FRANK 46: Steve Olson by Frank151

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Photo Robbie Jeffers A couple of months ago I was approached about doing a chapter of Frank. I asked what I could do and they answered, “Whatever you want.” So I thought I’d just talk to some people I’ve known throughout my life who have a unique approach to their “career.” I have tremendous respect for all of them and I truly dig what they do. As I talked with them I started to see similarities. It became clear that they all followed their heart and didn’t stop until they achieved what they set out to do. Every one of them is passionate, hardworking, and never really cared what other people thought—they trusted in themselves. Most of the them took what they were influenced by and made it their own. Every one of them has already helped set styles for generations to come.

Steve Olson

Photo Susanne Melanie Berry

Photos C.R. Stecyk III Learn from your past. That sounds good. Influence makes more sense than just ripping something off. Original content: ideas, along with anything else that falls into that spectrum. Stecyk is an Original. One of a kind. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unheard of nowadays. Sad, but true. At least we still have cats like Stecyk. Steve Olson: When did you first pick up a camera? C.R. Stecyk III: I grew up in a house where my mother was a ceramicist and a painter, and my father had been a professional photographer, specifically in World War II. So I had a darkroom. SO: Did he shoot on the battlefield? CRSIII: He shot before the War and after the War, as an occupational adjunct. He was early on the ground in Hiroshima, first wave Occupation Forces, and he shot it. He wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t discuss anything pursuant to his military service, particularly where he went, what he saw, what he did. Nonetheless, I did see pictures from Hiroshima. Other people in his unit described that

he and his commanding officer were the first people, that they knew, who went there. SO: And you saw these photos? CRSIII: I saw some of them, and then he destroyed most of them, probably when people started asking questions about them. So Lord knows what he was doing. SO: Did that have any impact on you, as a kid? CRSIII: Yeah, I think it was the access to tools and materials as much as anything. And then if I had a photography question, he would not answer it, which is a very good strategy because it encourages people to suss it out for themselves. He would give you

just enough information that you could blunder into a conclusion. SO: He would make you think. CRSIII: Yeah, just like, “If you were gonna try to do that, you’d probably want a telephoto lens because that would make your effective distance shorter.” I go, “Where do you find those?” He goes, “Probably in your case, you either get a job—which doesn’t seem to be something you’re destined for—or you might try a pawn shop.” I go, “Like Louie Shell’s Pawn Shop, down on Second?” And he said, “I wouldn’t recommend Louie Shell to anybody…but that would be a pawn shop. …It’s interesting you came up with that.” Kent Sherwood, who was Jay Adams’ stepdad, for a time made a portion of his income patching all the boards for Louie Shell at the hock shop. That was probably the best surfboard pawn going. My father gave me a career in that sense, ’cause you could take your sponsored surfboards from Dave Sweet and go down and hock ’em at Louie Shell to pay for your social life. And that’s how you discover that Kent Sherwood, who also works at Dave Sweet, is patching all those boards. “Where’s your four-inch square tail, Craig?” “Oh, Dave…yeah, I left that over at my uncle’s house.” He goes, “Your uncle is Louie Shell?” [Laughs] “You think you can go pawn your board and I wouldn’t know about it?” I go, “Well...I had hoped that I might be able to take a loan out on my board and have it safely taken care of by those fine people, and you might not find out.” Kent Sherwood, later in his life, does the wings on the Pegasus Missile, the first winged vehicle to go eight times the speed of sound. That’s how Kent ends up in this story. And Jay, he went on to greatness of his own. SO: True.

So you got a camera. What did you start shooting? CRSIII: Anything that moved. Same as now. I have no attention span, so whatever popped in front of me…I still tend to be fascinated by. I shoot every day, to some extent, with no particular reason or rationale. And I don’t look at most of the pictures ever again. Usually. Why would you? SO: To see what you shot? CRSIII: But trying to remember all the photos you took would be worse than trying to remember all the girls you’ve kissed. You might forget or devalue the immediacy of the experience and the honesty, the true fascination. SO: I would love to argue with you, but I won’t, ’cause I agree with you. What about writing? Your writing style is totally and completely different than almost everyone’s. CRSIII: I grew up with more of a spoken-word idiom. Surfing had an oral tradition because it came out of Hawaiian culture, largely, and the Spanish corridos, the stories, the tales. That’s how people where I grew up recounted the history—all these amazing oratories, people speaking. My writing was just something that happened because somebody put down something. I probably talked into a tape recorder. I’m not sure what the first published thing would’ve been. It might have been Steve Pezman at Surfer magazine or something. I don’t remember a lot of that stuff. I know that I was in a Dave Sweet Surfboards ad and that was probably some sort of pivotal moment. SO: When you first picked up a camera, did you think that you would have something published? CRSIII: No. I just like the activity of it, now. I think publishing and exhibiting and all that stuff is fine if other people

Miki Dora.

Tony Alva and Jesus.

appreciate it, but I think as an objective it’s entirely ludicrous. That’d be like sitting there trying to figure out making love. “I gotta get 36 pumps, and then bump.” How the fuck is that gonna turn out? You’re counting! It’s like a Lamaze class. [Laughs] SO: What was it like in the ’60s? CRSIII: If I had a good time, why would I even remember the ’60s? SO: [Laughs] Good, then you’re telling me you don’t really remember? CRSIII: I liked the ’60s because I paid for my first camera. My father wanted me to get a job—it was a “learning experience.” He was big on that. SO: What about the whole skateboarding scene in the mid-’60s? CRSIII: Mid-’60s I thought were pretty good. Larry Stevenson and Hobie and those guys had come into 1964, had made it to ’66, and then the whole thing basically imploded. There were so many skateboards that had been made, you didn’t have to go out and steal rollerskates and turn them into skateboards. And I think the great thing about the merchandising of skateboarding was then there was all this equipment you could just pick up, particularly when skateboarding was out. SO: To make your own custom board. CRSIII: What’s better than an obsolete sport? If the industry went away right now, people would be skating for 200 years off the dregs. And it’d be fat and luscious. SO: And probably better than ever. CRSIII: I think it would be better ’cause there’d be absolutely no reason to do it. There’s no financial support for it, there’s no mercantile imperative, so what’s better than just honest, pure transportation? Herbie Fletcher, he goes as hard at those things as he ever did. I probably met him about ’65 at Hunting-

ton Beach. Typical skateboard thing. When you’re a kid with a skateboard and you see another kid skating three blocks down— SO: You skate over to him. CRSIII: He ends up being your friend for life. It just happened that it was Herbie, a guy who was completely overlooked. He’s been doing stuff for so long, at such a high level, people just ignore it ’cause he’s been there the whole time. He was a great pool skater. But, you know…like he gave a mad fuck. Instead of being a surf star he decided he could ride mini guns on the North Shore. SO: So where did the Zephyr thing come from? CRSIII: Skip Engblom, Jeff Ho, and I were sitting on the beach and we had all worked at different surfboard factories. I had been with Dave Sweet and Jeff had worked, I believe, at Roberts in Playa del Rey for Dewey Weber, and Skip had branded Makaha skateboards—the Phil Edwards models in Venice, for Larry Stevenson—and he’d worked in a variety of surfboard factories. We were trying to figure out why we couldn’t get good surfboards made. We thought that was the point of building them, to make equipment you wanted to ride. So we decided to go into business together. This skateboard thing was something all three of us had in common. There was another guy involved briefly up front named Dana Woolfe who was an artist of significance. We were trying to build surfboards and we tried to make ’em look different and we tried to make ’em work different, and I think for a while we succeeded. Since we all three had skated, it made sense to us that skateboards would be made also, and that Jay Adams was a team rider and Kent Sherwood—who was another materials, construction guy—was

around. And that was the genesis of the Zephyr skateboard. Tony Alva was there, Stacy Peralta, Jim Muir, everybody that was a Z-Boy. All those guys were principally riding the surfboards. SO: When did you start painting the surfboards? CRSIII: There’s a painted surfboard that I did in about 1966 in the Smithsonian. It’s a stringerless Dave Sweet, and that’s an early painted, kinda artsy-looking board—at least for me. We started with resins and stuff. I grew up in a house that had spray paint. Between ceramics and the hotrod thing, you get sprayed color because it’s common to both of ’em. My parental unit had airspray technology. Skipper was a low-rider, and Jeff and I had grown up in a family with what you now call “custom cars,” or hotrods. They were low and slow and big and bold and iridescent paint and metalflake and pinstriped and all of that. So

it made sense to paint surfboards in a similarly personalized manner so they didn’t look like production things. SO: What about the DogTown thing? Where did you create that from? CRSIII: I don’t think I created anything. I might’ve made some comment. Several people were there and apparently I said, “It’s a dog’s life in a dog’s town.” I was painting surfboards for people at that point. Somebody said, “Paint ‘DogTown’ on the bottom of my board,” and that would be how that went. SO: No Mexican affiliation at all? CRSIII: Well I think the padres—Father Sur and those guys—had come through some time before that. I grew up in occupied Mexico. All of California was stolen from the sovereign Mexico government, so yeah, there was a Mexican influence.

Photos Mike Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Meally

Eli Reed and Jamie Story come from different generations, but they have common ground. As skaters, Eli and Jamie are respected for a certain toughness. Their style demonstrates that finesse is nothing without heart, and they bring that same balance to ER and The J. Money Collection, their respective clothing brands. Whether theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re sizing up a gap or laying out graphics, Eli and Jamie both have a sharp eye for detail and a near-flawless execution.

Eli Reed (Pro-skater / ER) @theelireed

“You can skate all day with a G-Shock and it doesn’t get in the way. I don’t even think about it when it’s on me, and that’s the most important part.” - Eli Reed

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“G-Shock is the watch when it comes to this culture. We needed something that was going to be able to withstand the environment and look good at the same time. G-Shock still meets that criteria.” - Jamie Story

GA120A-7A Don’t be thrown by its XL size—the Analog-Digital has yet to sacrifice style for functionality. A redesigned face and metal dial accents take a solid timepiece to new levels. Featuring 200-meter water resistance, magnetic resistance, auto LED, and more. gshock.com

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Photos Bijoux Altamirano A thought, an idea, a dream.... To allow yourself to be who you are is very rare nowadays. But some do it—some have no choice. Kembra is this special breed. To make the idea materialize is not easy. Kembra continues to do it in the form of art, music, photography, and writing. Whether it be the music of her Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, or inventing new art movements, Kembra stops at nothing. There’s something to be said for that...that thing being, “You fucking go, Girl. Ain’t nothing going to stop you, that’s for sure.” Thank you for being you. Done. Steve Olson: What’s your name? Kembra Pfahler: My name is Kembra Pfahler, the lead singer for The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. SO: Where do you come from? KP: I come from Los Angeles. SO: And what did you do when you were growing up as a kid, in California? KP: For The young Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, my formative years were spent learning how to remove tar from my feet. We would use lighter fluid from the barbecue. I spent my childhood ditching class and going to the beach and walking along the Strand wall. I was kind of like an early parkour athlete, a skateboarder without a skateboard. I loved climbing on roofs and climbing over fences. I loved beating up all the boys in my neighborhood and wrestling and doing

extreme sports, and I loved putting on little shows. I would go to the ocean with my dad—Fred Pfahler, he was a surfer— and we would study the ocean every morning in Hermosa Beach, looking for currents, red tides, sharks, surf conditions. When there were no surf conditions we would drive into Inglewood and go to the racetrack to look at the horses. SO: Hollywood Park. KP: It’s the only education that I can remember, because I don’t remember any education in school. Most California public schools don’t really care about educating children in American history, mathematics…. My mother showed me how to make clothes. She was very creative. They

were very young and very creative so they opened the door for me to become creative. SO: When did you get to Santa Monica? KP: Later on we moved up north, which seemed completely satanic, to move up north from Hermosa. Hermosa Beach was such a bubble of surf culture. Even though I went to the Virginia McMartin school, which later became a center for this child pornography scandal. SO: You did not go to that school! KP: I love Virginia McMartin. It was a tradition with all the locals because we were a few generations in Hermosa— all the families sent their kids to the Virginia McMartin school. They were accused of being Satanists and making films with children, but that never bothered me. SO: Were you in any of their films? KP: No, I think it was just an extreme witch hunt. Maybe there was some scandal with one of the parents. They were always very, very nice. It was just a terrible, terrible California tragedy. But no, if I was abducted and participated in some sort of child pornography and satanic ritual, it made me the person that I am today. SO: So you go up north. KP: So we moved up north because after that, it was like, my mother had loftier intentions for the children. She thought, I want to broaden their education and go to “No Pants Lance” Malibu, where we went from The Beach Boys to Big Wednesday. SO: What year was this going on? KP: That was in the ’60s. In the ’70s we were in the Santa Monica-Brentwood area. I went to Paul Revere Junior High, which had some of the most incredible sports terrain. But I was a punk rocker and I was not popular. SO: Why do you think that was?

KP: Black-haired people with green eyes are an acquired taste. And I was from the land of surf royalty. The Addams Family hadn’t quite merged with Five Summer Stories, OK? [Laughs] It was inspiring because it made me isolate myself, and I think the isolation helped me to become an artist. Pain and isolation and rejection made me look inward and I started painting and drawing and trying to find some sort of beauty away from a social network. SO: What was it that drew you to the early punk scene? Especially in Southern California, because they all think, Why on Earth would you be interested in punk rock when you have the sunshine? KP: When I was a child I always felt really unsafe, and I felt like rock ‘n’ roll belonged to an older demographic that wanted to get you into their car and force you to listen to Steely Dan and maybe they would drive you up into the Hollywood Hills and rape you when you were a little surfer in your towel with your punk-rock hairdo. And punk rock was loud, fast, hard, and dirty. Who could tolerate the shows? Who could bear to go to Rhino Music just to buy 45s? It wasn’t appealing to this creepy, coked-out, ritzy, overly produced, overly embellished adult. Thankfully it just annihilated a whole demographic and made room for me to feel like I had a place to be myself, even though I didn’t fit in with any group. That’s why I identified with punk rock. It was the kind of music that made you have diarrhea. It was so terrifying that it was unbearable, and that appealed to me. It was so violent, and so threatening. To go to a show was like taking your life into your hands. From my earlier days of loving parkour, loving to climb, loving to be really active, this music was very

participatory. It made me want to be an artist. SO: What about going from the beach into Hollywood? KP: I was a young teenager and I was not popular, and the marriage of the cultures hadn’t really taken place yet, so I decided to move to New York in ’79. There was Lydia Lunch, there was No Wave, and I was very homesick for California. I can’t explain this kind of longing for California that you get when you’re from Los Angeles. My brother is in a band called Jawbreaker—he’s the original “emo power trio” artist. He writes about Los Angeles so beautifully...but there’s always this feeling that I had. I was always very homesick for Los Angeles, but that’s just like my indigenous culture. I can never erase it; it’s in my DNA, and it just comes out in everything that I do.

SO: What did you do in New York? KP: I went to the School of Visual Arts. I was very unpopular because I was from California and I had a different kind of appearance. I was inappropriately dressed. It took a long time for my look to get popular. It didn’t really get popular until the early ’90s and then I got discovered by Calvin Klein and I was a model on the side of buses. Heavy eye makeup, shaved eyebrows, shaved forehead, black hair. I used to be really ugly and then all of a sudden I was popular. That took a long time, though. I was really lucky. I got to do and see everything. It was a very highly integrated situation. I worked at ABC No Rio. It’s a not-for-profit space in the Lower East Side. My teacher was Mary Heilman. Years later I got to be in the Whitney Biennial with her. I went from her assistant to, I got to be in an art show with my teacher. It’s fantastic.

SO: Yeah. That is really excellent. KP: So art school was good, but it was boring. SO: ’Cause it was too “school?” KP: Yeah. School’s always boring. So I went to Berlin in ’82. When I got back, that was the late ’80s, and then around ’90 we started Karen Black and went on tour for ten years. SO: But you kept painting? KP: Nah, I never really painted. I just did drawings, mostly. ...The performance wasn’t really that popular. SO: I’ve never seen a show. KP: It’s pretty good. I consider myself to be an availabist and an anti-naturalist. SO: Explain that. KP: An availabist is someone who makes the best use of what’s available. An anti-naturalist is someone who lives in harmony with things that aren’t natural. SO: And how did you come across the idea for the show? KP: I like Karen Black the actress because I loved all those movies that people like her and Dennis Hopper made in the ’60s. SO: Trilogy of Terror is amazing. KP: The Day of the Locust, about the water in LA. I like Karen Black in her more non-horror roles, actually. I’m not an actress. I can’t access my emotions and recall feelings. As an anti-naturalist I’m the complete antithesis of what an actress like Karen Black can do, and I just respect her so much. SO: It’s like paying homage. KP: Yes, we’re paying homage to her; we’re not satirizing her. SO: Did you ever think, back in ’76, that you would be where you are now? KP: Um...yeah. Sure. I knew that it was my job to do exactly what I wanted to do every day of my life. The people from the ’60s and my parents

and the people that were around me…that’s what I was trained to do. And it’s not like every day is really whooping it up. There’s been years of quietness and sacrifice and hardship. It’s really a full-time job. SO: Now that you’ve been living the way you want and doing the things you want to do, you’re gonna do that until you can’t do it anymore? Meaning, until the day you die? KP: When I was younger I was an availabist and an anti-naturalist. I feel like now the world is coming to an end. New York always kills anything of value. They have to re-do Madison Square Garden and make it look new. They have to tear down the Chrysler building and put a new façade on it. New York loves to kill things with any kind of history. If we had the Eiffel Tower in New York they would probably tear it down and the mayor would put up some stupid art park. I feel like I’m gonna have to become a “memorist” now. I feel like the ocean’s gonna be closed for good. It’s gonna go from blue to black. I have a very Philip K. Dick-ian outlook on things, because we’ve caused so much harm. So I decided that I needed to make up a new art movement. I was invited by the great artist E.V. Day to be in her art project in Giverny, France at the Claude Monet Foundation. Claude Monet was an impressionist and he painted nature and he painted his impression of what he saw. And then we moved onto other art movements like surrealism and dada and futurism and post-modernism and slacker minimalism, availabism, anti-naturalism, and now I feel like I’m going to be making artwork that’s from the memories I have. It’s a new movement. I just made it up yesterday, so I can’t really elaborate on it. Maybe in the next five years, if I remember to work on the movement, we’ll still have the memorist movement.

Images Bob Recine Individuality doesn’t seem to be so current lately. It’s easy to see, but what do you expect from a disposable generation? Why can this be? Too much information? Fear of trying something new, taking a chance, or having a unique take on your interests? Here’s knowledge from someone who continues to take chances, in whatever form he chooses. This is Bobby Recine. Steve Olson: Where are you from? Bob Recine: Born in New York City. Both of my parents were from Rome. God rest both of their souls. SO: How was it going to school in New York City? BR: Growing up in New York in the ’60s, I already had some kind of sixth sense about people and culture. Everybody I knew had older brothers, like I did, and we always got our musical ears and information from them. We were sponges for things we took interest in or things we marveled at, things that we aspired to.

see these cats come down the street with their bikes spray-painted. These were the days before stickers. What we used to do is cut magazines of hooker headers and all the dragracing things and Scotch-tape them on our bikes. Gino Bracco was the guy who not only had this amazing bicycle, but under his banana seat he stashed porno books, ’cause Gino was about four years older than us. He was probably 13 or 14 already, with a full beard. Mad, mad character. First guy to bring marijuana and things like that into our lives.

Of course I was a rebel to any kind of direction. I always felt like I wanted in a sense to be an adventurer. I always wanted to walk on the wrong side of the tracks.

Anywhere you grow up there’s a mish-mash of characters that fascinate you—at least I can only speak for myself—and I’ve always been fascinated by personalities that are more realistic, or in a sense more instinctual. I played drums my whole life, and one of my biggest inspirations…when I was so little, I remember watching the famous street drummer of New York City, who I befriended many years after and blew my chance to do a

When you talk about school, I think about these characters that are a part of my DNA, my makeup. Characters like Gino Bracco, who owned one of the first bicycles I saw. I must’ve been eight years old, in 1966, and I would

documentary on him. SO: Not the dude in Taxi Driver? BR: The guy in Taxi Driver. That’s Gene [Palma]. Gene was also an amazing man visually. I remember being struck by him in so many ways. I believed that he had this beautiful talent that he was willing to sacrifice his life for. It just seemed that that was his quest, that was who he was in this life, and once you get those kind of characters, any town where I would be staying, I would pick up on them for sure. It’s not where you are; I think it’s who you are. SO: They build you of what’s available. BR: Just to give you an example of how crisp my memory was and how quite the same it still is, I can remember walking down the street and for the first time seeing one of the kids in the neighborhood with an earring. And I remember looking at that and being thunderstruck. Like, how…liberal. Or…I don’t know what the word is, but just outrageous or insulting or beautiful. It boils down to that I’m struck by instinctual honesty. There was a very famous motorcycle gang in the early ’60s in New York City called The Grateful Dead, and they were these amazing characters that once or twice a year would be arrested and end up in the New York Post. And society looked at them as animals! These were the days when tattoos were tattoos and bikers were bikers, not the commodities they’ve become in modern day. A perfect example is, in the punk days I never thought that I’d see a 60-year-old woman walking down Fifth Avenue wearing a motorcycle jacket. So...“Viva la beautiful world,” is all I can say. I always find that people seem to be fascinated about a life in New York City. New York is the best place in the

world if you want to “do,” and probably the worst place in the world if you just want to “be.” I’m the typical New Yorker: I can’t wait three minutes for anything. You live at a kind of futuristic speed. New York’s not the most beautiful place I’ve been to, but the people make the place here. SO: Beauty is only skin deep. BR: Yeah, New York reminds me of this big, old king that’s got food all over his beard and he can do as he wishes and he still gets all the girls. [Laughs] Because it’s about something else. Downtown there was the German streets, Italian streets, Irish streets, so it’s a very different scene than it is now. It’s a very different moral-shaper. There was a distinction, not like the “campus” atmosphere that I sense now. Before, it was more about the people. Today it’s more about how people are positioned, meaning people are so easily talked into things, like the Internet and alternate lifestyle. That’s a good thing, but everybody has the choice to make a real life. I remember holding my father’s hand on Canal Street at a very young age and having this weird epiphany. I would look at a man, I guess at four or five or six years old, and see some kind of society-instilled donkey. [Laughs] I knew that I wanted to be something that nobody else was. SO: What was the deal with the drums? BR: My father was a musician. So ever since I could remember, I remember music in the house, instruments in the house, being shown music to say, “Do you see it? Do you feel it?” SO: And when did you start playing with bands? BR: I think in 1976…1977, punk rock was already over for me, because I was there from when it was born and understood and watched friends of

mine like The New York Dolls, prior to anybody calling anything “punk.” I mean, “punk” was just a term for a punk. Hence the most amazing attraction to that scene at the time, because it was such a realistic, perfectly timed thing. Punk has been around for thousands of years, but when it happened in modern music, I was at the pinnacle of being a musician on the scene I started a lot of bands. One that might be familiar to people is a band called No Music, which was a project that I started with a guy named Joe Diaz, who happens to be one of the fantastic talents of the speed metal and punk scenes since that time. I created a lot of musicians of his ilk into guitar players, into performance artists. I thought that was the beauty of punk, that I finally got a chance to bring all my characters to life on stage. I always looked at this kid like, “If this kid was up on the stage playing the bass like Sid Vicious, the whole world would drop dead!” Being a musician my whole life, I understood the difference between when the body listens to Mozart and when the body listens to punk rock. When we went to 47 beats per second at one point in punk-rock music, people didn’t really understand that the only thing to do would be to run into the wall, you see. It was accident music. It was finally an amazing moment to see music, in a sense, promoting destruction. As I’ve always said, when you’re into something, if you have a passion about something, you eventually reach a point where it’s only the abstract that has any energy, or milk, for you. Even in my profession as a so-called hairdresser, how many times can I do the same thing before I understand that I’m performing a job, as opposed to making something? So

I’ve always been of the nature that I need to progress forward. Watching motorcycle gangs, watching the mafia in the street, and gangsters—I never really had aspirations to be anything like that, but I must admit I used that energy in a positive way. I saw what it meant to grab somebody by the throat, and I always felt that I wanted to do that either with music or my artwork. SO: But did you think that the music, that movement of punk, was your generation’s music? BR: That’s the problem with people looking for genre. I think that the only way to find something of your own is to believe in it. Right now people seem to be so content with revival. After having lived through the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, there was no talk of, “Let’s do something very ’60s,” or ’50s, for that matter. If you drove a car from the ’50s it was either because that was something you could afford or it was something that was easy to manipulate into a hotrod. I’m saying people need to be a little bit more believing in themselves. When I wanted to learn about esoteric bands, when I wanted to find out about happenings nobody knew about, I had to go out there and do my homework, and in that process of digging was my life. And maybe some people think it’s great to have everything at your fingertips, but I don’t think anybody’s quite focused on what that costs you as a person—to find a possible identity in your own genre. That’s where the genre lies: in the strife, in the struggle, in the true interest, not in the interests of being able to sit anywhere and tap your finger. I’m a doer.

Photo Craig Wetherby

Photos Curtis Kulig Nothing comes easy. When you want it, go get it. Kulig will stop at nothing until it’s done. You get what you want when the effort is put forth. If it’s right, it’s right, and you know it. Now is the time: “LOVE ME” Steve Olson: Where are you from? Curtis Kulig: Born in North Dakota. SO: What did you do as a kid? CK: Grew up, normal childhood, parents are still together. SO: So you have a good relationship with your folks. CK: I do. But I also have issues with the folks, so…therapy! I grew up with a somewhat normal childhood, and then got into drugs. SO: What does that mean, “somewhat normal?” CK: I wrestled. State Champion. SO: Oh. My. God. Why wrestling? CK: I actually liked the individuality of wrestling. Nobody to blame. You lose, you win…it’s all you. SO: You said earlier you went through your drug phase... CK: Eighth-grade summer was the first time I ever smoked pot, and from there I just went fucking nuts. SO: The gateway.

CK: The gateway for sure. SO: To...? CK: Selling everything, doing everything. I was uncontrollable. My mom was always very ignorant about those things. She is an all-star mom to be able to handle the shit that I’ve put her through. Again, it was a very normal, down-to-Earth family, but she just hid the fact that I was so fucked up—finding pounds in my closet and taking it from me. I’d be like, “Alright, cool Mom. Just…I probably won’t be around this week. I’m probably gonna get killed off for this one.” She’d be like “Just fuckin’ get it out of the house!” It got to the point where, when I was 18, I actually didn’t graduate from high school. They failed me at the last second. SO: But you’re obviously not dumb. CK: Common sense-wise, no. For some reason I had a niche in my brain where I thought it was not cool to learn.

Even art classes. I didn’t want to have shit to do with anything. Like, “Who are you to teach me about history?” I was just getting high, being a jokester, and skating. Skating was my life. SO: How, in North Dakota, does one come across skateboarding? CK: Summertime. Wintertime you’re obviously locked down. There were no skate shops. I got CCS catalogs and would have to steal my mom’s credit card and order things to support my skate thing. SO: Why do you think you were so drawn to skateboarding? CK: I think, again, it was the individuality thing. SO: Did you have a crew that skated? CK: Yeah, it was like five of us. There wasn’t much of a scene, but we had a punk-rock scene in Minot. It was considered for a bit The Little Seattle. At that time I was much more com-

fortable with myself. I just liked being different. I wasn’t even doing drugs at that time. I didn’t need drugs; I felt like I was weird enough. That was like sixth, seventh, eighth grade. I was born in ’81, so I’m like 13…14. That’s ’94-ish. SO: Were you doing anything with art? CK: No. My brother was always the artist. He was always drawing, always had sketchbooks, and he was really good, so I wasn’t trying to one-up him or be better at drawing than him. SO: It’s weird how when you’re a kid, if you can’t draw, art doesn’t exist. CK: Yeah. Definitely. That’s why when there are these people that critique art and shit, it’s like, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself? Who are you to say what’s good art?” The most realistic painting you can do? I’m not into that. I’m not into oil paintings. I don’t care. At that point, that’s what I thought a good artist was: somebody that could

paint or draw or do something that looks like a picture. SO: So when did you figure out... CK: Well, I think the graffiti thing came along once I moved to Minneapolis from North Dakota. Basically at 18 I got locked up for 62 days, which was a big deal. SO: For…? CK: Three counts of simple assault. I had a 1982 Honda Accord my dad bought me. I can’t tell you how many times I drove full blackout drunk. Crazy. Stupid. At one point we were going to a friend’s party, and in North Dakota the highways run parallel and there’s like a little mini half-pipe in the middle of the highways, which is a ditch, obviously. It just happens to look like a big half-pipe to me…and my car’s the skateboard. So we’re going like 80 miles per hour and— SO: Dropping in.

CK: At the point where I decided to “drop in” to the “giant half-pipe” there’s a giant culvert—the cement so the water can go underneath the highways—which is like a 12…15-foot cement arch. I go down and hit that thing and launch. We slammed so hard all the tires popped, the fuckin’ engine’s smoking. We pushed the car to my friend’s house and put it in the driveway. I left it there for days. My parents were like, “Where’s the car?” At the point I realized it was totaled, I told my parents, “Oh yeah, this is what happened to the car.” In North Dakota everything’s spread out so you have to drive. So my dad has to get me a new car. He sits me down and he’s like, “I’m getting you a car. I don’t care where you have to park it. If somebody’s else’s door hits it, if there is one fucking scratch on this thing, you’re walking wherever you have to

go or calling your friends for rides.” I’m like, “Alright Dad.” I go out that night, and—in my drunk head I told myself that these kids threw something at the car, which I don’t think they did. [Laughs] Basically I pulled up to this Jeep and it was full of kids. I was like, “I have a full tank of gas. You guys can drive all fucking night long, but if you don’t get out of the car and let me beat the fuck out of every single one of you individually, I will follow you until you stop.” I end up following them for 45 minutes, all around town. I followed them into their driveway. They all spread, I ran out and started fuckin’ buck-wild hitting everything I saw. I remember a kid trying to open the front door of the house. It was locked. I was in the driveway just pounding this kid. He was lying on the ground, I was on top, it’s snowing, there’s blood

everywhere, and the next thing I know, I’m in a bear hold by a big, hairy beast in his underwear, which was their dad. He’s holding me and he’s screaming, “Call the cops!” And I’m instantly nice. “Sir, let me down. Let me explain what happened.” The second he lets me down, I run, jump in my car, and slam the door. He comes up and starts pounding on my window. I put it in reverse. My car had a windshield wiper on the back. He rips the windshield wiper off—the motor, the whole fucking thing has wires and shit hanging off it—and throws it at my car, scrapes up the hood. I pull out. My car, that my dad just gave me this spiel about, has a missing windshield wiper and a big scrape on the hood the next day. The next day the cops came to my work and were like, “Who owns the maroon car outside?” I was like, “Yeah, me.” They were like, “What happened last night?” I was like, I’m not getting out of this. “These kids threw a bottle at my car and we ended up fighting.” So one of the kids ends up being the sheriff’s kid. They sentenced me to 30 days in jail. I was 18 at the time, so it was our county jail. We used to have barbecues, even in the winter. We would go to the market and rack meat, like filet mignon. Before I was going to jail we wanted to have this extravaganza barbecue. So I go in, steal meat, and of course this time, out of the four years that I’ve been doing this— SO: You get caught. CK: At that point I had been sentenced for the assault. I have 30 days that I need to serve, and I had about ten years hanging over my head if I got in trouble for anything else. Well I’d already got in trouble for something, and I hadn’t even been in jail yet. So I’m in jail and my court date’s com-

ing up in ten days for this theft. I’m in the monkey suit, the whole thing. I’m literally breaking down every night, 18 years old, crying myself to sleep. The first ten days I’m a totally different human, scared for my life, in jail with fuckin’ crackheads, drunks, murderers…everybody goes in there before they go to prison. And for the first time in my life, my parents can’t do anything about it. For me it was like, Am I going to be 28, getting out of jail for this? To the correctional officers I’m like, “Oh! I’m so scared!” Being nice. Then the day came where I had to go back to court. I walk into the courtroom, shackled, mom off to the side crying. I go in front of the judge. He is basically like, “Are you out of your mind?” I had to stand up in front of the whole courtroom and be like, “Dill… uh, Judge Dill, I’ve learned my lesson.” He’s like, “You’ve learned your lesson? You’ve been in jail for ten days.” It could’ve been 100 times worse. He gave me 32 more days. So it was a grand total of 62 days. But the way my brain worked then, of how big of a baby and scared for my life I was, once I knew that that was my release date, the fucking second I walked back into my cell block I turned straight back to uncontrollable psycho, ’cause I knew I was getting out. To the correctional officers I was like, “Fuck you! Fuck this place! You want me to clean? I’m not your slave!” They’d be screaming at me over the loudspeaker, like, “Mr. Kulig! You have to clean the lobby!” “Fuck you! I’m not getting up!” They would come in, “Get out of bed!” “I’m out of here in 45 days! You’re just upset because you’re fat!” Just going nuts. And I served the rest of my time. The second I got out my mom was like, “You’ve gotta get out of town. You can’t be here anymore.”

At that point I moved to Minneapolis. My brother had already been living there for a few years and he had connections there and shit. I instantly got back into drugs, doing coke and smoking tons of weed and getting crazy drunk. That went on for another year, and then I moved to LA and I was still doing it. And I pretty much wil’ed to the point where my immune system was shutting down. Every two weeks I would be bedridden. Once I started getting sick I got so freaked out that I flipped the fuckin’ script completely and turned into this obsessive health freak. For a year and a half I was straight sober. No meetings, nothing like that. At that level you just become ultra-sensitive, and it was probably the darkest point of my life, when I was that healthy. It was just the feelings, no masking. I was so alone at that point. I had no other outlet of getting rid of that energy, so I was writing a ton. At that point I had never done LOVE ME in the streets. I met SKULLPHONE and started going out with him. He was holding it down in LA for a long time. I remember it was 2004 or something like that. We were downtown, and he gave me a can of black spraypaint and was like, “There’s a boarded-up store. Go write something.” I’d been doing graffiti and writing stupid names forever—I was obsessed with writing on stuff. It was like Skid Row pretty much, whatever time in the morning. I got out of the truck and went up to the wall and I was like, I’m not gonna catch a stupid tag that I’ve been catching forever, so I just wrote “LOVE ME”—I wish I had a photo of that shit! At that time I really looked up to SKULLPHONE—I still do. So I was running back to the truck and I was like, I just wrote “LOVE ME” on this fucking wall. Is he gonna be like, “Ohhh my God! What the fuck is that?!” I remember getting in the

truck and we drove by and he was like, “LOVE ME? That looks dope.” SO: What does it mean to you? CK: I have a few takes on it. SO: Talking to you right now, I think I’ve found it out. CK: Let’s hear it. SO: I think it’s you telling yourself that you need to love yourself and quit being such a fucking brutal idiot to yourself. Maybe in a subconscious way it’s like, “Yo, really? You’re gonna get drunk and beat up some kid because you think he threw a bottle? Or maybe he didn’t, but fuck it, I’m gonna beat him up anyway, ’cause I maybe don’t love myself completely ’cause I don’t know exactly who I am yet.” But it’s not a bad thing to love yourself, because if you can’t love yourself, you can’t love anyone else. Period. CK: Yeah, it’s probably spot on, but as the years have gone by, it’s grown into other things. The graffiti culture is like, somebody that puts so much time and energy into writing their name that means nothing to anybody else on so many walls, and destroys so much property…at some point everybody might as well be writing “LOVE ME” or “LOOK AT ME” or “SEE ME.” I feel like it’s the most selfish act. SO: When did you start hitting hard with LOVE ME? CK: I just started catching little tags around LA. People started talking about it a little bit. It fed me, making me want to get out there more. I wasn’t putting myself out there as much until I made the choice that I didn’t give a fuck. I’m not gonna be another guy that’s hiding in the dark. I never had any intentions of making anybody feel any way, bad or good, but 95% of the feedback I get is, it’s making people’s day. If I can make a difference in the world that’s changing even one human’s day, fucking…great.

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Photos courtesy of Rocco Urbisci When the shoe fits, strut and never look back. This is the kid from Cleveland who made something of himself in a city that chews up and spits out time and time again. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to the old schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;someone who really understands what time it is. Salute!

Rocco Urbisci and Richard Pryor on the set of Jo Jo Dancer.

Steve Olson: Where’d you grow up? Rocco Urbisci: I’m Italian, from Cleveland. Steel-mills kid. SO: When you were a kid in Cleveland, what kind of music was happening? RU: It was Elvis and The Beatles. SO: Were you around for Bill Haley and the Comets? RU: That was just a little earlier. It was the post-jazz era, and we knew all the doo-wop shit. We saw the transition happen. And the reason that is significant is because I grew up in the city where rock ‘n’ roll got its name. Up to that point it was called “race music.” So what happens is, Alan Freed has this thing called the Coronation Ball and he says—I’m paraphrasing— “Tonight, we’re gonna rock and roll.” And that caught on. Well, “rock and roll” comes from “Roll with me Henry, Rock with me Henry,” which is about fucking, really. SO: It caught on, and parents didn’t want their kids fucking. RU: Of course when Elvis hit the scene, look what it did. I mean [Ed] Sullivan shot him from the waist up and all that horseshit. So right at the end of that, here comes The Beatles. 1964. Wham. That changed everything, of course. I was going to school during the day and working at a television station nights to make some money. SO: Still living at home? RU: Yeah. So I’m watching Merv Griffin and I see this skinny little Black guy, and he’s killin’ me. And of course it was Richard Pryor. And then I see him on The Tonight Show, and I go, “This fuckin’ guy’s funny, man.” And then I got hooked into this other guy named George Carlin, who was on The Tonight Show. If you would’ve told me that years later I’d be working with them, I would’ve told you that you were on crack. It was just a dream.

I got drafted, went into the army, came out, and got a job in Baltimore at a channel as an art director. I was like 21 years old. And then one day I made a short film. The station decided to do Horror Week, and I took an old 8mm camera and I ran through the woods. When I got back I added [howls], and I put my voice in [pants and growls]. And the station went nuts, because they’d never seen anything like that. A station manager in Chicago saw it. They hired me. I spent a couple of years in Chicago and then I came out to LA. I had a kid and no job. SO: What year though? RU: This was ’73, somewhere in there. There was a guy that worked with me in Cleveland that was doing a show with Steve Allen. Of course I knew of Steve Allen, because I was a big fan of the talk shows. So I get a job working for Steve. During his monologue I would interrupt him. He made me interrupt him. I was off to the wings and he’d be talking, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a great show.” I go, “Steve!”—I did this 166 times—“Steve!” Steve would go, “Rocco? What are you doing? Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of my young writers, Rocco.” I said, “I’m just...I’m really embarrassed.” “No, just tell me what it is.” “Well, I was talking to Jane”—his wife—“and she said you got a new boat.” He said, “Rocco, I don’t have any boat.” I said, “That’s funny. Jane said you’re getting a little ‘dingy.’” SO: [Cackles] RU: So now, I don’t even tell him. I say, “Steve!” Same thing. “How’s your new ranch?” He looks at me with this glaring look, ’cause I got him in the middle of the ocean—he’s gotta go with me. And now my nuts are sweating. He says, “I don’t have a new ranch. I have a new boat, but I don’t have a new ranch.” I said, “Gee, that’s funny. I was

Rocco Urbisci and George Carlin.

talking to Jane and she said you’re getting a big ‘spread.’” SO: [Laughs] RU: It gets a laugh. He comes off stage and he goes, “You know kid, you took a real risk there.” I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Allen. I just got bored,” He goes, “You got bored? I’ll tell you when you get bored. It was funny. But tomorrow, we’re back to ‘boat.’” So now I’m booking, I’m writing, I’m doing everything. It was the end of his run and his staff was in half. Everybody did everything. Plus he wanted to tape six 90-minute shows in two days. He’s booking Milton Berle, Jack Benny, all those guys, which I’m happy about because they’re all legends. And I’m booking Steve Martin and George Carlin and Richard Pryor and those guys. And Steve Allen loves me ’cause, who the fuck are these guys? It’s my peer group.

Then they cancelled the show. This is ’73…’74. So I did some research and found out after The Tonight Show they were running old movies across America, and for the same amount of money they could run a music show from 12:30 AM to 2 AM. So The Midnight Special was created, and I got brought in because the guys that were producing it knew nothing about rock ‘n’ roll. Me and a girl named Susan Richards—God bless her soul—we did the pilot, one special. Susan and I book Linda Ronstadt; Harry Chapin; Earth, Wind & Fire; The Doobie Brothers; and the show is a big hit. It was hosted by John Denver. The show gets picked up. I’m the writer and co-producer and also parttime booker. So I said, “Why don’t we book Richard Pryor?” Burt Sugarman, my boss on Midnight Special, says yes. So Richard Pryor hosted a show, George Carlin hosted a show, Lily

Tomlin hosted a show, Andy Kaufman hosted a show. Richard does the show and he’s great. Saturday Night Live comes out and I’m really jealous, ’cause I wanted to do that show. So I said, “Fuck it. I’m gonna get Richard Pryor to do a variety show.” I hung out at The Comedy Store every night for a week trying to build up the courage to ask him. One night he walks out and says, “Motherfucker, what are you doing here? What do you want?” And I said, “I wanna know if I can sell a variety special with you.” “Go sell the motherfucker and get out of my face.” I went to Burt Sugarman and I said, “I got Richard Pryor, but I need you as an umbrella.” He was the umbrella, and we did the special. They wouldn’t give me producing credit on the special because I didn’t have any credits, but they made a deal with me: If the series got picked up, I could be the producer. So my writing partner was Alan Thicke. SO: Really? RU: Yeah. And then of course Richard quit over the naked opening. SO: Wait...the what? RU: We did four shows, of 13. Here’s what happened. He called me up one day and he said, “We don’t have an opening to the show. Can you get the best makeup guy in the business?” I said, “Yeah, this kid Rick Baker, who just won 100 Academy Awards,” and of course did Star Wars. He said, “He’s gotta make me look like a mannequin.” We bring him in, we put this little piece on Richard, like shorts. He looks like a mannequin. So the opening of the show went like this: Waistto-head shot: “Hi, I’m Richard Pryor. A lot’s been written about me doing a show. Should I do a show, or should I not do a show? People say, ‘Richard, if you do television you’re gonna

have to give up everything.’ Well I’m standing here naked”—head-to-toe shot—“and I’ve given up absolutely nothing.” Of course he’s got no dick and balls. Hysterical. The day the show’s gonna air I get a call from NBC saying the censors are gonna cut it out. I said, “Does Richard know about this?” They go, “Yeah.” I called Richard at home. I said, “I can’t believe they’re not gonna air this.” He says, “What are you talking about?” I said, “They want to cut the naked opening. Are you gonna cut it out?” He said, “Absolutely fucking not. Motherfucker.” He quit, I got fired. Later Richard called me back and I wrote Jo Jo Dancer [Your Life Is Calling] with him, which was semi-autobiographical. SO: Why does Pryor pick you to work with? Same sense of humor? RU: I could say one of the reasons was because I had a street mentality. I always shot from the hip; I never hid anything. Whether you liked it or not, I told you my opinion. That’s how I was raised. And he liked that. He invited me to his house once for dinner. He told me, “It’s just gonna be guys.” I show up at the house…I’m the only White guy there. You know who’s at dinner? Miles Davis. And Oscar Peterson. I don’t say shit through the whole dinner. And finally Miles says, “Richard, who’s the cracker?” SO: [Laughs] Really! RU: Richard liked me, I guess. I guess he respected me, and I wrote some funny shit. I went to Richard Pryor about the show. He didn’t pick me; I picked him, in a weird way. And he honored it. He could’ve gotten anybody. He told me that Don Cornelius was really pissed off that he didn’t get to produce the show. “Who the fuck is that Whiteboy?” I was at Richard’s house one day and he said, in front of a lot of his Black friends, “You know why this nigger is producing my

show?” It was the first time anybody had ever called me a nigger. And he said, “Get off this motherfucker’s ass. None of you came up to me with the idea of a show. He did! So let’s get fuckin’ things straight.” I was never fucked with after that. SO: So he had integrity as well. RU: I’m a kid producing the show. He showed up for work and did his shit. What do I have to complain about? It made my comedy career. SO: What about Jo Jo Dancer? RU: I think he trusted me with his life story, that I wasn’t gonna make it a commercial venture. So, we wrote the script for Jo Jo Dancer in Hawaii. Jo Jo was shot in Peoria [Illinois], in the house where his mother did tricks, in the bedroom where his mother did tricks. He went to the house, the bedroom, the yard he played in. I thought that was fucking amazing. He walked into the head of the dragon and blew out the flame. I loved him for that. I cannot believe he did that. SO: How do you meet up with Carlin? RU: I met up with Carlin on Steve Allen. I booked him at least a half a dozen times. He was having a hard time getting adjusted, ’cause he was making the transition from Vegas comic to the new George Carlin. I booked him ’cause I loved him, and he never forgot. I’m driving down Wilshire Boulevard, at the Wadsworth Theater it says “George Carlin.” I buy a ticket. I go backstage to see him. Now this is after I did Steve Allen, Midnight Special, Pryor, SCTV, Lily: Sold Out with Lily Tomlin—which I won an Emmy for. I go backstage to say hello to him. He says, “Rocco, I want you to do my next HBO special.” I wound up doing George Carlin’s last ten HBO specials. Not even Lorne Michaels could say

that, and he’s the only guy in the business I’m envious of.

SO: Who are you working now? RU: One night I’m in a club in the Valley. I went to see a showcase where they asked comics to do something about the environment. Lame. You can’t ask comics to come up with original material in a week! Anyway, I was walking out, these two girls walked on stage and they said, “Hi, we’re Carli and Doni, and God bless Mother Nature,” and sang a song called “Bikini Wax.” And I loved them. Doni’s a tomboy from Idaho, she’s gay. Carli’s born in LA. Cute Latin girl, straight. They moved in together and wrote a lot of funny songs. I said, “You know, you need an act, because you just can’t make a living singing songs. You guys have a story.” I said, “Go watch the Smothers Brothers.” They didn’t even know who they were. I met them the next week, they had four or five pages of banter. It was hysterical. So I signed on to comanage them, and I brought in Jerry Hamza, who was Carlin’s manager. And then I walked into The Improv and saw this Black comic, Daryl Wright. His story is completely different than the girls’. Daryl went to prison, came out, started comedy late. But they’re all very smart and very precise.

Images Kenneth Cappello’s Sketchbook What does it mean to go after something and actually get it? A vision of what you think you can obtain. Aware…unaware…following what you think is possible. Not stopping, doing the work— whatever it is—to get to that position. Hard work does pay off, and never stops. This pertains to Kenneth Cappello. With the will, the way, and the determination to make it happen, Cappello is what Cappello is. Here. Steve Olson: Where are you from? Kenneth Cappello: I grew up in Houston. I was born in Miami. SO: When did you get to New York? KC: I moved to New York in 1994. SO: And how was it? KC: New York in ’94 was great. I’d been to New York in ’92 or ’93. I went on a roadtrip there with a band, and the city was crazy. You could drink on the street, you could drink if you were 18…it didn’t matter. It was cool… you could smoke pot. It was lawless. The East Village was the craziest thing in the early ’90s. I knew I had to get out of Texas. I was thinking either San Francisco or New York, or for some reason Chicago was on my list.

I did my research: New York was the most expensive city, SF was second. I said, If I can make it here, I can go anywhere. So I moved to New York in ’94. SO: Why? To pursue photography? KC: No, not at all. I just moved to New York because the energy of the city was crazy. SO: So you didn’t have any inclination you were going to be a photographer when you got to New York? KC: None. SO: So how did you become a photographer? KC: I was a bar-back at this place called Beauty Bar in ’96. I still took photos and made little photo albums, but I didn’t care about being a photographer —I didn’t know what a

photographer was. These kids used to come in to happy hour all the time. I hooked them up with drinks. They had tattoos, one had a pompadour; they were cool-looking dudes back then. And I was like, “What do you guys do for a living?” They were like, “We build sets for a photographer.” I said, “How much money you make?” “175…200 a day.” In ’96 I was making like 80 bucks a night, sweeping up around fucking celebrities and shit, washing glasses and cleaning up and shit till four in the morning, drunk. I said, “Fuck, I want to make that much money!” They said, “Do you know how to use saws and shit?” “I guess. I used to build skateboard ramps.” SO: Look, if you can build a skateboard ramp, you can figure out how to build almost any kind of set. KC: I’m not so good with a measuring tape. SO: We won’t go into math.

KC: A few months later a lady called me, “We got your number from soand-so. Can you come in and help me with this set for this photographer?” So with me not knowing shit about photography.... And at the time I was dating this girl who was about ten years older than me, and she was an ex-model— SO: Do you want to say who? KC: No. SO: Good. No pressure. KC: So I said, “What’s the photographer’s name?” “David LaChapelle.” It kinda rang a bell, but I was in a punk band, I was going to shows...I wasn’t into photography or fashion; I was into hardcore. SO: So you went to do LaChapelle. KC: So I went. The first job I did was the Elton John job for the cover of Interview magazine. SO: And what was your job? KC: I was a lackey. I was stripping

the walls, painting the walls, whatever else. “Art Department.” Whatever they needed me to do, I was doing it. So they started hiring me here and there, I kept my job at the bar, then I was promoted to the Assistant to the Art Director, I became a prop shopper— buying chairs, whatever. Just working for David for three-and-a-half years. SO: How was that, though? Because he was a little bit over the top, no? KC: He fired me like ten times, but I always got hired back. Just stupid shit, you know. Heat-of-the-moment type shit. Like getting third-degree burns and stopping what I’m doing and him being like, “What the fuck?!” “I just burned my hand, dude, putting a sparkler on some bitch’s hair.” Just crazy shit. I saw him recently. He was cool. The point is this: working for him opened my eyes up, like, “I like taking photos. This is where photos come from. This is the photo studio. That’s the stylist....” It just all started clicking. I worked with him for a long time. And I was a photo assistant but I was really hands-on. I was already taking photos, but he got me really inspired to take more photos, and I said, “I’m gonna fucking do this.” And I did. SO: Within fashion photography and your experience with a chick that’s a decade older who’s a model, did you like the energy of that whole world? KC: Did I like that scene? Fuck yeah, man. When you’re in your 20s and you’re living in New York City and you’re up in this world and all of a sudden you realize what a model is, and you’re going to these model parties, and you’re hanging out with models on set with photographers, you’re fuckin’ siked. Now I could give a fuck. But back then it’s like, “Yeah, this rules.” SO: Why though? KC: Why do hot girls rule? SO: Is it really hot girls that rule, or just cool girls?

KC: Now it’s cool girls. Back then it was hot girls. SO: Right, but what was it about the hot girls that you found so attractive? KC: Because they were hot. [Laughs] I didn’t have a brain then, so I didn’t care if they had one. SO: What happened to the girl who was ten years older, the model who’s going to remain nameless? KC: Didn’t work out. SO: [Laughs] But why? KC: Too jealous or something. I don’t remember. SO: She was too jealous, or you were too jealous? KC: She was. SO: [Laughs] Wait a minute! So this is a hot chick, and you’re this cat from Houston who’s just doing his thing, and she’s jealous of you? KC: Check this out…I felt like I hit the lottery or some shit. I was some fuckin’ bum-ass bar-back…which is fine, but I met this hot model chick that was super siked on me. Then she ended up moving in with me. But once they stop modeling, sometimes these girls have a problem with the next stage of life, like getting a job. She used to make tons of money. So I’m supporting this chick off like 80 bucks a night-type money. And she was living at my crib, and she was busting my balls and shit, like, “Who’s that girl? What’d you do last night? You smell like…!” And that was it. SO: What happens with the photography world? You actually made a really good career for yourself. KC: Yeah. SO: What from? Hard work? KC: Hard work. Not being lazy. There’s like a thousand people trying to do this. I’m a high-school dropout. I didn’t go to art school. I don’t have a family that’s connected to fashion or art. I didn’t get a handout. I dropped

out of high school, moved to New York, and found my way. I guess there was some luck in there. SO: What kind of music do you like? KC: I like all kinds of music. SO: Give me one genre. ...Metal? KC: I like metal. I hung out with Marilyn Manson a few nights ago. He’s funny. I was shocked. He’s kinda just like a redneck from Florida. All we talked about was Piranha 3D. I like his vibe.

SO: Do you like The Jonas Brothers? KC: I did just shoot Joe Jonas. And I do like him a lot. He’s a cool dude. SO: He’s nice, right? KC: Nice guy. You came to my set and drank all the beer. SO: I drank one beer in the middle of the day and they looked at me like I was an alcoholic. I’m like, “I’m thirsty. It’s sunny. All these people look like they’re really uptight. Someone’s gotta be loose.”

Photos Jacqueline Miro For the people, by the people. Take advantage of what you’ve got. Make something of it...please. Take the lead and trust in yourself. It’s not as easy as some make it out to be. With heart and soul it’s time to go, straight to where you need to be. It’s all one big effort, and the outcome is just that: what you make of yourself. This is what I get from one—Jacqueline Miro. Steve Olson: Where were you born? Jacqueline Miro: I was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, in 1965. SO: How was it growing up as a kid? JM: There’s this legend of the 14 families that owned El Salvador. My grandmother belonged to one of those families. So I was very protected. And that’s why I love surf—my access to people in the ocean could not be limited. The beach in El Salvador is about 20 minutes away from San Salvador. There was this private club called El Sunzal, which is in La Libertad, and Punta Roca is right there. You just start swimming or you take your board to the side and you’re not in the club anymore, you’re in the sea with everybody. SO: When did you discover that? JM: Around the time that I started smoking pot. [Laughs] I was born to an extremely beautiful, French mother. My father met her in Barcelona and my mom agreed to move to El Salvador with him.

My grandfather was from Spain, my grandmother was local. She was partly Mayan. I lived with my father and my mother, all my uncles, their wives, everybody, at my grandmother’s house. It was a house with 30 people, and each one of them was a character. Probably the most folkloric in those days was a carpenter named Jorge. He used to call himself Jorgito del Niño Jesús. He was a total drunk and he sniffed glue. So we sniffed glue, usually on Sundays when my grandmother was at church or whatever, and we would hallucinate in the garden. Jorge was a priest, according to his hallucinations, and we would have these masses and the kids would participate. He was, let’s say, a degenerate. It’s not a bad memory because…it was this guy, in the garden, you were sniffing glue, I mean…it was beautiful. You can imagine ferns and palm trees and birds, and he would set out his little table where he would read from the Bible.

Jorge would build us houses up in the trees. I don’t know, at this point, if he wasn’t actually retarded. It’s crossed my mind. [Laughs] He also didn’t have fingers. Neither did my guitar teacher, Profesor Sin Dedos. He was also a carpenter. They would all cut off their fingers because they were drunks. SO: Jorge turned you on to weed? JM: No. I was turned on to weed by my first boyfriend, a surfer. Tito. He was the best surfer in El Salvador. He was friends with Gerry Lopez, whom I met when I was 11. SO: In ’76. Big Wednesday. Were you hanging around the set of Big Wednesday? JM: I wasn’t hanging around the set, but they were filming it right next to my house. You’ve gone to El Salvador, right? SO: Yeah. JM: La Libertad was very different before the Revolution. In those days there were all these houses and all these joints where you could eat oyster and conch and ceviche, and we would just skateboard everywhere. You could go into town. You weren’t necessarily allowed to do it, but it was safe. SO: Was it lawless then, too? Before the Revolution, I’m asking. JM: It was lawless in a much more innocent way. Oh God, El Salvador has been lawless forever! You make your own law, for sure. SO: What was the Revolution about? JM: Overthrowing the 14 families and the military regime. The 14 families had sort of a consortium of chieftains to defend their land against Americans coming in and installing the United Fruit Company. El Salvador is the only country in Central America that’s never been a banana republic, because America didn’t own most of the land—the people did. But in exchange for that, the United States would say, “We need a government that puts

down every kind of peasant revolt.” So the 14 families made sure that there was a president and a military, and in most cases, a secret militia— death squads—that would put down any kind of uprising, so that it wouldn’t spread into what Americans called “our back yard.” By ’79 there had been a very slow and steady indoctrination in schools and universities by the Jesuits that created this whole class of super intelligent and super left-wing kids within the ruling class. They were going into the land saying, “You guys believe in God, but that means that you need to fight for your life on Earth, for your kids, for having health benefits. You can’t just let yourself and your family die. God and Jesus expect praxis, which is, they expect you to practice something and get it done.” So anyway, I love that. That’s called “theology of liberation.” Then when I was 13, in 1979, my mother was kidnapped by the BPR [Bloque Popular Revolucionario]. She was at the French embassy then. The BPR did not kidnap children or women. At this point, instead of kidnapping individuals they’d take possession of an embassy. They would say, “We want all the people who the military has in”—what were called bartolinas, these tiny little cells. The military would take away all these teachers, all these people who were trying to talk in the countryside, and they would put them away. They were called los desaparecidos: “the disappeared.” In my mother’s case, negotiations went on for six weeks. We used to bring food to them. My mother being French and socialist, essentially, was never attacked, except psychologically. A whole SWAT team from France came. They killed about five guys in there. It was a massacre. Meanwhile I’m already full-blown drinking and using.

SO: Living life as a teenager. Maybe it’s a form of escape. JM: And surf was too, for me. By this time my grandparents were not living in El Salvador. They were living in Barcelona because they were concerned about being kidnapped and all of that. My cousins who were men were all in boarding school, even if they were 11…12. My brother was too. The women were left in El Salvador to deal with this revolution. [Laughs] I was also not going to school, because there was no school. After this whole thing with my mother happened, she had to leave to Canada. So I’m alone with Jorge [laughs], with the guard Don Rómulo, with all the bodyguards, with Calin, the chauffeur. Everywhere I went I saw dead bodies in the street. I saw I don’t know how many guerrilleros hanging from bridges. From ’79 to ’81, it was gruesome. So everybody was gone. They didn’t know what to do with me.

And then one night, I’m in my grandfather’s car with one of his guards and Calín, and we get stuck in a retén [checkpoint]. We think it’s military, but it’s guerrilleros, and they kidnap me. They’re looking for my grandfather, but he’s not in the car. It turns out to be people who know my mother from the embassy. They were drinking a lot of the time, and they were smoking a lot of pot, but really heavy-duty stuff like they did in the mountains, and doing coke. They were out of their minds, trying to figure out what to do with me. We’re driving around endlessly for two days. This is before they had radio, cell phones, or anything. Physically, I was unharmed. Finally after two days of going back and forth, they just leave me in the countryside. My grandmother and my aunt come to get me, as usual. And two days later I was out of there. I went to Barcelona and hung out until I went to boarding

school here in America at Middlesex, in Concord, Massachusetts. SO: And school is heaven? JM: I didn’t realize, because I’m such a “macho” kind of person, but I was completely shell-shocked by my father dying, the Revolution two years later, my mother being kidnapped, me being kidnapped, all of the violence that I had experienced. So I got to boarding school and I just thought, [sighs] I am safe. I went on to study architecture. SO: When did you start to turn that into a reality? JM: After 1991, I went back to El Salvador and I started working with the Ministry of Urban Works. The peace signings were in 1992, so it was essentially the end of the Revolution. Everything was starting anew. The subject of my thesis was La Ciudad de dos Desaparecidos: “The City

of the Disappeared.” It was a ghost town I designed for all the people who had disappeared during the war in El Salvador. So this NGO [Non-Government Organization] approaches me to start helping them build camps for refugees. I become the liaison between the Ministry of Urban Works and this NGO. I’m not drinking, I’ve celebrated three years in AA, but I’m using cocaine. So I have this bar in which all of the right wing comes, all of the left wing comes, and we have discussions. This is 1993. And then all of a sudden I notice the fucking DEA is all over my bar, and the military is all over my bar. I was surrounded by probably some of the most dangerous people I’ve ever come across. I go to the beach to this little shack that a boyfriend of mine used to have near El Sunzal. I’m hanging out and there are all these guys surfing, totally high on crack, with hunting knives and guns, shooting sharks that are not even there. It’s a paranoid horror. These are the people I’m hanging out with. I go back home, and on the way I take every pill that I have on me. I get to my house and I finish all the coke that I have. Like suicide, essentially. I kept trying to start all these things in my life, like shelters for refugees, based on something that I really believe in, this whole issue of people that were never accounted for in the Revolution. I mean, where the fuck are they? …What’s wrong? [Laughs] Literally, I didn’t get it! Thanks to my family and friends, I was taken out of El Salvador, and after a brief stay in a military hospital I get out of there. Straight to NA.

did my PhD on Urban Policy, and came to New York were I’ve stayed. I taught at Pratt for a long time. I had a lecture series called “Engaging The City” which was all theory of urbanism. It’s all about things that we don’t expect. And that’s why I love [C.R.] Stecyk [III]. I’ve been reading Stecyk since I was in school. Because it’s all about, here are all these architects and engineers building all this infrastructure, and here we are, these teenage punks, basically finding a use for what they’ve disposed off. That to me is what explains policy, what explains grass-roots architecture, community, a sense of being a family under circumstances that you wouldn’t expect. What I also did was open my own design studio, where with some friends we started doing design-build stuff, from ’98 till 2008, as well as teaching and writing, when everything kind of collapsed in terms of architecture. When you do your buildings or your restaurants or whatever it is, you get deeply enthralled. You build and you make. You’re hands-on with it. SO: That comes from Jorge. [Laughs] I’m kidding! JM: You know, it may come from Jorge! Listen, shrink after shrink has tried to tell me, “You were abused as a child.” And I’m trying to say I was inspired as a child, whether Jorge was responsible or not. But there is an inspiration, and you know what I call that inspiration? El Obseno Pajaro de la Noche: “The Obscene Bird of the Night.” It’s something that is in your subconscious that just captures your imagination. And to me, it can be people like Jorge.

Then some friends and I formed an architecture school in Guatemala. That’s what I did for about three years. I taught kids. Then I didn’t feel safe in Central America again. I went to France and I

Images Mark Maggiori Talent—something most have but don’t take advantage of, or develop. Imagination—something the dreamer uses to his advantage. Mark Maggiori makes full use of his talents, whether it be through photography, directing, painting, writing, or music. With an arsenal of weapons like that, there’s no way to miss your target. An eye for an eye…see what I’m saying? Let’s hope so. If you can’t see, open your eyes to genius. Vive Maggiori, baby!

Steve Olson: Where were you born? Mark Maggiori: I was born in a town called Avon, an hour south of Paris, in France. I was raised pretty quietly in the middle of the forest. [Laughs] My parents are teachers, doing philosophy and literature. They’re like, “clever” people. [Laughs] I started skateboarding when I was nine. SO: But in the forest? MM: Yeah. Actually, Avon had the biggest skateboard contest in Europe, for some reason. There was a little skate scene there, people were doing the first shit back in ’84 or ’85. The Bones Brigade came and it was amazing. We had a huge ramp, so I was doing mainly ramp stuff and some street stuff. I spent my whole fucking childhood and teenage years skateboarding. SO: What about before that? MM: I was rollerskating. I started when I was five and I was pretty good. I was winning contests. I was just doing speed, in circles. My older sister, she was in love with skateboard guys. She was hanging out with the skaters. I started skating that way. My first skateboard was a Gordon & Smith. I think it was like Nicky Guerrero. And I had one of your fucking boards. SO: No you didn’t. I was done by then. When did you start drawing? MM: I was drawing when I was a kid, probably when I was like four…five… six. And then I kinda stopped, never really drew, and I came back to drawing after high school. I went to art school in Paris and I started to draw and it was like something coming back to the surface. Three months after starting school I was number-one in my class. Then I never stopped drawing. SO: How did you get into art school? MM: My uncle was a very famous art director. He did covers for every big magazine in France. He’s been kind

of my spiritual father. He was kind of a badass and I really admired him. I started a band when I was 15 and I was doing shit with my friend, playing music. When I graduated, at 18, I was like, “I’m just going to go to a shitty university and I’m going to focus on doing music.” After three months I was done with university because it was a pain in the ass, like, “I’m doing music.” And my parents went crazy, like, “You’re not going to do music. This is not a job; this is bullshit.” So my uncle suggested, “You should go to an art school, because you do have some art skills.” At this time I wasn’t drawing. So I put together a portfolio to apply for a very big art school in France and I stayed there for four years. The school was amazing. It taught me everything. SO: Did you find the same passion that you had for skateboarding? MM: Yeah. It was exactly the same involvement. I haven’t done a lot of things in my life, but the things I have done I’ve done with so much passion and I’ve done them, like, every day. SO: What kind of music were you doing? MM: My girlfriend, when I was 15, was a big fan of Led Zeppelin. There was this guy around, he had long hair, he was a “cool guy,” and he was playing Led Zeppelin on the guitar and my girlfriend was looking at him like, “Wow. He is so amazing.” I was like, “What?!” [Laughs] “I’m gonna learn how to play that shit and I’m gonna kick this guy’s ass!” So I started guitar and I was playing six hours a day. In six months I was playing every fucking Led Zeppelin solo because I was so into it. Then I created my first band. I had a singer who had a great voice so we started doing our own songs—very inspired by Led Zeppelin. We entered a contest for bands in Paris and we took second place. We were like 16 and it

was just something we were doing on the weekends. Then I stopped with those guys and kept on with my drummer and met a bass player. We came up with Pleymo, which is the band that became very famous. SO: Was Pleymo before art school or after art school? MM: It was at the same time. That

was pretty insane because I was in the last year of art school, and at the end of the year you had to do a project and it required so much energy. So while I was doing that I was on tour with Pleymo all around France and Europe. I was taking night trains to be at school at 8 AM. It was insane. Sometimes Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d miss school on Friday

because we had a concert that night. SO: You were a singer in Pleymo, yeah? Not playing guitar. MM: Yeah, because what I liked in Led Zeppelin wasn’t Jimmy Page; my favorite guy was Robert Plant. Early on I realized when I was recording my voice that it was shitty. I said, “I’m just going to play the guitar.” But that was the time when Rage Against The Machine was on, and the beginning of Limp Bizkit. That gave me the confidence to start singing in a different way than the very lyrical, songlike, difficult melodies that I wasn’t good at. I just started putting words together, doing kind of jamming and hip-hop, and my guys were playing big metal behind that. That started to be very cool, because I was singing in French, and there were no fucking bands in France doing this, at all. Everything

happened in 1999. SO: What happens with Pleymo? MM: France always works with the American market, but like two years after. We were kinda following Korn and Limp Bizkit and that scene from the US. We were the number-one French nu-metal band. And then the audience pretty much changed. After the third album more girls came to the show and it became really a band for the mainstream—we were on the radio. That’s when the original fans dropped it. They were like, “Now Pleymo is shitty. There are 15-yearold girls at the show. There’s no more moshpits.” The success of the band killed it, which is pretty much fucked, but I think it’s what every band like that gets. The last tour we did we were doing 5,000-person venues in Paris. We didn’t stop because it was over; we stopped because I thought it was

good to stop at this level and because I wanted to focus on film. SO: What about the painting part of your life? MM: I’ve never focused on painting like, “I’m gonna be a painter.” After the band I had a studio in Paris and for three or four months I was locked in there painting all day long, but I find it very lonely. And then there was a girl who wanted to exhibit my stuff. We did this show in London and I had a very bad experience with these paintings that I’d spent so much time on. People just passed by and didn’t give a shit, or just said, “That’s nice.” So I decided, Fuck that, I’m not gonna be a painter. This is too hard. I might just use paintings for concepts. And that’s what I did for my film, Johnny Christ. I started to do paintings to get in the mood and work on the theme. But it was for something. I really prefer the medium of film, where you lock people in a room for two hours, and it’s dark, and they just fucking look at it. I haven’t found a way to express myself in painting, because the paintings I like are pretty old school and it’s kinda done. I realized contemporary art is very conceptual, and I’m not into that at all. I’m just painting realism because I like it. SO: How did you get into film? Through photography? MM: I did a lot of photography at school. My photography teacher was Paolo Roversi. He is a very big fashion photographer, and told me that I should just keep on going in photo. I did a few album covers and stuff like that, but I quickly went into music videos. The whole time I was with Pleymo I was doing music videos, too. Then in 2008 I did a short film in LA. The main showing at the Film Festival in Paris, I won first prize for that. It’s called Thelma. It’s with skateboard-

ers, actually. It’s filmed in 35mm black and white, very raw. It was the first time I did something with dialogue, and I had a blast doing it. I worked only with people that I cast from the street. Same for Johnny Christ. SO: Explain what Johnny Christ is. MM: Johnny Christ came from my friend Petecia, who is my girlfriend now. I was in LA on a trip and she came up with the idea of doing an exhibition. She was dreaming about painting 144 pictures of Jesus. She’s like, “I dreamt about that. I’m gonna do a show of paintings. You guys want to do something with me?” So Shala was there— SO: Who is Shala? MM: She’s a friend of Petecia. She does jewelry and stuff like that. So we started to make this exhibition happen. I had nothing about Jesus because I didn’t give a shit about Jesus. The idea of painting Jesus on a cross or whatever was fucking boring. So I was like, What if Jesus came back right now and was in a White-trash town somewhere? I finally was like, “I’m gonna do a fucking film with that shit.” I came up with the idea of this guy riding in a car and he passes this naked guy, Jesus, in the street, bleeding all over the place, and he takes him back home. I’m always painting from photos so I needed to make photos. I talked to the guys and I said, “I’m gonna go back to LA and I’m going to film this shit as a trailer for a film, and from the trailer I’m gonna paint stills.” At the same time I wanted to mix this with Demolition Derby because I was doing a documentary about the Demolition Derby in photos. So I was like, “What if the guy who finds Jesus in the street is a Demolition Derby driver?” We did a casting on Craigslist and we found one girl and two guys. I put them in a

car and we drove up to Utah and did the thing, and then I came back to France and I put my trailer together and did my paintings. It was pretty epic. My daughter was born on the 20th of July and the show was on the tenth of August. I had to finish everything and my daughter went to the hospital because she was sick when she was born. Man, that was the worst time of my life. So fucking hard. But I wanted to do that show. Fuck. ’Cause I thought it would be good and Shala was like, “Yeah, so many people will come and I think it’s good if people see your painting. Maybe you can find money to do your film.” I was really believing it now. So I did the show and I sold two pieces. But I came back to France a little bit disappointed by the exhibition. I started working on the film. My producer, David, was like, “Fuck the US. Nobody knows us

there. Just write a script and at the same time I’m gonna show your trailer to people and we’re gonna try and find money here.” I took three or four months to write the script for Johnny Christ, and when I was done David took three months to put the money together. Then around May we decided we were gonna do the movie. In August we were in LA doing rehearsal with you guys. [Laughs] It happened pretty fast. SO: The movie looks like it’s going to be good. Maybe that’s biased, or I’m hopeful, or whatever. But yeah, it happened really fast, just like the band, just like everything. MM: I am always unsatisfied, and I’ve been dreaming about doing things in the US forever, but it’s so hard to do it when you’re from France. So I guess Johnny Christ is the first thing that I did for real there.

RYAN DECENZO

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Photo Steve Olson

Eric Dressen: skating, tattooing, and smoking. Maybe not in that order, but who cares? Dressen is the real deal. Steve Olson: Where are you from? Eric Dressen: I’m born and raised in LA. My whole family, from back in the ’30s, is from Inglewood. I Grew up pretty much in Santa Monica. SO: And your dad used to silkscreen? ED: Yeah, my dad was a professional fine-art silkscreener for years. He printed everybody, like Frank Stella, Ed Roche, all the Patrick Nagel stuff. Jasper Johns. SO: I never knew this! What did you do when you were a little kid? ED: Skateboarded. That’s it. SO: When did you start skating? ED: I first skateboarded when I was about five. I saw a skateboard and I knew right then I wanted to be good at it. And then I saw Endless Summer and I wanted to learn how to surf. But I liked skateboarding better ’cause it’s more accessible. Nobody liked skateboarding as much as surfing back then. When I was in probably second or third grade I was like, “I’m gonna be a pro-skateboarder. And if I don’t make that, I’m probably gonna kill myself.” [Laughs] SO: How did you get on the Logan Earth Ski team? ED: One lucky day I was skating this pool in Palos Verdes, or Rolling Hills. Laura Thornhill showed up and she asked me if I wanted to ride for Logan. I was like, “Hell yeah.” That was my dream, to be on Logan. Two days later I’m at Skatopia shooting my “Who’s

Hot” with Warren Bolster, hanging out with the Logans and shit. SO: How did you do in the contests? ED: I pretty much always won. SO: And then you start blowing up? ED: A little bit. It was harder for me, ’cause I didn’t always get to go to everything. I never had rides anywhere. Me and my dad were kinda poor back then. We never had a phone. The only way to get ahold of me was to stop by and get me. [Laughs] And back then I was just a little kid; I didn’t know to take down people’s phone numbers. But Excalibur paid me salary when I was ten. Then right when I turned 11 we moved to Santa Monica and I ran into [Tony] Alva and I was like, “I wanna ride for Alva Skates,” the original Alva team. They put me right on. SO: Did you do all the USSAs? ED: I think I was California State Champion for the amateur league. I don’t know what the association was back then, but I was California Pool and Half-pipe Champion when I was 11. That was when I was on Alva. After that I tried to enter some pro contests. I entered the Liquid Pro, the half-pipe. SO: How was that? ED: It was scary. I went there the day of the contest…big-ass dudes skating. While they were having a riders meeting I went and practiced my kickturns. [Laughs] SO: It got deep at the bottom. ED: Yeah, it got really deep. And then

I entered the Marina Dog Bowl Pro. I think I got 24th or something. SO: Oh sick, I got 20th. Nice one. So what happens when skateboarding dies in the early ’80s? ED: I think I was 13. It was probably ’81 or something. I wasn’t doing good in school and me and my dad weren’t getting along. I just became really depressed. And fuckin’ skateboarding just died. Skateboard shops closed. Magazines gone. I got back into surfing and did a little bicycle racing. And right around 17 or 18 I got sent to continuation school at Palisades High, and I started hanging out with all the burnout kids and they all had skateboards. I ended up skating a pool and I still had it. On my 18th birthday I went out with an Alva board—I think Alva was just coming back out. That was right at the beginning of Thrashin’. I started hanging out with Alva, going to tryouts for that, and that’s where I met Jesse [Martinez] and Natas [Kaupas] and everybody, started hanging out down in Venice. SO: Then all of a sudden your whole thing starts to blow up again. ED: Skateboarding starts blowing up again. I got back into it as much as I was into it when I was a kid. ’Cause I never felt fulfilled; I always wanted to win a pro contest, I wanted to get on a cover, I wanted to do all that shit. And I never thought it was gonna happen when I was younger, or when skateboarding died. But then it all came back and I was into it. SO: You were pro again then? ED: Kind of. It was right when the first couple of street contests started. I entered as an amateur, just ’cause I didn’t know what the fuck. [Laughs] “What’s a street contest?” And then I got sponsored by DogTown. They had a cool, tight little team, like Aaron Murray, Kelly Jackson, Scott Oster.

Alva had a bigger team. I think they thought I was too old and hadn’t been skating. So I wanted to be on the DogTown team. They were just jumping in Jim [Muir]’s Ford Falcon and going to contests. I wanted to be a part of that. Right then we took it really seriously, the contests. It was fun. So we’re out there, just a little garage team beating dudes on the big teams. That was the shit. SO: When did you start banging? ED: I think during Gleaming The Cube filming. I was supposed to be a stunt double for Max Perlich and Stacy [Peralta] promised me six…nine months of solid work, so I quit my job and I worked one day, and then they didn’t need me anymore. [Laughs] Christian [Hosoi], [Aaron] Murray, [Scott] Oster, and Block were all going to Hawaii, and I went to Hawaii and I was finally like, “I’m on my own now. Skateboarding’s gonna pay for everything.” And I just started skating everyday. And then it was the Arizona Wave Pool Contest. SO: Uh-oh. ED: It was my first win. It was “hanging on for dear life”-type shit. SO: Why do you think you won? ED: That whole Mike Tyson thing— come out swinging. I over-amped in the contest. I didn’t have the best tricks in the world so I had to go all out. SO: This is ’87…’88. When do you start winning the giant contests? ED: I won the first year of Disco In Frisco. That was pretty gnarly. I didn’t think I did that good, and then they’re all like, “First place…Eric Dressen.” SO: When do you bounce from DogTown? ED: Probably ’89. I kept getting asked by Santa Cruz to come ride for them. I felt a little limited riding for DogTown. Even though we were doing really good at the time, all my other friends were making ten grand a month and

Photo MRZ

I’m making like two grand a month, which is good for a garage skateboard company. Then Santa Cruz took me up to some big-ass warehouse full of skateboards. After a few meetings I decided to go with them. SO: How was the whole Venice scene back then? ED: Back then that was the place to meet up and skate. Me and Jesse [Martinez] and Mark Hartzel and all the boys lived down there. There was a real skate culture going on. SO: You’re one of the first street-style guys, contest-winner dudes. ED: I guess. SO: “I guess.” I know this for a fact. ED: We were in Venice, there was nothing to skate, so we started doing wallrides and just utilizing whatever we had. SO: What about Gonzalez and that whole scene? ED: Mark? He was just so rad. SO: But you beat him all the time? ED: Kind of, yeah. But he was ripping. He wasn’t really a contest skater, but he’d bust shit out in a contest or after a contest. But he’s more creative than me. He came up with way more shit. SO: But were you doing street-plants? ED: I was more like a mini-ramp guy, if anything. I liked mini-ramp ’cause I always wanted to be a vert pro and take the street tricks to the mini-ramp and the vert tricks to the mini-ramp. SO: So the whole thing blows up, you’re doing great...what about the demise of the vert scene? ED: Yeah, I think it was ’93, skateboarding changed overnight. All these new kids were coming in, getting pro boards that never.... It just changed all together. The whole marketing thing was “out with the old, in with the new”–type shit. SO: Definitely “out with the old.” ED: I was still doing good in contests, I was still selling a shit ton of boards, but

the company I was riding for wanted to change their image. Whatever. I got let go. The whole magazine thing, the direction they were going didn’t include me. And right at that moment I blew my ACL out. Sunk into depression. SO: Oh really? How so? Like…deep? ED: Just drinking. I sat in bed for a year, probably. Brian Wilson-type fuckin’ shit. [Laughs] “You’re too old now.” All my life I was too young, and now all of a sudden I’m too old. SO: How old were you? ED: Twenty-six. [Laughs] SO: Yeah, “life’s over.” How did you come out of that? ED: I kept skating. I just couldn’t get a good gig within these companies. Blew all my savings. Hustled working at skate shops, but I was partying. And then I think probably 2003 or 2004 I was still partying gnarly and I was filming with Brian Lotti and Kenny Anderson, that video 1st & Hope. They came to get me one day and I was too drunk. The next day I watched Kenny Anderson just killing it, taking photos, and I was hanging out with Tom Knox for the first time in years. I was like, “This is what I set out to be. I didn’t set out to be an alcoholic, drug addict, party animal.” SO: How did you get into tattooing? ED: Probably from hanging out at tattoo shops and getting tattoos. And from like hanging out with Jason Jessee in the early ’90s. Then I was working for my friend Gerlad and he decided to apprentice me. I didn’t know how to draw, [laughs] so he had to teach me. I learned all the tricks of the trade. I still can’t draw. [Laughs] SO: Yes you can. What does the future hold for Eric Dressen? ED: Tattooing and having a small part in the skateboard industry.

Images Richard Duardo Execution is its own from of creation. Sigue viviendo el momento. Steve Olson: Where were you born? Richard Duardo: I was born in Boyle Heights, East LA. SO: Growing up, were you a low-rider? RD: No no no. Me and my eight brothers and sisters, our mother would drop us in front of a TV as our babysitter, from 1955 on. My introduction to American culture was I Love Lucy, Sgt. Bilko, Sheriff John, Father Knows Best. I was like, This is what I am. And then once you get into high school, you get educated to the fact that there was a war and we’re the leftovers and we’re in occupied territory and this belongs to us. I became a very angry Chicano all the way through college, till I got my art education, and I just thought, Fuck this shit. I just wanna be an artist. [Laughs] I’m not gonna change the world. SO: You were printing when you were a kid? RD: No. Never went to a museum till I was 19. And I was still a senior at 19. I got outed for organizing three walkouts at my high school. I was given a choice: I either quit doing all the political work I was doing in high school, or I’d be expelled. I thought, Well, all this

fucking energy has to be refocused somewhere. It was my senior year and I had all these elective courses that I could do, so I just packed it all with art classes. And to my own surprise I could sculpt, I could draw, I could paint. My high-school ceramics teacher, Mrs. Wong, got me a show at a bank by the LA County Museum. That was my first taste, like, There’s this whole other planet of people who love art and buy it. I came to the conclusion that you can be radical and iconoclastic in only one realm in society, where you’re accepted and revered. That’s being an artist. Then I went to PCC [Pasadena City College]. I saw Peter Voulkos do a demonstration and I said, “I want to be a ceramic artist.” Then I fell in love with silk-screening. I stopped doing ceramics and I went straight into printmaking. I did two years at PCC, kicked ass, became a TA. Because when you fall in love with the process, nothing else matters. From PCC I got a full ride at Occidental College. Checked in there, too many White people around me—I thought I was

turning into a coconut—and I walked away from a full ride. Then went back to school at UCLA. Did my two years there. I was a wake-n-bake Chicanohippy-cracker-coconut. I conquered all the disciplines in printmaking: etching, lithography, silk-screening, monoprints. Got my degree, left in 1976, felt like a full-blown coconut. ...Do you know what a coconut is? SO: I have an idea, but maybe just give me the right description. RD: It’s what true Chicanos recognize as another Mexican-American that sold out. They’re Brown on the outside and White on the inside. In order to redeem myself among my culture, I went straight into East LA and I met a chain-smoking, potty-mouthed nun by the name of Sister Karen who was trying to help all the little Brown people by opening an art academy called Self-Help Graphics. I set up their print lab. I found out the most respected fineart printmaker and silkscreener was Jeff Wasserman, who was a Gemini printer. Right now, Gemini is the most respected fine-art print studio in the world. Anyway, Jeffrey Wasserman then started his own studio, Wasserman Silkscreen. I would take the bus out to Santa Monica, knock on his door, and say, “I wanna work for you.” And he says, “I don’t have room. I don’t have time. Can’t help you.” Finally he said, “Fuck it. Come in.” I was doing the shittiest fucking jobs you could do. But I kept doing it, and loving it. We’re talking about Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Laddie Dill, Ed Roche. I was meeting all the people I was reading about in art school, and working with them. After the 11th month Jeffrey says, “I’m gonna cut you loose.” And I said, “What’d I do?” ’Cause in my mind, dude, I wanted to die there. He said,

“You’re a chief; you’re not an Indian. I’m gonna feed you two of my best clients. Just don’t let me down.” I was making $5.50 an hour. He handed me two contracts for $35,000 and $40,000, and I realized, You can make a lot of money doing this shit! It gave me the opportunity to start setting up my own studio, which became Multiples Fine Art. So after 1978, while I was getting involved in the punk scene, doing postits for them, there were a lot of artists calling me up. SO: When did you move downtown? RD: In 1978. I grabbed my eightthousand-square-foot space for…I think I was paying 300 bucks, and I scammed a $125,000 Small Business Administration loan. And this is where, in hindsight, I could beat myself up. Downtown was so desolate. You could put down 25 grand and buy a building that today is probably worth about ten million. But instead I took my hundred-and-fucking-twenty-five thousand dollars and I bought equipment and I made a state-of-the-art print studio...and was a renter. SO: [Laughs] Right. It happens. RD: But I always thought my measure of success is what the fuck we make, as artists. The city just gave me a plaque saying I’ve worked with over 750 artists. The average edition with those artists would be about 100 pieces. So we’ve made over 75,000 prints. We created shit that people respect and honor and love. And that’s our legacy. So when I become a fucking pile of ash, I know that I’m still alive. SO: What about the punk thing? RD: In 1978 I was on the second floor in a loft by myself. I’m only occupying about 600 square feet of it, doing my little silkscreening. And this guy named Carlos Guitarlos heard about some fucking Mexican on the second floor of this building. He came up with

you do our gig posters?” I became a “player” in the punk scene, because I ran a propaganda machine, really. I was making enough money that I decided to start a punk record label called Fatima Records. We signed Paul Reubens and we did a Pee-wee Herman soundtrack album. SO: [Laughs] You did not! RD: Fuck yeah. Signed The Plugz, The Brat, Wet Picnic with this guy that won the Oscar for the music for Brokeback Mountain. I lost 150 grand, like everybody else that tries to do an indie punk label. Shut that down, then focused on the print studio. I burned out on the punk scene. It got too violent—all the Orange County bands. SO: I’m from there. Don’t worry. RD: I spun out of the punk scene and just concentrated on my print studio and publishing. I was now part of what they might call New Wave. Gary Panter, who was the father of punk art, issued a manifesto called “Rozz Tox.” I went, “I’m down with this shit. I don’t want to work with the west-side guys—Billy Al [Bengston], Ed Moses, Laddie John Dill—I want to get behind what’s happening now. If I want to make money, I should be playing that game.” Then somebody took me to the East Village [in New York]. I met people like Patti Astor, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nicholas Moufarrege. I went, “I’m gonna align myself with you.”

an amplifier and a guitar and he said, “Would you mind if I rehearse here?” I said, “Knock yourself out.” After him, everybody started coming up. Then I started hosting gigs. And then all of a sudden everybody’s going, “You can screen?! Can you do our t-shirts? Can

I come back to LA and I tell my people, “I’m gonna open up a retail gallery. It’s gonna be called Future Perfect, not Richard Duardo, because fuck the personality-driven gallery. First show was a graffiti show. CHAZ, Gary Panter, Bob Zoell. And then the next show was a solo show for Keith Haring. It was a fucking madhouse. I was too ahead of the curve. SO: Do you think that the punk-rock

thing and the graffiti thing had similar energy when they were starting? RD: Yeah. But you know what? Who gives a shit that you’re cool? You’re so ahead of the curve that you’re not making money; you’re just getting “cool points” and starving. SO: Were you doing your own art through all of this? RD: Oh yeah. I had a career as a “decorative pop artist,” which I call my “schlock years.” I sold my soul to the devil. I made a lot of money being what they called “a second-rate Andy Warhol.” So I got sick of being in the art world. I shut everything down in 1991, sold 90% of my equipment. I knew I was sitting on probably about two or three million dollars worth of inventory in my drawers. So I rode that for about five years. And in those five years I decided to become a promoter in the rave scene. [Laughs] Spun out on fucking coke, E, and speed and got out of that after losing about a quarter of a million dollars. I was having a great time till I had this interesting conversation with Ed Roche. He said, “Where the fuck did you go? People respected you and loved what you were doing.” I said, “I was in a warehouse at two in the morning somewhere downtown with 2,000 18-yearolds, raving.” He said, “Where’s that going? Go back to what you know. Otherwise, when all this shit is sold out you’re gonna have to line up and apply for a job like everybody else.” And that actually was what scared me. So I scrambled in ’96 to get my shit back together. In 1999 I was up and running again, except I must’ve been like 45, and then I realized I had no more juice in the art world. SO: You had to reinvent yourself. RD: And reinventing myself was meeting Shepard Fairey. Then the phone started ringing off the hook. Name any fucking street or graffiti artist, they

were showing up at my door: “You do Shepard’s work? You’re gonna do my shit.” And then in 2006 Banksy called me up. “I’m doing a show in LA. I need you to do six prints.” He came in, had us tape over all the windows, and he was in here for nine days. I dumped all my printer’s proofs from that session in 2006 for $65,000 and I found out later everything flipped again for over $850,000. Lesson number two! [Laughs] But we were as good as any fine-art print studio in the world, and we were game for hotdog shit. Most print studios right now, it’s just very rarefied protocol. “There’s no drinking, there’s no smoking, there’s no all-nighters.” [Laughs] We’re game for anything. We’re ten years in now, and I think we’re maybe second to Gemini. I think we’re the coolest print studio on the West Coast. Ryan McGinness, his whole thing was, “I like you guys.” Because we don’t say, “Hold off a minute, gotta go in the office and do a change order, calculate how much we have to charge you.” I just go, “Well, fuck. Let’s give it a go!”

FRANK’S CHOP SHOP

VANS

NEW ERA

AVAIL AB LE AT F R A NK S C H O P S H O P. CO M

Photos Michael Halsband

If you don’t know what it is you want, take the time to figure it out. Patience is a virtue. Mr. Halsband waited till the time was right, till he was shown what to do: pick up a camera and shoot photos of what needs to be shot. Taking control of his destiny, and working, and working, and still working. Halsband is a concise perfectionist. Stopping at nothing, forging forward with reckless abandon—but nothing out of control. Push it, buddy. Open it up and never stop. Steve Olson: Where are you from? Michael Halsband: I was born in Brooklyn. We lived there for two years and then moved here [to Manhattan]. SO: You don’t have to tell me, but what year? MH: Fifty-six. SO: How old were you when you first touched a camera? MH: I was ten. I was in private school, and I remember on the fifth floor there was this door in the hallway and this kid said, “Come in here.” We went in and they turned the lights off, they made an exposure under an enlarger, they took the paper and put it in this chemical, and all of a sudden this image comes up, and I’m like, “This is amazing. How do you do this? I’m in.” So I ran home and said, “I’m into photography.” My parents were like, “If you’re into photography in a year, we’ll buy you a camera. But until then, you have to do it with nothing. We already gave you a guitar. You’re into that.” For a year I just printed in the darkroom, and I was actually happy with that. So we went to a store the next summer and I got a Pentax Spotmatic, and it was a beautiful camera. Every school I went to I was doing photography, until I graduated. SO: Seeing the photo in the darkroom come to life, it’s amazing. MH: Man, that’s still the thing for me. I learned it the right way, as far as I’m concerned. When it came time to take a camera and go out and make pictures, it was really with the idea of how

it was gonna turn out, instead of getting caught up in, “This camera does this. This lens does that.” SO: You were playing guitar, too? MH: Playing all the time. SO: And what music were you into? MH: When I was 14 I went to boarding school with Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd’s kids. That was Atlantic Records. We’d come back on weekends and go to Atlantic Studios and watch unbelievable recording sessions. Aretha [Franklin], Atlantic Rhythm Section...I didn’t even fully grasp how amazing it was, but I knew this was where I wanted to be. While I was in Atlantic Recording Studios, The James Gang came through to record. But this was after Joe Walsh replaced himself with Tommy Bolin. We hit it off, so I was kinda rolling around with him. I wasn’t 18 yet, and I got a job at SIR [Studio Instrument Rentals] here in New York. I was driving a truck, doing runs to all the venues. Finally some gigs came up to actually roadie and then road-manage. SO: What bands? MH: A little bit with The James Gang. When I was over at SIR, a lot of these jazz-fusion groups were coming in, like Tony Williams and Lenny White and Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham. It wasn’t like rock ‘n’ roll; rock ‘n’ roll was a little intimidating for me because the roadies were super hardcore. This was a little more where they were just depending on a smaller crew where you had more control, more autonomy, more responsibility.

The Rolling Stones came to record a little bit of Goatshead Soup at Atlantic, so I met them there. Then they cycled back when I went to work at SIR. Then boom, I get a job in 1975 to go up to Newburgh, to the Stewart Airport. The Stones rented an airplane hangar there and set up a stage, and they were rehearsing on it. In this one moment there’s this woman photographer there, and Mick comes out and he’s all done up and he gets on this little platform and he starts posing, and then he just walks off and this woman says to me, “This is the worst job of my life.” It was crazy. “Are you fucking serious? This is the dream of my life!” Then I clearly know more about what I want to do. The next six years is like, graduating high school; going to college, hating it; going to art school, loving it—putting all the pieces together. I ran into Earl McGrath, who used to work at Atlantic Records. He said to me, “What are you doing these days?” “I’m at art school, in photography.” He had been a publicist at Atlantic Records, but had gone on to become the president of Rolling Stone Records. And then I ran into him again at Larry

Rivers’ house in the Hamptons, who my family was friends with, and he said, “You have a studio? We’re going to do a press event at your studio. We’re gonna have the world press photograph you photographing The Stones.” SO: No! Fuck off! I love this! MH: So I think, Oh my God. But then he said, “It’s not gonna work, because there’s no place for the band to hide out. You only have one other room, the darkroom.” I must have been out of my mind to want to stuff five superstars in a little eight-by-ten-foot room. Then he was like, “But don’t worry, there’ll be something else for you to do.” And sure enough, during the recording of Emotional Rescue he says, “We’re doing this music video, and we’re using this filming technique with this thermographic, heat-sensitive thing.” So I’m like, “I’m there.” I come in and Mick is working with me on the images that eventually become used for the album package. SO: So Mick’s into it? MH: The thing about me is I knew how to behave. I knew that, all I have to do is come in here and just do the job. I’m not like, “When do I get to meet the band?!” At a certain point they were in this engineer booth and they were looking at the imagery, and Mick said to me, “Just shoot a bunch of stuff.” I said, “It has to be shot as the video’s moving because we have to shoot it in slow motion. I have to shoot with a longer shutter speed to get rid of the scan lines.” He was like, “So you know what you’re doing?” It was exciting, needless to say. They’re very intense, and they cultivate that intensity effortlessly. And then all of a sudden I was the little house photographer. It’s 1981. I get this call, “Come into the office.” I come in,

Keith Richards.

Paul Wasserman—he was their publicist—says, “We’ve got two big stories to do. One is the cover of Life magazine, a cover story with Mick. And the other one is the cover of Rolling Stone with Keith. We’ve decided that you should do the cover of Rolling Stone with Keith, and Ken Regan’s gonna do the cover of Life,” because Ken’s a Life photographer. Of course I think

the other thing is the better job, the one I’m not getting. But it was a better matchup anyway. So I took everything I owned—lighting, camera—and went. We get on a plane, fly up to Wooster, Massachusetts, and there’s some dude in a station wagon with Charlie Watts sitting in the front seat to pick us up. We drive to a horse farm. We walk into the farmhouse and the whole

band is there getting ready to eat dinner together. I walked in the door, I backed up against the wall next to the doorway, in the dark, and it was like, “What am I doing here? This is crazy.” The writer walks right in, “Hey! Hey! We’re here!” Mick comes over and he pulls me aside and he says, “We have a lot of respect for your work, and the only way this is gonna work is if you can look at us as equals. So come in and eat some dinner.” I’m sure they’ve had to do that over and over again, so they knew what to do. And then we must have done so many re-shoots, ’cause between my ideas and Keith’s ideas we were going back and forth and we were shooting and I was going back to New York and coming back up with pictures. Now all of a sudden I’m on tour with them. Two weeks into the tour and we’re getting calls from Rolling Stone saying, “A month has gone by, there’s no pictures, we’re going to press, we need something tomorrow!” We’re in LA, staying at the Westwood Marquis. We’re driving to San Diego to do a show. and I’m saying, “I’ve got to do—” SO: This is not the tour that Prince is opening for? George Thorogood, J. Geils, and The Stones? MH: Yes. Eighty-one. Tattoo You. Prince gets booed off stage. SO: With his jock strap and his fur. I saw that! At LA Coliseum. MH: That show was my first show that I was officially the tour photographer for The Stones. ’Cause the deal was made poolside with Rupert Lowenstein the day before. We played one show before LA Coliseum that we based out of the Westwood Marquis, so we drove two hours. This was it, we had to make these pictures. It was do or die. “Tonight, we’ll shoot the thing.” And I’m doing the math: “The show’s over at 11 o’clock,

the decompression time that it takes to get over the show, and travel time… best we’ll do is, 2 AM we’ll be shooting.” So I was ready to go, and then I think at four AM we were shooting. It was fucking brilliant. I had everything to make a photo studio. We set up a canvas background and Keith came in and did this sick shoot. I think really just what he wanted. But it was what we had to do to get there: build a relationship, build a connection, build a friendship to whatever degree. The next day my assistant processed the film, we brought it to Keith, we edited the film on a dentist’s lightbox. I think we marked it with an eye pencil. It was raw, the whole thing. We hand them to the assistant, the assistant goes to LAX, gets to JFK on the red eye the next morning, hands the pictures in. I wake up…no word. I call them up and they go, “We waited for your pictures but we didn’t actually have time, so we went with a picture Annie Leibowitz did from a couple of years ago.” I’m in shock. Now I feel like an ass ’cause I’m in the middle of this tour with this band that I have unbelievable respect for. I went back to my room and I’m packing my stuff. Keith was next door to me. I saw him in the hallway. He had been gone for most of the time there, so I went into his room, we’re hanging out. All of a sudden Mick walks in. We’re sitting there and Mick says, “...So. How’d it go with Rolling Stone?” SO: Ow. MH: I can’t lie. And I felt like, I’m gone anyway. What does it matter? So I say, “This is what happened....” Keith is furious. Mick says, “I knew they’d screw you over.” He was laughing—kind of respectfully, not harshly—at Keith. Keith calls Annie Leibowitz and lays into her. I was just like, “Holy shit, this is crazy!” Then he calls Yann Wenner. He hangs up the phone and says to me, “You and me, we are gonna kill

Steve and Alex Olson.

Yann Wenner. We’re going to plan the perfect murder.” I don’t know what I must’ve looked like, 25 years-old, kinda crushed. I felt like Wow, this was my big chance and it just slipped through my fingers. The next morning I’m packing. I walked out in the hall ’cause I heard something, and Mick was out there. He puts his finger up to his mouth, “Shhh. Let’s go in your room. Let me look at some of those pictures.” Then he says, “What are you going to do now?” I was like, “I’m just gonna go home to New York and pick up where I left off…I guess.” He says, “You do have the most comprehensive coverage of the tour so far. Would you want to be the tour photographer?”

I said, “I’d love to.” He said, “Talk to Rupert Lowenstein, work out the deal.” I was like, Holy shit! This was something I’d dreamed about, to have a job where you could just lose yourself in it completely. It was an amazing opportunity and I don’t think even my situation with AC/DC came close to it. I came back from The Stones, took six months to edit through all the pictures and recover—Mick and I worked on that a lot together and spent a lot of time going out and having fun. Then they went to Europe and didn’t take me. Which was kinda good. I needed to move on. And I felt like, I’m done with music—I toured with The Stones.

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Photo Samson Contompasis Deeply committed to a path which has been chosen. Following a course that has been happening since a young age. With the skills and discipline to follow what is necessary to continue the process of an artist, Phil Frost is what a true artist is. Sometimes, as an artist, it gets lonely, you and your pieces...isolation, your studio, and your tools. To continue is what drives the truth, the love, the commitment, and the desire to let out whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inside. Never let anything or anyone persuade you in any other directionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;except the one that is truest to you, the Creator. Phil Frost is Phil Frost, there is no other. Thank you, and good night.

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Steve Olson: Where were you born? Phil Frost: I was born in Jamestown, New York. When I was two I moved to Western Massachusetts and lived around Easthampton and Amherst. When I was 11 and 12 I lived in Cooperstown, New York, and during high school I lived in Albany, New York. When I graduated high school in 1991 I moved to Long Island City, Queens. SO: When you were a little guy, what did you do? PF: We lived in a rural area and I spent a lot of time wandering in the woods. There was this kind of fountain, a little area where clay would spout out of the ground. I would make things with the clay. There were a lot of farm fields, and I got really interested in looking for arrowheads. When they would cultivate the soil it would turn stuff up. An old farmer had a cigar box filled with arrow points, and I got interested in looking for them. SO: What were you making with clay? PF: Little things I could form in my hands, little shapes. I would also try and make sharks’ teeth. SO: When you were looking for arrowheads it was kind of like surface mining, no? PF: Yeah. I would walk around where the soil had been tilled and stare at the ground, looking for them. SO: Were you drawing as a kid? PF: Yes. When we lived at that same place I continuously drew the wave of gray running through Reed Richards’ hair. He was this scientist that Jack Kirby drew, from The Fantastic Four. And I would draw Batman’s “crown” all the time, also The Flash’s wings on his head and The Thing’s rock pattern. SO: What drew you to that stuff? PF: I guess looking at comic books it’s just what I zoned in on. SO: Did you play sports when you

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were a kid? PF: I was really into hockey. At that point on I was just raised by my Mom, and my mom was working as a dental hygienist. There were some Boston Bruins players that went to her office, because we lived in Massachusetts, and this guy came in one day with no front teeth, so she got bugged out. From hockey I got really into BMX, and then I actually knocked my four front teeth out BMXing. SO: Were you skating then, too? PF: I started to cross over around the time I was 11 or 12. I would skate and then I’d also ride a bike. By the time I was 13 I pretty much just skated. SO: And what kind of skating? PF: Basically street skating. SO: This was in the ’80s? PF: Yeah, it started probably around ’83 or ’84 and I got even more into it around ’85…’86. SO: What was the draw? PF: I grew up with just my mom and my sister. There was an aggressiveness in skateboarding that could be unleashed that was creative and positive. I found it interesting in a different way than hockey or other athletics. This guy Dave Schreiber, a college student in Massachusetts, had this skate camp / shop and when I lived in Upstate NY they sponsored me. That was cool because they got my favorite skateboarder of all time to go. SO: Which was? PF: Eric Dressen. So Eric Dressen and Jesse Martinez came and I got to skate and be around them. The shop sponsored Jim Gagne, Corey Shaw, Dag Ingvesson and I. The next year they asked me if I could bring a couple of friends with me, because it was in Amherst, Massachusetts, and at that time I lived in Upstate New York. So I brought two of my friends, Johnny Schillereff and Blake Hannan. When

Photo Ivory Serra

we got to the place Andy Howell was there and Johnny and Andy met for the first time. I was with Johnny and Blake and Andy and we saw J. [Mascis] and Neil Blender waiting in line for a movie. This was 1987 or ’88. Andy snagged Neil, and then after the movie Neil came and started skating with us. Somehow Neil and I clicked. For like two weeks I spent every day with Neil. He saw me drawing and then we started drawing together in the same room. After that he came to Albany for a couple months. There definitely was something that happened by being in company with him that inspired me to keep doodling. Blake spent a lot of time in New York because he went to school nearby, in New Jersey. And through that I began to spend time with and be influenced by Aly Asha. He came around Albany a little bit and I would go to the city and skate with him. Aly was really into graffiti, and I was really inspired by it. SO: How old were you then? PF: Now I’m like 15…16. I remember seeing SMITH and SANE on a rock uptown while looking for skate spots, and Aly would tell our friend to pull over. Then we’d take a couple of minutes and he’d talk to me about what it was and let me soak it in. He lived over by Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, and there was graffiti around there, so he would put me in front of stuff and I would stare at it and get super inspired. SO: Where did you take that? PF: Just before graduating high school I found a large brown paper bag of oil paints for 25 cents at a garage sale. In it was a copy of Francis Bacon Interviews with David Sylvester. I looked at all the images in the book and was completely fascinated. I read and reread it. I was really inspired by Bacon, that painting didn’t seem to him to be a skill acquired from academy.

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Then when I was 18, just having graduated high school, I moved to Queens on my own and took up a $325 a month basement studio apartment with no windows. SO: When you made the move, you just started to immerse yourself? PF: I took a union job working on the back of trucks. It was in the middle of the night, so I would have to be at work at one…two…three in the morning. Every week the call time would change. I turned the commute into a mission to draw on stuff, like train platforms. I carried a concealable jar of glue and paste with doodles or xeroxes of doodles to stick up. I’d get out of work at ten in the morning and go to the Metropolitan Museum, because you could pay what you wanted. I didn’t have much money, so I would give them some change and spend as much time as I could looking at stuff and trying to absorb all of the things that I found interesting. SO: What had an impact on you? PF: Medieval tapestries made a big impact on me. I would stare at them a lot. I was also really interested in Egyptian archeological things—they’d give me a cold chill. I remember looking at everything though—old clothing, they have these giant Clyfford Still paintings that inspired me, and Paul Klee works. I find inspiration in all of it. Sometimes I’d go every day, sometimes three or four days a week, but I’d go often.

SO: That was like schooling. PF: Yeah. I believe knowledge is really important, and information and the processing of it is really important as well. I just feel the boundless nature of it once it’s pronounced and exists can and should be acquired for free. I didn’t want to be naïve and not know about things, but I didn’t have the funds or the interest to be in a school environment, so I found ways to learn without it. SO: When was there a transition from doodling to, “I’m gonna get serious about it”? PF: When I was 17 and 18 it started to become something that I preferred to skateboarding. When I moved to New York, that was a result of deciding to give my life to painting. SO: What drew you to the media you were working with at the time? PF: I didn’t have a lot of means to buy art materials, and I still find art materials to be quite expensive. At the time I, out of necessity, was searching for materials in dumpsters or along the side of the road. I would find bucket paint, windowpanes, torn fabric, and I would spend hours peeling street snipes and posters from the train platforms. I would find a discarded piece of wood or door and make it into something that I could work on. SO: At the beginning of the interview you were searching for arrowheads. So it follows you through into this part of your life. PF: Yes, and it will continue to. SO: When did you start letting people know that you were an artist? PF: I met REVS and started to spend a lot of time with him. I would help him, and COST sometimes, with carrying ladders and bucket paint, or be on the lookout during walk / don’t-walk sign missions. Around that time I would find utilitarian, three-dimensional things that would protrude from buildings

and I would measure them, then cut butcher paper, and make paintings that fit perfectly and wheat paste them on. PBS asked if they could film me doing a wheat-pasting mission for a show titled City ARTs, and from there I got curated into a show at Holly Solomon’s gallery called “City Folk.” She inspired me to keep plodding on the path that I was on and found ways to commission me to make work so that I could continue to explore and paint. For example, having me paint in her bathrooms at her gallery on Houston Street. SO: How does your work keep progressing? PF: I keep focused, working with discipline, and have never stopped. When I’m not painting I spend my time seeking materials to paint with, or thinking about contexts of things on my paintings. There’s a lot of thought and meditation that goes into it. SO: From what I can see, you use whatever it is that you are drawn to, and intertwine things. PF: My work is formed of materials that I find in my environment and make into a visual passage or dialogue on the surface of what becomes an image. I find things as I live, things I pick up along the way. SO: And you never repeat. PF: Well, there is quite a bit of repetition in what I do... SO: Repetition yes, but not repeated precisely, is what I’m getting at. PF: Yeah, I don’t try to recreate things that I’ve already created. I make paintings and each one is unique unto itself, but there is a language of repetition that exists within them. SO: And will you be doing this, until you’re done? PF: Yes, persistently.

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Photos Cesario “Block” Montano Going with your heart, that’s how the process flourishes. Finding the inner creativity is easier said than done. Block has found it. Now, going beyond what one knows and trusting the end result. Pick up what you dig, go for it, and never look back. The truth of this is the proof. This truth is Block. Steve Olson: Where does the name “Block” come from? Block: I got a big head. Everyone thinks I’m Samoan. SO: And where did you grow up? B: I grew up in Venice. SO: Original Venice. B: Original Venice, man. Went to Westminster Elementary, Mark Twain Junior High, then I went to Venice High School. After high school I went off to CalArts for photography. SO: What was it like growing up in Venice? B: It was a lot different than it is now. Most of the families were either on welfare or in poverty. I was born in ’66. So, say, ’76 was still pretty broken down and cheap. It’s gentrified now. But growing up in Venice, I never really realized how poor we were. You went to school, and after school you had your basic little bicycle, you had a skateboard, and you went to the beach. You played in the sand and the water all day. That was our backyard, and that was good enough for us. SO: Did you start surfing young? Or skating?

B: I started surfing around ninth grade. I grew up with Solo [Scott] and a lot of the local guys down there, and we used to see [Allen] Sarlo surfing at the Breakwater. We were always on boogie boards. Jay Adams was the one that was hitting us up. Jay was like, “When are you guys gonna stop boogie boarding and start surfing? Take my board! Go in the water!” And then it became surfing for real. Then you learn the whole surf lifestyle. I didn’t grow up with surfing parents or anyone else in my family that surfed. SO: But did your older brother surf? B: Yeah, but I turned him onto surfing. SO: Who started the MSA? B: MSA was the Mexican Surf and Skate Association. Back then there wasn’t a lot of Mexican surfers. Surfer magazine isn’t successful for showing brown-eyed, brown-haired people. I remember there was an article in the magazine for the Black Surfing Association. Solo [Scott] and Craig Little and a couple of other people that we

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knew from the west side were in the interview. All our friends by then were surfing, so in the Venice Breakwater there was probably a good six...seven Mexicans, or more. I remember being out in the water one day, and Steve Shelp, who’s a photographer, was like, “I don’t see no BSA out in the water; I see a bunch of Mexicans! This looks like the damn MSA!” And we were like, “We should start the Mexican Surf and Skate Association.” We kept it 13 members only. We would have meetings every week and everybody would pay their fees and we’d put that money together and throw events. It gave us something to do and it gave the Latinos pride, like you can be a surfer in California and not have to say that you’re “Whitewash.” We all spoke Spanish and we all still had our Mexican culture. None of us were gang members. We weren’t about that. I was into other things. I was into drama class and art— SO: You were into drama class? Oh, dude. You have to tell me. I love that. B: I did all of the plays in my junior high. We did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I played Augustus Gloop, and I was hilarious. I was doing alright, and then my mom passed away in the eighth grade. When she passed away the family home broke up and it was like “on your own” time. I think I got straight fails that year, and they still passed me into the ninth grade. And then that’s when I was dealing with, “What the hell am I gonna do?” Lucky enough, I felt like I was born with a good head on my shoulders. SO: Were you tight with your mom? B: Not at all. Never had a conversation with her, really. She was a single mom. She was just a provider. “There’s food on the table. Eat, get out of my face.”

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Later on as an adult I tried to understand the issues that she had. My older brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles were all like, “Your mom went through a lot of shit.” And I’m like, “OK, now I get it.” SO: When did you get your first camera? B: I picked up a camera in ninth grade, and then 12th grade— SO: What kind of camera? B: A Canon AE-1. My brother and his friends I guess burglarized some place and had a bunch of cameras. I said, “Let me get this camera,” and he’s like, “Yeah, if you shoot pictures of me and my homies.” So I started shooting pictures of them. By the time I graduated high school I had five periods of photography. I remember going to the beach to do most of my assignments. And then 15 years later I was doing it for a paycheck, shooting photography on the beach with artists. I shot a Kid Frost album down there and I got paid $5,000. I was thinking how cool it was, ’cause it was the same shit I was doing when I was 15…16 in high school. I remember being like, I wanna do photography ’cause I like it. It makes other people dig you, and you get applause and pats on the back for it. But selling it, when you’re getting money for things, it takes a lot of the fun out of it because it becomes so serious about budgets. Someone gives you $20,000 to go shoot, you better give them what they like, or now they’re gonna talk shit about you because you fucked off their money. And with photography, it’s just a matter of opinion. And as an artist, you gotta accept criticism. SO: But to look back and think, Whoa. I get paid.

B: “I’ve been paid,” I could say. I wouldn’t say, “I get paid.” [Laughs] SO: You could say, “You could get paid.” [Laughs] B: Yeah. “I could get paid a lot more.” SO: Like I never thought as a kid, that in the tenth grade I would be driving a car more expensive than my teacher’s, from skateboarding. B: Then the photography thing, with me, led into directing and other things. SO: How did that happen?

B: Paul Stewart had taken the photography class and was a grade ahead of me. He was getting into music. He was staying I think with DJ Muggs and Skatemaster Tate, and I ran into him again and he said he had a band called The Pharcyde. He was like, “Why don’t you come and shoot these photos for me. I need photos of the band for this album.” So I hit it off with them. We were hanging out, we’re all smoking weed. It was ’93…’92. They were at the studio and I was like, “Come out in the alley and shoot some photos.” And there was a mirror—you know those round mirrors that you see in garages? I ripped the mirror off and I put it on the ground and told the guys, “Look into the mirror and I’m gonna shoot into the mirror.” And they’re like, “…What’s that?” I’m like, “The Pharcyde, to me, is the reflection, like, ‘What’s on that side of the mirror?’ That’s the Pharcyde. You guys are taking us there. We’re going

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Bob Burnquist, Christ Air.

on this bizarre ride with you guys through your music.” And they were like, “Love it!” [Laughs] It’s fucking concepts that make sense, bro. Not just images because you have some famous people, or you’re shooting a beautiful face in a car. That doesn’t do nothing for me. That’s elementary. But it started at an early age, man. Telling people what to do and being that directive type of character. I was always the kid that was like, “Let’s go steal the wood and build a ramp! We’re all gonna meet at my house.” There were no parents at my house, so we could all do whatever the fuck we wanted. SO: The orchestrator. B: The Pharcyde asked me to do a music video for them. They’re like, “We got a $100,000 budget.” I never had a hundred grand to spend on nothin’. I’m like, “What am I gonna

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do?”…“Start writing it!” So we got horses, and we had Hummers, and we had a mansion. “Runnin’” was talking about Black people being scared of their success. That was my first music video. So things matured as they went on. SO: How is it to look back? You traveled—skating, surfing, and shooting photos—around the world, made documentaries, you make music videos, shoot album covers, all of that. B: And I run a skateboard shop and a clothing company. SO: [Laughs] Oh, I forgot. B: Yeah, we’re trying to do a brand now. SO: Oh you’re branding? B: Yeah, we’re branding! We learned from people like you guys.

black nubuck c h a d m u s k a s i g n atur e m odel suprafootwear.com

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Photo Miguel Yerga Aparicio The 21st century is upon us…but why does it seem others don’t get it? Most apparent is in the world of pop music. With a different approach and attitude, Celectrixx is on the way to deal with the 21st century on their terms, introducing a mixture of everything they have been fortunate enough to learn and experience. Celectrixx is now willing to bring us into the 21st century, happily. It’s all our future. Celectrixx gets it. They want you to as well. Steve Olson: What do you guys do? N’Dea Davenport: We’re making music for the 21st century. SO: What’s the name of the project? ND: Celectrixx. I met Katsuya in To-

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kyo, Japan, and we started an interactive sort of friendship—which also lends itself to Celectrixx, as it is “21st century.” We were basically communicating on Skype, utilizing that

digital platform to write and record, going back and forth between Asia, between America and Europe, and putting together our ideas, mashing everything up. SO: And what is your background, Katsuya? Katsuya: I play jazz bass and I produce Japanese hip-hop and R&B. I did a lot of different stuff in Japan. I’m a musician, producer, and I’m also the DJ and bass player and keyboard player in an Irish band in Japan. SO: How long have you been playing music? K: More than 12 years. SO: And N’Dea? Where did you start singing? ND: I started singing when I was a little girl. I actually was a dancer. I studied acting, music...I was an active kid that needed to express myself. I came from Atlanta, Georgia. I moved to Los Angeles and really got an opportunity to explore. Los Angeles was a huge platform for me. I got a chance to be involved in dancing. Through the whole dance and club underground subculture I had an opportunity to meet DJs that started record labels, and I got signed to a label here in Los Angeles. I was about to put out a solo record when I hooked up with a band that was just being signed to Delicious Vinyl, a British band that didn’t have a singer. It was The Brand New Heavies, which is where most people probably know me from. Through that I’ve always kept myself open to collaborating. That’s where we’re evolving now, with all the different collaborations that I’ve gone through: rock music, reggae, hip-hop…all that stuff. Now we’re also experimenting with dance music. It’s gotten me to this point, where we are with Celectrixx. SO: And what is “Celectrixx” music? ND: It’s really “acoustic-electronic.” Because of Katsuya’s strong back-

ground in jazz music and my background—soul music, funk music, pop—and also both of us being DJs, we are able to combine live or traditional music—which is our foundation—with where we are now and where we’re going. We can take a jazz standard and flip it into something that sounds like it could be on stage with Chemical Brothers. And Celectrixx brings an interactive perspective as well. Bringing a visual perspective to the music, where there’s activity, there’s information, there’s some other type of eye candy or visual stimulation that supports the music. Just as the music industry has changed, we have to adjust and find other ways to create. There’s only two of us. However, we can bring it up and have people come into our performance for that evening. We’re flexible. With that said, our goal is to be more self-contained, more reliant on who is on stage, as opposed to having a million different people around. SO: And you guys also use laptops? ND: Yes. SO: As well as DJ? ND: No, we don’t DJ as part of Celectrixx. It’s still run very much like a DJ set, where the tracks go back to back—it’s all linked in together. SO: So how do you approach writing and coming up with melody and song structure and all of that? ND: Katsuya’s a great programmer as well as a great musician. I’m a little behind the beat as far as my digital situation, but I’m catching up very quickly. A lot of the beats, we get inspired out of the blue. We don’t actually have loads of time, because we live on different continents. So we have to utilize our time well. And again, both of us are quick, as far as coming up with ideas. I think our only shortcoming is

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that we’re not together all the time. SO: But you Skype and communicate constantly. ND: Every day. We connected with someone a couple of days ago, they have some app that will record like Skype. You could be in Bora Bora, and your session is in New York, and it gives you the full capability to record. We’re hoping that’s the next phase for us. SO: How long have you been at it, as Celectrixx? K: More than two years. ND: A little bit over two years. We’ve been purposely sharing it almost one person at a time. Specifically, sharing it with people that we believe are progressive thinkers, that are open-minded. We’re really building a stronger fan base, or an “appreciation base,” as opposed to the traditional ways that a major record label will do it. Obviously, with the record label you have so many advantages, but we want people to really appreciate our music one by one. We’ve been travelling around the world, actually, invited by different people in Asia, in Europe, in the States, sharing our music with them. It’s almost like being “goodwill ambassadors.” As the world gets smaller it gives us the opportunity to keep connecting and sharing ideas. SO: But do you think that with the World Wide Web you can also put it out way more easily than ten years ago? You can build an appreciation base more so now than ever? ND: Absolutely. A lot of people have been moaning and griping about how the record industry changed. But I think now you have got to be very flexible and look at the opportunities, as opposed the record label being your bank or your backer. It gives us the opportunity to work without people over your shoulder.

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SO: Trying to guide something they don’t really get. Some guy who just wants to put product upon product out and really doesn’t know what it’s about, or care what it’s about. ND: That’s right. SO: Which is, I understand, their job. ND: That’s right. And we understand that. I do think within the course of the journey we’re hoping to connect with those types of execs—to link with a label or whatever. It’s important for us to really find and connect with people that understand what we’re about and will let us be what we are. SO: Where do you want to take it? ND: We want to continue to expose what we’re doing to anybody who’s interested. I think there are a lot of people who may think it’s a Brand New Heavies thing, or it’s something from the past. And it’s not. I’ve noticed with my own peers in this change from the 1990s to the 2000s, a lot of people are getting stuck in “what was” and not looking at “what is” or “what’s gonna be.” I’ve been in the music industry for a long time. It’s an easy out for somebody like me to go to jazz music. I’m not really a jazz singer, but I get associated with that. Sure I could’ve gone an easier route, or just settled in. Celectrixx means a lot more to me. SO: It’s like, how could you just stick with what’s already been done, or happening? ND: You’d be surprised. A lot of people do. They have to pay their bills— we all have to pay our bills. But at the same time, if we don’t continue to push, we don’t progress as individuals. It helps to chip in, to put in your two cents and keep the wheel spinning forward.

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Photos Karin Gfeller To shoot, or not to shoot...this isn’t the question. This is what happens when you love what you do. Study, perfect your skills, then do it. Photography is what Karin Gfeller does, and will be doing for quite some time to come. It’s been said before that “every picture tells a story,” but that doesn’t mean the picture maker always understands the subject. Gfeller tracks down the subject matter to understand it and then helps the viewer understand it through her photos. Gfeller is a perfectionist. It’s obvious in the images if you take the time to look closely enough. She does. You should too. Steve Olson: Where do you come from, Karin? Karin Gfeller: I grew up in a village about ten minutes away from Bern, Switzerland. It’s nice as a child to grow up in the countryside, but it gets a little bit boring, so you wanna go someplace else. SO: So where did you go? KG: I was living in Zürich after Bern and then I travelled throughout the world. I went to Asia, London, Mexico, Cuba, Israel…a lot of places. And then I went to Paris and I came to New York. SO: And what would you do when you were in these different countries?

Just cruise around? KG: Yes, cruise around. Go to different beaches. Traveling and meeting people and taking pictures. SO: When did you start taking photos? KG: I started when I was maybe 13. SO: When you were 13, what was your attraction to the camera? KG: I used to draw a lot as a kid, and maybe photography’s just a faster medium. I was attracted to the fact that photography is technical but it’s also visual and creative. I never really thought about being a photographer because the profes-

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sion doesn’t exist in Switzerland, or it doesn’t exist on the level I wanted to work on. There are some photographers, but you don’t really have those ideas when you’re a kid. I didn’t. It’s not a culture of artists. SO: It’s similar to where I grew up. You don’t think, I can be a photographer. KG: You think you’re gonna work at a company. I studied law first. I thought I should become a lawyer. I finished my studies, and then I never worked. I changed my career straightaway into photography. SO: What kind of law did you study? KG: I specialized in international law and media law. SO: So did you start traveling then? KG: No, I was travelling during my studies because I always had a big break in the summer. So whenever I had time I went travelling for two or three months. I was working a lot as a photographer and taking evening classes. I was at the point where I tried to work as a lawyer but it just didn’t work, so I couldn’t cheat myself anymore. SO: What photographers did you like? KG: One of the first ones that I loved was Richard Avedon. I was really blown away when I saw his pictures for the first time. But I liked all kinds of photographers, like documentary and portrait and fashion…everything. And mostly black and white. SO: Did you start making money as a photographer? KG: I realized that yeah, I could always make money with photography. I realized that people liked my pictures a lot. I always got good feedback. SO: Do you think that you really have a handle on the technical part of photography? KG: I think so. I like the technical part, that the picture goes through the camera. I like that there’s a medium in between.

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SO: What do you mean, “in between?” KG: You have the eye and you have to capture a situation or a moment, but then it’s always the technique that changes it. SO: So it’s not exact. KG: Yeah. I think it’s very fascinating. SO: You’re Swiss, right? The Swiss pay attention to numbers. KG: It’s true. Time has a very big value. “Be on time.” There are clocks everywhere. [Laughs] And I always liked math and numbers. SO: So when you got to New York, what did you start doing? KG: I was doing this law internship in Switzerland, and I left it after a month. One week later I met Annie Leibowitz on a shoot in Zürich. I was a photo assistant. She told me that I could do an internship at her studio in New York. So I got into the whole business and met everybody. That was in 2008. SO: What was it like working with Annie Leibowitz? KG: It was very fascinating, that it’s on such a high level—a big crew and lighting and everything. I like that it’s big with a lot of production and a lot of people involved. SO: What were you doing for her? KG: I was on set a couple of times with her, but mainly I was in the studio doing research and organizing stuff, archiving. For me it was great because I didn’t have so much experience yet. SO: What happened after Leibowitz? KG: Then I went back home, but I knew I wanted to stay in New York. SO: So you went to Switzerland and then came back? KG: Yeah. And then I started working for Mario Sorrenti. This was really awesome too. SO: They’re different photographers. KG: Yeah, so I got more into fashion.

SO: What were you doing with Mario? KG: Everything on set. Lighting, working at the studio. I learned a lot. SO: What’s up with this strip-club thing? Explain to me the whole concept. KG: I’ve been doing this project in a gentleman’s club in New York City. I wanted to take portraits of the girls over three months. A friend of mine works at this club as a hair stylist, that’s how I got the idea. It’s in Midtown Manhattan. After three months I just kept on going. I took pictures for a year. SO: Why shoot there? KG: I could go there and take portraits in the dressing room, just setting up an improvised studio and having a little light with me. It was amazing because they were already dressed up and they already had their makeup and hair done. The styling looked so

awesome. It’s so interesting to see all those different personalities, how they change, like a transformation. SO: It’s like they come into the office and then put on their business suit. KG: It was very fascinating to see the glamour, or a kind of glamour. It was also interesting to see how much competition there is. You have to look better than everyone else and you have to be more eye-catching. It affects how much money you’re gonna make. I’m finished now and I’m thinking I should go back and take more pictures, because there’s always more to do. SO: Is there a name for the project? KG: Yeah, it’s called “Carousel.” I gave it this name because I saw that it’s such an emotional carousel, as well the clothing—it’s so colorful and glittery, so it reminded me of a carousel. SO: And what was it like dealing with

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all the different personalities? KG: There was every kind of person. You have mothers, you have students, you have girls who own companies. SO: There’s competition to get money when you’re dancing, but what about when it came to being photographed by you? KG: Mmm, there wasn’t much competition. Some of them liked it and they wanted to pose for hours. That was fine with me! [Laughs] And some didn’t really like it but they let me take a picture. SO: How do you feel about strip clubs? About a girl taking her clothes off to get paid? KG: I would never do it, so I don’t really understand it. But I think the girls who are doing it, it depends a lot on their background. Maybe it depends on the situation, maybe some of them don’t have a good education so it’s their own way to survive. I also think it’s a trap, because once you start and you make money so easily and so fast it’s very difficult to find another job. We don’t have those clubs so much in Switzerland, and in New York it seems to be a very common thing. It’s a lot about money in New York—you want to have nice things. In Switzerland you want to make money, too, but it’s more about quality of life. You just want to have a nice life. In New York you can get really rich or really poor, and in Switzerland the middle class is much bigger. You can’t get so high but you can’t fall so low, either. You just work and you have time to go on vacation. SO: What’s your next project? KG: I’m planning to do a project in a theater. I’m interested in the clothes and the people who work there. SO: So you’re going from people who take off their clothes to people who put clothes on. KG: Yeah, I think so. [Laughs]

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Images courtesy of Moshe Brakha A force. Not the easiest thing to make oneself. The discipline to make that choice, not the easiest to come by. Moshe Brakha creates what others wish they could. To be imitated is the highest form of flattery, so they say. Sometimes it can be taken as just being ripped off. Within the world of photography, Moshe Brakha stands alone. Creative, original, always pushing himself to develop something that has never been done.

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Steve Olson: What’s your name? Moshe Brakha: Moshe “Hollywood” Brakha. Born in Israel, reborn on Fairfax in Hollywood. SO: What was it like making the transition to Hollywood? MB: In Israel, when I was in the service, I was actually into just being a soldier. I finished the Six Day War in my years and I came over to Hollywood. SO: You were a frogman, no? MB: I was a frogman, and I don’t remember anymore about the army because I don’t care, really. Today I know one thing: images. SO: When did you get to Hollywood? MB: I came in 1969. Everything was still hippie. SO: Were you going to school? MB: No. I was like anybody else: painting, getting small jobs. Once I picked up a camera, I never dropped it. SO: Where did you pick up a camera, Israel or here? MB: Here. I was lucky. When I moved here I was living next to young artists— photographers, painters—and that’s what got me into this life. SO: Why did you go to the camera? MB: For some reason I got the disease. I don’t see anything but images. I’m sick. I’m addicted! SO: That isn’t sick. You followed your love and your passion. MB: It was either this or music. So it was photography, I guess. SO: So what year did you pick up a camera? MB: Seventy, I had a darkroom in the garage. SO: In Hollywood things were happening, no? MB: It was happening, but my dream from day one was to go to Art Center [College of Design]. If I got to Art Center, I got to Mount Sinai. Before that I got into city college, LACC. Shit if I knew English! But I got

the B! [Laughs] I got the average. I got accepted into Art Center. When I finished LACC I had a solo show. SO: What year? MB: Seventy-two I went to Art Center, so it must be ’71. When I was in my seventh semester, one of the teachers introduced me at Columbia Records, and they gave me my first album cover to do. I did the album Silk Degrees, Boz Scaggs, and the rest is history, because the first album cover I did went to the Grammys. SO: And back then they paid money for album covers, because album covers were extremely important. So when you first got your check— MB: The first one was I think $500. The biggest ever was like $1,200. SO: But that’s a lot of money then. MB: A lot! I didn’t have shit money, you know. More than that, I got a BMW! Without having nothing, all of a sudden I become the fucking hot record-cover guy. The hottest! SO: What photographers did you like? MB: In school it was always Guy Bourdin, some Irving Penn, also Weegee. That’s it. I never got into [Richard] Avedon. …Oh! And I got into Diane Arbus. SO: The freaks. MB: The freaks. And that’s it. I didn’t care for anything else. SO: Name me some record covers you did. MB: We did Richie Havens, Jackson 5, Boz Scaggs, The Ramones. Then I started to shoot all those punk people, Devo, all that era. Then I was Mr. Hollywood. I was in the club! SO: When did you start in advertising? MB: Jeff Weiss. When I met JW, that’s when I understood advertising. I didn’t understand that type of photography at the time. I educated by him, he educated by me, and we started to ad-

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vertise. I remember in the beginning it was Richard Shoes. We used to shoot an ad every month. SO: What year? MB: We’re talking ’76 and up. SO: So punk was an influence. MB: At the same time, punk. I grabbed Jeff, I said, “Come!” Jeff used to be scared of punks. It’s the truth! [Laughs] He used to be scared to come to the clubs. Jeff was hippie. He couldn’t figure out how to relate to those clubs. It’s intimidating if you’re not into it. SO: It was scarier back then. If you didn’t know and you went to a punkrock show in ’77, you see freaks. MB: You see all this banging and shmanging and all the sweat and the freaks! And “Who are you?!” SO: But why did you like punk rock back then? MB: It was me. It was a free expression of something radical. It was the beginning of the movement and I felt like I was part of it. I became friends with every band, of course with my camera. But I was friends with every fucking punker. SO: There were sick ideas happening throughout that whole time with you guys and your peers. MB: There were a few photographers. SO: I’m not even talking photographers; I’m talking more like design and the energy of what was going on. MB: I was very energetic and I drove a lot of energy between designers. SO: You shoot Richard Shoes, but when did you start coming into big advertising deals? MB: It’s all JW. When he became big, I became big. Jeff got a bigger job, I got a bigger job. When we finally got into Margeotes [MFW], then it was like, boom! SO: Would you guys go and pitch jobs

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together? MB: Yes. TDK. You did MFW from the beginning with us. SO: Oh, I didn’t know that part. I figured MFW was happening a couple years before my arrival. MB: You were part of the beginning, because anything we did, we did testing. SO: The TDK test is so ill. It’s better than the actual commercial. It’s TV, shot on Super 8. It’s insane. There are no cuts. MB: Before MFW, Jeff did a campaign on tires for Goodyear. It was beyond brilliant, and he got kicked out. SO: They got jealous of Jeff ’cause he was so much further ahead than they were. MB: At the time, for those people, he was punk. That’s when I met Maripol, in ’75, when I graduated and went to New York. And that’s when I got introduced to Basquiat, Blondie, Kid Creole and the Coconuts. SO: I remember you doing Cointreau. You’re shooting and you’ve got all the lights going, eight…nine lights. I’m like, “Mo, dude, do you know what you’re doing?” “Fuck Olson. No, man. We make it work right now. It’s the clients that pay for our mistakes!” And I was like, “This guy’s so punk!” This is like in ’87. MB: Fred the Furrier. SO: Fred the Furrier! It was amazing! You’re shooting furs and chicks, and Maripol is the stylist, and then you’re just slipping me in like some guy in the background playing the guitar, and JW is like, “What the fuck is Olson doing in the photo?!” I was like, “Mo told me to get in it!” [Laughs] When did you realize you wanted to do what you’re doing now? MB: When Eddie [Brakha] came onto the scene, everything changed from

Devo.

“photography” to “academic photography.” SO: What do you mean, “academic?” MB: The thinking, the arrangement, the philosophy, the movement, it was very well thought out and not influenced by money. SO: And who’s Eddie? MB: Speak up. Eddie Brakha: I’m in the building now.

SO: You’re Moshe’s youngest son. EB: Yeah man. Never had to go from Israel to LA. I was just born here. SO: And then there’s your brother, Buddy, and Buddy’s ’78. You’re ’82. MB: Me and Buddy did a lot of television, a big campaign with Martini. And then Eddie graduated and I got a campaign to go to Greece to do television. Eddie came with me to do

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a commercial with Christina Aguilera. When we were there the people said, “We have another commercial. Can you come up with ideas?” I’m not kidding you, Eddie went and in one hour came up with an idea. The guy bought it on the spot, no change or anything! SO: So then you were in. EB: Yeah. “BrakhaX2,” baby. SO: So what was it you were actually doing? Writing and creating? EB: We came together and the whole idea was to be all in-house. Now it was like singer, songwriter, producer—you don’t have to go anywhere else. The collaboration was an evolution. Like they were doing in the ’70s and ’80s. He had a relationship with JW, we had our own relationship. For me, seeing him work and being raised on a set, I really saw the flavor. And seeing you, Olson. SO: You were raised with a camera. EB: But forget the camera. I was raised with culture. The camera is only the mechanism. The most paramount thing for me is being in that milieu. In that environment you have no choice but to be great. MB: Every commercial he would sit in the back and he used to tell me, “Dad, why don’t you do this?” EB: It was never, “Be quiet.” It was, “If you have something to say, say it. No matter what age, just say it.” Because maybe you got it, and then you start getting that confidence, and then it’s a disease. SO: I’m going with “gift,” ’cause you’re not diseased; you’re creative. When did you guys start doing the stuff you’re doing now? MB: I told a poet, “Poetry is dead. If you wanna do great poetry I’ll do something magical with your poems, with words and pictures. We’ll make big blowups somewhere where people can read your poems.” The guy

says, “Let’s do it. I’m gonna call you.” He didn’t call me the first few days. Meanwhile, I talked to Eddie and he said, “I’ll do the writing.” So I ditched the guy. SO: And what is it that you guys do together? EB: When we were doing the archives for the “Occupation Dreamer” show, looking through all those pictures, for me that was the first time of being exposed to the documentation of it, really looking through every single character. To me it was a gigantic character study. Then all of a sudden, we finish “Occupation Dreamer”— SO: What was “Occupation Dreamer?” EB: “Occupation Dreamer” was a rock ‘n’ roll photo show. MB: Eddie helped to select all the photos. Buddy went to the garage, and he sees all these pictures there, and he says— EB: “Let’s do a retrospective from the ’70s and ’80s.” It started to go from there, and we edited it, and lo and behold we got a deal over at the Grammy museum. Mo was the first one to do an exhibition at the Grammy museum in downtown LA. That was dope. SO: It makes perfect sense. EB: It’s a perfect segue-way. The only reason I think he didn’t want to do it or might’ve been a little bit apprehensive to begin with is because he never wanted to do a retrospective. He’s still creating new work. MB: Until then I never liked to be in the limelight. Finally I figured, “I’ll do it.” And then once Eddie came I said, “Yes, let’s get exposed now. Let’s go all the way.” EB: But now you needed a new product to go from. That brings us to the beginning of the next chapter, which is BrakhaX2. MB: I said, “Son, I’m done being va hooker.” EB: I remember the exact day when

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The Screamers.

“I’m done being a hooker” came about. We were up for a European commercial, a job out there, and they pushed it back. And again you sit and wait. Then Mo says, “Fuck it. You know what? I’m shooting from now on. I’m not stopping. I’m gonna be the singer /

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songwriter / producer. We’re doing it all ourselves.” He became an artist. MB: That’s when the word “academic” came into the picture. Eddie brought academic. I’m punk. Together it becomes fine art.

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Images courtesy of Jeff Weiss It’s tough when you start with nothing. You fight for all that seems to be worth fighting for. Start where you believe is the right place, and get at it. JW fought, believed, and made dreams come true for himself with determination, hard work, and doing what needed to get done. A dreamer, a hustler, a fighter, and a champ…I’ve said enough already. Be my guest and learn a little something from someone a lil’ older, and a lil’ Weisser. Steve Olson: Where are you from? Jeff Weiss: I was born in Hollywood. I lived in North Hollywood till I was seven. Then one night my dad came home bloody from a fistfight with a guy he caught my mom in a car with. The next day he didn’t live there anymore and my folks divorced. This was 1960. I kept running away and pulling knives on teachers until finally they let me go live with my dad. My dad was Romanian. All his family was annihilated in the Holocaust, so he and his twin brother came over here to fight the war. But he was like, old European Jewish. “Straight A’s or don’t come home.” So I flipped. I straightened up. I still got in a lot of fights ’cause I was always really little. Till the time I was 11…12, there was nothing but my dad. He defined what

it was to be a man. We were poor as shit, but he went to work in the morning wearing a shirt and tie, changed into painter’s clothes, and came home wearing a shirt and tie. So I grew up thinking being a man meant women, fist-fighting, and working. That was it. I wanted to be an astronaut, and my dad loved that. In the 11th grade they told you that you had to have four art-elective credits to graduate. I was like, “What the fuck do I need art for? I’m going to the moon, and you can’t draw up there.” The summer between 11th and 12th grade I start in this arthistory class, and I was like, “This is just fucking suicide.” I go back to the guidance counselor and she says, “Well you know you can do a graphic design course.” I said, “Design sounds good. It’s kind of like building shit.”

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My teacher was a cat named Patrick Nagatani, who was 23, just graduated college. This cat was fuckin’ out there, man. He would blindfold us and give us clay and put music on. He’d go from like Joni Mitchell to Hendrix, just to see how different the piece would be. He entered me into a contest for a pollution poster and I took third place or something, in the state. He explained to me that there was a vocation that involved this; it wasn’t play. He took me and three other kids to Art Center [College of Design]. These guys were designing cars, fuckin’ making films, designing logos, designing electric mixers, and painting naked women. It was like this fuckin’ floodgate opened. I spent every day, including weekends, from eight in the morning till eight at night in that design shop that summer. The next year, my senior year, I threw out all of my math courses and I took graphic design, architectural design, yearbook. Like

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four of my classes were with Nagatani. When my step-mom told my dad I had dropped all my classes to take art, he was like, “Not in this house!” But I was 16, so all of a sudden my dad saying, “You have to do this,” wasn’t enough. Nagatani had taken my dad’s place as the guy I wanted to be like. At that moment in my life I’m just graduating high school, just getting my first taste of a woman, getting a draft notice, and basically getting kicked out of my house. My best friend, Marty Weiss, he went through this thing with me. He was gonna be a doctor, his dad was a European Jew, when I went to the art thing he kinda went over with me. One of our buddies, his mom owned a catalog company. She says, “I need to hire two paste-up artists. Do you guys know how to do that?” We were like, “Yeah, we did the yearbook.” So Marty and I both worked at this catalog agency around ’71…’72. At a cer-

tain point Marty had become the head of production and I had become one of the top art directors, and I learned about photography and how to do layouts and how to present things. We had gone to a Memorial Day party out in Encino and we’re driving home at like two o’clock in the morning to our house in Venice. All of a sudden this car comes screaming, doing like 80 miles an hour, weaving back and forth. We get hit at full speed on the driver’s door. I woke up two or three days later with my head half shaved and my left arm and left leg in traction. Me and Marty had started this little company called Weiss 2 in high school. We did pamphlets for local tennis shops, stuff like that. So he walks in and says, “If you can get the fuck out of this bed, we’ve got six months of disability to try to make this

thing work.” We’re 22. So we spraypainted our garage white and we really start this little Weiss 2 Designs. We got too big for the garage and went and rented a studio. By that time my dad and I had made up. He helped build the studio. He thought I was nuts to have thrown it all away, but he saw the passion. Everything I was doing was derivative of West Coast design. I remember Mike Salisbury’s West magazine covers as being different. In ’76 I was 23, Weiss 2 was in its second year. We had three or four cool accounts. We had Pottery Barn, when it was still five stores; we had Richard Shoes; we had Celine in Beverly Hills; and Big 5 Sporting Goods. We were doing a magazine ad here and there, a lot of catalogs, posters. At that point we had four people working for us. I needed a

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fashion illustrator for something, and this buddy of mine turned me on to Terri Taylor. Killer. Same age as me, but like ten years older than me. She was part of this whole Art Center scene, and I fell for her like…bad. She turned me on to three things: she took me to a museum for the first time in my life. She turned me on to cocaine. And she said to me, “You have to meet Moshe [Brakha].” SO: Why? JW: I don’t know! So she has this big Valentine’s Day party for the specific purpose of me meeting Moshe. And I’m really uncomfortable because everybody there is an artist, and I’m an ad guy. Back then you said “advertising” under your breath. You were the sell-out. Moshe had just done Boz Scaggs and Richie Havens, and he’s beyond on fire. SO: He’s the album-cover guy. JW: Yeah. So he walked in and Terri goes, “Moshe! This is Jeff! Jeff! This is Moshe!” I can’t stand him, he can’t stand me. So this photographer has a party. Moshe walks up to me and he goes, [thick accent] “Jeff Weiss. Let’s take a walk.” He says, “Here’s my car.” He’s got this little silver Porsche Targa. We sit down in his Targa. We found out that both our dads were Romanian, both of us were Capricorns…we talked all fuckin’ night. The sun starts coming up and I said, “I’ve got an ad that I’ve got to go shoot. You wanna do it?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” We shot our first ad that day. Later, Moshe calls me one night. He says, “Dude, I gotta go to the Whiskey [A Go Go] tonight. Go with me.” He took me to the Whiskey and we saw The Screamers, and it scared the fuck out of me. SO: Why, though?

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JW: ’Cause it wasn’t music, man; it was cannibalism. It’s like these guys were cuttin’ themselves and bleeding. This has got to be ’77 now. All bets were off. What I thought was art, wasn’t art. What I thought was music, wasn’t music. What I thought was advertising, wasn’t advertising. Moshe became my partner, much more so than Marty. If I had a fire going, Moshe came by and poured gasoline on it. He was opening doors to, “Smack ’em in the fuckin’ face and then French kiss ’em.” There was something about understanding McDonalds and Kodak and the whole world of advertising that I gave to Moshe as a gift. And there was something about punk and art and sheer creativity that Moshe gave to me. I remember for Richard Shoes we had these new shoes that were all perforated and woven leather. Moshe was like, “We’re gonna photograph these on the pier.” I glued the Polaroid in my sketchbook and underneath it I wrote, “Two cool Italians.” And that was it. Moshe could cast this line right out there and I could hook it right back in for normal folk. SO: So it made sense to the masses. JW: Yeah. Mo would have an album cover to do, he’d say, “Do the album cover with me.” I’d have this to do, I’d say, “Do this with me.” If we could work every night, we did. Weiss 2 was 1975…’76 to 1980. Then things got shaky with me and Marty, ’cause he couldn’t work with Moshe. We did this job for Valentino, for men’s shoes, and we had to come to New York. I kept putting off going back to LA, then finally I said to Marty, “We’ve gotta move to New York.” Still at that point I didn’t know that there was like “advertising agencies.” All I knew was there was a lot of fashion people here

that didn’t know rock ‘n’ roll, and our work was rock ‘n’ roll fashion. I also felt like I could come here and be me. Not my dad’s me, just me. The four people that worked for us, we gave them Weiss 2 in LA. Marty and I moved to New York, but separately. I came here and I freelanced at first. I’d go and do the work and give ’em a bill, and they never paid me! Finally I got so broke that I lost my apartment and I talked some old lady into subleasing the place from me. A friend said, “There’s a book called The Advertising Red Book that is a list of every advertising agency.” I started at the A’s and called AC&R Advertising and got an appointment. They were like, “Love your work.” So I started working for them, and then...Moshe. [Laughs]

The first thing AC&R gave me to do was an ad for London Fog Children’s. And I had done this layout that the client loved. Moshe rolls into town and he’s like, “Let’s do it on the roof!” It ended up looking like a fucking Ramones cover. I bring it back to show them and they were like, “We sold the client on the other idea!” I was like, “Well this is better.” I would come up with an idea, they would sell the idea, and then I’d jam with the photographer, which is the way I always did it in LA. After a couple of times of that, they were like, “We gotta fire you.” I was like, “That’s cool. I get it.” So I was only there for six months. Now, I’m broke. No light at the tunnel, no money coming in, and I’m freelancing for a photographer. I’m down there and this other art director

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comes in. She’s like, “I just went for the best interview of my life and it was on Kodak and they loved me!” I’m writing it all down. I look up Kodak and the agency is J. Walter Thompson and the creative director’s a guy named Andy Romano. I call and I’m like, “I forgot. Can you tell me who Andy Romano’s secretary is?” “It’s Maureen.” I call back, “Hi, can you put me through to Maureen?”…“Hi Maureen, it’s Jeff, Andy’s friend from California. Can you tell him I’m on the phone?” This cat gets on the phone and he goes, “I don’t know any fuckin’ Jeff from fucking California. Who the fuck is this?” “Ay Mr. Romano I’m sorry! Blah blah blah!” And he’s like, “You know what, come over right now and bring your work with you, ’cause I need an art director.” So I go over there. The guy says, “I like your work. I think you’re what we need. When you come in

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on Monday you’re going to meet Steve August. He’s going to be your creative director on Kodak. Bring your reel. Show him what you do on TV.” And I said, “You got it!” [Laughs] I call this buddy of mine who’s a producer at the first agency I got fired from. I say, “What’s a reel?” He shows me all these reels of directors. I’m like, “These are great, man! Let’s take that and that and that, and that’ll be my reel!” I go in the next week and I’ve got a book that’s all punk, rock, and fashion from LA, and a reel that’s the biggest TV commercials in Europe. He’s like, “Wow, this is great work,” and they hire me. The first night I go home from work I get a call. My dad died. Heart attack. I go home and bury him. This is 1981. As far as I know I quit my job. SO: But you didn’t get fired? JW: Andy Romano was an ex-Jesuit

priest that gave it up to play guitar in a rock band, who then discovered art, and he got it. He said to me, “Listen, you need somebody to trust, and if you don’t, you’re never gonna make it in this business. You’re ten times more creative than anybody here, but you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing. So trust me.” And I did. I became a very hot gun at J. Walter, on the biggest clients in the world. Moshe and I did Kodak, Moshe and I did Goodyear.... I got to be like 32…33 years old, I’d been at Thompson five years. I was hot as shit and everybody else was making a lot more money. So I interviewed with Young & Rubicam and they doubled my salary, that day. Then I met my first great writing partner. This guy Vic. SO: Victor Levin. JW: Victor was cornball as they come, but classic. He was “big advertising,” and when you took that and combined it with this hip, So-Cal rock, punk execution, it was like…the “toilet.” It was things that people hadn’t seen before. So at Y&R Vic and I started freelancing for Margeotes [Fertitta] and we’d pitch and pitch and pitch for them, and they’d win all this stuff, but they didn’t know how to do it so we had them over a barrel. “You wanna hire us, it’s gonna be a hundred grand.” It was like, They’ll never pay that. Then they were like, “OK!”…“And we don’t report to anybody!”…“OK!” So we went in there and it was like a pitch every day. I would say that if there was anything that really exploded me, MFW [Margeotes, Fertitta & Weiss] was it. It was five years of complete hits. It was Harper’s, HäagenDazs, Newsday, Sak’s.

were talking about college. I said, “All that matters is that you do something you love doing. If you do something you love doing, you’re never gonna work. And if you do it all the time, you get great at it.” SO: What’s your favorite victory in the game of advertising? JW: Martini Man. SO: Thank you. ’Cause that’s my favorite of your guys’ work, too. JW: You and Mo and me and [Paul] Opp[erman], all of us are in David Charles’ character. SO: There’s a certain amount of cool in the Martini Man that is— JW: Punk. And mass. It’s like “Two cool Italians.” Everybody gets to get the joke. SO: Everything comes around full circle. JW: Everything! Opp and I are starting over in a little studio, doing the best work we’ve done, enjoying it like Weiss 2. I feel as scared and as excited going into this shoot with Moshe as I did with Richard Shoes. I have no idea what we’re going to come out with on the other side. If you love to fuck, the first time is always the first time. That’s why men always need to go somewhere new, because they’re always going for the first time. I’m so lucky because every time I start with a blank piece of paper I have no idea if I’m going to be able to put anything in it. When Opp and I go away to work, I don’t go, “This is gonna be a cakewalk.” We sit there and we start drinking, we start thinking, and I have no idea if this will be the time that they realize it’s all been a fucking charade. Thirty years of faking it, today I get caught.

I’m flying out to shoot with Mo tomorrow, except now I’m bringing my 15-year-old kid with me. Today we

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Talented, charming, and just plain crazy. When you’re a little different, it can go a long way. Yaniv’s craftsmanship is superior. Not just getting it done for the sake of getting it done, but making it the best it can be. That’s what separates Yaniv from any competitors. Steve Olson: Where were you born? Yaniv Evan: I was born in Israel. I came to America when I was eight. SO: What do you do now? YE: Now, I’m building motorcycles, painting, doing leatherwork. I got a clothing line, too. It’s a full-time job running the shop because there’s so many branches to Powerplant. It’s corporate, bitch. SO: Oh really? When is your company going public? YE: Probably like June 15th of twothousand-and-never. SO: [Laughs] Alright. Tell me more about Israel. YE: It was amazing. There were no bills, no responsibilities. As soon as I came to the United States, it was over. It was a lot to handle out here. It’s a different lifestyle. But here I get more freedom because any country besides the United States, it’s a bitch to build custom bikes without having to deal with crazy laws. The States is the most lenient about that kind of stuff, like running a bike with no front brake, suicide shift, no smog check, doing whatever we want.

SO: How did you get into building bikes in LA? YE: I built my own bike in the garage at home. SO: Did you build cars before? YE: When I was 14, I think I got my first car. My dad bought it for me. It was a Chevelle piece of shit. I fixed it up, I did everything I could do myself. Whatever I couldn’t do, I had to pay people an arm and a leg to do, but at least I learned every time I made a mistake. I dropped out of high school. My dad was like, “If you’re gonna work on anything, work on airplanes,” because there’s more money in it. My dad’s buddy used to work on planes here at Santa Monica Airport. He was like, “Go to this class.” I took the class at LAX airport but eight months later I dropped out. It was too strict. There’s no freedom to do what you want. After that I apprenticed at a shop and started learning how to do bodywork. SO: So you learned about all kinds of welding from the aerospace world? YE: No, welding came after. The only time I actually learned something was when people were showing me their

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little tricks of the trade. SO: It takes time to figure out how to get a good bead. YE: If you don’t do it every day, you won’t learn anything. I had to go buy my own tools and break ’em and fix ’em to learn how to do half the shit I do right now. I was just doing old cars, and then I got really old, like 1920s cars that I built, Fords. SO: Why did you go from that to building bikes? YE: Because you can’t do the same thing over and over. I could’ve just built Chevelles and now I’d be a master at building Chevelles, and El Caminos. But after I do something once I want to do something different. I always have my eye on different cars and bikes. SO: What is it that makes you think, That works with my aesthetic? YE: If someone says, “It can’t be done,” I wanna do it. If I see it’s done already, I don’t wanna do it. Right now I’m getting over motorcycles ’cause everyone’s building good bikes. It’s like when my friend Tim climbed Mount Everest. Somebody else did that. Why do you want to do it? Go climb a different mountain. SO: Does anyone else in your family do something similar to this? YE: In their own world, yeah. Everyone in my family is self-employed. SO: Your father’s a chef, right? YE: Right. But he creates. He builds restaurants. He knows how to do menus. He’s never worked for anybody. We have that in our blood. We’re not the richest people, we’re not the poorest people, but we do our thing and we’re happy doing it. I never have to fucking float into work late or have to deal with anybody telling me I’m doing something wrong, and that’s the best part about it.

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SO: What is it that inspires you to do the old stuff? The bikes, the vintage clothing and all of that? YE: People motivate me. If I do something and I get a good reaction, I’m like, Fuck. Why am I sitting here struggling with things? People like this. Keep doing this, and then always modify it a little bit and do a better job at it, but keep the same lines. In the beginning of me building bikes, no one got this whole “bobber” thing. I could come into a show full of finished bikes, beautiful paint jobs, everything chrome, with a piece-of-shit rusty bike in bare metal—or rust—and take first place. Now, ten years later, people understand it’s more of a sculpture. SO: Are we finally going to get to that point where you’re an artist? YE: ...Maybe. SO: How many bikes have you built? YE: Thirty bikes. SO: Thirty bikes, in seven years? YE: I’m lying. Twenty. Fuck it…30 sounds better. SO: How long does it take you to do a bike from start to finish? YE: Three to four months to do it right. We’re talking, there’s nothing in my way, one thing at a time…four months. The idea here, Olson, is the bikes are organic, the shapes are organic, there’s no need for paint, there’s no need for finish. Some of these bikes with the raw and unfinished look, I think guys feel tougher on them. SO: There’s beauty in unfinished. YE: No one wants to be a pretty-boy anymore. Those days are gone. SO: They’ll be back. Tell me about the clothing. Would it be safe to say you’re the next Von Dutch? YE: A very, very bad question to ask. The clothing is amazing.

SO: Why? YE: I never thought I’d be doing clothing. It just happened. The demand is there, therefore I’m gonna take advantage. If you see a good wave, you’re gonna ride it, right? Well, right now the wave of the future is—fuck, I shouldn’t say this—“The scumbag is the new yuppie.” So it’s perfect. Those fucked-up jeans? They want ’em. Those fucked up t-shirts? They want ’em. I feel bad for the razor companies; no one shaves anymore. It’s trendy to have facial hair and be a biker-looking guy. So it’s good for us. Ten years ago if you had a beard you looked like a fucking redneck biker. But they want that style right now, so I’m gonna go with it. I’m spending way too much time doing it, but I believe that we have something good here.

age it with our dirty hands. It doesn’t even cross our mind that we have to be careful, because it’s like, they want that shit. They want your greasy hands on it. It’s crazy! I can’t believe it. I’m blown away. I’m amazed. SO: What’s the future of Powerplant? YE: The future of Powerplant is, I want to be in every mall in the United States. SO: You’ve lost your mind completely. YE: I want to sell a million t-shirts, make ten-dollars profit on each one. That’s ten million dollars. We can go to Mexico whenever you want, Olson. I’ll build you a pool over there to skate. SO: That’s OK. YE: God, I’m so arrogant right now.

We go from the garage to next door and we sell a t-shirt and we pack-

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Photos Glen E. Friedman Right place, right time. Not once, not twice…. From skateboarding to punk rock to hip-hop, Friedman has been around more than once. He follows his heart with the intention of getting something that hasn’t been captured on film before. They can try and rewrite history, but they can’t change the photo.

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Photo Matthew Chai

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Steve Olson: Where’d you grow up? Glen E. Friedman: In northern New Jersey, just across from Manhattan, and West Los Angeles. I moved to California when I was eight or nine. I went to Bellagio [Elementary], and then I went to Kenter Canyon, and then I went to Paul Revere Junior High. SO: Bullshit! Fuck off. You’re not giving me a hat trick right now! GEF: I swear to God—if I believed in one. That’s why I know everyone. The schools that everyone skated at, I actually went to. SO: Did you skate Bellagio when you were a little kid? GEF: Nope. This was before that was really happening. SO: But did you see the Banks? GEF: Yeah, we saw the Banks. I remember playing up there. SO: Why Bellagio and then Kenter? GEF: Because we moved from Bel Air to Brentwood. SO: And in Brentwood you lived close to Kenter? GEF: I actually lived closer to Revere. When I stayed home from school I could hear the class bells ringing. SO: You could hear the Z-Boys skating? Just kidding. [Laughs] But did you see them skating when you were a kid at Kenter? GEF: No. When I was a kid at Kenter, I got my first Makaha, one of those red boards, and I skated on the sidewalk outside the school, slaloming. I never thought to ride the Banks inside the school. Also because you had clay wheels. Unless you were really talented, you couldn’t push off on the top with those hard wheels; you’d slide right down the bank. That might’ve been ’72. But of course by ’74…’75 we were riding the Banks. Then I went to Revere, and as soon as I was in there, Cadillac Wheels came out, and all of a sudden I’m going back to my elementary school to skate the

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Banks. I would just hang out there every weekend, all the time, ’cause that was my spot anyways. I was a local before they were locals. By the time I was 13 I was down at Kenter or Revere or in Santa Monica or Venice, hanging out with that crew of people. And a lot of them thought of me as a “rich kid” ’cause I came from Brentwood, even though I didn’t even fit in there. My mom moved there ’cause she remarried a lawyer. I was younger than most of them. [Stacy] Peralta knows me since I was 12, probably. [Tony] Alva knows me since I was 13, and Jay [Adams] too. The other thing was that when the cops would come, I would know where to hide before anyone else because I lived in the neighborhood. I could ditch into someone’s house. SO: The only time I rode Kenter we had to run from the cops. GEF: It was great skating Kenter. I actually could ride it pretty good ’cause it was just a nice long bank. I mean Alva shredded there, Stacy shredded there—he rode it more like a wave than anyone. Watch that footage from Freewheelin’, Peralta carving on the Banks, doing those quick turns. That’s something I tried to emulate my whole life, but I could never do it like Stacy. Someone’s mom drove a bunch of us to Carlsbad, the first skate park ever, and we came back that day just fucking high. I was so fuckin’ pumped. And so we’re at Kenter, it’s around three o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m telling you, I was passing Peralta on the bank. Twenty minutes later the board slid out from under me and I broke my arm. That was like ’76, in the summer, and I think I had just taken the first photos that I ever got published. SO: Let’s talk about that.

Jay Adams.

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Ice-T.

GEF: I showed the photos to [C.R.] Stecyk [III]. I didn’t know it was him; I just knew he worked for SkateBoarder magazine. He was stoked. And Stacy comes by and sees them at my mom’s house, he and Jay, and he’s like, “Glen, you should send these down to the magazine. These are really good.” And it was the first time I’d ever shot skate photos with a real 35mm camera. Next day, I disguised my voice, I called [Warren] Bolster on the phone, and I said [deep voice], “I have these pictures and they’re really important to me and I need to get them back if I send them to you. I was told I need to send originals.” He said, “Don’t worry. We’ll send them back to you.” There was no Fed-Ex back then; you had to put it in the regular mail. A couple months later I get a tear sheet in the mail with a check for $30, and my mind was just blown. And

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then everything just blows up from that point on. Those pictures were shot with a borrowed camera. I didn’t even have a real 35mm camera yet. SO: Why did you decide to borrow the camera at this point? GEF: Because I found this unridden pool. Someone knew that I knew the Z-Boys and wanted to tell me, ’cause they wanted to be cool. They wanted to get some points with me. He said, “I know this house, it’s under construction….” I never told him I was going there ’cause he was a fuckin’ kook. I scoped it out myself and told myself, I gotta get a real camera. I’d been shooting skate photos with a [Kodak] Pocket Instamatic for at least six months, maybe a year. So I found this pool and I said, “Now’s my chance to really get something in the mag.” In SkateBoarder magazine at the

front it said If you’re gonna contribute stuff, you gotta send color slides or black-and-white prints. I didn’t realize that, but it really wasn’t that in focus with a Pocket Instamatic, ’cause you couldn’t focus it and it was a slow shutter speed. But I had taken Photography 1 with the Instamatic. I got a D in the Spring semester, and I was published in SkateBoarder with a photo I took by the Fall semester. I learned all the basics, that’s all anyone really needs. If you got the eye you’ll get the shot, as long as you got the basics. If you don’t have the eye, no matter how much schooling you get, you’ll rarely get a great shot. SO: So when do you get your own camera? GEF: Pretty soon after that. My first published photo was taken in September or October of ’76. The magazine tear sheet I get in January ’77, and that’s when the magazine comes out. It’s the April ’77 issue. I borrowed that camera, and then within a month of shooting those photos I got my own camera. I had the lens that came with it, the 50mm lens, and a cheap screw-on fisheye. Then for my birthday, after my first published photo, my stepfather got me a used Takumar fisheye—the real deal. I went to that pool on Maple Drive with Alva and I got that picture of him giving me the middle finger. A print of that is in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That lens was the one that Bolster was using, and it was what they were using for surfing. SO: So you had older guys that were shooting photos in the same genre as you? Bolster and Stecyk? I don’t know how you feel about Bolster, but he was pushing shit, and Stecyk was pushing shit. GEF: I was very lucky that those guys saw me and saw the film that I was turning in. Part of it has me believing

that they saw this kid doing this and they just stepped out of the way, almost, and they just let me fucking go and they gave me ideas and tutoring. SO: Like mentorship? GEF: Kind of, but really? No. Stecyk would only harass me. I didn’t know him then. SO: How would he harass you? GEF: In the gossip columns. He would always put me down and push me harder. “Friedman is focused somewhere between three feet and infinity.” “DogTown’s youngest and only!” SO: [Laughs] That is so sick. Was Stecyk talking about focus? “Three feet to infinity”? GEF: Yeah, pure harassment in ink. Shooting the DogTown guys, if I just sat there and shot pictures all day long I would have to be in everyone’s face. And I didn’t want to be a fucking camera nerd right from the beginning. I had to shoot photos when it mattered and make them good. If I didn’t shoot good photos, I wouldn’t be allowed to come back. SO: Right. And there’s also the possibility of getting beat up. GEF: I wouldn’t get beat up, but “in the way” and a “pest” was not something you wanted to be. I definitely got harassed and tortured at times and bullied a little bit. But not too bad, ’cause everyone actually liked me and everyone was actually pretty nice to me, most of the time because I was getting great shots, if for nothing else. Even the toughest guys. Some guys gave me a hard time because I came from the nice neighborhood. Years later those guys turned out to be the nicest guys of all, ’cause they realized how mean they were to me. Some who I hadn’t seen in 20 years came up to me at the DogTown and Z-Boys premier and were saying how proud they are of me. It meant an incredible amount to me to see them grow and

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Black Flag.

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to also get that praise from them at this point in our lives. SO: What about hanging out with those maniacs, going into a pool in a house in an fancy neighborhood and getting chased, breaking the law? GEF: I remember so many times being chased by people with baseball bats, chainsaws, shotguns. They probably weren’t going to shoot us, but they would scare us. The chainsaw revving up was always a classic. I remember this one pool, I think it was called the Buddha Bowl, where I shot the first ever DogTown Skates ad with Paul Constantineau. Wes [Humpston] and Jim [Muir] were there. We got just a few shots, and then you hear the car pull up and some raving maniac gets out—the guy who’d just fucking replastered the pool, probably. Everybody fucking runs, and my camera case is on the other side of the pool. I knew that Muir said he was gonna get it, but we all ran in different directions. And then you’re just bailing down the mountainside through ivy, rolling, not even on your feet half the time. Twenty minutes later we’re walking around a neighborhood where we don’t know shit, and you’re afraid that the guy might come looking for you, so every car that came by, you’d hide. And then finally I see Muir come up over a hill, walking down the middle of the street. He’s got my case in his hand. SO: He’s a good guy like that. GEF: That’s probably the reason I helped out Mike Muir. Before I ever knew anyone else in Jim’s family, Jim treated me like a little brother. First time I met Mike was in Santa Monica College. We were in school together there and he tells me he’s Jim’s younger brother. I’d heard of his band, but not the music, and he gives me his demo. Everyone hated them. SO: Hated who?

GEF: Suicidal Tendencies. Not that many people knew about them, but just locally and in the punk scene—outside of Venice and Santa Monica—they hated ’em. But I was like, “This is Jim’s little brother. This is a family matter for me.” I had been around a lot of shit at that point. I’d been in the studio with The Circle Jerks, Black Flag, The Adolescents, T.S.O.L. I’d seen everyone making mistakes, knowing that I could probably make everything sound better even though I’d never had the experience myself, except for sitting in a studio. So I said, “Fuck it. I think they sound great.” I got them their record deal, did all the photography, all the publicity, was their manager, and produced the record. Biggest-selling punk-rock album of the ’80s. Period. Bigger than Black Flag, bigger than The Dead Kennedys. Not that it deserved it. It certainly wasn’t the best, not even in my opinion, but it sold the most by far. SO: You shot pictures of Duane [Peters] after skating went back kinda underground in the early ’80s. GEF: Yeah. The thing I liked about Duane is that I was really into punkrock culture and he was too, and I thought that was the way to promote that culture, by shooting more pictures of him, and of you. SO: You both had the same passion and were deep into it, which is cool. GEF: When I see someone doing it and believing in what they’re doing, believing in themselves, I’m gonna help them, whether it’s getting their picture in the magazine or helping them win a contest by telling them to do this or do that. I want that in the magazine because I like that to be publicized. And to get them in the magazines they have to win. So I want them to do better to bring attention to their attitude, to their lifestyle, to their culture.

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