» Having Flashbacks
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.