In mid october i went up to toronto to visit Bacon, the undeclared but unanimously voted King of Toronto/ in the top 4 of canada all timers. Baco’ is my dude, good host, fun to hang with. The only bad thing i can say is in 4 days i watch more hockey then i had played or watch in total throughout my life, WHAT THE PUCK!
So i know it gets cold in toronto wind off the lakes or coming south from further north can make it pretty brutal. KNowing this i still wildly under packed and froze my ass off for 3 days, while it got just about down to freezing and sleeted and rained on us while I painted and the Canadians commented on how it wasn’t ”that bad eh?”. “yooou knoow honestly this weather is that bad ehy?”. Really? then why is the only dude with a return flight to worry about painting in the freezing rain? Sure enough as soon as i left the temperature picked up 15 degrees or so the following weekend they finished in warm beautiful weather- f-you guys!
All in all though i had a blast, Bacon, Kane, and Kwest are a hard lot to hang with and not have a good time regardless of weather.
Rath & Bacon Upsetter Crew Toronto 2011. Sorry lil jenky photo shop job to connect these...
On a side note if bacon ever gave up writing he could easily be on the PBA tour. I forgot how fun bowling is…
So i go into home depot to get some buff, 12.97, should get up the cheapest possible mixed gallon of black paint. I got the guy who knew his shit a few weeks ago on a similar mission, Jay. Jay gets props. My guy this time, not so much…”so they are two of these semi gloss bases, they have different numbers”, pointing at them,” here, see?’ he said. Now if i knew there was gonna be a test, or that Jay was the only dude who knew shit about paint in this home depot I would have taken notes when he was making my last gallon, thats for dam sure. However, i presumed, thats what i do now instead of assuming, however i get mostly the same results, most fools working the paint dept at home depot could mix a basic black. No, not so, over 45 minutes of mixing attempts I got Light grey, and slightly lighter grey. Yes some how after adding 12 more ounces of black into the can its tint became lighter then the previous grey it was added too, So i went with a bucket of white. In retrospect i should have taken the grey, i was so annoyed after it came to light the old boy had only been in paint for two weeks and didn’t real know anything; after 40 minutes of producing grey, he thought it prudent to let me in on his Incompetency Vis-à-vis the paint situation.
After the paint situation I Didnt get started until after noon. Finally Baby Enue, shank williams, Plea and Smuggie showed up to make it a party.
Ad lib plan, aimed the some bleached out/ over exposed areas contrasted with some rich color.
So let the ‘your countries credit rating is so bad’ jokes begin… My countries credit soooo bad we refurnished the White house with shit from rent-a-center.
It seems like we only pull together ‘after’ disaster, whilst ‘impending’ disaster tends to divide, polarize, and paralyze us from taking almost any preventative or curative steps at all. Glad our country is run by adults with there eyes firmly on the prizes the matters most… re-election and blaming someone else for not acting fast enough.
SO to celebrate not having any money tied up in stocks that are tanking, i rolled to jersey and had a lil arty party, we didnt raise the debt ceiling, but Kool Enue raised the roof. COD aint about no credit, we keep it Cash on Demand, Triple-A rated and Unidos Para Siempre
Midwest under Heat advisory, public funds to ensure the safety for the elderly and others needing home care are cut off due to budget shortages. New York broken heat records 3 days in a row. Saturday morning, 9:20Am, the in-dash temperature gauge reads 104 degrees, which to be fare is reading radiant heat from the asphalt below, but J-Christmas its not even noon. Lets GO, but slowly im old and almost died last week.
So we count the blessings, Hot day, headed in the same direction as a 100k plus beach goers, traffic is thick but moving. google maps prediction of the trip time was about right, factor in my lead foot, stopping for water, equals not stress; Bless. A fare amount of cloud cover, so less direct sun; Bless. This time i came with cooler got Ice and plenty of water.
All Week the weather forecasts were wrong, each day was supposed to be worse then the previous day. Monday-Friday forecasts fell short of the high temps being predicted. Sunday was slated to be a nice day, mid 85-ish, thats about 29.4C for those of you not in America, not bad, warmer then id like but still not bad. At 9:00 Am i left the house and headed towards Brooklyn, 1010 Winds said it was already 80 degrees. There was no way it would only climb 5 degrees through out the day. I got to the wall and the sun was blazing already, thanks to Kem5 the only tree in a 3 block radius was de-limbed as it was interfering with his painting (I think he just hates nature really), at any rate there went the only shade spot in area. By 10:30Am it was 89 degrees and climbing rapidly. I drank water, lots of water, ate food, wore my ‘working in the field’ hat plus sweat band. At noon-thirty or so it was 97 (35C-ish), lawd-a-mercy, HIM jus’ a burn we out! I didn’t even need a lighter to light a cigarette, you just needed to touch it to the hood of a car and poof, FIRE! So there we are suffering, trying to make the best of it, there was plenty of good people around to help keep spirits up. Around 430 i had lapsed in my water consumption, and began getting some real heavy head rushes, which i tired to fight through. Finally I hit head rush number 13, and I realized i wasn’t making it out gracefully. I was talking to Stae2 and Yes1 and all of a sudden i became aware that i was standing up, holding my ladder white knuckle style and my legs were gone; i was holding on trying to make it to the bell, whilst seeing the canvas looking like a pretty solid inevitability. I was one wobble away form the ground the yes1 stepped in and gave me and arm helped to to the ground and hit me with a half gallon of cold water. Fuck, i felt like a horse fiend doing the stumble nod, shit was NO good. I am not fan of not being in control of my body movements and activities. Thanks to Yes and Stae2 i was saved, if not for them id polly be face down on the brooklyn concrete right now sleeping it off, or worse… i could be used as a human picnic table by some of the many hispters in the area, and had my face drawn on like they like to do when people pass out, which would end up on youtube and then id have to cut some people. I digress… After the water and a few minutes of resting I was back on the life side of things and felt a lot better. the take away is, 97 degrees, 18 lbs of hair, body by Xbox, not enough water is a no win scenario, however surrounded by good people, makes all the difference in the world. Violins and roses!
Molotow Colors
Sketch:
sahara Beige
cadmium yellow
tele magenta
Piece:
Poison green
Evil Olive
Traffic red
Pastel Orange
Light orange Brown
almond
white
Toast Gloss Black (SOOOO GOOD)
light Kiwi (ran out of poison)
Background:
Dark Shadow Grey
Esher Dirty Red (among the favs)
Butterfly
Light Piglet Pink
grapefruit
The wall was supposed to be black, which much of it was, however my section was a city buff grey, which through off the game plan of having a black background, sometimes half the fun is working with what you got, which can also then turn into the main source of heartache, regrets and shattered dreams; Ive seen it happen. At any rate, after the heat almost KOed me i drew down on some of the plans to fill the vacuous grey background area. As Usual there was a good selection of people present to while away the day, shoot the shit with. Hotta Fya, humble I.
Years ago Moms decided the best way to deal with my super out of control ass was to send me to a quaker summer camp out in the woods. I had just started getting up and staying out late, which left moms upset and worried and up late waiting for me show up alive. I would ride the T into and around boston taking mini tags, somewhat shook but determined to see what there was to see and do what there was to do. The summer was just beginning, school was out which gave me ample time to run amuck. At least for the week or so before i was to go to camp. On saturday before i left, I found this park in Brookline. The park had a lil building with bathrooms and a storage space, and it had been painted top to bottom on all four sides with the FRESHEST pieces i had ever seen at that point in my life, i was floored, i walked around that building for 4 hours, not noticing an underpass foot path leading under the train tracks, which was also covered inside end to end with pieces, by jest and tale and others whom i cant recall. It was pitch black before i got enough and went home only to come back the next day and take photos; which years later would be destroyed in a basement flood, UGH.
So the day after taking the photos i went to camp. I got there and being some what shy and out of my comfort zone i sat in my bunk with my black book and doodled bubble letters. At some point one of my councilors came over to see what i was doing. ‘oh you do graffiti he said?’, I was a lil shocked he even knew what it was, so i said yes, at which point he went to his bunk and returned with a sketch book, that was HOLY FUCKING SHIT one of the same dudes whos piece i had been jockeying like i was trying to win Preakness two days before. What are the odds that my camp councilor would be a writer, and slimmer still hed be one of the people who i had jsut seen pieces by. They were, if remember correctly, done as a farewell before he left the city for the summer to work as a camp councilor for knuckle heads like me.
In the years since i have tried to find anyone with photos of the building and or any other of jests work with not luck. There was such a lack of popper documentation in those days sooo much work went un recorded. At any rate i was at moms house over the weekend helping sort through and 86 any of my old crap still lying around. And i found my old camp trunk that had a jest tag on it, the only one i know off i couldn’t take the trunk so before ti got tossed it tried to take some final photos. They may not seem like much now, but back when it was done it meant the world to me as a lil stupid kid, that a ‘real’ writer hit my camp trunk and helped inspire me to ruin parts of my life in attempting to chase the style train. One in which he probably exited soon after meeting me, haha.
Than doing a bunch of outlines and not having time to paint them. So as to avoid the ‘wanna but can’t', Ive been doing other peoples names to stay limber but not get agita.
these were scratched out on paper first, cleaned up a bit with a silver sharpie and a black sharpie poster paint maker which covers th esilver oil paint like a charm!
early Berst Sketch on Ipad: in sketchbook pro, and i brought it into inkpad, an ipad vector drawing app, and then exported the file as a svg into illustrator...
