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| MADE/SAME | |||||||||
| “Peter Sutherland has put together one of the most intriguing works documenting the game of graffiti. Autograf is truly a book about graffiti writers for graffiti writers. Let alone the fact that I am in it, I have been eagerly anticipating its publication for years. I love graffiti, and this book represents a gift from Peter to us, the writers, and anyone else lucky enough to be a part of our little secret. Hats off.” —MADE “I was born on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1982, the youngest of a loving and ultraconservative Roman Catholic family,” recalls MADE. “My family represents the exception on the Upper East, harking back to a post World War II era of domestic normalcy, religious faith, and SearSucker suits. The Brady Bunch don’t have shit on us. Seriously, we belong in a Norman Rockwell print. For one thing, my parents are still deeply in love after almost thirty years of marriage, a miracle in a world of fifth divorces, trophy wives and prenuptial agreements. As any developmental psychologist will tell you, my upbringing was perfect. Abiding by a calculated combination of traditional Irish Catholic child rearing practice and cutting edge psychosocial methods, my parents did everything right. The huge array of truly admirable achievements of my siblings’s young lives give testament to the success of their parents. SumaCumLaureatNationalHonorSocietiesetcetc. And then there’s me. I have no excuse, I just love graffiti. “From the beginning, I was trouble, and my parents knew they were in for a long, strange ride. I was adventurous, mischievous and spontaneous, and made a habit of rebelling against the strict codes of the household. My first parlay into graffiti was one for the books, a shrink’s wet-dream and an experience that my parents would revisit with horror in trying to figure out what went wrong. I was three or four years old, and my Mom was on the phone when I decided to blast tags on my hallway wall. Fame for miles. Upon discovery of my inaugural bomb, my Mom calmly sat me down and explained that I wasn’t allowed to write on walls. I can write on paper, but nothing else. Humpf. Later that day she took me to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and outside the entrance was a lady who was selling shirts she had designed. ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ I said, ‘She bad; she wrote on clothes.’ My mother explained that she was allowed to because they were hers and she was selling them. Double Humpf. We then headed for the Egyptian wing, the Temple of Dendar, which is comprised of a series of ancient walls covered with Hieroglyphs. ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ I said, ‘They bad, they wrote on walls.’ My poor mother, how could she finesse this one. She’s an extremely smart lady, but damn, I was a pain in the ass. She then attempted to explain the concept of art, saying that it was beautiful. I bought it. Finally, on the bus ride home, I spotted a tag on one of the advertisements. I got my mother’s attention, pointed to the graffiti, and said, ’Look Mommy, beautiful art.’ I was fucked from the get go, I didn’t have a chance. “Fast-forward to fifth grade. While the Upper East Side was never exactly a hot bed for graffiti, it was enough for me. The first writer I noticed was SPON GNR, a Harlem legend with a talent for letter and an eye for colors. I liked him both because I thought his crew was an homage to Guns N’ Roses, and secondly because he was the king of garbage trucks. After the trains died, writers started smashing garbage trucks because of their similarities to trains. They were city property, they ran all over the city, and they were stored in easily-accessed lay-ups at night. So on the Up East, SPON was a legend. Every morning walking to school, I was like a hawk, staring up and down avenues hunting for a truck. And when I would finally see one, oh man, I was in on something special. Characters, burners, straight letters, throwups tags. Anything, everything. I was hooked. From there I started noticing the streets. “For a while, a lot of respected writers would get of the train at 86th and Lex to pay their respects to the neighborhood. I quickly noticed SPON’S street work, along with the rest of his crew including JOVES, AVER, CIDE, and JBUG. SEDI, BUDA, RAST, KRAZE from RFC, TRAKE and MQUE, JA, KEZ5, SKUF, NATO, KOKER, COST, TRIP, YES, SET. Then there were the local crews, BAF, HFL, and 357. The former two aren’t as well known as the rest, but they had shit smashed, and I owe my obsession with handstyles to them. So I started taking tags, whipping around on rollerblades all day, hitting phone booths and silver poles. Then I got bagged. Eleven fucking years old, and I get popped doing tags with a bottle of Kiwi. It was my first encounter with Johnny Law, but it wouldn’t be my last. “While I was already thoroughly obsessed with graffiti, high school proved to be instrumental in pushing me towards really becoming a street bomber. I linked up with other writers from the Upper East who would become my crew. It was a time when a lot of kids were trying to write and be down with crews just to live some sort of thug life, and that wasn't my scene. I just loved graffiti. So I met PACT at a house party, and I immediately liked him. For one thing he had a really nice hand, and a true appreciation for the game. We spent two hours steaming trees and writing on paper, flexing our skills and our knowledge. It was a wrap. He kicked me down with his crew, DAC, and I never looked back. I had already met BKAE and MAS, brothers with serious handstyles and appetites for destruction. MAS is a cool ass motherfucker, in the Vincent-Vega-from-Pulp-Fiction kind of way. He's one of the nicest dudes I know, but he's got a swagger in his step that lets you know he's not to be fucked with, and a mean left hook to back it up. Model Citizen BKAE is a true live-wire, willing to push it to the limit and walk closer to the edge than anyone I know. One night, just after he had mased a group of five meatheads from Long Island for fucking with his girl, he said to me: ‘Mader, I don't understand, I'm just a nice young Jew, if only more people knew that, maybe we wouldn't have these kinds of problems.’ “SAME is a smooth cat I knew from elementary school when we used to bump into each other back in sixth grade when we were both exploring the Freedom Tunnels in sixth grade. I ran into him at a party one night, he had paint, I had paint, we painted. I made the intro to president PACT and that was that. Finally, Senor TRIPONE, the Godfather. He'd been smashing streets and tunnels for decades, and because of his numerous trips to the Upper East over the years, he was one of my favorites. He schooled me like only a good Godfather can, showing me ropes that I never knew existed. That was that, the recipe for destruction, the Dope Acronym Crew. “When SAME first contacted me about posing for the book, I definitely had my apprehensions. I have a lot to lose, including the trust of my family and friends, and an Ivy League education. So I was curious, at best, about the project. For one thing, it wasn’t a book yet. It was just this guy, Peter Sutherland, who wanted to take our picture. While SAME is a go-with-the-flow kind of cat, I’m more of the OCD control freak. I like to know what’s what, so I wanted to know what was what. But unfortunately, all SAME had was a time and a place. We were supposed to meet some tall guy on Canal street underneath the ‘dopest spot in New York.’ SAME and I had a chuckle about that one, knowing he was talking about the JAYA straight letter, and we prematurely (and incorrectly) assumed he was a scene jock who had watched style wars, subscribed to Mass Appeal and decided he wanted to meet some graffiti writers. Or, he was a cop. Either way, he knew who we were, and I was somewhat flattered. So we met Peter at the spot and started the session, running out to the middle of Canal Street in between flows of traffic. After a few minutes, Peter’s phone rang, and he quickly responded, ‘Hey, I’m busy, I’m shooting SAME and MADE.’ At that exact moment, an undercover police car threw on its berries, speeding towards us. Same and I were half way down the nearest side street by the time we realized they weren’t after us, and walking back to find Pete laughing hysterically, we also realized he was legit.” “A lot of people don’t understand graffiti. ‘When are you gonna grow out of this shit?’ and ‘What the fuck is the point? Why do you love it so much?’ they ask. I respond, ‘Never,” and. ‘How can you not love it?’ While the average vice momentarily fulfills some desire, graffiti is the gift that keeps on giving. There is the act itself, the adventure of walking the streets, exploring dark and mysterious places, and the camaraderie of painting with your team. Then there is the unparalleled pleasure of seeing your spot boom the next day, followed by the compliments and (maybe) respect of your piers. Conversely, there is the admiration and appreciation for other writers’ work. I can’t remember the last time I was bored walking down the street. Of course, the lifestyle is fraught with pitfalls, including unnecessary beef, court dates and bologna sandwiches, but you take the good with the bad or you start collecting stamps. Through it all, the one regret I have is the pain and suffering I have caused my family and friends, and for that I am truly sorry. While I appreciate their support and unconditional love, I wish I could have gone through it all by myself, and completely dissociated the dysfunction from those who walk a more conventional path. But at the same time, I could never apologize for who I am, and those who care about me wouldn’t expect me to either. After 21 years of life I have already lived the life of a hundred Joe Schmoes, and I have the memories, stories and flicks to prove it. So go buy the book, and see for yourself what the motherfucking fuss is about!” |
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