Dark Daze photography blog

This really should have been posted a week back, the penultimate blog from the Cali trip as its now been a while since we got back, and its even been a fair while since our luggage turned up too. I’m not even gonna use this space to complain that it went missing, that the delivery company tried to leave it at the fire door of a tower block of flats as ‘no-one was in’, I wont spend long on describing the weird dampness of the clothes inside, the ruined polaroids, and that the Chicano lady I had smuggled back in had passed away a few days before I finally got the case back. But what I will say is don’t fly US Airways, ever……. not even if they offer you cash money, a chance to sit in the captains seat, and first dibs on the plastic sealed, indescribable hot slop they churn out once during the flight. Yeah sure we booked a bit of a budget trip, but still I have never seen airhostess’ that damn lazy in my life. When we got delayed in Philadelphia (what were we doing in Philly…..?…..well you shouldn’t ask, it’s the bloody elephant in the room, but still, we had to get a connection there from our internal flight to the transatlantic flight). By the time we got off the plane they were already paging us for the connector flight 2 terminals away, or a frantic ten minute dash, if you were any of the amblingoldrespiratorpushinsodaswillin Yanks that got knocked over by 6 UK heds doing that strange run that wearing jeans slung far too low causes then you shoulda just got out the way innit.
Anyway, we made the connection,
the luggage didn’t,
and then we sat on a frozen runway for 3 hours.
The US airways staff figured then that if they served the food and showed the one movie that was available (it was some shaky plastic 80’s plane with one screen at the end of the centre aisle) whilst we were still waiting for the plane queue to the de-icer then they could spend the rest of the flight napping, dribbling into the coffee and practising their hostile stares and put downs. Believe me ladies you got that shit locked, no practise required!!!

Back in LA, it’s the last day being recalled here, and the others from HA have spent the last evening going to the 7th Letter office again, which apparently was finally opened up. Some shift in the space-time continuum occurred apparently. Whilst Jiroe and Ods plan the next day.

—- This was it on the last day of the stressful, eventful trip, instead of hanging at the beach laughing at the muscle freaks and the 80’s boob jobs (oh man I could write an essay on that shit, were plastic surgeons just practising back then, seeing how much of any kinda material they could squeeze in before a rupture happened? I’ve seen ladies out here with more cc’s of landfill in the chest than we’ve got bodies under the Millennium Dome), we decided to roll on down to a river in east LA and visit a huge Hall of Fame.

Jiroe, Odisie and I had gotten up early and found our way to a Home Depot. Its like a big big B+Q, outside loads of Mexicans are lined up stopping you on the way in and on the way out, offering to do work for you, they line the gates and exits, is this just an LA thing? Inside Jiroe and Odisie were busy gettin paint mixed by a dude who looked like a mash up between Richie Valens and Eddie the kid from the Munsters, the original one, not the shitty new colour series. He took paint mixing real seriously, and didn’t seem fazed by two twitchin excitable UK writers, wearing dubbins t-shirts ordering Gallons and Gallons of two kinds of Disney Blue, a fair few gallons of red, gallons of black and a trolley full of rollers. So $200 and a few arguments later about colour schemes and doo-dads we rolled out the depot, and loaded up the HHR. They thought long and hard about getting the Mexican dudes to do the roller work, cos it would look gangsta for the flick and they seemed pretty eager to get involved, but it didn’t happen….

We fired up the beast of an engine, rolled out the gates of the parking lot, running over a few feet as we went and pulled out into LA traffic, crossed the central reservation and pulled into the Osh parking lot. This is America, you can’t walk anywhere…..

I spent my time sat in the car wondering if I was ever gonna get to hook up with Lou O’Bedlam the dope photographer that was part of my reason for coming to LA in the first place. But the signs were looking promising, it was maybe only 8.30am and we had almost all the paint, and now they only had to choose some tins that matched, a few hours to paint the dubbins maybe, then soon i would be kicking back with Lou, sipping a beer, and nerding out about polaroids, and how fun it is to get to take photos of hot girls, and them be really pleased that you even wanna……oh man i love those hot girls…….. anyways i snapped to out of my daydream, no-aircon-onLAHeat-hallucination and ten minutes later they were back in the car and we rolled round to fill up on corned beef hash and in odisy’s case a chilli omelette, I love chilli but not convinced by that early morning combo.

I admire good ideas, and I have a lot of respect for Odisie and Jiroe, but I have a lot more of both admiration and respect for stupid, pointless ideas and this was definitely one of them. An hour and a half of driving and I was dumping them at the side of the 4 lane freeway, buckets of gallons of paint, rollers, tins, backpacks, changes of clothes, cameras, laptops, tripods, all piling up in the brush next to the dusty road, a no stopping zone so I spent half hour driving around looking for somewhere to park, on one side of the bridge/river was a massive gated community, with a sheriff patrolling, on the other was wilderness stretching to the mountains. I chose the nature trail and parked in some lakeside area, and took the long walk down the rumbling truck heavy road.

Mulshing by the time I got back,

Odisie was busy sketchin some fuckin huge blockbuster letters,

you can see from the shots they posted how damn big they are. It was pretty cool under the bridge and they were working fast but still this was gonna be long and hot.

The chance of meeting Lou O’ was slowly sliding into the water yet again, and I really owed the dude to see him, but I couldn’t leave them in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal an the sheriff rolling by, without a ride. Some dude wearing a cronk hat then rode past on his horse yes thats right fo’s i said Horse, dude was rocking the four hoof silver shoe rims, and crossed the river, how often does that happen at the Hall of Fame, a couple of local kids on bmx rocked by to watch and smoke some ditch weed. Some things are the same all over the world…..

2 hours in and this was turning into some huge mission, neither of them had stopped,

and it was dead quiet, except for the rumbling of traffic overhead and the rushing water one arch over, as they pushed rollers up and down against the huge sections of bridge, slowly covering up the tags, throw ups and odd pieces that were there. Like I said you can admire hard work but when combined with some dumb ass stupidity then sirs I will doff my hat to you, a pointless but tireless work ethic is pretty cool, and they worked head down arm aching busy.

There isn’t much for me to say about the pieces, they say it themselves, big blockbusters standing tall on a river somewhere in east LA, ambassadors for the Heavy Artillery and another successful UK invasion, maybe this trip was a bit more quiet than the first but you gotta get your footing right sometimes.

Maybe a bunch of Mexican dudes would have finished this in half the time, but where is the self satisfaction in that. Anyways they got to stand back and think “yeah I just blew the entire final budget of my holiday and 6 hrs of my last day, standing in the shade, with my feet in cold water, rolling paint on a wall that I might never see again, and which I cant even do justice to in a photo, but feel dead proud I did it.”

The casualty list several gallons of paint, two pairs of trainers, one vintage pink shirt (red paint splashes cheers Jiroe), one volcom white hoodie of dubious Ross/Russian origin, a fair few tins of paint, a 1/4 tank of gas there and back, rollers, $250+ and one trip to visit Lou O’Bedlam which never happened…. Sorry buddy, but it had to be done. The first HA crew to drop Blockbusters in LA.

Bless Up LA.

For a man that’s permanently got a metal soundtrack playing loudly in his head, occasionally interrupted by the sound of a shotgun going off and some pigs guts flying against a wall, Odisie can really hold it down when it matters. And this mattered. You don’t walk into a LA neighbourhood like this without being prepared to drop someone, especially when there’s not enough girls to go round and writers are pushing to get their paws and pens on some flesh. But, “There’s Something About Odisie”, to steal a line from somewhere else. Apparently by the time we rolled up in the HHR (see earlier post) which we wisely parked round the corner, word had gotten out to the organisers that if anyone here deserved a piece of meat to brand, then it was the educated hooligan from England.

Already psyched by a day that had laid claim to the best of the trip; we had found the biggest and most freaky Hall of Fame that either of us had laid our greedy Paint and Polaroid eyes on… Tasting the true east LA culture was a hot look for that day, rolling past a street somewhere in outer outer outer East LA, we had freaked ourselves out by finding the Old Memories club, a hardcore group of car fetishists, that had a collection of vintage Chevrolet trucks and vans that burnt long and hard on yr mind and eyes. I busted out a whole batch of Polaroid’s in less than 50m of pavement, and will fill a post with them sometime. We’d seen dusty fruit sellers on the side of the highway out of town toward the mountains, and even passed the County Sheriff as we bounced in baking heat to check out the hidden Fame Walls. It was only a frantic call from Gary, telling us to get back to West LA and the flesh heaven that awaited that got us back in the car. On the ride over early NWA was followed by Slayer and some mental metal psyching music, we passed the lolo driving, traffic light bouncing Chollo, that looked for every second like a MTV 90’s era inspired joint hallucination. Some things in East LA are just too good to be real, but we both got flicks so there it was.

So everything was going good, whilst the others in HA had spent hours driving to the ever-closed Seventh Letter office and to the moneychangers at LAX we had finally tapped the rich holiday vein of LA. But now it was time for the big O to get to work. All day he had been telling me over and over that this was his thing, all his sketching life he had been waiting to paint ladies, and now not just any girls but on some hot juicy So-Cal legs and backs. Now the time was here and the inner id/Od was building.

The BITD shop/warehouse/gallery/yard was hosting the event and the yard was packed with writers and gawkers, the HA were in full effect, even over the beats you could hear Aroe’s comments at the girls, like a eager mic chatting mc, and he certainly doesn’t need any amps. We’ve all seen the West Coast Hip-Hop video girl, and here they were in every corner, fully ready to be painted flossing the kinda bikini/shoes combo that can only make perfect no sense in a hot dry thugged out city. Eyes were on stalks were on stalks were on stalks…etc.

Bang the off-camera flash on high, point it somewhere up at white ceiling, stick a wide angle on for the tanned legs with the Perspex heels that left shines on the lens. Look around at all the I-phones and handy cams being pointed at all angles, and just what do you call upskirt when there aint no skirt on….. and you realise you gotta get in close and be English to win this Cali pseudo snapper shootout. Then look around and Ods has a clutch of pens in his hands and is sat in a chair with that arrogant/expectant look that shows his game is ready and he’s just now waiting for the girl to roll up and disrobe. The rest of the room shows a mix of ladies halfway through some action, some girls with wildstyles, some with pieces and some with the kinda Graff that should have been dragged out and shot like Happy Days back in 84, but hey who’s gonna knock it hombre, you’re drawing on the girl whilst all the other mugs are just gawpin and whooping. Anyways the guy is just fiddly with the markers in his hand, sat there and maybe he just taking it all in or maybe it just doesn’t matter cos nobody has Game like this, not today. One girl gets pushed, dragged, in front, a plastic chair is slung in and suddenly she’s sat down reverse cowgirl like a Chicano Christine Keeler. She’s still lowering her butt into the chair when her t-shirts up and her bra strap is pinging off, like the Ali phantom punch no one sees the Odisie hands move. The Russian bboy gangsta via “Ross Dress for Less” is off and drawing….

No sketches, no thin outlines, just bang on in with a chisel tip permanent marker, so god damn I hope she likes it, but you can tell he doesn’t care, it aint his back. The screwface doesn’t change once, backed into the farthest corner he only looks up when the stacked-to-the-rafters Blonde at 1 o’clock drops out a “Harben Harben” moment, and he grins that shiteater grin. If you get up close and take a flick you might hear the dapper English charm coming out; making sure the girl is cool, telling her what he’s doing, checking if she needs to move for a bit, but for now forget you know that cos this is about frontin and gangsta, this is about the Evil Odisie with the Shotgun and the Sharpie, who’s gonna change the way that skulls and skin look forever.

He’s just hitting that freestyle flow when a second girl rocks up, whilst the first still isn’t even sketched; so wait here comes the patented move; the chair slide, the top off, pinged bra strap and he’s still just shakin her hand with his left and inking with his right on blonde girl one. Game. Playa.

There’s a crowd behind him now, maybe they have never seen screwface Russians at work before,
“eh ah wha ees it man…?”
“s’what it is innit bruv”
he’s mumbling in the mugged up London ‘spraybokkles, sottages” painting patois…. There’s no more questions.

2 hours maybe and 2 girls inked up.

A whole memory card of shots is done, when they wander outside for a yard pic, even the buff girl in the red dental floss bikini has to bend down and pic up a ‘dropped’ tab to get a bit of the attention from the crowd of homies that are now jumpin around behind the two blonde girls with the skulls and the flowers and the bumble bee, yep even a bumble bee, (believe me it looks better than it reads) under his expert pens.

When the colouring starts the rest of HA have already dussed, but their legacy is upheld again, by the dude that flamed LA when he sketched the LA Takedown Wall, the character king, the geek that spends hours poring over the comic book work of Glenn Fabry, and the insane vision of Chuck Close, the four eyed nerd in the corner that’s about to merc a gang of writers in their own backyard with a freestyle colouring lesson.

That fuckin Odisie has got Game, that dude that can lecture you on the merits of the Incredible String Band, whilst drinking numerous pints of Beater and who goes on holiday purely to dress up, who’d end up ‘Grilled n Pimped’ up if he ever spent serious time West Coast, is just a bout to seal his reputation with a brace o’ bitches and get more props than any ego needs from Writers 10 years either side of his generation.

So what if the rest of HA are sat down to a blowout feast at Red Lobster or that I’m all out of SD cards and have seen far too much leg for one days memory banking, and that I have had to shuffle back and forth getting more and more pens as the big O’s waving hands as the colour scheme gets too complex.

If this Cali trip was about proving yourself individually then this was Odisie’s triple double. If you don’t read the words look at the pictures, they are prettier and more eloquent anyway. Odisie, Big Game. Done.

Todays lesson is all about Big Game. Having Big Game, witnessing Big Game, and being part of the Big Game.

First up the man known as the Cappo, or to the watchin world Aroe. I don’t care that I‘m repeating myself here, but getting put in MSK is such a big move, and shown to be even bigger when you actually roll into LA. The Exchange with Rime has been a dope project and a graff tour last year with the type of writers he can attract and invite is always gonna be a success, but the real test is finding yourself in the home cities of MSK San Francisco and LA and standing strong on yr pieces and flexin yr moves. But hell its not just about one man, why not bring your whole crew out and show some next level power move, dedication to the game and showing yr fellow MSK crew members how the UK’s best crew roll (personal opinion here- no haters comments tolerated). What followed next is bound to get the attention of all the net geeks, graff freaks and fame heds out there in the misguided world.

Billboard action on the side of a freeway is the stuff that most other UK writers will only dream of, who gives a damn if it’s a legal billboard spot or not, its all about yr piece being seen thousands and thousands of times every day, in one of the most heavily hit Graff cities in the world. But its not just about the drive by gawkers, its about the details that make it happen and how you finish the job, on a narrow platform, painting way into the night, after 6 hrs of standing in the blazing sun, not being able to step back and see yr work.

Its about wanting to check if the perspective is right and having to climb down a rickety ladder, jumping over a razor wire fence, avoiding the needles at the bottom, walking down a big dirt verge, crossing a 2 lane freeway sliproad, walk up another bank, stand on the edge of an 8 lane freeway, looking up at an odd angle and trying to work out whats not working, repeating the whole journey, remembering whats right and wrong with the piece and correcting it. Then doing this over and over.

Throw in an entirely reasonable fear of heights and knowing also that what you are covering up was painted by Saber, and that when we all saw it last year as we were driving to downtown LA, it nearly made us spin the whip and send 5 stunned bodies flying into the lanes of traffic, (if anyone else other than Numan was at the wheel of course.) Then add that you were painting with Revok and that at times throughout the day Rime would rock up and tell you his opinion in that no messing-straightup-talking way of his. Throw in the photographer leaning right into yr face, as the only way he can shoot in this space is with a super wide angle, and your shoulders are so big that turning sideways on this narrow shaking platform is impossible, and sitting down to hit the tiny details that will never be seen by anyone, but that you know are there,

means you have to wedge your leg underneath to keep from falling off.

But instead of freezing or giving way to the thoughts of others you take the god-damn Gold Chains firmly by the hand and squeeze them tight round the necks of the other UK writers, and blow a world of UK internet haters away by slamming down a monster of a crumbling, defragmenting digitization (©Lord Kronington) MSK blockbuster held up by yr bboy soldiers on each side.

Standing strong on the shoulder of the LA freeway, that’s Big Game. Lecturing the Yanks about the benefits of an NHS style free health care system and not leavin the drug addled and the mental to roam the streets of the city, whilst doing all the above is just pure Aroe.

Here is the final pic courtesy of the Heavy Artillery themselves, thats a first me stealing someones else pics!!!

Coming up soon, Odisie’s big game.

Oh and on a side note props and Happy Valentines to my girl Sally, could never have made this trip without yr support and also cold hard cash, owe you big time, DD.

On Thursday Jon and I picked up the new rental and went to Rodeo Drive, home of the unbelievably rich, if you ever want to see your true standin on the monetary/status life ladder pay it a visit. Plus incredibly over manicured ladies and even men too. Sure we have all learnt the benefits of moisturiser but when you go for a slice of pizza and the dude serving you has a French Manicure then you now the circle has turned. We seemed to get a lot of strange stares too when bopping down the street, maybe cos he has a Third Reich tattoo (hes not a Nazi) on one arm, and I have Hitlers Haircut (I’m not a Nazi), maybe it was that or maybe the fact that the rental company had decided to give us the most gay car in the world on the day I decided to floss my hot pink shirt. Oooh hello, move overrrr, tooot toot…..etc

The embarrassment factor is amped when the next day you roll to the local graff spot in an alley in East LA, and yr following a group of gold grills sporting, black tricked and tinted SUV driving, hench MSK writers. Apologies for cramping the style Sever, but we didn’t know the way on our own…..

But anyways that day we saw no graff, took no photos but still had a good time. The others went to San Diego, got hooked up by Persue with a huge wall and promptly all did the best pieces of the trip, I missed it, my fault, as they left at 4.30am I was still sleeping, and had to pick up th rental in North Hollywood so no way it was gonna work and so no pictures, look at the HA flickr tho as they have ill flicks from Cappo and some soon from LightNights®. Mad props from the crew to the gentleman Persue for the wall. Also they met a man from Nottingham, out walking his parrot….apparently.

After finishing the wall from the previous day Gary and Odisie and I got picked up by the others (apart from Aroe) who was out with Revok, Sever was driving the whip, and the whip was driving us crazy. The car just isn’t big enough for what we need when the crew are all split up, and causes a lot of problems and today was one of them again, with the rest of the crew having to wait for Aroe and then wait for us, and I decided that the only way was to get a car of my own. I had figured that riding with them all would actually help, and get better shots, document the whole trip but its clearly not working out like that, its nobodys fault but 2 cars is the way forward. Sever took us thru Inglewood to a crazy yard at Back In The Day, out back they have loadsa walls, plus loads of old Lincolns it was a strange spot to paint in but definitely a memorable one, and also definitely a part of the LA scene.

Gary got to paint a blinding wall with Sever and Alert painted some of a truck panel. But the most important part of the day was when Joe told us that Sunday we should come back as they were painting on girls. At about the same time the hottest latino girl bopped in wearing the shortest pair of cotton hot pants and some fresh American Apparel knee high socks, for the first time in the whole trip no-one said a word as some moments are not meant to be spoilt.

Driving in LA is great the roads are wide, you can overtake on any side, you don’t need to indicate, the cars all have cruise control and its best practise to make a break for your freeway exit just after the last possible moment- kinda suits how I like to roll, but driving the rush hour seems to run from 8am till 1pm and 1.15pm till 8pm, its hella busy and stupid slow. So if you have to get across town you sit next to all the other Suvs bought on credit that no-one can actually afford and you crawl through the city, by the time I got to Aroe and Revok the sun was setting over the city. An amazing site and killer backdrop but bloody useless for button pressing. I got some okay shots but none that do justice to the job that the two of them pulled on the billboard. Looming over the 101, which heads downtown, on a walkway less than a foot wide, with a helluva big drop onto the ground below. Plus if you do fall you have to make the split second choice of whether you want to land on the razor wire or the little crack tent that was full of needles and broken glass. But the cappo is a big man in many ways and powered thru, dropping a filthy MSK piece complete with gold chains and Bboy characters. Theres power moves in Graff and there is killing it in LA on the Freeway, it’s a weird feeling to be in one of the worlds most iconic backdrops and busiest freeways and see Uzi toting characters from Brighton Kinging the Road. I don’t like to be in awe of someone but damn what can top that?

So we arrived in LA, in a car stinking of man or several men, and various Taco Bell or Denny’s influenced farts, it wasn’t good and not recommended plus if you eat at Taco Bell, a restaurant created and designed purely on the criteria that it can provide the most cash per square foot and exist in the smallest building footprint then you are a fool. There is a reason that there is a dollar menu, cos its all absolute crap, filthy sugar high, fat rich , food, and if you eat there more than once in yr life then the hand of the obesity giant may one day come down and wrap his hammy, fat filled fingers around your clogged, stodgy overblown heart. But don’t worry if you eat at Dennys cos you will surely live a better and more fulfilling life for the rest of your rich pampered days. ( I believe in positive thinking). We finally rolled up to the Hollywood Downtowner after another epic driving stint from the Numan machine and proceeded to harass and offend the receptionist/owner. I am discovering more Laws every day on this trip and this new one is that “if more then 4 men stand in any one room, the longer the conversation continues the more they will swear and talk about shit”, I mean literally shit, faeces, skid marks, Rio Ferdinand and curling one out and then throw in a bit of jumping on women. Its a really strange phenomenon. The Americans are to polite too actually say what they think about it, but it makes eating out, and ordering any kind of meal a difficult, sometimes tense group splitting occasion. Eventually we booked in though, sorted some beers and planned the next day.

So with some kinda crappy, Waynes World style flashback arm waving I will attempt to tell you what then went down. Early on the first morning we got in the whip and drove to Alhambra to get paint.

The paint shop is hella dope, run by Hugo and stocks, mags pens, t’s, hoodies and loads and loads of paint, (go there if you make it to LA and spend some money) but not just any old paint but mythical Montana gold, and Belton, boxes and boxes of it. Plus Hugo is a real nice guy, as is pretty much everyone we meet out here. I know why people have a strange perception of the Yanks as a whole, from the films media and general murderous behaviour of its foreign policy but you just don’t seem to get that attitude from ordinary people that you find back home. Living in the heart of LA, maybe some play up on the gangsta theme a bit but you don’t get that phony rude boy frontin that you get in London and more and more in Brighton. No fake swagger and people even make eye contact with you out here, it just makes it seem such a depressing prospect to return to England, I am sure that ‘fake’ is a way of life in LA, but on a one to one level the ‘normal’ people just aren’t like that- instead they are straight up, offer you advice, tell you the best place to get good Mexican etc. Oh and yeah the Mexicans/Latinos (not sure what is the right term to use), man those guys keep this city going, if they wanted to I bet they could stop working and hold the place to ransom, plus nothing seems to bother them, ever…..and the girls are so so hot.

Anyways…. they got paint, stocked the whip to the point that a rearender (cue Alert single intendre) would result in some kinda Skittles® type multi colour explosion, before we would all probably go up in some Hare Krishna technicolour fireball. This seemed to calm everyone down though, not the thought of sudden group emollition but the chance to go paint decent pieces, which was kinda the point of travelling 6,000 miles, but a graff holiday is kinda unlike any other holiday and things never ever go the plan…..

The first spots were hooked up by Rime, who works constantly painting, probably the most up writer in the whole of LA and he has so many spots locked down that it must take him hours each week to get round them all and see the pieces are still running. But this is the thing with LA, or maybe its just graff in USA, writers get a permission wall, somewhere really dope, like this one was, just behind the Paramount Studios, paint it once and then just leave the piece. The Rime that Odisie painted over was more than two years old, it’s a completely different mentality to the UK when you paint a piece get a flick and expect to never see it again. It means though that once again there aren’t enough places for the HA to paint, or not on the scale that everyone had all hoped, no huge full productions being dropped on this trip. In times of lean walls writers get grumpy, like 14 yr olds waiting for the ten minute Freeview, all jumpy and ready to fly off at any moment, and what makes it worse is that LA is wall heavy city, so many potential spots, and its hurting them bad.

Its been the running theme of this trip tension and lack of space, which is the deal with 7 men any ways, but back in the Paramount session Jiroe, Gary and Odisie killed it with an almost perfect piecing wall and Aroe smacked the alley along with Rime,

Rench and Alert were burning hard in a car park.

Its just a shame it couldn’t happen all in one space, and also meant a bit of running back and forth for me, but at least I got to burn off the filthy Astro burger, how can Americans even make a cheeseburger sweet, and I don’t mean in a “oh dude that burger was to’h’tally sweet….” But it just tasted of sugar and kept risng again like some mini patty version of Christ.

Anyway as ods would say “Bless Up” Rime for giving some hella good spots, probably the only ones that will appear in LA this trip. I posted the pics already but will throw some more into this blog later.

not many words in this one as I am hungry and off to find some fried chicken…..

so here is the All Killer No Filler production by Jiroe, Gary and Odisie, just behind the Paramount studios lot.

treat yr eyes to the piece by Gary…..

On the way to North Gate to paint, Sever stopped by his production to show us this beast,

Then we got to North Gate and Gary and Sever banged the door shut for everyone else…..

words soon for those that read them…. eze DD.

from a purely photographic point of view i think that today is the worst day that I have ever had in 6 or so years. I missed out on what I feel to be the biggest photo op of my work/documenting or whatever you want to call it, so far, because I wasn’t able to stop and get out of a car that I had paid my fair share to be in. I am so gutted that its hard to put into words, and makes me realise that its pretty much impossible for anyone to take you seriously in this kind of business. I am so out of control of what I want and need to shoot on this trip… Oh well here is a picture… Hopefully a day out of it all tomorrow will help…

So the lowdown on San Francisco is going to be short and slightly bitter. Short not just as a courtesy to those who read that long tirade earlier but also because in many ways its sometimes best to learn when to shut up. The production was at most a mid range effort, individually the pieces were good, Gary in particular had a burner, Odisie went a bit Teen Wolf, for those that remember the blessings TW dropped at Tarner a few years back, and Rench pulled a killer colour scheme and a sweet piece. But expectations are high, individually and as a crew, plus trying to drop the first burner of a trip can often backfire. Its like whenever you cook pancakes at home and no matter how good you mix it, or how hot the pan, the first pancake out always looks a bit odd. Last year the SouthGate LA wall was not something to stop the presses for and still the LA Takedown wall came flying out the gates just after. Plus I can type this with the knowledge that within a day of being in LA the crew have all dropped burners, the kind that suck the light out the sky around them, and cause rubbernecking even from 60’s acid heads, so its all firing again now, and the pics will follow. We are back in LA, it feels like home, the whip is brimming with hundreds of tins of paint and its 60˙ and sunny.

list of things learnt, heard or seen in San Francisco.
1. Spotted by Gary in McDonalds Haight Ashbury a man who had ‘quite literally mate’ shit his trousers off, on a diahorrea induced dash to the cubicle.
2. Aroe managed to eat in a place ‘so dirty even the cockroaches were scared’ (my choice) that served Brain Masala, but agreed the curry tasted good. Ghetto eating.
3. Its all about Hyphy.
4. And Uncle Murda.
5. If you have a 7 hr tattoo one day, theres gonna be blood on the sheets the next.
6. You can justify any food you like in America in the morning as long as you preface it with the word breakfast, so we have Breakfast steak, or in Alerts eyes Breakfast Chilli Dog and Coke.
7. I saw a man who had shit his own leg off.
8. All writers suffer from Nike addiction.
9. City officials are happy for sanitation workers to buff tags with flouro pink paint.

10. The national dish of California is brown slop, normally wrapped in foil and tastes great with lots of hot sauce. It comes in Chicken or Beef flavour.
11. The Tenderloin is mostly populated by zombies or people who will soon be dead. Mostly.
12. It is one of the defined laws of physics that “No matter how many times you pace out and divide a wall into sections, Odisies piece will always grow bigger than the space available.”
13. Its mandatory to shout and swear on street corners in SF.
14. Gary uses “Piece in a Can”® for everything he paints.
15. It rains a lot in San Francisco.
16. If you spend $20 on breakfast but have to walk past a mental homeless man masturbating in the street and two crackheads kicking and punching a fellow crackfiend up against a wall , then you get a little bit of heartburn after eating, but don’t worry a mint will normally shift it.

17. You cant keep seven people happy in one small city.
18. Hanging on the outside of cable cars after a few beers and pretending to skate with your free leg is to be recommended to everyone.
19. You cant fit seven men in a Durango without sacrifices being mad to gods of sanity and flatulence.
20. The Golden Gate Bridge can cause projectile vomiting.
21. “get in the car we’re leaving”

Much has happened, but i gotta type it up…..
so heres a commercial break…….

winner of best piece (maybe) my preference anyway….
still cant read what it says tho….