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…
there is nothing like the lean times to bring you back down to earth. After living fat off the hog for the last three years, we were brought back in check with a down grade in spots and having the team kinda split up a bit- thanks to the earfs, moons and changing tides. OUr traditional spot had been reclaimed by the property owner and turned in what i was told was some sort of outdoor photo studio/ courtyard. The old space was now newly cleaned and given new skim coats of concrete along with rounding ALL of corners including where the walls met the ground; given a bit more of gracious transition and it might be skate able.
wall from 2011, skim coated and framed out to leave some of the painting...
So down the street to the Chaos of the Rc Cola compound, we went to our spot, which was not big enough for three, so preys and I it was, while kems flexeded it up on the other side of the compound.
With no real ladders and or means of doing much off the ground the original plan was scrapped in favor of doing a really nice piece with breathing room so as not to get lost on a wall ram-jammed with pieces and characters and colors…
got some 97 cent cans from home depot as i had limited paint and got to work on the sketch.
This year brought a lot of politics into the mix, and it sounded as if there were some tensions between organizers and local heads who had claimed spots that were the if youre from here you know if youre not from here you might not care. Words were said feelings were hurt, jaws were tapped, bruises and scrapes got cleaned up later.
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.
I dont think you have to be a fat American to have ever found your self indulging in some activity only to have a moment of clarity that leads you to realize you’d rather being doing almost anything else… Generally you feel this way while working or some other form of drudgery, its odd and somewhat jarring when that feeling hits you in the midst of ding what you generally wish you were doing instead of working…Extra medium.
And So it was, i Took the day off from work, Who doesnt love a lil hooky? I drove to CT, to meet the fellas and do a lil wall. I haven’t painted with Ges all year and barely any the year before, both being family men scheduling has been tough.
3a Sketch Ups
By my ‘I&iPhone Digital Computer Multi-tool Device’ it was noon-thirty before sketching started, Great Caesars ghost in the shell, we moving slower then Hell. We had a lot of Poopy diaper stories to catch up on, i guess, and i slowly found my desire to paint anything fading faster then Krylon grape in sun. It wasnt too hot, the last two walls i painted beat this day by 15-20 degrees, we had some breeze too. This was was closer to the crib by an hour then the last few places i painted, so it wasnt the trip time. I had food with me and had eaten before i left the house as well (fat america). Still something was off ALL day… I fully blame Kem5; hes generally the spark that brings action to the dark, and when hes kinda eh-eh about the day, it trickles down like Reaganomicss. 3a is all about Business before pleasure, one of the reasons I have so much respect for these guys is the work ethic they bring to everything they do- I try to just not embarrass them as we go. So I was ready to be at the wall at 9am, but Kem said theyd arrive at 10:30, sheeeit thats like half the day down the tube already, totally out of character. Extra medium in Effect! Generally as a team, even if Kems is half dead from re-arranging his socks and t-shirts, and playing the alphabet game with his wife while via facetime, there is one of us hyped enough to keep everyone else up too, that “i wasn’t gonna jump off that bridge but fuck, if im going to let you be the only one”, type spirit enough to carry the team. UPS/3a is like No gorilla left behind, but for some reason no one picked up that slack,good work JIMBOE!, and we all ( i say we all but i liked everyone else’s joints save mine, I say we to make ME feel better) struggled to get it in above the bar. Up until getting into my car to go home I was ready to blast my piece with a burner chrome simple and call it a day, which is never how I roll, ill fight the wall for days until I win or at least break even; i stand on two feet no in defeat; but today my inner sisyphus was ready to tap out early.
I know you can’t win them all, but it sucks when you don’t even feel like your’e shits competitive….dead last in a two man race is kinda wack!
Rath X Ges X 3A_2011 X Molotow
In the end, im not mad at the wall, but have no recollection of what pulled it together. But when painting you want the dope monkey on your back, the one thats like, ‘keep it cool player you’re in the process of rocking some shit. Take it easy and don’t fuck up this gimme’; never had that for this wall. I want shit to ‘pop off’ or at the very least ‘drop off’, hanging mid stride in limbo is unsatisfying. I strive to be ‘markedly better’ then last time or SOOO much worse people think i fucked around and caught a crack addiction in between walls. I Shot for gorilla status; ended up on some starving midget spider monkey shit. Ugh. I shoulda had a v8.
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.
Art Basel starts out as an organized event, and as more and more people show up, the black and white rules of combat change by the hour, unitl eventually your get the wild wild west gold rush mentality, as the sun sets and people are hungry for more unsatisfied with what they had in the day lite, there us a rush of activity as spots get grilled by people needing more, the promise of tomorrow the throngs will be here to see this call like sirens, and any writer worth their slat cant ignore it all together. We all started out as the actors in unsanctioned events, so the call is so close the heart one answers it. and when that one is multiplied by hundreds, you get Wynwood Miami, the new frontier. You have to guard your supplies as the drifters roll through to pilfer some surveying equipment and are off into the night in quest of conquering a new surface frontier.
I entered this lil spot and it was filled with fools taking advantage. The plan was a quick, 1,2,3 style jump off, just a lil of the devil that bit you. everyone working fast with a little bit of gusto to get done and keep it moving before anything goes wrong… I look up and see a white security truck rolling by. time to pick it up a bit. Im pretty confident if shits gonna pop off ill get a warning from one of the other 13 people in my little area. Less the a minute later i turn around again just to check on the situation and my lil area is completely empty. NO P.I.C’s in site ,just Hev and a wet painted wall and a security truck across the street. Which brings me to the rules of the renegade, ALWAYS be first or expect to get caught. 2nd and third place never get you into the winners circle, ever.
-complete fiction.
this is based on the first sketch i did in the series of newer lettered pieces I’ve done recently, it was done as sort or proof of concept on paper and then it looked like it might make a nice little simple somehow, which lead to then making slightly more involved and refined sketches. I needed a another 15 minutes and could have made it a bit more exciting…
