Saturday, September 18, 2010

MQ tagged my car aka the story of how I met MQ

So this post is totally probably come off as a lame graffiti fan boy post, but I'm fine with that. So it's no secret to anyone that MQ is my favorite bomber of all time. He's been painting for as long as I've been alive and I've seen him up in New York, San Francisco, and LA. Seeing how he represents DMS and I've seena lot of DMS bands over the years I figured I've probably seen him around and never known it was him.

In the past year or so I've become friends with some OBHC and DMS dudes who know MQ. Of course being a total graffiti nerd I've asked them about him and they just were like "yeah MQ is kinda random you won't see him for awhile and then he kinda pops up out of nowhere, but I'll introduce you to him if he's ever around."

So the other night some of my friends were DJing at a bar in the east bay and I went down to hang out for awhile. I was standing around talking to my friend Felicia and she tells me MQ is there and she would introduce me. I got pretty stoked, but nervous at the same time as I can be pretty shy when it comes to meeting people and it's gonna be even worse as this is someone I admire.

So MQ comes up to her and starts talking to her and she goes "oh hey MQ this is my friend Walter" which I just say hey nice to meet you and shake his hand. They go back to talking and he goes to walk away and I tap him and go "oh um hey I have something for you..." and proceed to pull out a zine and give it to him. He looks at it and goes "oh yeah I heard about this, this is dope dude, I'm definitely gonna check this out later" which totally made my week.

So as the night winds down I'm getting ready to leave and I'm exchanging numbers with someone before I split. My birthday was a few weeks earlier and my girlfriend got me the MQ iPhone case as a present and of course he's standing right there when I have my phone out. He sees my case and goes "oh you got one of those cases? That's dope man. Thank you so much for getting that. It really means a lot that you support me like that." I just told him he can thank my girlfriend as she was the one that got it for me and that it was nice to meet him and I'd see him around.

So I get home and park my car and go to get something out of the trunk and I see this on my rear window...


So at some point in the night MQ tagged my car. I don't know if someone told him it was my car or it was just random, but I was in shock. I immediately got out my camera and fired off a picture of it. Unfortunately it's supposed to rain this weekend, so it might wash away forever, but at least I have a picture and a good story from that night.


Special thanks to Cris Powerhouse's wife Felicia for introducing me to MQ and thanks to MQ for being a super humble guy and for bombing all these years when other people just quit graffiti.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

There's a man with a gun over there...

So on Monday I went out to get some pictures and decided to check out this cutty tunnel spot I hadn't been in yet. I scoped it out and there was a bunch of stuff in there mainly by the dudes in OBG crew like Blief, Sauna, Cecil, etc. I flicked this Blief piece and didn't think much of the quote in the corner...

 "There's a man with a gun over there...." Now I didn't think much of it because writers are always throwing up some sort of quote in their pieces and then when I came home today I had this message waiting for me in my flickr mail...

at that last tunnel spot you have, we encountered a man with a gun. he's not joking about the comment on the piece. everything ended up okay, but it was definitely a sweaty experience.

So yeah that's just a little scary knowing somewhere I had just been by myself in the middle of the day without anyone knowing where I was that there's some dude with a gun wandering around in some sewer tunnel. That will definitely be the last time I go into some weird cutty spot by myself.