MQ Scum Beks

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.

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. 

Trucks

I've been slacking on posting lately, so here's some truck i shot recently...

Udon interview preview

Just got back an interview from Udon for the next issue of the zine. Here's a little preview of the interviews and some flicks....

In your opinion what's the difference between graffiti  bombers and graffiti artists?

The bomber and the artist are equally important but to me, the bombing is the foundation
and each person gets to decide how much artist they are.
I think anyone willing to get arrested for painting is a bomber... artist or tagger... whatever
but that persons level of dedication determines how much more of a bomber or artist they are.
A bomber must always be prepared to get popped, get got, get in to whatever the streets offer. Knowing bus routes, side cuts, alleys, which garbage cans and trucks come out when. Basically foot patrol often.
My bomber mind is more militant. Impatient. Angry. Hyphy. Whatever. Almost machine, but I balance it with that ʻartistʻ mind. I think everyone does. I mean we got bus hoppin and thats bombin, but then we got fillins, thats like a little bit of artist. Straights to pieces, from legal walls, to chill spots, to freight yards, to freeways and streets. It goes back and forth. Sometimes I cant get my ideas out, so I just bomb. My artist mind, more easy, eerie, maybe even weirdoʻd out, like some meditation zones. I do art at the house. It's pretty much like my warm up to go paint, but if I were say the difference in the artist-the artist is more chill and patient-the pieces and the color schemes-thought content-these things all grow... without the dangers of bombing .An artist can sit back a create maybe more
elaborate skill... still.... I would prefer to see the art of some one who really bombs/ bombed..
then that ʻartʻ makes more sense to me.. it's alive. Next question...

Constructive Destruction Blog

awesome graffiti blog with lots of photos, interviews, news, etc. You should definitely be following their blog if you're not already...

Constructive Destruction Blog

Escape from the hospital

So since this blog is mostly dedicated to graffiti and since almost that everyone that does graffiti has a good chase story or just a story about something that happened while out painting I've decided to share some stories of things that have happened to me while I've been out taking photos.

So about a year ago I started seeing pictures online of this abandoned building that people started painting. It turned out to be an abandoned hospital. I looked into it and found out where it was and went early one Sunday morning by myself to get pictures. I flicked most of everything in the building and left without any hassle.

Fast forward to about 6 months later and I decide one Saturday afternoon to go back and take pictures there again figuring there would be some new stuff there and also there was another building up a hill from the main building which I hadn't had a chance to get. So I head out there, park my car down the street, walk up, hop the main fence and walk past the main building up a hill to a smaller building.

I take some pictures up there and then decide to head back down to the main building. As I'm walking down the hill I see a security truck turning the corner and I instantly turn out and book up the hill and duck down hoping I wasn't seen. I went back into one of the buildings to the second floor to get a good vantage point of where the security guard was.

At this point he was basically doing rounds around the main entrance, so it was obvious I wasn't going back that way. I started hiking up the hill through a wooded area hoping I'd find another way out without being seen. So I finally got to a fence and of course it's barb wire at the top. So I just walked the length of the fence hoping eventually I'd find a hole to climb through or a section that didn't have barb wire at the top. I finally found a section of fence where there wasn't any barb wire at the top and climbed over it. Of course it was on top of a hill and as soon as I jumped off the fence I hit the ground at full speed and proceeded to roll down the hill for a little bit.

Finally all covered in dirt and blood (I managed to cut my hand climbing the fence) I found my way back to the street, walked back to my car, and went home and cleaned myself off.

Anyway here's some pictures from the hospital. Hopefully I'll get back there again one day when I don't have to run from security. More stories to come including how I thought I was going to get stuck in a sewer tunnel and how I thought I broke my ankles falling off the roof of a building.