” a week-long celebration of her life and legacy, on Friday, September 16, 2022, The Bronx County Historical Society screened TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty, an edited oral history collection, at Pregones/Puero Rican Travelling Theater in The Bronx. Section 2 of this article provides a brief biography of Evelina to orient readers who might not be as familiar with her work. Section 3 contains a list of narrators included in the edited oral history collection, together with references to the full-length oral histories recorded by the Historical Society for the Bronx Latino History Project and the Bronx African American History Project. Section 4 reproduces the transcript of TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty in its entirety. Although representing only a sampling of the significant oral his- tory collecting that is taking place around Evelina’s life and legacy, the selections transcribed in the final section of this article demonstrate the multi-layered, complex, emotionally laden, and politically significant impact Evelina continues to have among Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 1 family members, friends, and the wider Bronx community. Although physically absent, Evelina continues to shape the way that The Bronx and its people struggle for and think about a more livable, sustainable present and future. II. Brief Biography of Dr. Evelina Antonetty Dr. Evelina Antonetty (née López) was born on September 19, 1922 in Salinas, Puerto Rico.1 Her mother, Eva Cruz, raised Evelina and her two younger sisters, Lillian and Elba. Evelina’s aunt and uncle, Vi- centa and Enrique Godreau, had relocated to New York City in 1923. A decade later, in 1933, they sent for Evelina to live with them. Evelina left Puerto Rico soon after her youngest sister Elba was born, on September 10, 1933. After arriving in New York on El Ponce, Evelina lived with her aunt and uncle in El Barrio until her mother and sisters could join her. This they did two years later, in 1935, and the entire family lived together in successive East Harlem apart- ments. Vicenta and Enrique—known to most simply as “Godreau”— had already established extensive ties within the community by the time Evelina’s family arrived. Vicenta was a political activist with close ties to the LaGuardia and Roosevelt administrations. Godreau was a music promoter and numbers runner who regularly socialized with the likes of Machito and Tito Puente. Those close to Evelina while she was growing up remember her as actively engaged in transforming the world and her place within it 1 For longer biographical treatments of Dr. Evelina Antonetty, some more reliable than others, see, for example, Nicholasa Mohr, All for the Better (Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn, 1993); “Guide to the Records of United Bronx Parents, Inc 1966–1989 (Bulk 1970s–1983),” Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, CUNY, 2005 https://centropr-archive.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/faids/ubpf.html; Nélida Pé- rez, “Antonetty, Evelina López (1922–1984),” pp. 48–49 in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006); and Nydia Edgecombe, “‘The Hell Lady from the Bronx’ Evelina López Antonetty, el activismo comunitario de una puertorriqueña en la diáspora del Sur del Bronx” (PhD dissertation, El Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y El Caribe, 2018). 2 STEVEN PAYNE from an early age. One of her friends from childhood, Dolores Roque, remembers a pageant that she and Evelina organized in ele- mentary school in Puerto Rico. It was the largest pageant in the school’s history up to that point.2 In New York City, at the age of sixteen, Evelina joined the Young Communist League, the youth wing of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a formidable force in the 1940s in progressive, anti-racist, labor, and anti-colonial struggles. Evelina was speaking at mass meetings citywide by the time she was in her late teens. Her youngest sister Elba, for instance, remembers Evelina speaking at a large American Labor Party rally in New York City during the early 1940s in support of the U.S.’s anti-fascist war efforts (as World War II was explicitly characterized at the time). During this rally, as a testament to her ability and reputation, a young Evelina was on the rostrum with Jesús Colón (1901–1974), one of the leading Puerto Rican activists of the day and more than 20 years Evelina’s senior. Evelina also worked very closely with Vito Marcantonio, a progressive Italian politician from East Harlem who built close ties with both Italian and Puerto Rican communities in the neighborhood and around New York. Evelina became a postal worker for a period of time during the war, and it was during these years that she met and married her first husband and moved to Jackson Avenue in The Bronx. Evelina gave birth to her first daughter, Lorraine, in 1943. For a number of years after the war, Evelina worked for District 65 of the Retail, Whole- sale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), one of the more militant unions that fell under close scrutiny during the McCarthy era.3 Evelina recruited for the local among Puerto Ricans and other people of color who were still discriminated against in many unions 2 See Section 4 below for the transcription of this story from Dolores Roque’s oral history recorded for the Bronx Latino History Project. 3 District 65 of the RWDSU eventually merged with the United Auto Workers (UAW) and became a local affiliated with that union. For a historical overview of this union, see “Guide to the United Automobile Workers of America, District 65 Records WAG.006,” Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, NYU, 2019, https://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/ html/tamwag/wag_006/bioghist.html; and Minna P. Ziskind, “Labor Conflict in the Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 3 at the time. By this point, Evelina’s mother, two sisters, and some of her extended family had also moved to The Bronx, settling nearby on Concord Avenue. During these years, Evelina divorced her first husband and married Donato Antonetty, with whom she had her second daughter, Anita, and her only son Donald. Navigating the public school system with her three children and other parents in the neighborhood convinced Evelina that education advocacy was an urgent and much needed area of struggle, both in The Bronx and citywide. With community and family members, Evelina founded an organi- zation called United Bronx Parents (UBP) in 1965 in order to train Bronx parents to advocate for their children’s language, cultural, and nourishment needs. Additionally, UBP organized bilingual adult education classes, served as a community center, offered a variety of employment and job training opportunities to youth, became in- volved in local struggles for healthcare justice, and fought for the people of The Bronx in a variety of other ways. UBP quickly grew to become one of New York City’s leading community organi- zations. By the early 1970s, UBP was distributing two meals a day to thousands of children in all five boroughs for the city’s new free summer breakfast and lunch program. Both through UBP and independently Evelina was deeply engaged in her community. After youth involvement in gangs experienced an uptick in The Bronx during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Evelina began approaching known gang leaders, befriending them, arranging for their employment, and supporting them throughout their rehabilitation. Additionally, Evelina and other community members drew attention to the abhorrent healthcare being provided at Lincoln Hospital and other “ghetto hospitals” (as they were called at the time). She and others, including groups like the Young Lords and Suburbs: Organizing Retail in Metropolitan New York, 1954–1958,” International Labor and Working‐Class History 64 (2003): 55–79. 4 STEVEN PAYNE the Black Panthers, advocated for community control of these healthcare facilities.4 Evelina also supported Dr. Helen Rodríguez- Trías (1929–2001) and others at Lincoln Hospital who opposed the appointment of Dr. Antonio Silva, a doctor with a known history of mass sterilization of women in Puerto Rico.5 When the South Bronx and its people were depicted in racist and dehumanizing ways in films like Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981), Evelina hit the streets in protest, always sticking up for her community.6 In short, Evelina was a loving sister, mother, and aunt, a fierce fighter, a mentor to many, an incredibly active and brilliant human being who loved The Bronx, its people, and all oppressed peoples worldwide. III. Oral History Narrators TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty contains selections from the oral histories of the following narrators, alphabetized by last name, all of whom have recorded at least one oral history for either the Bronx Latino History Project or the Bronx African American History Project. References to these oral histories are pro- vided to facilitate further research about the life and legacy of Dr. Evelina Antonetty. ANITA ANTONETTY is the daughter of Evelina and Donato Anto- 4 For recent treatments of struggles for community control of healthcare facilities in The Bronx, see Rachel Pagones, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (London: Brevis, 2021), especially chs. 1 and 3; and Johanna Fernández, The Young Lords: A Radical History (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 271–304. 5 For a general history of mass sterlization campaigns among Puerto Ricans, see Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 142–161. A biography of Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías can be found in Joyce Wilcox, “The Face of Women’s Health: Helen Rodriguez Trias,” American Journal of Public Health (2002): 566–569. 6 See box 1, folder 3, “Committee Against Fort Apache,” The Gelvin Stevenson papers on Arson and Housing Abandonment, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 5 netty.7 DONALD ANTONETTY is the son of Evelina and Donato Antonetty.8 ELBA CABRERA is the youngest sister of Evelina.9 JOE CONZO, JR. is the grandson of Evelina and the son of Lorraine Montenegro, who was the oldest daughter of Evelina.10 CARINA MONDESIRE is the daughter of Paul Mondesire, the grand- daughter of Elba Cabrera, and the great niece of Evelina.11 PAUL MONDESIRE is the younger son of Elba Cabrera and a nephew of Evelina.12 ANTONIO MONDESÍRE-CABRERA is the older son of Elba Cabrera and a nephew of Evelina.13 7 “Oral History of Anita and Donald Antonetty,” April 13, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 8 “Oral History of Anita and Donald Antonetty.” 9 “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 1,” November 16, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 2,” November 30, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 3,” December 6, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 4,” December 14, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 5,” December 22, 2021; “Oral History of Elba Cabrera, Part 6,” December 28, 2021; interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 10 “Oral History of Joe Conzo, Jr.,” May 9, 2006, interviewed by Mark Naison, The Bronx African American History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 11 “Oral History of Carina Mondesire,” December 14, 2021, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 12 “Oral History of Paul Mondesire, Part 1,” February 1, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 13 “Oral History of Babá Antonio Mondesire-Cabrera, Part 1,” June 16, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne; “Oral History of Babá Antonio Mondesire-Cabrera, Part 2,” September 22, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne and Pastor Crespo, Jr., The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical 6 STEVEN PAYNE DOLORES ROQUE is a childhood friend of Evelina who went to elementary school with her in Puerto Rico.14 CLEO SILVERS is a community and labor organizer who was men- tored by Evelina as a young activist in the South Bronx in the late 1960s and early 1970s.15 VIVIAN VÁSQUEZ IRIZARRY is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who frequented UBP when she was growing up.16 IV. Transcript of TITI: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty The transcribed oral history collection below is organized into three sections: 1. Evelina’s Life, which includes selected narrations of different aspects of Evelina’s life, from early childhood through adulthood; 2. Evelina’s Struggles, comprised of selected narrations of activist struggles Evelina engaged in from the 1940s until her passing in 1984, with pride of place falling to UBP; and 3. Evelina’s Legacies, which contains selected narrations of the many legacies left behind in Evelina’s wake—from a passion for education to gang rehabilitation to mentoring and inspiring generations of community activists, family members, and Bronxites in general. Society Research Library. 14 “Oral History of Dolores Roque,” February 11, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 15 “Oral History of Cleo Silvers, Part 1,” February 21, 2007; “Oral History of Cleo Silvers, Part 2,” March 12, 2007; interviewed by Mark Naison, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 16 “Oral History of Vivian Vásquez Irizarry,” February 18, 2022, interviewed by Steven Payne, The Bronx Latino History Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 7 1. Evelina’s Life ELBA CABRERA: Well, I came to this country in 1935. My sister Evelina had—I was born, I was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. And the day I was born, Evelina left to come to New York. She actually saw me— she saw my mother giving birth to me. And she said it was the hardest thing for her to leave, to leave her new baby sister. But my aunt [Vicenta Godreau], who had come to New York from Puerto Rico in 1923, had sent for her. And so, she was leaving. And that was actually September 10, 1933 that Evelina came to this country. And she was with my aunt. She landed in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, I think it was. And the boat was the, El Ponce. That was the name of the boat—boat or ship. When, when Evelina came, she went to live at 117th Street, in East Harlem. And it was, I think, off Fifth Avenue, I think. Because, you know, this is all what I’ve heard, you know. I wasn’t around. And so anyway, two years later, my aunt sent for us, sent for me and my mom and Lillian. And we came on the same ship and landed in Brooklyn as well. And we went to live with my aunt, and this was extended family living in Spanish Harlem. ANITA ANTONETTY: Well, how my mother [Evelina Antonetty] and my father [Donato Antonetty] ended up in The Bronx: well, my mother, when, when she came to this country, she lived in El Barrio in Harlem, East Harlem, New York, with her aunt, and then I believe what she told us was that when she, she got married to her first husband, she, they moved to The Bronx. That seemed to be the place people were going, a lot of people were coming to the Bronx, so they were in the South Bronx, Jackson Avenue. So, and then after she divorced her first husband, she and my, my sister Lorraine, were still there in Jackson Avenue. And her mother and her two sisters followed her to the, to The Bronx. That’s Elba 8 STEVEN PAYNE and Lillian. And they lived on Concord Avenue, which was a block away from Jackson Avenue. My father came later, I think, around ’55 or so, came to New York. And, and his family also had come to, some of them had already come to New York—my aunt Santos and my other aunt Margo, came, came to New York. Santos lived in the same building, Jackson Avenue. Margo lived in Concord as well. So, we had, we had, we had family all around us. There was other friends also that lived [in] Union Avenue: Tini, Carmen. Carmen Muñoz was godmother to Donny. My, my godmother, Celia Avilés, at the time, lived in, in Jackson Avenue, 625 Jackson, [inaudible], too. So, it was a real family neighborhood, you know, besides being blood relatives, we were close to everybody. It was a very mixed neighborhood. It was, you know, Puerto Ricans, African Americans that came from the South. There were others: Irish; Jewish, mostly from, from Russia; and Chinese. There were Chinese people that lived in the neighborhood, too. So, it was a very mixed neighborhood, very working-class neighborhood. PAUL MONDESIRE: So, the anchor of our family was Titi—everybody called her “Titi.” That would be Dr. Evelina Antonetty. Titi and her family, when I was really, really, really young, they lived, I think it was there on Jackson Avenue. The address I’m remembering: 625 Jackson Avenue. But we used to go visit them all the time. We used to visit Aunt Lilly a lot. She and, she and my grandmother lived in the then new Bridge Apartments, there at 111 Wadsworth, in, you know, technically that’s Man-, Washington Heights. The Bridge Apartments at that time were brand, brand new. They, this was before they kind of turned into a sewer, you know, because that, that turned into a very harsh neighborhood. But Aunt Lilly moved out of there before then. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 9 But, so, we would visit Titi and Aunt Lilly a lot. Lorraine and her kids. I mean, well, Titi was kind of the, she was the fulcrum. So, everybody went to Titi’s house, no matter what. Right? So, you know, holidays were spent going to Titi’s a lot. DOLORES ROQUE: Let me tell you: one time I went to get together, and we tried to make a pageant. And we made a pageant. And I say, “You know what? We’re gonna have Alma.” Alma was a girl, she was very nice, cute, but she had a cross-eye, and was cross-eyed. Her mother was separating from her father. But Titi and me, we decided to make the pageant. And I made the pageant. So, this man, he was a big man with money, like Alma’s father. They worked in the, in the corporation that then built [inaudible]. And this guy came over to me, and he says, “How much money do you need to make my daughter the queen?” The ticket was two cents —two cents, the ticket! Just [to] buy the stuff for the pageant, and, you know, for the—. So, and then we say, “No, we want to have —Alma will be the president.” And I said [to Titi], “You’re gonna be the, the princess.” So, we made the pageant, okay—the teacher doesn't know anything about it. We’re doing everything behind the teacher’s back. But it happened so that was the biggest event the school has, okay? Titi was the princess, and we made Alma the queen. That was Evelina and me in school, okay? They had a garden. And there we had a, they had a teacher. Mostly for the boys. For teaching gardening and stuff like that. And Titi and me went to see how they seed, plant the tomatoes, just to see. We don’t want to do it, but they don’t allow girls. It was only for the boys. We had to do something else. And Titi and me were there looking to see. And then I said, “I can do it.” Titi said, “I can do it.” 10 STEVEN PAYNE 2. Evelina’s Struggles ELBA CABRERA: This [pointing to a photograph] was during World War Two. We used to have rallies for the war effort, and Evelina was one of the main speakers [for an American Labor Party rally] with Jesús Colón, and two other women. And I have a cute story about that. I was, I was about, I don’t know, maybe seven, eight years old. And I was in the audience with Lillian, with my sister Lillian, and all of a sudden, the rains came. And I had this, they had given me like a costume with crepe paper, color, and the rains came, and all this dye came all over me. And I started crying out for Evelina. We used to call her “Titi.” I said, “Titi!” And, and Lillian says, “You can’t, she can’t come down, just stay with me.” But I’ll never forget that day. Above: Dr. Evelina Antonetty, 1980, Frank Espada, photographer, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquisition made possible through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 11 PAUL MONDESIRE: I think the most important thing to recall about those years was Titi’s attitude was not by any means necessary. It was by every means necessary, okay? She worked with city, city administrations. She worked with folks that had less than savory reputations in certain places, because that’s what you had to do. But her personal integrity on this was unquestioned. Like I said, she wouldn’t mess around with those SEBCO [South East Bronx Community Organization] people, and they wouldn’t mess around with her. Think about, think about that. The mob wouldn’t f—k with Titi. The mob would not f—k with Titi. And yeah, I said it just like that. Yeah, that’s the kind of powerful person that she was. When she started United Bronx Parents [in 1965], it was first United Bronx Parents, as the, as the, you know, education advocacy organization. Then she started the daycare center, and the daycare center grew into, you know, ultimately serving, you know, all kinds of populations, you know, the, you know, folks that were, you know, recovering from drugs. And later on, when Lorraine was running the organization, she got into helping, you know, creating the women’s shelter. I don’t know as much about the details there. ANITA ANTONETTY: Besides being at Bank Street, after school, we were in United Bronx Parents. And, and since my mother’s con- sultations moved out of the house, we had to learn how to answer the phone properly. Take messages, all of that. And then in, in, in the office, we, if there was an event going on, and flyers were being run off, we, and we needed to collate material, it was all done by hand, machines, at the time, to do it. So, we were put to work. And we also learned how to sit at the switchboard and transfer calls and all of that. DONALD ANTONETTY: And Elba was the, the office manager. 12 STEVEN PAYNE ANITA ANTONETTY: The office manager. DONALD ANTONETTY: She was a drill sergeant. ANITA ANTONETTY: She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t take anything from anybody. But we had, we had the run of the place pretty much. But we were in the middle of everything. DONALD ANTONETTY: But we were always expected to work. Always. Matter of fact, my father used to tell us, you know, since this is, you know, since it’s family-run, you’re expected to do more than any- body who was an employee there. Okay. Okay. Always. Always. ANITA ANTONETTY: [Our father] was integral to the operation. DONALD ANTONETTY: He used to translate all the documents into Spanish—like from Spanish to English, or mostly English to Spanish. So, all the, all the materials for the parents organizing, organizing, he would translate it. We always put out everything in English and Spanish. ANITA ANTONETTY: And by hand because it was two dictionaries and two thesauruses, and then just going back and forth. He would spend, spend nights doing that. And then if anything broke, he was fixing it. The machines broke, he would fix them. If, if something had, shelves had to be built, he was building them. But what was good about him is that he was working with people, and especially younger people, and showing them how to do: this is how you measure, this is how you cut, this is how you put it together, and all of that. Estella Rodríguez was the fiscal officer for the organization. She was a good friend. Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 13 DONALD ANTONETTY: She knew where every penny was. ANITA ANTONETTY: She made sure every penny was accounted for. Because in those days, you had to, because otherwise they’d shut you down in a minute. And I, I remember, she, one day her outrage, because they said, you know, they wanted all of the records. The next day, like nine o’clock in the morning, outraged that it was, anything would be wrong, but she made sure everything was right. Every payroll was met. Never, never missed the payroll. DONALD ANTONETTY: They had a great relationship with the banks, a great relationship with the banks. VIVIAN VÁSQUEZ IRIZARRY: Well, the main community center that we were a part of was United Bronx Parents. So, I remember when we were young, we would go to St. Mary’s Park, and, you know, swim in the swimming pool at certain times of the year, but our, my, our main place was UBP. UBP—and, and for a little bit, St. Margaret’s, but not so much—UBP was a place where my sister, my oldest sister, worked year-round. And I worked there as a summer youth employment. But even going before that, you know—and I had not made this link until long afterwards—was that UBP provided free lunch, free breakfast and lunch. And so there were times during the summer where my mother would say, “Okay, go over there and go to 1-, PS 130. And get your lunch and your breakfast, you know, and bring, take—.” So, there were five of us. So, the five of us would go and, and get our sandwiches and our lunch. And you know, it was really great. And, you know, at that time, I don’t think I knew where that was coming from. But then eventually, you know, as I worked for the Summer Youth Employment Program, I think I worked for UBP, summer, maybe three years. And, and you know, we worked, we cleaned up the park and we, we went on trips, and it was the first 14 STEVEN PAYNE time I think I went to Coney Island. You know, we were exposed to different places throughout the city. We had what I’ll call counseling sessions. At that time, they were called “rap sessions,” you know, where the older employees at UBP, the, the counselors would sit us down and talk to us about what was going on in our lives and, you know, build relationships with us so that I guess we could feel safe. I feel like that was important, you know, looking back, going to a safe place every day in the summer, you know, making friends, having fun, being engaged in, in fun activities, was, was important, was really important to me. DONALD ANTONETTY: But also, when they, you know, they, there was some mass sterilization program going on in Puerto Rico. The one heading that program, when he left there, he went to be the director of Lincoln Hospital. Keep up the “good” work. So, there was a lot of protest about that, a lot organizing about that. ANITA ANTONETTY: And then the stereotypes from Hollywood, so —that’s Fort Apache. That was a big deal, too. We were in the street every single day, every single day. DONALD ANTONETTY: It was the filming crew. One time we saw Paul Newman downtown. We chased him, saying, “Stop the racist movie!” 3. Evelina’s Legacies ANTONIO MONDESIRE-CABRERA: And Titi and Aunt Lilly, through embracing education—education is a universal, when we start understanding other people’s cultures, history, you get past all this stuff. Titi was very much influenced by [Vito] Marcantonio from, from, and LaGuardia, from East Harlem, Italian-American men who had a vision of a larger expanse. She loved Malcolm X. Don Pedro Albizu Campos. So, and of course, Aunt Lilly exposed me to so much. So, I’m trying to say is my formative years were very Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 15 diverse, very rich, and allowed me—I’m very blessed, man. And I would like, I like to pass that on to people, because we’re living in very testy times now, very testy times. JOE CONZO, JR.: My grandmother never shunned or ran away from any community problems. And yes, there were a lot of gang problems at the time. She took in people like Benji Melendez from the Ghetto Brothers, the president of the Ghetto Brothers, she took in people from the Savage Skulls, all these community people. So, I knew them growing up. She, she involved them in her work and gave them their jobs, gave them jobs. Benji Melendez, you know, who, who had a brigade of, of gang members, who in, you know, a couple of thousand, will tell anybody today how Evelina Antonetty walked into their gang house, pointed them out, and said, “You want a job? Go home, take a bath, shave, and come see me.” And gave him his first job. But that’s how, she—she wasn’t afraid of anybody, because she was doing something for her people, her community. ESPERANZA MARTELL: I began doing activism in The Bronx with, I guess, the, the—’cause I’m trying to really place myself, right? So, in the late, I would say like in the late ’60s. When folks were fighting for community control, bilingual education, and childcare, basically. So, folks like Evelina Antonetty was the leading person in a lot of those struggles. She did a lot of coalition work, and was part of Brown vs. [Board of Education], right? So, you know, I was young, I was in my early 20s, or late teens, and I would come and support actions. CLEO SILVERS: Evelina Antonetty was the leader of United Bronx Parents. She organized all around the South Bronx [for] better education. Now, she had a team of people that worked with her. Ellen Lurie and Kathy Goldman. And Ellen and Kathy did the research. They gave the information to Evelina. She [made it where] parents could understand it and organized around absolute 16 STEVEN PAYNE conditions inside of the schools, inside of the classrooms—they had information about what was going on inside each classroom. It was one of the most wonderful experiences that I had with Evelina. ELBA CABRERA: The losses for me, you know, my sisters, you know, it’s been really tough. It’s, it’s been a little hard. And especially when I start talking about them. But I have such good, good memories. So yes, so, at any rate, let me, let me backtrack a little bit with Lillian and Evelina, cause it’s important. They, they were my role models. And they, they felt that I, that I could do anything, but I didn’t feel that way. You know, they really, you know, nurtured me and helped me, and I appreciate that till now and forever. So, when Evelina comes to The Bronx now, you know, she’s already, she’s an adult, and she’s very clear as to what’s to be done. So, she gets, you know, she got involved with people, especially when she went to work at the union, too. Because she also was recruiting, recruiting Puerto Rican and other Latinos to work in the industries that they serviced. And she, she was there for quite a few years. I would say something like four years. Before that she had worked in the post office as well. Yeah, during the war. And then she worked at the union. So, you know, she was pretty active in, in her thoughts, you know, because she, she really, you know, I think she was born with, with her knowledge of people and what had to be done, I really do. I don’t think people can learn that, I think it has to come within you, you know, has to be something, your passion. And she had the passion for people. CARINA MONDESIRE: Really, where a lot of the voices [for change] are going to come from are, you know, really, from, like, people like Evelina, you know, who were out here speaking up for us, to make it better. So, I, it’s, maybe I, maybe I [should] just follow in her footsteps and start talking more, you know, but it’s, I don’t know. I guess it’s, it’s like I’ve seen, you know—again, I wasn’t, I wasn’t born Titi: An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty 17 for a lot of the struggles that they had to, you know, I wasn’t around a lot of the struggles they had to deal with. So, in a way, I’m ignorant, because I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t here. And I, you know, I’m lucky enough that, like, my family, you know, for the most part, we haven’t had to have been in the situation where we’re seeing the really hard times that you can face. I mean, the pandemic also showed a lot of that to me. You know, and I, and this is when I started hearing more stories of people struggling. So, I think that like, the hope is that we continue to, I guess, grow, but I don’t know if that’s the right word that I’m looking for. But it’s like we need better, and I—for sure Evelina was on track, and my grandmother [Elba] and Lillian for what they contributed, for sure, are, you know, some of the catalysts for creating that change. And I think we definitely need to keep going, you know. It’s one of those journeys, one of those journeys that doesn’t stop, you know, it’s like we have to keep going, and there’s gonna be a lot of things that we, I guess, face that, you know, are I guess—I guess “adversity,” if that’s the word? And, I mean, I don’t want to say that it’s okay. But that’s a part of it. So, going forward hopefully it’s just better, you know. 18 STEVEN PAYNE KINGSBRIDGE VIGNETTES BY RICHARD L. BAUM I. Home Number 3P, 225 West 232nd Street—the three-room apartment located in the Kingsbridge section of The Bronx, where I grew up with my parents and two sisters from the late 1940s into 1959, was often without heat in the winter. Cold enough that I slept wearing extra layers of clothing and heavy socks. On many winter mornings, my mother would ritually bang on the steam pipes in the vain hope that the super would see fit to raise the level of heat or repair the errant coal furnace. In 1959, after many years in 3P, we moved up, literally, into apartment 6D, a four-room apartment on the sixth and top floor, at the monthly rate of $100.12, a not inconsequential sum at that time. There had been an earlier opportunity to get a four-room apartment. Some years before, my father left a deposit with the building’s super for an apartment that had become available. Shortly thereafter, during my father’s weekly Gin Rummy card game, he mentioned his imminent move to the other players. Not long after, the super returned the deposit, stating that someone else got the apartment. This person turned out to be Mr. Rogers, an electrician, who had been one of the Gin Rummy players. Our new sixth-floor apartment allowed my parents to move out of the living room into their own bedroom. By this time, we were four souls, as my eldest sister Vilma had married two years earlier. Though Vilma missed the joy of this sunny, spacious apartment, our new living space had disabilities that 3P had not had, and Vilma escaped suffering these. The environmental conditions in this sixth-floor space were more Kingsbridge Vignettes 19 severe than those in 3P. The new apartment was at the southeast corner of the building and overlooked a large open area that was intersected by the Broadway IRT elevated line. When we first moved in, the sound of the trains running along the track, up and down Broadway, interfered with both my studying and sleeping. After some time, I was able to develop the skill of filtering out the clickity-clack of the subway cars running along the glistening steel tracks. If a train was off schedule, however, its delay caused me to look up from whatever I was doing and anxiously wait for the sound of its approach. It was as if the world was out of balance without the sound of the train’s rhythmic passage occurring on cue. In the summer, the new apartment’s orientation, together with its open windows, allowed a crosswind partially to cool the apartment, which was excessively heated by the tarred roof directly above our apartment’s ceiling. The building’s electrical wiring was insufficient for window air conditioning, which was not yet common. Instead, we augmented the crosswind with a water-fed air conditioner that sat on a stand in the middle of the living room and cooled things a bit but added to the humidity. Despite the crosswind and the air- conditioner, summer days in that apartment felt as if one were living in a broiler. The winter brought radically different conditions. Perversely, the refreshing summer crosswind was transformed, even with the win- dows closed, into a malevolent, howling wind that conspired with the rotten wooden window frames to cause severe freezing con- ditions in the apartment. It was as if there were no windows at all! Stuffing towels along the edges of the window frames seemed to have no measurable effect. On one particularly cold morning, after I had the courage to stick my head out from under my blanket, I scanned the room through the fog of my breath, and my gaze fell upon a square pane of glass. It 20 RICHARD L. BAUM was frosted over by Jack, hanging by one corner from a wooden slat, swaying lazily in the breeze. Rather than take the chance that I might knock the pane to the street, I called my father. He casually entered the room while tucking his starched white shirt into his pants, immediately sized up the problem, cinched his belt, and slowly reached for the glass pane. As his fingers closed around the glass, the pane, as if in spite, suddenly slipped. Before he could react, it plummeted to the street six stories below, tumbling, flat-end over flat-end, into the distance. Luckily, it was about 7:15 in the morning, and only one person was on the way to work. To our relief, the pedestrian, who was on the opposite side of the street, did not react to the sound of the glass shattering on the sidewalk. II. Play On school-day afternoons, my friends and I would play in front of our building, which was sandwiched on a steep hill between Broadway on the east and Kingsbridge Avenue on the west. The girls would jump rope (sometimes double-dutch) to the rhythm of sung doggerel, or play Potsy, a variation of Hopscotch, tossing house keys into numbered rectangles chalked onto the sidewalk. The boys devoted their free time either to curb ball or to hide-and-seek. Other kids donned roller skates, consisting of four metal wheels, metal tabs, extending outward from the base of the skate, fitted onto the soles of one’s leather shoes (sneakers would not work) and tightened in place with a key. Every now and again, while we were peacefully engrossed in play, kids from Godwin Terrace, sensing an opportunity, would gather into a mob and run full tilt toward us in an attempt to disrupt our fun. Godwin Terrace was perpendicular to our street and, invariably, we spotted the growing mob and would run into the lobby of our Kingsbridge Vignettes 21 building, locking the heavy iron and glass door behind us. There came a time when I was fed up and, as the mob galloped down Godwin Terrace towards number 225, I refused to flee, despite the entreaties of my friends cowering in the lobby. Just as my friends slammed the heavy metal door shut, the gang rolled over me, like an ocean storm wave, pummeling me with projectiles from peashooters and zip guns. I was hit in the face but stoically kept my ground, standing upright and facing my tormentors, too small to hit back effectively. III. Halloween Halloween was a particularly risky time to be on neighborhood streets. In 1952, when I was eight, I happened to have an early evening dentist appointment with Dr. Cacecci, whose office was on the northwest corner of Kingsbridge Avenue and 231st Street (in later years it became the community office for Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz). The route to the dentist, south along Kingsbridge Avenue, took me past a row of bushes, directly opposite Naples Terrace, that concealed an empty lot. In late October it was already dark at 5:00 PM at that latitude of The Bronx. The depth of the darkness was compounded since that area of the borough is in a valley formed by the Riverdale Ridge to the west and the Fordham Ridge overlooking Bailey Avenue, east of Broadway. I was alone on the avenue. As I approached the darkened lot, the bushes ominously rustling by the breeze, I was overcome by a sense of foreboding. With images of the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane haunting my thoughts, I increased my pace to get past the shadowy bushes. Forewarned too late by muffled giggling coming from behind the bushes, I was set upon by several boys armed with pastel chalk who proceeded to throw me to the ground. They held me down while they basted me from head to toe, front to back, with purple, green, red, blue, and yellow pastel chalk. Not an inch of 22 RICHARD L. BAUM my clothing, hair, hands, or face was spared. Satisfied with their handiwork, the boys let me up. Otherwise not worse for the experience, I scurried off to a worse fate at the dentist. IV. Neighbors In about 1951, during the Korean War, a Chinese family, consisting of two parents, a daughter, and a son, moved into the neighborhood, opening a laundry a short distance west of Broadway on the north side of 232nd Street, just as the street began to rise toward Kingsbridge Avenue. I became friendly with the family’s son. On his birthday, soon after the family had moved in, his parents decided to buy him a miniature gas station he had spied in a candy store on the northern side of 231st Street, just east of Kingsbridge Avenue. I was invited to come along with the entire family on their buying expedition. The parents wanted to take the short route to the store that would take them up (i.e., south) along Godwin Terrace and then down a flight of steps to West 231st Street, rather than walking south along the busier Broadway to 231st Street and then west to the candy store. I tried to dissuade them from the Godwin Terrace route, as I was well aware that the kids on Godwin Terrace did not take kindly to outsiders. However, due to the parents’ not taking a child’s concerns seriously, they confidently led our little group along the most logical path. As we passed along Godwin Terrace, I con- tinuously glanced left and right, on the lookout for trouble. The outbound trip turned out to be uneventful. However, the brutes that lived along our route had been alerted by the passage of our defenseless squad. While returning, our small party being distracted by the birthday toy gas station, the “Godwin Terrace Gang,” now organized, pounced. We were forced to flee towards the laundry with projectiles buzzing through the air. It was only upon entering the store that I saw my friend’s mother bleeding profusely from a cut in the fleshy part of her face just below her eye. She was lucky: a Kingsbridge Vignettes 23 little bit higher and she might have lost that eye. With the assault continuing, I ran from the store in an attempt to get help, but not being successful, I rejoined my friends to share their fate. A few days after the assault, I returned to their store to visit. The store was dark and deserted. Sadly, the Chinese family was gone. V. School Public School 7 is the successor to Grammar School 66. Located at the northwest corner of Church Street and Weber’s Lane, today’s Kingsbridge Avenue and 232nd Street, PS 7 opened for classes on November 11, 1895. This structure was made of what appears to be, to a non-geologist such as myself, reddish-brown sandstone. There was a medieval-looking tower dominating the main entrance. When I attended the school, beginning in 1949, the school had clearly been expanded. There was an enclosed, brick bridge con- necting a brick building to the old sandstone structure. The entire complex was raised above street level and accessed by twin staircases leading to two large schoolyards. The school grounds extended from Kingsbridge Avenue west to Corlear Avenue and north to 233rd Street. If one looked carefully, one could see that some doors leading into the school had the word “Girls” inscribed over it, and others were labeled “Boys.” The north yard was the boys’ yard where they lined up every school-day morning waiting for their teachers to lead them to their classrooms. The south yard, known as the girls’ yard, was where the girls lined up for classes. Only the youngest children were intermingled, boys with girls. On rainy or snowy days, we lined up in the indoor yard, the boys on one side and the girls on the other. The indoor space doubled as the hot-lunch room and always had a strong, almost nauseating, smell of oranges and tomato soup. Most children walked home for lunch, since families in which both 24 RICHARD L. BAUM parents worked were in the minority in the neighborhood. Those few children who could not go home were doomed to eat in that odiferous atmosphere. Sometime in the 1950s the influence of our Puritan past began to wane, and boys and girls were allowed to line up together in the south yard. The north yard was reserved for the upper grades. It was a great thrill when I was finally old enough to be in the north schoolyard. I was fascinated by the large, faded, white circle painted on the north yard’s pavement, with the names of countries printed along its radii. I was instantly attracted to the name Turkey, which I was certain was a bird! To my knowledge, neither teacher nor students ever used this circle, which lay there, mute, like an ancient artifact, its function lost to the ages. Above: View looking northwest to the corner of Kingsbridge Avenue and 230th Street, a couple blocks south of the author’s apartment, 1981. From the AF705–Kingsbridge Avenue–230th St. folder, Photograph Collection, The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Kingsbridge Vignettes 25 A fence of black, cast-iron bars stood guard around the perimeter of the school’s two concrete yards. The tip of each bar was shaped into a spike to discourage trespassers. After school and during summer, when the gates were closed, the local kids, myself included, undiscouraged by the quiet threat of the spikes, would confidently climb over the spiked fence to get into the schoolyard in order to play either basketball or stickball. The schoolyard was the site of the sole neighborhood basketball hoops. Stickball could not be played with pitching in the street because the ball would be too easily lost. In the schoolyard, we played stickball by pitching a pink Spalding —pronounced in the local vernacular as “spaldeen”—against a wall which was inscribed with a chalked rectangular strike zone as a backstop. During my earliest years at the school, I learned how to churn butter in Miss Minahan’s class, went on nature walks around the neigh- borhood, and listened, enthralled, to stories read by my teacher in the quiet of the cool, shady children’s library, then on Kingsbridge Avenue adjacent to St. John’s Church. Each school-day morning I would look forward to arriving at PS 7, a short walk from where I lived, because it was always warm there. After the mid-morning milk break, it was my task to collect and carry the students’ empty waxed cardboard half-pint milk cartons to the basement coal-burning furnace for incineration. The janitor always allowed me to sit on an upturned wooden milk crate placed in front of the furnace’s open door and luxuriate in the warmth of the heat radiating from the glowing orange-red stones of coal that were uniformly spread on the furnace bed. After a few short minutes I had to be on my way back to the classroom, otherwise I would be missed. By three in the afternoon, however, it was a great relief to be crossing Kingsbridge Avenue and heading eastward down the hill towards home. 26 RICHARD L. BAUM I walked to school with Stanley and Peter. These two boys lived in my building and were my best friends. Each school morning, as we reached Kingsbridge Avenue, a half block from where we lived, we had to wait for the school crossing guard to allow us to cross. The guard, an older boy, wore a broad white belt that wound its way around his waist and diagonally across his chest, and to which was attached an official, gleaming metal badge. The crossing guard was responsible for the safety of children crossing the intersection. One autumn school morning, the raw gusts of wind swirled brittle brown leaves around our feet as the three of us approached the Kingsbridge intersection. The traffic light changed from green to red. The guard dutifully put his arms out to prevent us from crossing. Peter, a sensitive boy, became upset at having his path blocked and began to cry and scream for his mother. He turned and ran hysterically down the long hill toward Broadway, which his mother was approaching after having just left us in front of our building. Peter’s mother, with Peter in tow, walked the two blocks uphill to where Stanley, the crossing-guard, and I were standing, stunned and frozen in place at this unfathomable display. His mo- ther, on reaching us, calmly asked me for an explanation and then, satisfied that nothing untoward had caused Peter’s upset, said goodbye and went on her way, leaving us to finish our trip. Peter later attended MIT and went on to obtain a PhD in Physics from Brown University. One of the most profound lessons I learned at PS 7 occurred on the first day of school, at the start of fifth grade, in the north school- yard. In a moment of idleness and indiscretion, while waiting on line with the other students to be escorted to our classroom by our new teacher, Miss Scanlon, I puffed up my cheeks! Miss Scanlon took umbrage at the pair of distended organs, distorting the otherwise perfectly straight line of children, and declared that if the culprit did not reveal himself, the entire class would be kept after school. Kingsbridge Vignettes 27 Mean-spiritedness, pettiness, group responsibility for the acts of individual members of the group, and the threat of peer revenge were the lessons of the day, distasteful lessons that I have not yet forgotten. In the sixth grade, I achieved a score on the Iowa Achievement Exam equivalent to that expected in the tenth grade in English and in the twelfth grade in Mathematics. My teacher, Mrs. Curley, surprised at this result (as was I), called me to her desk in the front of the room and charged me with cheating by copying from Richard C. This was patently absurd. Richard C. was illiterate. At dinner that night, I told my father what had happened in the childish expectation that he would be enraged and defend my honor to the death. However, without raising his head from Life Magazine, and between swallows of his evening fare, he calmly, and with then unappreciated wisdom, advised me to tell the teacher to give me the test again. Mrs. Curley declined his suggestion. At the end of the term the good teacher assuaged her guilt at making a false charge by presenting me with an award, signed by the principal, Carmela Nesi, for the student who improved the most during the school year. At home, I was about to tear up the award when my mother grabbed it from me and kept it for herself for decades. I found it among her papers after she passed away. In respect of her wishes, I have continued to preserve the award. 28 RICHARD L. BAUM ALLERTON IN THE 1940S AND 1950S BY ROBERT WEISS The time period about which I am writing encompasses the mid- forties to the mid-fifties. Much of which characterized that period, for the most part, has been swept away by time, never to return.1 I. Streets Allerton Avenue was bordered on either side by perpendicular side streets bearing such names as Mace, Barnes, and Holland. I never knew how these streets were named. To the east, Allerton crossed Boston Road, a very busy road, the crossing of which required pedestrians to take their life into their hands. Walking under the elevated train tracks, heading in a westerly direction, one would encounter Bronx Park, our neighborhood’s lush, flora- and fauna- filled boundary. The avenue and perpendicular side streets broke the neighborhood up into blocks. The actual size of the avenue covered an area of about 24 of these rectangular blocks. The whole thing could easily be walked in a relatively short time. Two blocks were divided in half by alleyways. Bordering either side of these dirt roads were the rear entrances of the block’s row houses, gardens, and garages. The alleys also permitted the Allerton Avenue inhabitants to take a mid-block shortcut by car or foot. For us kids, they were our country dirt roads. II. Hanging Around A well-known singing group performed a song entitled “Old Folks,” the lyrics of which paint a vivid picture of elderly people sitting on park benches, enshrouded in oversized overcoats with newspapers 1 This article is excerpted from selections of an unpublished manuscript by the author about his childhood growing up in the Allerton section of The Bronx. Readers interested in obtaining additional selections or the manuscript itself should write to the author at BRRS137@AOL.COM. Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 29 blowing around tips of high black shoes. These lyrics captured what I would see in my neighborhood on almost any winter’s day. Wooden boxes, however, were more the seat of choice, primarily because of their portability and easy access. These boxes could be strategically positioned in front of neighborhood stores or a sunny avenue spot. The tops of these crude seats were usually covered with newspapers, providing some degree of cleanliness and protection from splinters, the titles of which included: The Daily News, The New York Post, The World Telegram and Sun, The Freiheit, The Daily Worker, The Forverts (The Jewish Forward), The Herald Tribune, The Daily Mirror, or The New York Times. In addition to newspapers, other convenient forms of printed material were drafted into service. Above: Allerton Avenue, looking west from Barnes Avenue, 1993, showing various more recent shops. Although the kosher delis and appetizing stores have disappeared, along with much of the Jewish community in the neighborhood, Allerton Avenue is still lined with stores and restaurants to this day. From the AF19–Allerton Avenue–Barnes Avenue folder, Photograph Collection, The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. 30 ROBERT WEISS These crude seat boxes usually weren’t schlepped home. Rather, they were left behind to provide another elderly person with a place to perch. III. Kosher Deli Then there was the Kosher delicatessen or deli, as it was commonly called. Such delicacies as pastrami, hot dogs, corned beef, mustard, and sauerkraut were available to be ordered by a waiter and eaten off a square table. The waiter would walk up to the table. Usually he was a gray-haired, balding, old guy. He wore a white apron with stains. The waiter was boss. He would look down at you and command, in his heavy accent, “So vot do you vant?” As he reached across the table, distributing metal eating implements, his sleeve would ride up, sometimes exposing numbers across his wrist. At that time, I never knew where he got the number tattoo. Regular hot dogs might be wrapped in two types of casings. One was real cow’s intestine and the other casings were made in a plastics factory. “Specials” were super-duper fat hot dogs. Both hot dogs and “specials” were attached to their own kind by either string or twisted extensions of the casing. This enabled the franks to be hung along with the Kosher salami on the rear wall behind the counter man. Should you decide “take out,” the accompanying deli mustard was stored in a stiff cone-shaped piece of shiny, stiff paper. To release the spicy yellow-brown mustard, the rolled-up tube was squeezed while the tube tip rested on whatever was to be covered. Sour pickles were found on all the tables, which caused the whole joint to wreak of garlic. Kosher salami seemed to contain about thirty percent meat, seventy percent fat. After eating a salami sandwich on rye with mustard, it might be stored in the body for an untold period of time. You were reminded of this by the repeated belching and acidic regurgitation during repetitive garlicky heart-burn episodes. Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 31 A favorite side dish was something called kishke, the more sophis- ticated Jewish name for stuffed derma. Kishke was made by stuffing cow’s intestines with some kind of yellowish, grainy, fatty, garlicky- type of substance. It was served as fried slices. The casing was eaten along with the stuffing. Again, a health department genius came up with the idea that eating cow intestines was not good for you. Consequently, most kishke factories, like the hot dog factories, replaced the animal intestine with a casing made of plastic. Before consuming the kishke, the plastic had to be peeled off and placed on the side. I am sure that at some time, in some deli somewhere, this plastic caused choking or inadvertently was used as dental floss. In addition to laws preventing the shaking of dust mops and the burning of leaves, and doing away with intestine casings, a law should have been passed stipulating a label to accompany plastic- wrapped delicacies. The label would have read: “Warning! Remove the plastic ring before eating the kishke or hot dogs or you run the risk of dying.” Before the lights went out, there would be an old man in a dirty apron standing over the gasping patron making a loud official announcement: “Pay up front.” As previously mentioned, people never gave much thought about eating healthy. If you wanted to see an unhealthy, happy person, go to a Kosher deli and look at the regulars. They often tipped the scale at about 300 pounds. “Spit Puss” owned the only Jewish appetizing store on the avenue. The Legend of Spit Puss originated with the recognition of the accumulation of foamy spit at the corners of his mouth. He never seemed to object to the name. It was almost a form of homey mar- keting. Spit Puss’s appetizing store was about the size of a large walk-in closet. The outside of the store had windows opaque with filth. If the name of the appetizing store wasn’t written on the front, one would think that an illegal card game was going on the other side of the front wall. 32 ROBERT WEISS Looking through the front during a hot summer day, I could see old people, the women with their house dresses and the men clutching their wife’s shopping list. The women all had raised fists grasping shopping lists, eagerly trying to push in front of the other 99 patrons. The floor creaked under the load. The place was always wall-to-wall people as the merchandise hung or fell off the rickety shelves. The shelved packages consisted of canned foods, cellophane bags, and bottled liquids. When you walked through the entrance of the store, immediately to your left was something like a counter with glass display cases. Only a limited area of about five feet was used for business transactions. Inside the display cases were such exotic delicacies as smoked sturgeon, smoked carp, lox, pickled her- ring in sour cream and onions, pickled herring without sour cream, just onions, jars of salmon caviar, smoked white fish, and sable. There was no doubt that the display case contained the body or body parts of dead animals. Some of the smoked fish still had their heads, sunken eyes, gills, mouths including teeth and fins. The guts were removed prior to the smoking process, as viewed through an abdominal slit. Also, occupying space behind the counter sat bulk cream cheese, something called pot cheese, butter, and farmer cheese. Except for the caviar, all others were out of package lying in pans or on clean white pieces of packaging paper. I remember the store, stinking of a pungent fishy, pickley, garlicy odor. No other store on the avenue could claim that distinct stink. The Jewish deli odor was far different from the scent of stinky feet imported from Italy. Spit Puss would yell over the counter, “Vot you vant?” Behind the counter display cases, Spit Puss marched back and forth with his belly polishing the steel molding of the counter as he fulfilled the orders shot at him from the opposite side. The orders were to Spit Puss like a starting gun to a runner. He would run from one section of the counter to the other with a “clop! clop!” sound emanating from the soles of his feet as they struck the wooden floor boards behind the counter. The sharp eyes of Spit Puss’s customers could Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 33 clearly see what they were ordering. In heavy accents, you could hear, “Dalink, you should slice me quarter pound lox, a nice piece of carp, not the end, the middle, and I vant a small vite fish.” “Dalink, the lox you should give me: Belly, not Novi. It’s too expensive.” “Don’t give me any bleck pieces and the vite fish, not dat vun, da fet vun.” The orders were put on the scale and a price was determined. The items were then wrapped in yellowish white wrapping paper and secured with cellophane tape. They were handed across the counter or placed on top of the display case. “So how moch I owe you?” the customer would yell out. A tally was made by using a pencil, pulled from Spit Puss’s ear. The numbers were scribbled and summed up on the brown paper bag, into which the filled order was to be placed. A monetary exchange, and “Next!” Spit Puss yelled out. Sometimes, this started an all-out war. Mostly, the women would start bellowing phrases such as, “Vot are you doink, it is my toin.” “No it’s not your toin.” “I’m next!” a voice somewhere in the crowd would spring forth from the crowd. “I was here foist,” someone else would yell. A brief skirmish might ensue. In the name of fairness and to break up the log-jam, a small jury would form, providing patrons the opportunity to invest their two cents. “I tink she vus here foist,” an arbitrator would announce. The offended customer would respond with a, “I neva hoid soch a thing!” “Next!” Spit Puss would once again yell out to his audience. He was protected by this no man’s land of counter space and display cases. Spit Puss never got involved in the store wars. Everyone knew where Spit Puss’s appetizing store was located. The whole front of the store and somewhat extending outside was a stink that no other avenue store possessed. On the sidewalk, in front of the store, were these four-foot-high, brown, grungy-looking wooden barrels. One barrel contained very sour pickles, another barrel contained not-so-sour pickles, and the third barrel contained a 34 ROBERT WEISS powerfully strong, fishy-smelling stuff. Floating in this barrel were what appeared to be rotten fish in an equally putrid looking liquid. This was the schmaltz herring barrel. The last barrel contained madjes herring. The contents of this barrel contained what looked like reddish-colored schmaltz herrings. It had the “fency” name: “Herring in wine sauce.” Eventually, the health department deemed that the outside uncovered barrels were a health hazard. It did make some sense. The fact that they were open to the public made the barrels a target for all kinds of foreign stuff. Should anything be thrown or dropped in, like bird shit, no one would have been the wiser. Spit Puss was now required, by law, to store all barreled products inside closed plastic containers inside the store. The familiar and odd aroma that diffused from the appetizing store and into the neighborhood declined significantly. This was a small price to pay for the fact that the people of our neighborhood, both consumers and just plain “sniffers,” were, once again, saved from some horrific disease. Allerton Avenue was getting safer and safer as a result of these various health regulations. Everything in the Jewish appetizing store took on its unique garlicky odor, including the people who worked there. A good friend, Dave Leher, may he rest in peace, worked all day in an appetizing store. After work, he would drop by our clubroom, of which he was a member. This was usually a pre-shower visit. He wore the same stained apron from work into our subterranean clubroom. The air was unusually close, in that the basement room had no windows. Needless to say, when Dave paid us a visit, he brought with him every possible garlicky, fishy stink that pervaded his workplace. Upon his entrance, the appetizing molecules would release themselves from Dave and diffuse into the surrounding clubroom atmosphere. This would create a great uproar punctuated by a barrage of curses such as, “Dave, get the f—k out of here.” Dave Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 35 would stand his ground with a self-satisfied toothy grin on his face. We couldn’t decide whether to kick him above ground, rip his clothes off, or put him on a bagel with cream cheese and eat him. IV. Our Bronx Park Oasis We lived close to a New York oasis rivaled only by the forests, fields, streams, and lakes of Central Park in Manhattan. What Central Park was to Manhattan, Bronx Park was, and still is, to The Bronx. All we had to do was walk six blocks west from my apartment house to the Bronx Park perimeter. The park stretches approximately two-thirds the length of The Bronx. The northern part sits close to the borders of suburban Westchester. Southern Bronx Park dipped into what might presently be described as the more congested and industrial area of The Bronx. Most of the buildings consisted of old, pre-war apartment houses interspersed with private homes. Going back in time, the inhabitants were made up of Black, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants. Many were poor, lower-middle-, and working-class people. It could be said that Bronx Park was an emerald-green oasis that was divided into three main sections. The northernmost part is Bronx Park proper. Traveling southward, the park included the Botanical Garden, which merged with the Bronx Zoo. The Bronx Zoo had fences that defined its borders. Bronx Park proper and the Botanical Garden had no such barriers of demarcation. Each melded into the other. I could ride my bike and enter without paying a penny through Bronx Park proper and continue “freely” into the Botanical Gardens and finally into the Bronx Zoo. Within park sections, one could find small lakes, large rock outcroppings, caves, streams, a river, swamps, fields, waterfalls, forests, ball fields, playgrounds, bicycle paths, hiking paths and handball courts. Bicycle paths en- abled us to gain access to everywhere. 36 ROBERT WEISS The lakes and the surrounding parkland contained various forms of animal life. Varieties of fish included perch, eels, bass, sunfish, carp, and minnows. Amphibians included frogs and salamanders. Reptiles included varieties of snakes and turtles. Many of these beasts were caught and kept as pets. We frequently saw mammals rushing the leaves such as water rats, musk rats, plain-old rat rats, mice, moles, rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks, and finally birds, the listing of which would be too numerous. V. The Grand Finale As time moved on, values and behaviors changed frequently. These changes occurred subconsciously. It was after Buzz’s and my high school graduation, when he turned to me and said, “We are getting to be too old to do some of the things we use to do.” After all the sloppy kisses and well wishes finished, we ran home, pulled off our suit, tie, and fancy shirt and replaced them with old jeans, sneakers, and tee shirts. RoRo, the family dog, was leashed, and off to the park we went. We ended up at the bank of the Bronx River. Sitting on the shore, we spotted a muddy and rusted cement bin, the kind construction workers mix cement in. After a moment of planning, we slipped it into the river and each of us, including RoRo, gingerly climbed in. With a stick, we pushed off from shore. Slowly we drif- ted downstream, for the first time seeing the park from a different vantage point. Here we were, the three of us together, “Rub a dub, dub, three schmucks in a tub.” Suddenly, for some reason, only the golfball-sized brain of the dog understood. RoRo decided to ab- andon ship. In his enthusiasm to leap, he flipped the cement bin. While on board, a careful balance was maintained. Once the dog left, there was no more careful balance. Buzz and I became a part of the floating wood, leaves, and other debris in the river. It was easy enough to get to shore. The river was never very wide. Climbing onto shore was another matter. The bank was slippery with muddy, grey silt. By the time we reached a solid grassy area, we were soaked, Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s 37 but even worse, we were covered from head to toe with caked mud. Outfitted in our muddy attire, we walked right down the center of Allerton Avenue. It was a spectacle that captured a lot of attention: muddy me, Buzzy, and RoRo. Here we were, high school graduates, looking more like smelly rock people that appeared in an old Flash Gordon movie. It would be impossible for me to describe the expression on Lena and Mom’s face when they confronted the three of us in the street. Lena laughed. Mom, with a serious, straight face asked, “When are you kids going to grow up? You’re too old to be doing this nonsense. Look how filthy you are, and you stink!” 38 ROBERT WEISS A TRIBUTE TO BOB GUMBS AND HARRIET MCFEETERS BY MARK NAISON I. Bob Gumbs (1939–2022) Bob Gumbs was a brilliant graphic designer and publisher who played a pioneering role in the Black Arts movement in the 1950s and early 1960s, and then 40 years later, played a central role in the creation of The Bronx African American History Project. Brought up on Lymon Place, a small street in the Morrisania section of The Bronx that played an important part in American jazz history because jazz pianists Elmo and Bertha Hope resided there and Thelonious Monk visited regularly, Bob was part of a small group of young Bronxites who sponsored jazz concerts in the borough in the middle of the 1950s to call attention to jazz as an art form of African origin. Even in later years when he moved to Harlem and became a graphic designer whose work highlighted Black history and culture, The Bronx held a special place in his heart, and when he read an article about a Fordham professor who started an oral history project with Black residents of the Patterson Houses, he contacted that professor to urge him to include Morrisania, which he called “The Harlem of The Bronx.” This began a 20-year collaboration that turned The Bronx African American History Project into one of the premier community-based oral history projects in the nation. Bob helped organize over a hun- dred oral history interviews, participated in scores of community tours, was responsible for landmarking several streets and parks in the Morrisania neighborhood, and collaborated on Before The Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s (Fordham University Press, 2016), which transformed the dominant narrative of Bronx history to include Black experiences and perspectives. Bob also appeared on numerous radio and tele- A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters 39 vision shows highlighting Black contributions to Bronx history, and helped create an exhibit at The Bronx County Historical Society with that as its theme! Finally, at a time when the world honors The Bronx’s role in the creation of hip hop, Bob made sure, through his joyous but relentless activism, that the world also recognized The Bronx’s contribution to jazz from the mid ’40s through the late ’60s, not only as a place where the most important jazz artists of that era performed regularly but also where many of them lived. Bob Gumbs was one of those rare individuals who changed the way people defined themselves and interpreted their own histories. As a creative artist and community historian, he helped people see The Bronx as a site of unparalleled cultural creativity and a true melting pot for peoples of the African Diaspora. The Bronx African American History Project would not have had a fraction of its influence and historic reach without Bob Gumbs’s guidance. He will be sorely missed by family, friends, and all his collaborators in the Black Arts movement and The Bronx African American History Project. II. Harriet McFeeters (1926–2022) Harriet McFeeters was one of The Bronx’s greatest educators and a driving force behind the creation of The Bronx African American History Project. A graduate of Hunter College who lived her entire adult life in her family’s brownstone on 168th Street between Union and Prospect Avenues in the Morrisania section, Harriet was a fixture in Bronx schools for almost 50 years, serving as a teacher, principal, staff developer, and assistant district superintendent. 40 MARK NAISON Harriet, who was as passionate about learning as she was about teaching and who was deeply committed to the children of The Bronx, left an indelible mark on everyone who encountered her. More than 300 people, most of them fellow educators, came to her 90th birthday celebration several years ago and spoke of her with reverence and affectionate humor, as Harriet was a person who commanded every room she was in. But though Harriet radiated intellect and power, she also was a kind, generous person who created a sense of community among those she worked with, and her friends represented every cultural group in The Bronx. My own connection with Harriet came in the spring of 2003 when we started The Bronx African American History Project. I was put in touch with Harriet by her brother, Jim Pruitt, former director of the Upward Bound Program, who told me that Harriet, who had recently retired, was passionately interested in Bronx African American history and would have a lot to contribute to our research. That proved to be a considerable understatement. Once she dis- covered what we were trying to do, Harriet literally took command of The Bronx African American History Project’s research on Morrisania, helping us recruit interview subjects, identifying important community institutions, and holding events at her home on 168th Street, where she took a particular interest in the brilliant young research assistants I hired, to whom Harriet became a surrogate grandmother. Along with Bob Gumbs, another brilliant product of the Black Morrisania community, Harriet helped recover the lost history of a Black community in The Bronx, which produced several generations of professionals in a wide number of fields and created as many varieties of popular music as any neighborhood in the United States. It was Harriet who introduced us to Valerie Capers, the great jazz pianist, educator, and composer, whose concerts and performances became a fixture for The Bronx African American History Project’s A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters 41 staff, and who alerted us to the significance of St. Augustine Presbyterian Church and its brilliant minister Rev. Edler Hawkins, who mentored so many of the great leaders who came out of Morrisania. Until her health began to falter a few years ago, Harriet was a fixture at The Bronx African American History Project’s conferences, concerts, and interviews at Fordham, where she was as commanding a presence as she was in Bronx public schools. She also made a huge contribution to the Project via our fundraising, both through her individual donations and by encouraging others to contribute. As I write this tribute, with tears in my eyes, I will close with this final comment. Although Harriet’s degrees were in education, not history, and although she spent her life working in public schools, Harriet was as much a historian as any professor working at our most distinguished universities. When I first learned that Morrisania was the community where The Bronx African American History Project should concentrate its research, it was Harriet who told us how the community evolved, who its most important leaders were, which schools and churches we should focus on, and who we should interview. Of the more than 100 interviews we did with Morrisania residents past and present, more than half came through Harriet. Without her guidance, the Project would not have had the fraction of the influence it ultimately attained. We can learn so much from the example Harriet McFeeters set. Harriet was passionately devoted to learning about and teaching Black history. She fought hard to have it included in public school curricula and made it an integral part of her pedagogy. But she did so in a way that drew everyone around her in, insisting that Black history was everyone’s history, that learning it would uplift all who possessed that knowledge and would help people from all back- grounds better understand their American journey. That is one of the reasons why so many teachers who were Jewish, Italian, Irish, 42 MARK NAISON and Puerto Rican joined their Black fellow educators in paying tribute to Harriet at her 90th birthday celebration. Harriet spread knowledge but she also spread love. She embodied the highest values of The Bronx and its people. She may have passed on, but her spirit lives in the tens of thousands of people she touched as an educator and in the publications and digital archive of The Bronx African American History Project, where Harriet McFeeters’s vision of community history has been brought to life. Above: Members of The Bronx African American History Project at Harriet McFeeters’s family home on East 168th Street in Morrisania, December 2003. Pictured in front row, left to right, are Michelle Tollinici, Harriet Pruit- McFeeters, Joyce Tolliver, and Kevin Ross. Pictured in back row, left to right, are Bess Pruitt, Mark Naison, Claude Mangum, Bob Gumbs, Patricia Wright, and Candace Lee. Courtesy of the author. A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters 43 ABOUT THE AUTHORS STEVEN PAYNE is Director of The Bronx County Historical Society and social historian whose interests in Bronx history span commu- nity activism; underground music and art cultures; organized labor; race, class, and gender; housing struggles, and more. He records oral histories for The Bronx African American History Project, The Bronx Latino History Project, and The Bronx Aerosol Arts Docu- mentary Project. RICHARD BAUM grew up in the Kingsbridge section of The Bronx during the 1950s and 1960s and writes about his experiences growing up in the neighborhood. ROBERT WEISS, who came of age in the Allerton neighborhood of The Bronx during the 1940s and 1950s, has authored an unpublished manuscript about his childhood in Allerton, selections of which are printed here. MARK NAISON, Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University, is the c0-founder of The Bronx African American History Project, one of the largest community-based oral history projects in the nation. Dr. Naison has authored seven books and over 300 articles on African American politics, labor history, popular culture, and education policy. FROM THE ARCHIVES A HISTORY OF AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ IN THE BRONX FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ Editor’s Note: The below piece comes from an untitled, unpublished, and unatributed manuscript included in the David M. Carp papers on Latin Jazz in The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. Slight edits have been made for style and clarity throughout and are indicated by text in [brackets].1 I. Introduction New York City is among the most ethnically diverse places in the entire world. Since it was founded, New York has served as the chief center for immigration in the country, and its population continues to grow and diversify. Without a doubt, the largest percentage of immigrants in New York speaks Spanish. In the borough of The Bronx, Latinos make up half of the population, far more than any other demographic. Latino immigrants have always blessed New York City with their culture and traditions, music and art. The story of Afro-Cuban jazz in Manhattan and The Bronx illustrates the marriage of traditional Latino customs and the native music of New York City. During the early years of the twentieth century, music in Cuba was a 1 A note at the bottom of the manuscript reads: “All information used for this ar- ticle came from interviews from the David Carp Collection, courtesy Bronx County Historical Society. The following interviews were conducted by David Carp unless otherwise noted: Mario Bauzá, 2/8/89; Mario Bauzá, 4/18/91; Willie Colón (undated); José Curbelo, 10/3/93; Graciela Pérez (interviewed by Max Salazar), 5/10/85; Joe Orange, 2/6/99; José Mangual, Jr., 11/8/98; Eddie Palmieri, 8/13/98; Frank Rivera, 6/8/97; Mark Weinstein 11/24/96.” A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 45 way of life. Parents would teach their children the basics of Cuban music as a birthright. The people of Cuba would take up every street corner, playing congas, timbales, and bongos. Children would buy sheep skins from local markets and stretch them over drums made by hand. Cuba was music. By embracing their African roots, Cubans would distinguish their music from the rest of Latin America by making the terms “Cuban roots music” and “Afro-Cuban music” synonymous. Musicians from the most prestigious conservatories as well as working men and wo- men who relaxed on the street with a conga or djembe—all began to embrace the sounds of Cuban son and danzon. By the 1920s and ’30s, American musical influence would begin to find its way to Cuba. Radio stations from Miami and New Orleans would start to become popular on the island. Music fans would tune into American jazz stations on short-wave radio to try and absorb the latest musical trends. Musicians and music fans would begin to collect records from the United States and remind anyone who ven- tured north to bring the latest jazz albums back to Cuba. Shortly after, the finest musicians from the most prestigious conservatories and orchestras would slowly [immigrate] to America’s birthplace and home for jazz, New York City. Jazz would never be the same. Cubans, or Afro-Cubans, made a huge impact on American jazz. Jazz had a huge effect on Afro-Cuban musical traditions as well. Before long, a new type of music would emerge and take New York City by storm—Latin jazz. Not exclusively drawing from Cuban musical traditions, Latin jazz would incorporate traditions from all over Latin America and would inspire [traditional] jazz bands to expand their repertoires and include more global sounds. Eventually, the scene was huge. Ballrooms and dance halls like the Palladium and [the] Savoy in Manhattan and the Hunts Point Palace and Tritons Club in The Bronx would serve as key centers for jazz acts from 46 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ Charlie Parker to Tito Puente. Latinos in The Bronx would be af- fected forever. Following the closing of the Palladium, the major Latin jazz scene would pick up in The Bronx. Kids on the streets would embrace Latin jazz and appreciate the African roots behind it. Bands and orchestras would spring up all over The Bronx, and the borough would soon produce some of the most prominent names of Latin jazz in all of New York City. From a couple of key figures moving from Cuba to New York in the ’30s, through the Palladium era, to Latinos setting up crude drum sets and playing along with the radio, Latin jazz remains a vital part of life for many Latin American immigrants today as well as New Yorkers and music fans. II. Afro‐Cuban Jazz Begins in Cuba: Mario Bauzá, José Curbelo, Graciela Pérez The story of Afro-Cuban jazz in New York begins in Havana. Music was everywhere in the ghettos and crowded streets of Cuba’s capital. Street vendors would line the markets with animal skins for drums, musicians would play on the street, and families would sit on their porch and jam with bongos, congas, and hand drums. Classical forms of Cuban music mixed European instruments with African drums, embracing traditions from both the African slaves and rich Europeans who inhabited the colony of Cuba since it was founded. As years developed, more variations, new instrumentation, and a finer-tuned orchestration would build on the rich foundation of Afro-Cuban traditions. Pioneers like Arsenio Rodríguez would add new elements to traditional Cuban son, like African percussion and A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 47 syncopation. Eventually, Afro-Cuban music became the music of the people and Cubans were introduced to this tradition at an early age. This is the setting in which Mario Bauzá was raised. Bauzá, who would later become the most important figure in the fusion of Afro-Cuban and American jazz, started in Havana as a child. I tell you how everything happen. I was about five years old. My godfather used to teach the kids in my neighborhood in Cuba solfeggio. And I used to hear the kid try to sing those lesson, good intonation. And they have so much problem. So, one day I said to my godfather, “How come those kids have so much trouble with that lesson.” He say, “How do you know?” I said, “Well I think I know all those lessons.” He said, “You know lessons now?” I said, “Yeah, I think I know.” . . . He said, “I don’t want you to be an ear musician, so I’m gonna get a teacher for you.” So, he got me a teacher, I was in solfeggio for two years. And then I went to the Conservatory and . . . the first instrument they give me was the oboe. I didn’t like it. I heard the man play the clarinet, and I fell in love with the sound he produced. I said, “I would like to play that instrument.” And that’s how I become . . . a clarinet player. With Bauzá learning more and more music, his special ability became more apparent. Bauzá would excel at the Havana Conservatory and began to gain esteem from his colleagues. Soon, his teachers and fellow musicians helped him cultivate his talent. When I was a graduate, the Havana Philharmonic, they need a bass clarinet. And they approach me, I say, “Well, I’m willing to play, but somebody have to buy the instrument.” So, they sent to France for a bass clarinet. So, they brought it, they give it to me and say, “You practice, when you think you ready, let us know.” So, I 48 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ took my bass clarinet home, I start fooling around, it was the same thing, embouchure a little different and sound was kind of peculiar. When I thought I was ready, I came to one of the rehearsals . . . that’s how I (became) a bass clarinet and a clarinet player. Mario Bauzá was not the only person at this time to truly embrace his musical talents. A few years down the line a woman singer would join Bauzá’s Machito Orchestra in New York. Graciela Pérez would sing along with her brother Machito over the unique Afro-Cuban jazz sound Bauzá perfected. Graciela Pérez also began her music ca- reer at a young age in Cuba. Her father, an avid musician, would constantly have musicians to his house, and one day Graciela stayed up past her bedtime to enjoy one of them. I was born in Cuba. In Havana, el barrio Jesús María. . . . There were six of us. When I was four years old . . . there was a lot of music and (my father) bring some cantadores en la casa like (vocalist) María Teresa Vera . . . and the other kids in my house are still in bed . . . and then María Teresa Vera sees my finger doing the clave and María Teresa Vera said to my father, “You see, Graciela is going to be a singer.” Pérez’s father was reluctant, at first, to allow Graciela to sing. However, he would continue to inspire his daughter by having more and more musical guests come in and out of the Pérez home. Graciela remembers Septeto Nacional, in particular. Septeto Nacional . . . was to play because my father, the only party (that) was at my house was my mother’s birthday, and at my house was Septeto Nacional. . . . They was in my house, in my neighborhood nobody came then, you know, in that time. In my house was Nacional. As they grew up, Pérez and her brother Machito began to nurture A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 49 her gift little by little, until she had completely been absorbed by the music. Pérez would sing everywhere she went and join several groups thanks [to] Machito’s familiarity with the local music scene. Still, her father didn’t want her to sing professionally, and Graciela would have to sneak out at nights. One night while working as a delivery man, Pérez’s father recognized the voice coming from a club across the street from where he was working. He was staying over there, and he sees me singing and everybody applauds me. “Ohh, Graciela!” And then (at the house) he don’t say nothing to my mother, to nobody. Then he was waiting when I go hiding, when I go to working and (he said), “I know Chela, she’s singing in Alai de Libre in El Prado because I heard her last night. It’s alright, she sings beautiful.” Graciela Pérez had her father’s blessing and began to truly excel as a singer free from any restrictions. She would travel to South America with Al Anacaona and eventually move to Harlem in the 1930s, where she would meet up with Bauzá and Machito to start the Afro- Cuban Orchestra. A third key figure in the fusion of Afro-Cuban and American jazz is José Curbelo. Curbelo, who would manage and book Afro-Cuban jazz bands, was among the top performers in New York City during the Palladium Era. Curbelo’s uniquely vibrant sounds would place him in the highest echelon of Latin jazz performers along with Machito, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez. Curbelo, the son of a musician, started as a classically trained pianist and musician in Cuba. I (was) born in Havana, Cuba (on) February 18, 1917. Pedro Menéndez was my teacher, piano teacher in Cuba. He used to be the piano player in my father’s orchestra, at one time. So, he was my private teacher in piano. . . . I went to the school of music in Cuba, to the Academy of 50 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ Music to study. And I had different teachers like in voice and harmony and whatever, you know, different types of technique, et cetera. . . . My father was a fine violinist, he played for the Philharmonic Orchestra in Cuba, first violin. And . . . he was a bandleader, he had his own or- chestra where he played all the famous nightclub and supper club and casino in Cuba. . . . I’m talking (about) the late ’20s and the early ’30s. And then he play the most typical Cuban music, with the charanga music that used to be played, what they call in Cuba the “Academias.” . . . The real Cuban music at that time was charanga bands. It’s not with saxophones and trump- ets. . . . Cuban music is the charanga sound—violins and flute and rhythm. That is what the real nitty-gritty of the Cuban music is. . . . And it’s really Afro-Cuban music. Because the Negro slaves that came to Cuba from Africa, they brought the rhythm. And in Cuba they put the voicings out, the melody and harmony. . . . But that was, still is, the real Cuban music should be called not salsa [but] Afro-Cuban music. Curbelo would develop into a finely trained musical genius. He began to master the curriculum of the Academy of Music and decided to enter Cuba’s prestigious Molinas Conservatory. Like his contemporary Mario Bauzá, Curbelo became fascinated with new forms of music, in particular American jazz. His understanding and love for music fueled his passion for exploration, and American jazz was exciting and fresh. Curbelo and Bauzá both became obsessed with jazz. In the ’20s I was a very young kid. But I always was a fan, and my favorite music always has been jazz. . . . I find that jazz is the most interesting music that is, as far as popular music is concerned, I love it . . . in Cuba I used to have records from Chick Webb where Mario Bauzá, A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 51 when he came to United States, he was the first trumpet. Bauzá remembers listening to his favorite American jazz musicians on the radio in Cuba. Duke Ellington used to (broadcast) almost every night from the Cotton Club. And I used to catch that in Havana through short-wave radio. And that music was so fascinating, was so different. All different jazz— completely different. And I always said, “That’s African- American music, that’s Africa.” The sound of the music, the way he uses harmony, he give you that color. And I was dying to get into New York. Bauzá would get a taste of the New York jazz scene shortly after, by happenstance. He got his break after going into his favorite music store in Havana and meeting bandleader Antonio Romeu. I used to go practically almost every day. I go to the music store to see what new records came and what piece come. So, when I got there, the head man said, “Mario, I want to try this clarinet that just came out from France, a Buffet Crampon, I want you (to) try.” So, I was prac- ticing clarinet over there, you know, testing the clarinet, and Romeu was there. . . . He said, “You don’t mind play this one with me?” I said, “No.” He said, “But do you know how to transpose from clarinet to—?” I said, “Oh, yeah.” So, I played the danzon with him and he was (amazed). . . . About two weeks later he found my tele- phone number and called my father. He said, “I would like to take Mario to New York to record with me, my orchestra.” Bauzá went to record with Romeu and his orchestra in New York and was blown away by the live jazz musicianship he encountered. Upon seeing saxophonist Frankie Tumbaur, Bauzá’s attention shifted to a new instrument. He fell in love with the saxophone and 52 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ would take it up immediately upon returning to Cuba. The sax- ophone would provide an outlet for Bauzá to grow musically, and it provided more opportunities to gain exposure in the Havana music scene. Though it was hard for a dark-skinned musician to find work, Bauzá still managed to make a name for himself. He recalls the racial inequities in Havana at the time. When they heard me play . . . that’s when I got the op- portunity to get a first-class job in Havana. Up to then, no, because the average musician on the big-time job ov- er there was white. . . . That country is no different than Mississippi was . . . not much different. We had that prob- lem, still have that problem, and gonna have that prob- lem. . . . So, we are still fighting those problems . . . the only discrimination there in those days when I was a young kid, like you go in the interior of Havana and the colored people walk on . . . one side of the park. Don’t allowed to go on the other side with the white people. That’s the way, you know. You go in the barber shop, you had to go to the Black barber shop. But the trouble with my country is so much mixture. Because after all, how the Cuban race was produced? By Spaniard and African womans. After finally gaining acceptance in the Havana music scene, both Curbelo and Bauzá would look to the future. Each of them saw himself as a jazz musician waiting to break out and creatively explore his musicianship. Both Curbelo and Bauzá decided the only way to truly embrace their passion for music was by going to [the] hottest music spot in the world, the home of jazz, New York City. Everybody talk about Mario, Mario, Mario, clarinet player and saxophone player. So, I said, “Well the next stop gotta be the United States,” come to the Mecca of jazz . . . nothing else I can learn in Cuba. A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 53 III. Cuba Comes to New York: The Palladium Era Once in the United States, Mario Bauzá’s first order of business was to learn yet another instrument. It was rough because when I got here it was in the heart of the Depression. And I’m lucky that I was, I met Benny Carter and he gave me advice . . . (and) there was another fella that came here on the boat with me with the Don Azpiazu Orchestra by the name of Antonio Machin. . . . So, I used to go into his house every day, to listen to rehearsals, (one day) I say, “I have no problem to play the music the way you want to. . . . I don’t play trumpet, but I think if you buy me a trumpet, I think I can do the job.” So, we went to the pawnshop and bought a cheap trumpet for fifteen bucks or something like that. So, I took it home and I start, I knew the positions and all I had to do was to get some em- bouchure, and that was that. Said, “Mario, I only got . . . fifteen days to recording.” I said, “Well, you ain’t got nobody. If you give me the opportunity, I think I can do it, otherwise I wouldn’t even talk about it.” So, I start practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing. So finally, we go into the recording. . . . Then I fell in love with the trumpet. And then I figured I had a better chance with the trumpet than I did with the saxophone to join one of those jazz bands. Bauzá quickly became known around jazz circles, and his rise to prominence was fast. First, Bauzá joined the Chick Webb Band, where under the wing of bandleader Chick Webb he would gain a vast knowledge of jazz. Webb opened up doors for Bauzá and introduced him to some of the biggest names in the New York jazz scene. Bauzá played with countless musicians from Webb to Cab Calloway to Ella Fitzgerald. All over New York from the Apollo to 54 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ the Savoy Ballroom, Bauzá spread his love for jazz as he collaborated with a myriad of jazz legends. In addition to the various collaborations that were taking place, another tradition of the era was the Battle of the Bands. Two bands would play the same hall or ballroom and try to show one another up. This is when Afro-Cuban rhythms really stood out, earning Afro-Cubans a reputation for their showmanship. Mario Bauzá re- members battling Benny Goodman in the late 1930s with the Chick Webb Band. The Savoy Ballroom was pack(ed) around five o’clock in the afternoon, they had to close the door. . . . Benny Goodman playe(ed) the first set . . . they close with “Big John Special.” So, Chick say, “What’choo gonna play?” I say, “How about the same number, gonna play ‘Big John Special’ . . . and close with ‘Harlem Conga?’” . . . The battle of music was through in the first set. The band was too powerful for Benny. Benny’s band was too light for that, that and especially with that crowd. When that band hit, it was something else. This period of the 1930s was essential to the birth of Latin jazz music. Pioneers like Bauzá were becoming big names and starting to influence the music scene. By adding elements from their [strong] background in Cuban music, people like Bauzá, Curbelo, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez would usher in a new form of music —Afro-Cuban jazz. In 1940, Bauzá hooked up with his brother-in- law, Machito, and together they created Machito’s Afro-Cuban Orchestra, along with Graciela Pérez. Despite initial skepticism about the use of the name “Afro-Cuban,” Latinos, Blacks, and even whites would enjoy the music. When I started Machito Orchestra, whole lot of Puerto Rican people reject my music. They say I use bongo and that was a disgrace, that was “nanigo” music, “Negroes A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 55 from Africa” music. They didn’t go for that. But in the new generation, Puerto Rican born in New York begin to like what I was doin’. Soon there was a huge following for the acts and the premiere venue was Manhattan’s Palladium Ballroom. The Palladium was an important institution that would operate from 1949 to 1966, delighting fans of mambo and jazz alike. Celebrities like Marlon Brando and Bob Hope as well as everyday working-class immigrants would crowd the Palladium. With unparalleled integration, it be- came the single most important place for Latin jazz music in New York City. The rise of the Palladium marked a turning point in New York’s music scene. Tastes were beginning to change and people were be- coming more and more intrigued with the new Afro-Cuban jazz sound. Afro-Cubans were gaining acceptance and earning respect. Along with Afro-Cuban jazz, many of the Latino musicians involved collaborated with American jazz artists. Bauzá himself broke in legend Dizzy Gillespie, with whom he teamed up Machito percussionist Chano Pozo. And then I brought Dizzy into the band. . . . I went and got a hold of Dizzy: “Dizzy, bring your trumpet with a mute. I want you to play anything you want on top of that.” . . . Rhythm crazy. And he can dance. I got a videotape they made in Havana. . . . And when he came out there and dancing, dance a rumba. It’s amazin’! And Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy’s, Dizzy all right! Helluva fellow. . . . I love the guy, my son. The language barrier illustrates the connection Afro-Cubans made with American jazz musicians. Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo made terrific music and rose to the top of the jazz world in New York City, but Pozo didn’t speak a word of English. 56 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ You know the only word that Chano (could speak) to Dizzy? “Hundred dollar.” That’s all. Despite the cultural differences and language barrier, Gillespie found a niche in Latin jazz. In 1947, the two were set to perform a number called the “Afro-Cuban Drums Suite” at Carnegie Hall. The show was instrumental in bringing Latin jazz into mainstream awareness. Additionally, Gillespie’s improvisation added a whole new dimension to jazz. Gillespie’s musicianship became the groundwork for later improvisation such as bee bop and the music of greats like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. By 1950, Machito, Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez were among the biggest names in all of New York. Collaborations would continue, and Charlie Parker would get into the act, teaming up with pianist Norman Granz and Bauzá on one of the best examples of Latin jazz, “The Peanut Vendor.” Charlie Parker made a very big impression on Bauzá, and that would lead to partnership on the song “Mango Mangue.” People might think that Charlie Parker play because he was high, or—no, no, no, no. He knew everything he would do in the music, and nobody told him how to do it. That was his own creation, his own mentality, his own approach about music. . . . He says, “Oh man, play any- thing, let me hear the arrangement.” . . . When we play the arrangement, he say, “I like that.” I said, “But it’s a vocal.” He say, “All you gotta do, when the vocal sup- posed to be sing, tell ’em ‘don’t sing’ and gimme the cue, I’ll play.” . . . He went through that number like nothing, back to the montuno, and . . . “Oh my goodness!” I say, “this man is a genius!” As Afro-Cuban jazz’s popularity grew, more and more great bandleaders would emerge, and great musicians would flourish in the new form. José Curbelo’s orchestra was one of the bands that A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 57 benefited the most from the success of the other Afro-Cuban performers. Curbelo’s success came at a time when the music that was originally confined to Harlem began to spread downtown to places like the Palladium and uptown to The Bronx, again thanks to the success of Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez, but mainly because of Bauzá’s Machito Orchestra. Curbelo explains the phenomenon. That was Machito and his Afro-Cubans . . . because when you hit Broadway you did the biggest, the Broadway show, the Strand Theater, the Capitol Theater, the Paramount Theater. All the big theaters, the big ball- rooms, the Roseland, the Arcadia, everything was on Broadway between 42nd, the Astor Roof, and 54th, where the Palladium was. And the first band, Black, to come from El Barrio . . . was a great accomplishment. After Machito broke through to the mainstream, Afro-Cuban jazz exploded. The 1950s saw more and more Afro-Cuban jazz bands sprouting up, and the phenomenon became insanely popular. The Palladium was at its peak as a venue, consistently packing the house to see Tito Puente or Machito. At the height of the Palladium era, people of all races, backgrounds, and ethnicities came together to enjoy the music. IV. The Late Palladium Era: Afro‐Cubans in The Bronx The exposure Afro-Cuban jazz was experiencing affected all of New York, but no borough embraced the tradition like The Bronx. Just over the river from the “Mecca of Jazz,” Harlem, The Bronx served as the next major center for music in New York. At that time, clubs and dance halls in The Bronx would attract the biggest names in Afro-Cuban jazz, mambo, and American jazz. Venues like the Hunts Point Palace, the Tritons Club, and the Rockland Palace would put The Bronx on the map as the place to see Afro-Cuban music. While the main forum was still the Palladium, many people would look no 58 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ further than The Bronx for a quality Afro-Cuban jazz experience. Bronxites would go to have a good time, get down, and listen to some amazing music from the greats. Machito, Tito Puente, José Curbelo (before becoming a manager), Tito Rodríguez, and even Charlie Parker would play at Bronx clubs during the late 1950s. New bands started to come out of the borough as a result of the developing Afro-Cuban jazz scene in The Bronx. Young Bronxites would pack the clubs to get a glimpse of their favorite bands, go home, and try to imitate their sound. Afro-Cuban records were played from every window in every Latino neighborhood in The Bronx, and a new generation of Afro-Cuban jazz lovers would emerge. This new wave of Afro-Cuban jazz buffs would see music any chance they had. Joe Orange, Bronx native and jazz trombonist who played with Herbie Mann and Eddie Palmieri, recalls students at his high school going all the way downtown to see Afro-Cuban music. When I was going to Morris (High School) there was a whole group of kids that used to go to the Palladium and they used to come to school talkin’ about, “Man, last Saturday night at the Palladium. Tito Puente did this and Tito Rodríguez—.” And I (was) kind of like, “Give me a break!” But there was a real strong interest in Latin music. Even the non-musicians, Latin dance was like a craze that was going on you know, ’57, ’58, when I was in high school. The Bronx would serve as a breeding ground for some of the freshest talent in Latin jazz and this was, in part, due to the emergence of Afro-Cuban jazz’s popularity in the latter half of the 1950s. Willie Colón, one of the foremost innovators of Latin music in the late 1960s, remembers going to the Hunts Point Palace when he was thirteen. In those days you had to have a cabaret license, so I had a A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 59 friend who was older and he had one, (gave) me his and we kind of doctored it up and put my picture in it. . . . I grew a mustache as soon as possible, and I used to smoke cigars to try to look older, you know. I even used to put frosting on my hair sometimes, it must have been pretty pathetic but I got away with it most of the time. And yeah, we used to go to the Hunts Point Palace, which is now like an office building. . . . They would have like fourteen bands and the poster, you know, just looked like a checkerboard, it had so many faces and stuff on it. . . . And you would go in and I think you’d pay something like five dollars, and you’d be able to see twenty some- thing orchestras. . . . There was a big boom at one time. The popularity of the local venues was apparent by the amount of talent that came onto the Afro-Cuban scene in the late 1950s and early ’60s. One of the premiere acts that came from The Bronx at the time was Eddie Palmieri and his conjunto La Perfecta. My mother arrived in New York in 1925, that’s how it all starts. . . . She came here with an uncle and an aunt, and there was another uncle and aunt here. . . . And then my father followed a year later on a boat. . . . In 1926, they married, my brother was born in ’27, and I was born in ’36 . . . on 112th Street . . . between Madison and Park. We moved from there when I was five years old, and then we went right to Kelly Street between Longwood and Intervale, known now and later as the South Bronx. Palmieri’s extended family had also immigrated to The Bronx and would introduce Eddie to music as a child. His uncle had his own traditional band and encouraged Eddie and his older brother Charlie to take up the piano but emphasized the importance of traditional Latin percussion instruments. But Eddie Palmieri was a piano player. A prodigy, Palmieri played Carnegie Hall at the age of eleven. By 60 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ thirteen he had joined up with his uncle, as a percussionist. By the time I was fifteen I sold my timbales back to my uncle, (and) went back on the piano, which I’m still playing to this day. Like Willie Colon, Palmieri also gained a lot of musical knowledge by going to shows in The Bronx. Palmieri attributes his start as a serious pianist to seeing bands and orchestras at Bronx clubs and dance halls in the 1950s. I saw Charlie Parker, and that was at the Rockland Palace. He would get gigs like that because he used to work for a promoter, that was a Black promoter called Cecil Bowen. At the Hunts Point Palace I know I saw Charlie Parker and I didn’t know who he was but I saw rubber bands and band-aids on the saxophone, alto. I saw different groups but my main interest was to try to play the piano. ’Cause I hadn’t been reading music, I was playing timbales with my uncle, folkloric band, and then it was very difficult to get back to reading. Palmieri would get his break in 1955 playing with Eddie Forrestier’s Orchestra and would even play with the legendary Tito Rodríguez for a year before starting La Perfecta in 1961. Palmieri’s orchestra was fresh and new, replacing trumpets with trombones. The innovative La Perfecta became the key attraction in Latin music during the 1960s. By assembling some of the greatest musicians in all of New York, the Bronx-based conjunto was wildly popular and virtually unrivaled for the better part of the decade. To a large degree, the success of La Perfecta was truly a group effort, and the band incorporated one of the most influential musicians in the history of New York, trombonist Barry Rogers. Described as a true “renaissance man,” Rogers came out of a Jewish community in The Bronx and was an avid car mechanic, musician, writer, and most A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 61 prominently, a lover of all music. Mark Weinstein recalls Barry’s knack at instrumentation well beyond the trombone, including the folkloric double string guitar from Cuba known as the tres. “Barry was a great tres player. Barry was one of the better tres players in the city of New York.” Peers remember the late Barry Rogers spending hours upon hours listening to records and playing music. Rogers’s distinct trombone sound was of paramount importance in the development of Latin music from Afro-Cuban revivalist jazz to salsa. Known for his incessant writing, and re-writing, of charts, almost obsessive personality, and perfectionism, Rogers put all he had into Latin music. When asked about the influence Barry Rogers had on him, Eddie Palmieri remembers Rogers’s uniqueness. Those trombones, when they used to get into a riff behind the flute they don’t stop, and then Barry just takes off and keeps going and we just kept pushing and pushing, and that instrument is not an instrument to be able to do that with and they did it. . . . (I remember) his preparation, his musical knowledge, of all different kinds of music. With Rogers’s innovation and virtuosity with the trombone and Eddie Palmieri leading the band behind the piano, La Perfecta soon found themselves playing with the greats. Eddie Palmieri remembers the circumstances in which he played alongside legends at the Palladium. Oh, Machito, Tito Rodríguez, Tito Puente, La Perfecta dealt with each and every one one-on-one. No quarter taken. There was four sets, you did sixteen sets a week at the Palladium for 72 dollars, before taxes. . . . They had lost their liquor license and now they gave me 90 en- gagements, so once they give you the 90 engagements, then anybody that wants to book you out would have to 62 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ pay more and that was the deal, you know, and José Curbelo handled that pretty well. La Perfecta continued to thrive during the 1960s and played all over New York City, from the ritziest hotels to the local clubs of The Bronx. La Perfecta illustrates a rich history of music in The Bronx. While the music scene had always been big in places like Morrisania and Hunts Point, La Perfecta was one of the first real successful jazz bands to come out of The Bronx during the era. Mark Weinstein, second trombonist (with Barry Rogers) remembers playing in different clubs all over New York City. You couldn’t buy a second microphone, man! I mean the Hunts Point Palace, I don’t think they owned two microphones . . . and the trombone players would sweat, sweat blood. . . . Barry would catch the edge of the microphone by pointin’ his trombone towards (it). But because we were always playing during the montunos, the singer was in the way. . . . The Hunts Point was one of the bigger rooms, there were a couple other places. . . . The Palladium was a great room—Palladium was the best room to play, I loved the Palladium. . . . We played Birdland a couple of times, I mean then we’d have microphones. La Perfecta’s popularity soared in the ’60s. New Yorkers identified with both the jazz sound and the Latin roots. La Perfecta would draw from many musical traditions to form their unique sound. Mark Weinstein remembers The Bronx as one of the hottest spots for Afro-Cuban music. It was Cuban revivalist. I mean the amazing thing about playing with Eddie’s band was playing Latin music for people of Latino heritage, and this was basically the A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 63 cultural revival that occurred at the Triton Club, I mean the Triton Club was the center of it . . . in The Bronx, Southern Boulevard, right next door to the Hunts Point Palace. . . . And the model of the trombone improvisation came from the way . . . the soloist would play against the trumpets. But then Barry extended that. That was the model. In 1966, La Perfecta played the Palladium for its final show. The Palladium Era had officially ended, but Latin music would continue to gain steam up in The Bronx. V. The Bronx and Latin Jazz: The 1950s, 1960s, and Beyond With the Palladium closed and other Manhattan dance halls following suit, Latin music still thrived in one place. The Bronx was now the center for Latin jazz in New York and would become a hotbed for talent. The biggest names in Latin music were coming from The Bronx because communities were raising their kids on music. The Bronx in the ’50s and ’60s was rich in musical traditions from all over Latin America, and residents would expose different types of music to one another. Vibrant neighborhoods like Hunts Point, Morrisania, and Longwood became a breeding ground for musical talent. The public schools provided instruments for students, neighbors sat on their stoops and jammed, and Latin and jazz music blared from every street corner. Frank Rivera was a resident of the Longwood community in the ’50s and ’60s and remembers the neighborhood as well as developing a love for dancing. It was real nice and everybody knew everybody in the neighborhood. . . . Some of ’em became teachers and musicians like Joe Loco, he lived in the corner by the drugstore . . . when we went to (PS) 42, that’s when they started to open the school at night and that’s when we 64 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ started to have parties and dancing. . . . At that time it was more like they call “mambo”—mambo, not salsa like they call it now. Joe Orange, a longtime resident of Morrisania, remembers hearing music all over The Bronx when he was growing up. I was always hearing it. . . . I was always around it. My brother played conga. And there were all these bands, over at PS 99 they used talent shows. . . . You know, bands in junior high and high school, there were Latin bands all around me. . . . They used to have a place up in The Bronx on Boston Road that was really a great place for jam sessions when I was a kid. I was in high school and I would go in and listen . . . right where Boston and Pros- pect Avenue meet, and it was down in this little basement and I would sneak in there . . . it wasn’t open for very long but it was very popular. Orange contributes the large number of musicians who came out of The Bronx to a surrounding culture that nourished young musicians and helped to develop the talents of the community residents. I think the programs in the public schools had a lot to do with it. I started in (PS) 40, most of us started in 40 or one of those junior high schools. . . . PS 99 had that after- school community center. We used to have talent shows once a week, some great things came through those talent shows! Because of the rich cultural environment, young kids on the street would aspire for musical greatness. Latinos and African Americans would all embrace the various sounds of Latin music, thanks to the diversity of The Bronx, and lively musicians would surface all over the borough. Willie Colón was one such musician. A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 65 The South Bronx in the ’50s . . . was exactly like a town in Puerto Rico or any other Latin American country. . . . There were domino games on the sidewalks and there were bembes, which is a group of guys playing congas . . . and we’d sing choruses and maybe some of the hit songs of the day. From that upbringing, Colón embraced both Puerto Rican and Cuban son, and became a trombonist in his own band. Mark Weinstein attributes youth interest in Latin music to the popularity of Barry Rogers. There was LeBron Brothers and there was Willie Colón, I mean both Barry and I were very, very arrogant about what was happening with the trombone. ’Cause both of us had come to Latin music from very rich trombone traditions whereas all the kids who were comin’ up had learned to play trombone by listening to Barry essentially. Regardless of who influenced him, Willie Colón was a young upstart trombonist and he teamed up with a beautiful voice, [a] soñero named Héctor Lavoe. The two delighted fans with songs like trombone anthem with a Panamanian sound “La Murga,” or with the album El Malo, named after the persona Colón would embrace as a rough kid from The Bronx. Ushering the newly dubbed “boo- galoo” style, El Malo and Lavoe would travel all over the world with their exciting, trombone-driven sound until Lavoe unfortunately fell victim to heroin and began showing up late for gigs and acting out. In 1973, Colón was forced to fire Lavoe, ending their six-year partnership. Colón would continue to write and record music, and his name became synonymous with salsa music. Colón has written socially conscious songs like “El General” and “Si La Ves,” has sold over 30 66 FROM THE DAVID M. CARP PAPERS ON LATIN JAZZ million records worldwide, and has amassed fifteen gold and five platinum records since his humble beginning in The Bronx. VI. One Last Word From the start in Cuba, through the coalescence with jazz in Man- hattan, to the popularization in The Bronx, Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz has become one of the most important cultural phenomena in the history of New York. The various musical forms from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, and other Caribbean nations illustrate the diversity of the city. The story of Afro-Cuban music’s popularity in New York is a microcosm of all the wonderful things that make the city uniquely diverse. The way this music was embraced by native New Yorkers as well as [more recent] immigrants is an amazing tribute to the capital of the world, New York. Musical geniuses brought their incredibly well-trained and knowledgeable background to New York, where they mixed with the native population of jazz musicians, and history was made. The importance of The Bronx in all of this cannot be emphasized enough. It’s because of the borough’s love for Latin music that other musical forms could thrive and be introduced. The music served as a familiar reminder that The Bronx was a place for all people from all over the world. Though many, like Mario Bauzá, detest the term “Latin jazz,” the music itself tells the important story of two cultures merging to form great art. A History of Afro‐Cuban Jazz in The Bronx 67 BRONX BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE YEAR AWARD Presented to Bronx business leaders who support the humanities and the arts. 2021 Ram Gupta, Chatam 2000 Management Co., Inc. 2020 Michael Max Knobbe, BronxNet 1999 2019 Richard Legnini, Bronx Ad Group 1998 2018 John Calvelli, Bronx Zoo 2017 James H. Alston, McCalls 1997 Bronxwood Funeral Home 2016 Steve Baktidy, S&T Auto Body 1996 Shop 1995 2015 Matthew Engel, Langsam Property Services 1994 2014 Greg Gonzalez, Manhattan Parking Group 1993 2013 Steve Tisso, Teddy Nissan 2012 Joseph Kelleher, Hutchinson 1992 Metro Center 1991 2011 Adam Green, Rocking the Boat 2010 Anthony Mormile, Hudson 1990 Valley Bank 2009 Lenny Caro, Bronx Chamber of 1989 Commerce 2008 Katherine Gleeson, Goldman Sachs 2007 Sandra Erickson, Erickson Real 1988 Estate 2006 Cecil P. Joseph, McDonald’s 2005 Frank Cassano, New Bronx Chamber of Commerce 1987 2004 Dart Westphal, Norwood News 2003 James J. Houlihan, Houlihan- Parnes 2002 David Greco, Mike’s Deli & Caterers 2001 Peter Madonia, Madonia Brothers Bakery John Reilly, Fordham-Bedford Housing Corp. Mario Procida, Procida Construction Corp. Veronica M. White, NYC Housing Partnership Dr. Spencer Foreman, Montefiore Medical Center Monroe Lovinger, CPA Gil and Jerry Beautus, Walton Press William O’Meara, Greentree Restaurant Larry Barazzoto, Soundview Discount Muffler Gail McMillan, Con Edison Susan E. Goldy, ERA Susan Goldy & Co. Mike Nuñez, Bronx Venture Group Mark Engel, Langsam Property Services Carlos Nazario, Metro Beer & Soda Joel Fishman, Nehring Brother Realty Co. Michael Durso, Dollar Dry Dock Savings Bank Elias Karmon, EMK Enterprises REVIEWS Cope, Suzanne. Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2022. 304 pp. ISBN: 9781641604529. $27.99. Suzanne Cope’s expertly written, extensively researched book chron- icles the Civil Rights Movement in the United States through the lived experiences of two unacknowledged Black women champions of the movement, Aylene Quin and Cleo Silvers. Cope is a writer, professor, narrative journalist, and scholar. She earned a PhD in Adult Learning from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massa- chusetts and is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, where she is a “food studies scholar with a focus on food as a tool for social and political change.” Cope’s work illuminates the stories of “unsung leaders . . . mainly women of color who are left out of history,” individuals who “elevate women’s work” through their uses of food as a “political tool.” Cope does a magnificent job at presenting this historical survey of the Civil Rights Movement in an easy-to-read manner that meta- phorically transplants the reader to a stool at Aylene Quin’s food counter. In 22 short and detailed chapters, Power Hungry recounts the dual narratives of Aylene Quin’s community organizing and voter rights’ activism out of her McComb, Mississippi restaurant and tavern South of the Border during the Freedom Summer of 1964, on the one hand, and Cleo Silvers’s organizing in the South Bronx, first through VISTA1 and then with the Black Panther Party shortly after the start of the New York Chapter’s Children’s Free Breakfast Program in 1969, on the other. Cope argues that the two womens’ significance to the Civil Rights Movement is not reflected accurate- 1 VISTA: Volunteers in Service to America, part of President Johnson’s Anti- Poverty program and predecesser to today’s AmeriCorps. Cope, Power Hungry 69 ly in the historical record, in which such activity as cooking, if included at all, occurs as footnotes. As a tribute to the scholars whose research has inspired and informed her own work, Cope pro- vides the bibliographical citations preceding her prologue. Aylene Quin, or “Mama Quin” as she was affectionately known in her community of McComb, Mississippi, was a pivotal figure in the local and state-wide civil rights and voter registration efforts. Power Hungry vividly recounts Mama Quin’s story through the events of 1961 leading up to the Freedom Summer of 1964 and beyond. The book captures Mama Quin’s personal sacrifices in preparing and delivering meals to activists jailed, in one case for attempting to stage a sit-in at the McComb Woolworth’s food counter and in another for participating in a high school walk-out and march to the County Hall. Although a visible staple of the community, Mama Quin even took part in the latter as a show of support, alongside her daughter Jacqueline. Cope details the many other civil rights actions su- pported by Mama Quin, like holding secret meetings of the local Black middle-class and business people at her restaurant (who would arrive in the back of delivery trucks) and feeding civil rights wor- kers, such as the SNCC Freedom Riders, and the community at large. 2 Cope describes Mama Quin’s efforts at feeding civil rights activists and the wider community as “community building, done around the kitchen tables rather than on the front lines.” As Cope emphasizes, Mama Quin’s independent “financial means,” as a self-employed business owner, gave her the ability to support the movement with- out direct consequence to her employment status (which was not the case with many others). Cope introduces Cleo Silvers in chapter 4. She affably details Cleo’s beginnings in her hometown of Philadelphia while growing up enjoying Sunday meals at her grandmother’s house. The experience of social gatherings around meals influenced Cleo’s love for what 2 SNCC: The Student Non-Violenct Coordinating Committee, one of the leading student groups of the Civil Rights Movement. 70 PASTOR CRESPO, JR. Cope describes as “culinary diplomacy.” Cope expounds on the myriad ways that Cleo hosted and prepared gatherings around food at her apartment in the South Bronx (and elsewhere over the years), not only to garner financial support for the Black Panther Party but as a mentoring tool for what Cleo called her “Black and Brown cadre.” Cope cogently presents the lessons that Aylene Quin and Cleo Silvers provide as the “power of community organizing” and “the power of food to help create community among activists and local people.” At the same time, Cope takes care to ensure that the reader understands Cleo’s accomplishments in the contexts of navigating patriarchy within the Black Panther Party, on the one hand, and enduring extensive FBI efforts to “neutralize and destroy” the Party’s leaders and the brutality of local law enforcement, on the other. As Cope eloquently posits, “This is the insidious nature of white supremacy, particularly when it infiltrates every nook and cranny of governmental power.” Drawing attention to Mama Quin’s context in Mississippi, Cope warns also of the terroristic lengths white supre- macy is willing to go to maintain a racist system—drive-by shootings, drive-by bombings, firebombs, and economic sanctions. Power Hun‐ gry is a testament to the strength and perseverance of countless unknown, unrecognized, and uncredited African American women leaders and their use of varied foodways to build and feed the community. This is an absolutely captivating book that is a must read. Pastor Crespo, Jr. The Bronx, New York Cope, Power Hungry 71 Sammartino, Annemarie. Freedomland: Co‐Op City and The Story of New York. Ithaca/London: Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2022. 320 pp. ISBN: 9781501716430. $32.95. As its title suggests, Freedomland: Co‐Op City and the Story of New York frames the history of Co-op City, the largest cooperative hou- sing development in the U.S., as a microcosm of wider twentieth- century New York City history. Co-Op City was constructed at the end of the 1960s in the far reaches of the northeast Bronx, carved out of swampland along the Hutch- inson River. The title derives from the ill-fated amusement park, Freedomland, which during the first half of the 1960s occupied a portion of the land on which Co-Op City was built. At the same time, the title evokes the promise of Co-Op City: a place where affordable housing and a cohesive community life would be avail- able to residents without necessitating a move to the suburbs. Here was a place where working- and middle-class New Yorkers could flourish and share in the American dream of home-own-ership. The cooperative housing movement in New York City, of which Co- op City was a part, emerged in the early twentieth century among progressive Jewish and other trade unionists. Tenants, or “co- operators,” would purchase equity shares in an apartment upon move-in and would receive the amount back, plus interest, when vacating the apartment. Early cooperative housing in New Yorkwith pronounced leftwing influence such as the Allerton Coops in The Bronx had some of the first racially integrated housing in New York City. Other cooperatives had a less than stellar record in this regard, and this is a part of the story of Co-op City as well. Co-Op City was built by the United Housing Foundation (UHF), a nonmarket housing corporation known for cooperative projects like 72 ROGER MCCORMACK the Amalgamated Housing Co-operative in The Bronx, opened in 1927, and Rochdale Village in Queens, opened in 1963. Co-op City, whose first apartments opened in 1968, provided middle-income housing at a time when many middle-class New Yorkers had decamped for the suburbs. All of these UHF developments served as crucibles for the inexorable demographic and economic changes buffeting New York City in the second half of the twentieth century —not least because in the late 1960s the UHF was mandated by the state to conform to non-discriminatory housing policies. Racial integration was not without tension in these developments, particularly as the original goals of the cooperative movement lost their luster amid rising crime and the racialized perception among many that an influx of Blacks and Puerto Ricans to Co-Op City heralded the demise of the neighborhood in the late 1970s and 1980s. According to Sammartino, however, Co-Op City never succumbed to New York’s vituperative racial politics to the same extent as Rochdale Village did, with the latter coming apart over busing and integration in the 1970s. UHF initially stressed a homogenously middle-class community at Co-op City and refused to jettison the middle-income requirement to appeal to more Blacks and Latinos, who were on average employed in jobs that paid them less for comparable work done by whites and experienced higher rates of unemployment. The approach of UHF created tension with prominent city agencies and Mayor Lindsay’s administration, which advocated—at least on paper—various policies to uplift Black and Latino populations in the 1960s. According to Sammartino, the common socio-economic level of Co-Op City nourished racial integration, subduing racial tension and rancor at a time when such tensions were high elsewhere in New York. Sammartino argues for Co-Op City’s unusual role within New York City: problems found in the rest of the city, though perceptible in Co-Op City, were diminished by the middle-class character of the development and the ideology of the “cooperators” or residents of Co-Op City, stressing, Sammartino, Freedomland 73 as it did, shared ownership and the diminution of the profit motive in real estate. Other critics of Co-Op City at the time drew attention to its “Tow- ers in the park” model. Towering residential skyscrapers, these critics argued, contributed to urban alienation and malaise. In this telling, Co-Op City would never be able to achieve a spontaneous community. Architectural and urban planners—chief among them Jane Jacobs—celebrated the community life of old, smaller-scale neighborhoods and were quick to denounce massive urban development projects like Co-Op City. Sammartino argues that this portrayal of Co-Op City was false, citing a number of anecdotes from her own life and from other residents highlighting the robustness of community in Co-Op City. Community life was, in fact, celebrated by people of varying ethnicities and backgrounds, most notably Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who moved to Co-Op City as a young girl. Here, Sammartino probably overstates her thesis. While her anecdotes of vibrant community life in Co-Op City are nonetheless true, the development to this day remains isolated from the rest of The Bronx and New York City (many plans for a subway line to Co-Op City have proved abortive), making the development convenient primarily for automobile drivers. Sammartino masterfully describes the ethos of the cooperative’s founders, the United Housing Foundation, and their utopian aims for cooperative housing, desiring nothing less than a wholesale reevaluation of how New Yorkers envisioned housing. She is also unsparing in detailing the corruption of the Mitchell-Lama program (and probably the UHF) and the enormous cost overruns during the construction of Co-Op City, overruns eventually paid for by increases in “carrying charges,” or rents, by the development’s res- idents. The increase in carrying charges and resentment towards the UHF’s 74 ROGER MCCORMACK perceived corruption culminated in the rent strike of 1975–1976, the longest and largest so far in U.S. history. Led by the bombastic labor organizer Charles Rosen—dubbed by the Village Voice “the Lenin of the North Bronx”—Co-Op City cooperators eventually gained board control of Co-Op City but remained bedeviled by the same financial problems the UHF faced. The strike destroyed the UHF: it would never build another cooperative housing complex after the imbroglios involved in the construction and maintenance of Co-Op City. Here, Sammartino uses the example of Co-Op City to chart the history of New York’s social welfare apparatus, where robust funding was provided for education, housing, and a variety of other urban programs in the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1970s, this model was in desuetude. Instead, the ruling governing philosophy became “neoliberalism,” which Sammartino defines as market-based solutions to urban problems, and austerity, encapsulated by the federal government’s refusal to bail out New York City during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s (and symbolized by the New York Post’s famous headline, “Ford to New York—Drop Dead!”). Co-Op City, though, founded just prior to the high-water point of these policies in New York City, offered a rival conception of housing, with its roots in the social welfare model of the 1930s and ’40s and the tenant activism of the Lower East Side and The Bronx of this same era. Initially a safe-haven for Jews leaving once prosperous ethnic neighborhoods in the West Bronx, Co-Op City was widely seen as part of The Bronx and yet distinct from older neighborhoods not only because of its far-flung location and towering skyscrapers but also because of the absence of crime and urban blight. Complicating narratives of white flight and twentieth-century urban histories, Sammartino argues against Co-Op City as having a decisive destructive impact on the west Bronx. According to a standard narrative, Co-Op City exacerbated white flight from west Bronx neighborhoods and was one of the main contributors to urban decay in the borough. But, Professor Sammartino notes, many Jewish Sammartino, Freedomland 75 residents of the Grand Concourse had already left for the suburbs of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut before the construction of Co-Op City was finished in 1968. In her view, Co-Op City simply reinforced a social trend already underway. The book also benefits from Sammartino’s measured appraisal of the reasons for the Jewish exodus from the west Bronx. Many previously storied west Bronx neighborhoods had begun to experience decreases in city services and overall building maintenance, and new arrivals to Co-Op City cited actual crimes and a perceived decline in their old neighborhoods. For a time, Co-Op City was seen as an escape from such blight. Unlike many other scholars of this period, however, Sammartino is similarly careful to weigh the largely manufactured fears of white residents of an increase in crime in Co-Op City in the 1980s and 1990s. Sammartino concludes her commendable volume with a paean to Co-Op City’s multicultural identity, even as demographics in the development have shifted, and to its continued existence as a middle-class neighborhood for newer populations of Bronxites. Roger McCormack The Bronx, New York 76 ROGER MCCORMACK SELECT PUBLICATIONS AND GIFTS OF THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY The below items, and additional publications and gifts, are available for purchase in-person at any of our locations; by mail, through writing to The Bronx County Historical Society at 3309 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx, NY 10467; or online, at www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/store. Life in The Bronx Series Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Birth of The Bronx: 1609–1900 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx in the Innocent Years: 1890–1925 Lloyd Ultan and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, 1935–1965 Lloyd Ultan, The Beautiful Bronx: 1920–1950 Life in The Bronx, four-volume set History of The Bronx Nicholas DiBrino, History of Morris Park Racecourse Allan S. Gilbert (ed.), Digging The Bronx G. Hermalyn et al., A Historical Sketch of The Bronx, 2nd edition G. Hermalyn and Thomas X. Casey, Bronx Views G. Hermalyn and Anthony Greene, Yankee Stadium: 1923–2008 G. Hermalyn and Robert Kornfeld, Landmarks of The Bronx Kathleen A. McAuley, Westchester Town: Bronx Beginnings Kathleen A. McAuley and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx: Then and Now John McNamara, History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names (encyclopedia), 3rd edition John McNamara, McNamara’s Old Bronx Rubio P. Mendez, A History of the Riverdale Yacht Club Michael Miller, Theatres of The Bronx $30.00 $25.00 $25.00 $25.00 $90.00 $10.00 $25.00 $15.00 $12.00 $22.00 $15.00 $15.00 $22.00 $30.00 $20.00 $20.00 $5.00 Lloyd Ultan, Blacks in the Colonial Bronx: A Documentary History Lloyd Ultan, The Bronx in the Frontier Era Lloyd Ultan, Legacy of the Revolution Lloyd Ultan, The Northern Borough: A History of The Bronx George Zoebelein, The Bronx: A Struggle for County Government History of New York City Elizabeth Beirne, The Greater New York Centennial Peter Derrick, Tunneling to the Future G. Hermalyn, Morris High School and the Creation of the New York City Public High School System George Lankevich, New York City: A Short History Lawrence Stelter, By the El: Third Avenue and Its El at Mid‐Century History of New York State G. Hermalyn and Sidney Horenstein, Hudson’s River Elizabeth Beirne, The Hudson River Douglas Lazars et al., Re‐inspired: The Erie Canal Roots of the Republic Series George Lankevich, Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court George Lankevich, The First House of Representatives and the Bill of Rights Edward Quinn, The Signers of the Constitution of the United States Edward Quinn, The Signers of the Declaration of Independence Richard Streb, The First Senate of the United States Lloyd Ultan, Presidents of the United States Roots of the Republic Series, six-volume set Educational Material Anthony Greene, Annotated Primary Source Documents, vol. 1 Roger McCormack, Annotated Primary Source Documents, vol. 2 Dan Eisenstein, Local History Classroom Resource Guide $18.00 $20.00 $15.00 $28.00 $15.00 $20.00 $20.00 $34.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $99.00 $20.00 $22.00 $15.00 Lisa Garrison, The South Bronx and the Founding of America G. Hermalyn, The Study and Writing of History Samuel Hopkins, West Farms Local History Curriculum Guide Alonso Serrano, Latin Bicentennial, comic book The Bronx County Historical Society Journal $15.00 $20.00 $15.00 $5.00 Back issues of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, 1963–2021, are available for purchase for $15.00 an issue, excepting special issues like the Centennial of The Bronx issue, available for purchase for $20.00. Research Center Dominick Caldiero et al., Newspaper Titles of The Bronx G. Hermalyn, Publications and Other Media of The Bronx County Historical Society Since 1955 G. Hermalyn et al., The Bronx in Print G. Hermalyn et al., Education and Culture in The Bronx G. Hermalyn and Laura Tosi, Genealogy of The Bronx Kathleen A. McAuley, A Guide to the Collections of The Bronx County Archives Laura Tosi et al., Ethnic Groups in The Bronx Laura Tosi et al., Index to The Sheet Map Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Elected Public Officials of The Bronx Since 1898 Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Atlas Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Microfilm/Microfiche Collection of The Bronx County Historical Society Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Media Collection Laura Tosi and G. Hermalyn, Guide to The Bronx County Historical Society Video Collection $15.00 $5.00 $10.00 $20.00 $10.00 $20.00 $20.00 $20.00 $15.00 $10.00 $10.00 $10.00 $10.00 Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, a documentary on DVD Elizabeth Beirne, Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham Kathleen A. McAuley, Edgar Allan Poe at Fordham Special Interest Peter Derrick and G. Hermalyn, The Bronx Cookbook Remember The Bronx, Bronx history calendar for 2023 Gifts The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug The Bronx Afghan, washable cotton blanket, 50" x 65" The Bronx River Parkway, c. 1915, poster, 20.5" x 29.5" Edgar Allan Poe coffee mug The Grand Concourse, 1892, poster, 25" x 12" The Bronx Comfort gift set, includes The Bronx Cookbook, the Bronx Afghan, and The Beautiful Bronx coffee mug $20.00 $20.00 $15.00 $15.00 $12.00 $7.95 $50.00 $20.00 $7.95 $20.00 $60.00 THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESIDENTS Jacqueline Kutner, 1993– Robert R. Hall, 1986–1993 Raymond F. Crapo, 1976–1986 Robert Farkas, 1976 Lloyd Ultan, 1971–1976 Ronald Schliessman, 1969–1971 Roger Arcara 1967–1969 Thomas J. Mullins, 1964–1967 George J. Fluhr, 1963–1964 Ray D. Kelly, 1963 Fred E. J. Kracke, 1960–1963 Joseph Duffy, 1958–1960 Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff, 1955–1958 LIFE MEMBERS Dr. Elizabeth Beirne Louis H. Blumegarten Adolfo Carrión Sam Chermin James Conroy Dorothy Curran John Dillon Dan Eisenstein Mark Engel Natalie and Robert Esnard Ken Fisher Fordham Hill Owner’s Co. Katherine Gleeson Robert Abrams Jorge L. Batista Michael Benedetto Lorraine Cortez-Vazquez Gloria Davis Hector Diaz Ruben Díaz, Jr. Jeffrey Dinowitz Eliot Engel Carmen Fariña Dr. Joseph A. Fernandez Fernando Ferrer George Friedman Carl E. Heastie Lee Holtzman Greg Gonzalez David Greco Robert Hall Daniel Hauben Dr. Gary Hermalyn James Houlihan Marsha Horenstein Dr. Reintraut E. Jonsson Cecil P. Joseph Joseph Kelleher Mark Lampell Douglas Lazarus Maralyn May HONORARY MEMBERS Robert T. Johnson Stephen Kaufman Jeff Klein Joel I. Klein G. Oliver Koppell Jeffrey Korman Lawrence Levine Harold O. Levy Michael M. Lippman James J. Periconi Ricardo Oquendo Nathan Quinoñes Roberto Ramírez Gustavo Rivera Joel Rivera Kathleen A. McAuley Steven A. Ostrow Alan Parisse Jane Mead Peter Joel Podgor Steve Baktidy Marilyn and Morris Sopher Elizabeth Stone Henry G. Stroobants Susan Tane Lloyd Ultan Van Courtlandt Village CC Jac Zadrima José Rivera Ninfa Segarra José E. Serrano Stanley Simon Thomas Sobol THE BRONX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 3309 Bainbridge Avenue The Bronx, New York 10467 718-881-8900 www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org The publication of this volume was made possible, in part, through the generous support of The National Realty Club Foundation. The Bronx County Historical Society is supported through funds and services provided by: New York City Department of Cultural Affairs New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Historic House Trust of New York City New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation The Bronx Delegation of the New York City Council The Office of the President of the Borough of The Bronx The Bronx Delegation of the New York State Assembly The Bronx Delegation of the New York State Senate The H. W. Wilson Foundation The Astor Fund The Isabelle Fund The Elbaum Fund The Ultan Fund The Lucius N. Littauer Foundation The S. Hermalyn Institute The New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund, Inc. The Susan Tane Foundation The New York Public Library The New York Community Trust The National Realty Club Foundation Volume/Issue Volume and Issue of a periodical. 59/1–2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, vol. 59, nos. 1–2, 2022 Subject The topic of the resource Antonetty, Evelina, 1922-1984 Kingsbridge (The Bronx, N.Y.) Allerton (The Bronx, N.Y.) Gumbs, Bob McFeeters, Harriet Bauzá, Mario, 1911-1993 Colón, Willie, 1950- Afro-Cuban Jazz Description An account of the resource Vol. 59, nos. 1–2 of The Bronx County Historical Society Journal, published 2022. Contents: — Steven Payne, "An Oral History of Dr. Evelina Antonetty," p. 1 — Richard Baum, "Kingsbridge Vignettes," p. 19 — Robert Weiss, "Allerton in the 1940s and 1950s," p. 29 — Mark Naison, "A Tribute to Bob Gumbs and Harriet McFeeters," p. 39 — From the Archives, "Afro-Cuban Jazz in The Bronx," p. 45 — Pastor Crespo, Jr., Review of Cope, Power Hungry (2022), p. 69 — Roger McCormack, Review of Sammartino, Freedomland (2022), p. 72 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Bronx County Historical Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource ©2022, The Bronx County Historical Society Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Periodical Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Payne, Steven Baum, Richard Weiss, Robert Naison, Mark Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BCHSJOUR.2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 11:06 Compression Type/rate of compression for moving image file (i.e. MPEG-4) MPEG-4 Media Embedded media file for non-oral history recorded sound and moving images. <br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLO7_5Ro6_E?si=xxLSxRlYKbE-ncNh" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On the Tracks: Graffiti in NYC (Community Notes) Subject The topic of the resource Graffiti Bronx (New York, N.Y.) Graffiti artists--women Description An account of the resource Video produced by Shekinah Green for the Community Notes section of this repository, inspired by The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Green, Shekinah Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The copyright and related rights status of this Item has not been evaluated. Please refer to the individual or organization that has made the Item available for more information. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP4 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.2022.11.18