PHOTO: YUTAMAN
WELCOME
TO THE TOKYO
NEWS ISSUE
against my window and car door, as far away from the thing as possible, and secretly give him the side eye. He is still terrifying. Where are we going? Omigod.
YOU KNOW HOW SCARED I WAS? WHY DID YOU LET HIM IN THE CAR FIRST? DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT?! DID YOU KNOW THAT I WOKE UP AND THOUGHT THAT HE WAS GOING TO CUT Suddenly we screech to a halt in OFF MY HEAD AND FUCK IT IN front of a liquor store. What?! Serf THE MOUTH AND DUMP IT IN turns around in the passenger seat. THE BISCANE?! THAT I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE?!” “Marnell,” he says. Quietly. Sternly—huh? That bitch. As if he’s about “No,” BC says. “It was just Willy. to boss me! “Give me two dollars.” Our friend.” Omigod.
For a moment I forget about Swamp Thing (who is breathing heavily next to me, anticipating whatever beverage I’m just now figurI’m sleeping alone in the back- ing out has been promised him). seat of a parked rental car at 5 am in a terrible neighborhood “You realize, Jason, that you just in Miami when the door oppo- ordered me to give you monsite me clicks open and a griz- ey,” I hiss. “You realize that I am zly, sunken old black man with not in the habit of giving people glowing red eyes, yellow fangs, money when ordered to do so.” and flesh that hangs off the Serf and I give each other death bone who looks like the walking stares. dead slides in next to me and shuts the car door behind him. “Marnell,” Serf spits out. “Please give me two dollars.” Ten full seconds pass —one
Mississippi, two Mississippi— before the shock passes and I “But Jason,” I smirk. “Wait. You can even make a sound. seriously don’t have two dollars, Jason? And what about you, BC? “AH!” I cry out, half-snapping Neither of you have two dollars?” awake. “NO!”
“AND—AND—LET ME ASK YOU THIS!” I screech. “ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT WAS I SERIOUSLY THE ONLY PERSON OUT OF THE THREE PEOPLE IN THIS CAR CAPABLE OF PROCURING A TOTAL—A TOTAL—OF TWO FUCKING DOLLARS? TWO DOLLARS?!” BC is eyeing the stereo. But I’m not done. “Willy. So. What?” I snarl. “How LONG was I ASLEEP? Tell me about your friend. WILLY. That was your BUDDY? YOUR COHORT? Your JUNKY LOOKOUT? Mmm. Yeah, he seemed really on top of it. Where did you meet your friend Willy? Catching tags on his flophouse? Doing t fill ins on his methadone clinic? Are we going back tomorrow to take photos for the website? Mint will be so thrilled, babes. Uh huh. Let’s go home. Omigod. You guys are so fucking dumb. Don’t bring shivering wrecks like that in the CAR. I’m not even being paranoid. I’m being less retarded than you.”
Then we turn to Monster Mash, who is blotto, eyes open, look“It’s ohhh-kay,” the monster ing at something, nothing. Am mumbles, and I am about to I paying him two dollars to scream again when the front get out of the car? Whatever. car doors open at once, and Serf and BCtheKid hop in. I rummage through my purse, hand Serf the money. “Whatever. BC’s driving (he’s the intern, litHere. UGH.” It’s 5:45 am. “We” will be out bomberally the same age as Justin ing the slums ofv Miami until 7:30. Bieber and I believe only still Serf gets out; Creepshow gets out has a learner’s permit, just FYI). of the car now, too. I watch through “Omigoddd, why do I do this to mythe window as Serf talks to the self,” I whimper. “Why did I come I kick the passenger seat but man, gives him exactly two dol- to Basel with people who drive Serf doesn’t turn around. The lars. Then Serf gets back in the car. around at five in the morning and mutant is silent and smells pay off bums for looking out? Why sour next to me in the back. Nobody says anything. I know I am still awake and in a ghetto? they know me and are wait- Why am I not staying at the Delano We drive through a…lower in- ing for it: tick, tick, tick... with a bunch of girls right now?” come neighborhood (which I I pull my hoodie over my head. am not calling a ghetto for fear “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” I “I just want to not eat that disof sounding racist even though screech. ““WHO THE FUCK WAS count pulled pork sandwich every that is exactly what it was, my THAT?” day. Why am I eating a discount dears), seemingly aimlessly. pulled pork sandwich every day?” Nobody is saying anything; “That was--” BC says “--uh, Willy” there’s no music blasting for “That sandwich is dope, Marnell,” once. Jesus Christ. I press up “Oh,” I snarl. “Willy? Willy? DO says Serf
PHOTO: CYRUS RA
SGU IS AN ART PUBLICA PUBLISHED BY MINT&S
WWW.SPECIALGRAFFITIUN
CATION SERF
NIT.COM
.“Yeah, that sandwich is swag,” mean, I’d never again want to be says BC. friends who wouldn’t take me to a ghetto at 5 AM, you know? I’d nevCLANG CLANG CLANG go the er again want to travel with people spraypaint cans in the back of the who would be all, “Ew, don’t let HIM car. It’s the sound that has been giv- in!” about Willy! And I hated Willy! ing me a headache all of Art Basel. So graffiti writers on TRIPPPs, you “I hate you both,” I slur, but they see, are the best. I mean, they’re can’t hear me because BC has the worst, yes, but the best. It was cranked up that stripper song magic being stuck in that back seat. we’ve listened to fifty times al- I’ll remember it the rest of my life. ready that day. But enough about me: let’s talk MAKE IT RAIN TRICK MAKE IT about the PPP gang, the lost boys MAKE IT RAIN TRICK MAKE IT who fill the pages of this newspaper. RAIN TRICK MAKE IT MAKE IT They leave New York at every opRAIN TRICK portunity to take high-risk trips (Tokyo is the big one here) where they Never again, I think to myself. get needlessly fucked up, do reckRAINNN RAINN…THAT’S WHAT less things, and cause ridiculous THE HO BE SCREAMIN’ amounts of scandal. Just like at Yeah right. home, on TRIPPPs the crew prowls Why didn’t I stay at the Delano and and vandalizes in that witching lay out poolside all Art Basel? Be- hour just between when the aftercause graffiti writers are sexy fuck- hours ends and the sun rises. And ing trouble, that’s why, and those they get in a lot—a lot—of trouble. spray paint cans clang clang clanging was music to my ears the whole I know it’s tempting to just look time. I love graffiti and worship at the pictures—don’t. Read the my graffiti writer friends. They are pieces. Believe me. These guys hyper-intelligent, raucous, radical act so crazy that are certain points counterculture people who break in their narratives you’ll want to laws in order to paint. They are en- reach into their stories and fuckchanting artists: street artists, es- ing SHAKE THEM—but that’s PPP cape artists, sometimes con artists. for you. Their stories are comThey are daredevils and maniacs pletely unbelievable—this isn’t and Pans who will never grow up. the first SGU paper I’ve edited, believe me—and yet they are all (And unlike the artists whose work true, all obviously believable to hangs in your city museum (still anyone who knows these dudes— swag; props obviously), when my these crazy, creative, compelling, friends come to your town, their wild spirits. These true—forgive graffiti keeps your city alive and me for overusing this shit—Pans. changing and electric with new colors and words and energy di- I am both honored and completerect from New York. Incidental- ly fucking exhausted to call them ly, none of this takes place dur- my brothers—and truly my faming boring museum hours. Trust.) ily—and to introduce this special #TokyoNews edition of the SPEI complain a lot in the story above, CIAL GRAFFITI UNIT newspaper. but the truth is my last TRIPPP Welcome, officially, to the art and was incredibly special to me. Let adventure of travelling with the Peme put it this way: once you travel ter Pan Posse. Every new land is with TRIPPP—you don’t ever wan- a Neverland where lost boys and na travel any other way ever again. girls get wayyy more lost. EveryNo one else I knew in town that thing’s swag; creativity is the drug. week got to see the Art Basel that Second star to the right and crank I did: one just before dawn, from up the Wu-Tang. Enjoy the ride! the backseat of that rental car, Cat Marnell is a writer and senior editor at xojane.com tags going up on walls every tenth block, a drunky-junky smelling like sour milk panting beside me, spray paint cans clanging in the back. I
THE DEAL WENT SOUR PART1 BY OSVALDO CHANCE JIMENEZ
PHOTO: OSVALDO CHANCE JIMENEZ
A hacking cough wakes me up sometime late in the afternoon. I beg God it’s not the swine flu or a nuclear cold I caught dry humping the streets of Tokyo on my first night out. It had only been 5 months since the earthquake so I felt my worries justified. The air was humid with only an uneasy hint of fall making the simplest wardrobe choices terribly difficult. One minute you were chilly the next you were clawing yourself out of your layers. My eyes were glazed and my face balmy as my hands reeked of cheap whisky. I looked sick. MINT was kind enough to let me sleep my stray dog antics off on his bed while he put in a day’s work at this installation he was doing at And A along with SERF and LOVEME. And A was some clothing/ life style store that was hosting us for their 10th anniversary and had something to do with the Sotheby’s brand. Sotheby’s sounded fancy - I recognized the name from Page Six when celebrities would buy stuff from other rich folk that they would auction off (we would later find out it was “Sasabee’s” which meant something huge in Japan but nothing to us in America). I needed to clean myself up. I was there to do important shit. I was supposed to be taking pictures and not sleeping off a night that started off with a 16 hour flight and ended at 9am running out of a Japanese hand job shop.
“You pay now!”
That played over and over in my head as I blew a pack of cigarettes out of my nose. I never drank in such manner back in New York City. Apparently I snore. Something that’s always cool to find out when you’re bunking with other men. When I was approached about this trip a couple of months ago in truth I didn’t want to attend. I had never did an all homeboy camping trip so my first one being on the other side of the planet had me a little apprehensive. I also remembered reading a story about MINT and SERF almost dying in a gang fight in Beijing so yeah I was definitely apprehensive. Japan, with its mystery dragon lady boy Yakuza samurai shit, and these two certified wild boys? No thank you. I’ve gotten
into boxing matches with my shadow that have ended in decision. And then I found out Pablo “DONP3D” AKA “The Kentucky Gentleman himself” - NEWS was going. Then Greg NAW and Benni ZOOTED agreed to come– along with the guys from Roberta’s Pizza in Brooklyn. Will also agreed to come along with his girlfriend Kamaryn and her best friend forever Tanya, who I swore were sisters until I befriended them on Facebook. And the kid that tagged LOVEME all over the city was also going. And my very eager cameras and 18 rolls of film, who I couldn’t convince otherwise – they were all just dying to go. That decided it... If I was going to die out in Japan, this was going to be a very fun way to die. I did the best (or worst) I could’ve and saved up enough to cover my flight and a little bit of pocket change so I could feed myself. The hotel room was booked at the Cerulean Towers in Shibuya. According to The MIRF’s who had already been to Tokyo, the room was big enough to fit at least 4 people. They set it up so NEWS and I would bunk with them. A graffiti writer sleepover! A graffiti writer sleep over scented with the fresh smell of Krink markers and spray cans, paint splattered sneakers and half empty bottles of booze. Our sleepover would also have the proverbial “loose cannon” (NEWS), the crankiest Jesus Christ/ ZZ Top impersonator on the illegal side of a spray can (SERF), a human Smirnoff vodka bottle (MINT), and myself, a wide eyed Mogwai (from the movie “Gremlins”)minutes away from midnight and his next meal. I made sure to pack an extra liver and opened up a bank account with 2 separate ATM cards in case I lost everything in this perfect maelstrom of a “working vacation”. The room goes from dark and quiet to really colorful and busy. MINT and SERF pop back into the room to pick up a few more supplies and to wait for Pablo’s arrival. It’s around 6pm. I drag myself into the bathroom and peel off last night from my skin. My fingernails are caked with spray can fluid and my clothes are spotted with ink. I’m pretty sure
the streets of Tokyo looked worst – our urban nicknames scrawled on anything not neon or florescent. The quick shower I took does little for my composure, just enough to allow me a legible word in between my disruptive coughs. After I brush my teeth I use a shot of whiskey and Red Bull as mouth wash. The jolt to my system shakes me like a battered woman. When NEWS finally walks into the room I throw up a little in my mouth out of sheer excitement. After exchanging pleasantries we each grab a bag with supplies and head out to And A. Our walk through Shibuya is all anticipation with no expectations greater than more drinks and more painting. As we turn the corner to the store we are confronted with a huge MIRF wheat pasted on the side of a 2 story Japanese version of an Urban Outfitters, but neater. The inside of the store was all glass, mirrors, and wood grain shelves combined into some post modernist concept only a nerd into architecture, design, and fashion could come up with. Everything down to the drink coasters they sold had this feel of “New York won’t be seeing the likes of this until next year” vibe. Even the T shirts they sold had more technology than most of our inner city public schools. The staff was extremely pleasant and disarming to the point where we felt uncomfortable trusting them. Our sarcastic jokes fell flat and our bravado felt dated amongst their honorable posture– Japan is where egos go to die. On top of the huge fill-in that decorated the outside of the store the crew was given a separate room inside of the store to defile. This would be the room that kept most of the products illustrated with the vandalism that used to be exclusive to the concrete walls and trucks of urban blight. From coats to a coffee mug with a velvet handle and head phones this was graffiti meets Skymall. The LOVEME/MIRF tag had went from being blackbook scribble to an actual brand - as if tagging your building wasn’t enough these guys wanted to tag up your home interior and everything in it. The room was filled with a repetitive LOVEME written over and over on
a mirrored wall and glass with the MIRF fill-in painted over it. A huge “Peter Pan Posse Forever Young Always Having Fun” was painted over everything complete with the ink drips that turned the room into an acrylic forest. Standing inside the room felt like you were watching the store form the point of view of the painted walls, trapped inside a black, silver, and red doodle. The guys wrapped up their work for the day as our sponsor in Tokyo arrives to the store. Her daughter (Tanya), who was supposed to arrive with us the night before but had to spend a day in Alaska with Will and Kamaryn due to airplane trouble, finally arrive. Everyone is happy that they are not shrapnel scattered all over Canada in some horrific engine malfunction. Our New York City in Japan crew is now a basket ball team with a full bench. Our sponsor, in a celebratory mood - invites us all to a few drinks and food at a nearby restaurant. This turns out to be my first meal in Japan, interrupting was felt like a 24 hour alcohol binge. Before we leave the store we snatch up a few cans of paint at the behest of NEWS. He repeatedly keeps telling us of this wall along some train track he wants to hit. It was like he wouldn’t shut up about it. Our contact warns us of any shenanigans and advises us not to go bombing. Of course we agreed, while filling our pockets with Krink markers and mops. NEWS blatantly grabs an entire box of spray-paint. This is when we learn that he’s already downed 3 bottles of sake. He’s been in Japan now for about 3 hours.
given that held the key to the cubby that held his shoes went missing: “Come on guys, who got my piece of wood?” “Hahahahahaha! Pause, NEWS…” “No I’m fucking serious who got my block of wood?” “Shhhhh chill did you check where you were siting at?” “Yeah it’s not there come on guys give me my block.” By this time our host and the others had already filtered out of the restaurant, MINT&SERF couldn’t contain their laughter at Pablo’s growing temper tantrum and skipped outside leaving me to deal with it. This did nothing to help the situation. “Are you fucking guys kidding me COME ON GUYS GIVE ME MY WOOD.” “NEWS I think you put it in the box with the paint did you check it?” “YEAH I DID IT’S NOT IN THERE!” (This was the 1st time in Japan I felt a little embarrassed - and I ran out on a hand job the night before.) “No I don’t think you, did let me check it” “NO.” “NEWS just give me the box” “NO!
The dinner was cozy and jubilant – an authentic Japanese fare with a dash of western curiosity. Any place where you have to remove your shoes and sit on an embroidered cushion is automatically humbling. Our boisterous “happy to see you - alive in Japan” vibration felt like a quiet scream. Everyone was on their best behavior outside of a formal dinner with your parents. As the foreign food and sake flowed our respectful apprehension turned into a welcomed familiarity. This is when I first started to notice NEWS’s voice. It went from gentle giant to ardent politician. It got worst as the wooden chip he was
I try wrestling the box out of his hand and after a few moments he then reluctantly lets it go. Of course the wood chip in question was in the box. I had to bite my lip to keep me from exploding with laughter. We all exchange goodbyes with our sponsor and plan on meeting the other kids later on in the evening for dinks. We leave under the guise of returning back to our hotel room for a nap. She stresses again for us not to do anything stupid or go tagging informing us that the Tokyo police force doesn’t take kindly to
PHOTO: MINT&SERF
PHOTO: MINT&SERF
vandalism. We adamantly agree not to as NEWS is climbing on a garbage can to catch a tag in the foreground. There is no taming him now. The minute our host got into a cab - once again - we were climbing over everything to like ants at a picnic leaving our names on everything. NEWS is now our Peter Pan and we all blindly follow him.
ter than sex or drugs but I couldn’t - being that back then I was still a sober, wide eyed virgin. 18 years later and every imaginable vice I could get my hands on and try at least one confirmed it - nothing beats seeing your name up on a wall or when other people tell you that they have seen it. Nothing would ever beat the fear of getting caught or the feeling of paint This is when the deal goes sour. shooting out of your hands like a It’s about a 20 minute walk from super hero blasting a complex sigthe restaurant to the NEWS dear- nature from his palm onto concrete. ly coveted wall. Pablo leads the charge - like a pirate declaring anNOTHING. archy against clean surfaces - with IN. MINT and LOVEME in tow. SERF THE. and I hang back slowed down by WORLD. his need to tag every 3 seconds, my taking a picture every 3 seconds, And now I was all the way the and our paranoid need for caution. fuck over in Japan about to do Soon enough we reach the train the same with some of the most track which is outside and down infamous writers ever to touch a steep ditch several meters away a fat cap. And tagging in a train from an entry to a underground yard? My inner child couldn’t tunnel. While walking along the stop masturbating to the thought. outside of a track we notice a large We find entry on to the train track team of train workers sorting out at a part of the gate with not that their equipment and getting ready much barbed wire and next to a to start their shift - complete with wall making it easier for us to scale flood lights and a video camera. You it. Once over the gate and through would think this would be a major some bushes the trench dipped at red flag, but no. We address it with an angle for about 10 feet before a wise crack and proceed to walk touching a ledge then it went down another 100 or so yards before we for another 20 stories. I was the last break into the Tokyo transit system one to hop over. By the time I had climbed over LOVEME and NEWS I’ve always loved graffiti. Since where already on the train tracks I was young I would change my decorating NEWS’s holy grail of a name over and over again till I wall. MINT and SERF were still on found a moniker easy enough for the ledge changing the caps to the me to write and connect the letters spray cans we had. I readied my with a respectable penmanship. I camera. This was going to be my never went bombing. I always kept Video Graf (a graffiti video magamy vandalism to art blackbooks zine from the 90’s that showed and whatever desk I was stationed writers vandalizing all of existence), at in school. By the time I was old Ryan McGinley (a well known phoenough to move around the city tographer that started with photo’s without my mother chaperoning of street art) moment. In my exme the train era of graffiti was over. citement I take a photo of SERF The first time I actually grabbed a catching a tag on the wall that led can of paint was in my senior year into the track with the flash on of high school while attending night forgetting everything I had learned school at Washington Irving in low- from watching Mr. Brainwash fumer Manhattan. My friend at the time, ble around in Exit through the Gift FOCUS, took me right after class Shop. This wins me a resounding and we tagged the entire length of “What the fuck are you doing!?” 14th St. from the West Side High- quickly cooling my first time at an way all the way back to the Lower amusement park experience. The East Side. Mind it you was 9pm and base in SERF’s voice reminded a very different New York from the me how tense and dangerous evehomogenized metropolis it is now. rything was and how I wasn’t on I would tell you the feeling was bet- the other side of the gate looking
PHOTO: OSVALDO CHANCE JIMENEZ
in, I was a now a co-defendant. Before I could allow the thought to settle in and cement itself into common sense we are met with a running and out of breath LOVEME. The train workers who we had seen earlier had started their shift and were make their way down the track in our direction. He quickly scurried up the wall and hid with us in the shadows of an over pass that was near us on the ledge. We could only assume that NEWS was still hiding somewhere on the track. This was it: my “Locked up Abroad” moment. I refused to allow the guys to see me shake in fear and instead of going with my better judgment of leaving I stayed in the shadows with my team. We laid still under the silent Tokyo darkness with only our heart beat and gasps for air as our conversation. Each second felt like an hour. Once the track maintenance train shuffled passed us without incident we relaxed and waited for its light to fade into the tunnel. The minute the coast was clear MINT and LOVEME slid back down to the rail road to finish what they started while SERF stayed with me on the ledge to work on the fill-in he started. NEWS came out of hiding and continued painting.
periencing the hangover. LOVEME scaled back up the wall in what appeared to be one hop. Mint followed like he was still in communist Russia trying to claw his way out of Siberia. All I heard was that there’s someone with a flash light on foot. Cops?! We didn’t wait around. One by one we flew over the gate like it was an Olympic hurdle and we were going for the gold. In my anxious escape I scraped half of my shin off but didn’t realize it until days later, the adrenaline masking any pain I should have felt. I looked back once to make sure NEWS was following but I only saw the guy with his light saber of a flash light screaming like an extra in a Godzilla movie. NEWS was nowhere to behind us. We quickly spot a cab and pile into it. I keep telling everyone to wait for NEWS but I was in such shock I couldn’t even hear myself. This gave me my first lesson in graffiti: every man for his motherfucking self. I don’t even have my door shut before the cab pulls off into the neon city - as if our driver knew he was our getaway. I look back once to see NEWS face finally appear over the gate. I try to get our car to stop for him but my voice is lost amongst the commotion. I quietly pray he finds his way back to our hotel.
The worst was now over. Or so I thought. We pour out of our taxi and into our lobby in an exhilarated rush of “we The last few paragraph repeated it- fucking made it”. Everyone picks self 3 more times. Back at the hotel a corner of the room to nervously room we kept trying to figure out giggle off almost being caught and how we went so wrong. The con- “Locked up Abroad”. I grab the sensus was that if this had been lukewarm whiskey I had sitting beNYC we would have never even hind the window blinds and do a entered the track after seeing all of shot straight out of the bottle like it those transit workers standing by. was a much needed sedative. I’m Not only did we walk right by them so pumped up my hacking cough we broke into the tracks only a is no longer. Everyone catches couple 100 feet away from them. If their breath and the room starts that wasn’t enough of a bad omen to fill up with everyone escalating how did we even conceive it was gibberish. This was normal shit to of a sound mind decision to stay in them; it was a moment of an enthose tracks after the first mainte- tire lifetime for me. I was no longnance train had rolled by? Did we er playing it safe, taking pictures believe that a police force in Tokyo from afar, I was in the story. Shit was nonexistent? We definitely act- I almost was the story. My comed like that the first night we arrived, mon sense and need for adventure ragging any surface without care as collided at the bargaining table to whom was watching. Things we and negotiations fell apart. Everynever would have done in NYC... thing was one big “what the fuck Well that’s not entirely true; so what the fuck what the fuck???” we blamed NEWS, who was so drunk we are all still ex- Soon MINT’s voice cuts through
our
slowly
settling
rabble; Fifteen minutes have passed. We all collectively stop with our “Yo call NEWS’s phone.” bullshit and wonder why NEWS hasn’t arrived yet. I call him back. I scrolled through my BlackBer- This time he answers in one ring; ry until I reach his name like my fingers just remembered it had “Yo I’m getting arrested” some chores to do and our mother was almost home. I didn’t even That’s followed by a bunch of incare about how much I’m being audible screaming in Japanese. charged in roaming minutes my main concern was The Kentucky “What?!” Gentleman’s safety. Each ring had my finger crossed and a prayer I yell into my phone, eyebrow raised to the God of Overseas Vandal- and the smile escaping from my face. ism. By the 4th ring he picks up. “Yeah I’m getting arrested I’ll talk “Yo ou ok?” to you la…’ (Obviously.) And the phone goes dead. And “Yeah yeah I’m good where are the air leaves our room. Our facyou guys?” es drop and everyone starts hiding paint and stickers again and “We are at the hotel, come to the I start erasing tweets. This was hotel.” only my 2nd evening in Japan – Pablo’s 6th hour in Tokyo – and “Yeah but how do I get there?” the deal has gone extremely sour. “Just grab a cab any cab tell them the name of the hotel they’ll take you.” “Nah fuck it I’m gonna walk.” “NO DON’T WALK, GET IN A CAR!” “Ok ok I’ll get a cab, but where?” “THEY ARE EVERY WHERE!!!” “Ok ok” The phone hangs up and the room explodes with life again. Serf stops with the doomsdays scenarios and Mint stops hiding all of the evidence that littered our room, LOVE ME starts laughing. I go on a 20 post twitter rant about what just happened. The last thing any of us needed was NEWS getting arrested and starting some sort of huge international incident and getting us all into major trouble with our sponsor. Everyone relaxes and the next few minute are filled with the congratulatory jargon and the “what ifs” graffiti writers shower each other with after a great escape. Once again this was common place for them but to me - this was now Heaven.
“YEAH
AH I’M GETTING ARRESTED I’LL TALK TO YOU LA…”
PHOTO: CURTIS KULIG
THIS IS WHERE I LIVE NOW: A (SUB)CULTU IMMERSION THROUGH SENSORY DEPRIVATION OVERLOAD PART 1 BY PABLO POWER PHOTO: TOKYO POLICE DEPARTMENT
E URAL
The Perfect Storm Of Misunderstanding. “Kanpai, motherfucker!” I raised a hotel water glass, two fingers deep with Suntory Red, and toasted in celebration with Mike. I had just arrived to our room in The Cerulean Tower Hotel, the last in a group of fourteen people who had converged in Tokyo in support and celebration of an exhibition that Mike, Jason, and Curtis were participating in. We poured two more glasses and toasted again. Upon landing, I disembarked the plane quickly, breezed through customs in five minutes, and when I went outside to find the hotel shuttle bus, it was waiting directly outside the first door that I walked through and pulled away as soon as I got on. The trip couldn’t have been going any easier, so far. According to the bus schedule, the roads must have even been clearer than usual because I was off the bus and in the hotel room long before the scheduled arrival. I was staying in Mike and Jason’s hotel room, which by Tokyo standards had ample space for OJ, Greg, and myself to each stake out our own corner and camp out on the floor for the weeklong trip. In less than two hours from wheels touching down on the Narita runway, I was safe and comfortable in the room and already having a good drink of cheap whiskey. Then another. After the second toast, the five of us collected ourselves and prepared to go see the progress of their work for the exhibition, which was opening in two days. I emptied my pockets of my US dollars and cents, and remembered to leave my passport safely in one of my bags in the room like I had always done when abroad. We met Curtis in the lobby, along with Hajime, who was from Tokyo and involved in producing the exhibition. I had been anticipating, planning, and postponing a trip to Japan for ten years, so finally taking my first walk in the streets of Shibuya during rush hour was a thrilling fulfillment of a long time dream. Between the hotel and AndA, where the show was taking place, I suggested that we stop at a Lawson to pick up a quick snack. I was starving, but was informed that a
big dinner was planned in a couple of hours, so decided to hold off on eating until then. Instead, we filled two shopping bags with beer and sake to hold us over until dinner. And-A was a ten-minute walk from the hotel, on the edge of the bordering neighborhood, Harajuku. Mike, Jason, and Curtis got right to work on their installation as soon as we arrived. I got to work on a glass jar of sake. The interior part of the show was in a room that had the entire center area of the floor taken up by a three- foot- tall pile of paint, spray paint, and full cases of sundry marking devices made specifically for writing graffiti in the street. After watching them work for a few minutes and relishing my first sips of sake in Japan, I decided that with dinner still over an hour away, I had ample time to explore the tangle of narrow, winding streets in the surrounding neighborhood. Before leaving, I picked through the massive pile of writing implements and decided to take a medium point, silver marker that resembled the little plastic bottles that old ladies use to keep track of the numbers being called out at a bingo game. It happened naturally, without even realizing that my hand was sorting through the boxes to find just the right marker to secret away in my pocket and use to leave a trail of writing behind me as I wandered through the unfamiliar streets. When I had decided that I was finally going to visit Japan, and started telling friends that I had booked the ticket, the first thing most of them said to me was, “Be careful” and, “Don’t get caught bombing out there”. I took insult at the mere suggestion and at their misunderstanding of my intentions for the trip, which in my mind were to see my friends’ show, catch up with old friends who live in Japan, and add a Japanese chapter to an ongoing photo project that I’ve been working on for over ten years. I didn’t do it at home anymore and really had no intention or thoughts of writing graffiti in Japan at all. I hadn’t even gone so far as to think that I didn’t want to or shouldn’t do it; the subject hadn’t crossed my mind at all. Notwithstanding my good intentions, there I was look-
ing for just the right marker to take out with me, with no thought to what chain of events it may initiate. I set off alone into the night with my jar of sake in hand, quite amused at the novelty of being able to drink openly in public with no fear of a ticket or any other consequences. The first thing that I noticed when I walked out the front door of the store was the railroad tracks directly across the narrow street, right at street level. I crossed the street and walked up to the fence to have a closer look. The fence was low chain link, without the razor wire or V shaped double row of barbed wire that a fence around railroad tracks in The States would have on top of it. According to my friend Yutaman, a born and bred Tokyo native, that was literally one of only three or four places in the entire network of hundreds of miles of trains in the city, that the tracks are visible at ground level. There was a metal sign next to me on the fence that was full of tags, some recognizable from New York and some even of people that I knew personally. I lingered for a moment, had a quaff of sake, took the marker from my pocket, and added my own contribution to the sign. Like a girl who takes a piss, then can’t stop all night after she “breaks the seal�, I compulsively and recklessly opened a flood gate that would have me waiting in a much more uncomfortable place than the bathroom line for the rest of the night. For the next hour, I aimlessly explored the narrow back streets and wide avenues of the neighborhood, stopping twice to buy a tall can of Asahi, and frequently to write my old tag on whatever surface was before me at the opportune moment. When I depleted the ink in the first marker, I stopped back at the store to pick up two more and emptied those in rapid succession, the amount of writing increasing proportionately to the amount of alcohol consumed. As dinner time drew near and I started to walk back to meet everyone, I found a little abandoned building on a particularly dark and quiet corner, that had a back wall facing the railroad tracks, was next to a bridge overpass, and a gap in the
fence wide enough to slip through without even having to climb at all. From the bridge I could look down onto the tracks and see the long back wall that faced the tracks and realized that by the time we finished dinner the trains would be stopped for the night, leaving this prime track spot for the taking. When I got back to the store a few minutes later I relayed word of my discovery to anyone else that may have been as tantalized by it as I was at the time, and it was received with mild curiosity. Dinner satisfied my every my desire for what my first meal in Japan should be: all of my favorite foods, sitting on the floor, shoes off, bottomless draft beer, and a large, raucous crew. Over dinner, mild interest and casual suggestion turned into definite plans to go paint the back of my quiet, easy, little abandoned building that very night. After dinner, everyone said their goodbyes and our group of eleven or twelve split up to return to their respective hotels and homes for the night. The six of us that were in the same hotel decided to make a detour to the store, pick up paint, and then have a look at the track spot. On the way out of the store we all grabbed a few invitations for the show, just in case we went out after painting and wanted to pass some out. Walking to the abandoned building, we passed a crew of track workers preparing for their night shift, about half way down the stretch of track that ran between there and the store. To me they seemed far enough away from where we were going, and the actual spot shrouded in enough darkness, that it would still be a pretty safe place to go paint. I passed through the gap in the fence and climbed down a smooth, cement embankment to the tracks, without paying much attention to who followed me or in what order. I walked all the way down to the left side of the wall and began painting immediately, leaving the rest of the wall open for whoever else came down after me. I decided on block letters, filled in with silver, outlined in black, and double outlined with
“WE MAKE FINGERPRINT! YOU TELL TRUTH!”
PHOTO: GREG PASSUNTINO
PHOTO: KAMARYN POTTER
red. As I started filling in the letters, work trains started rolling by, horns blasting and lights glaring brightly, but I continued, undaunted. I was struggling to cover the rough cement with the skinny stock caps that were on the can and was spending far too much time down there, considering that there were workers in such close proximity. I had been drinking steadily since I landed and was pretty drunk at this point, with all judgment and fear of consequence near completely gone. It didn’t even cross my mind that I was spending way too much time down there until several minutes later, all my friends were finished and long gone, but I was still fecklessly trying to fill in my first letter and watching a track worker walking away from his crew and straight towards me. I stopped momentarily when he was finally right next to me, and listened intently to him talking calmly and quietly at me, trying to discern anything that may sound familiarly threatening. After giving my best drunken assessment to the threat level that the situation posed to me, I naturally decided that there was absolutely no danger whatsoever of anything bad arising from me taking as long as I needed to finish what I was doing. I bowed politely to the worker, to convey that I was vandalizing this property with the utmost respect, and returned to my work. As I continued painting for a couple of more minutes, I imagined that in his foreign mellifluence he was telling me to use caution when walking over the third rail or maybe even how he had always been curious about the mysterious painted letters that he sees while doing his job. Then reality struck me. And I realized how terribly wrong that ridiculous assessment was. What he was probably telling me was, “Who do you think you are coming down here, you arrogant Yankee asshole? I just called the cops and if you don’t get out of here right now, you’re going to jail.” I looked around in horror and embarrassment, dropped the can of paint, and ran for that gap in the fence as fast as I could. After scrambling up the embankment and through the
fence, I was back on the sidewalk, but didn’t see my friends anywhere. I figured that they had gone back to the hotel, so I started walking briskly in that direction, the tracks just on the other side of the fence. After I had made it well over halfway back to the hotel and definitely out of harm’s way, I started to feel guilty for leaving behind the six cans of paint that I brought down to the tracks and in another drunken assessment decided that not enough time had passed for police to show up, so I should definitely go back and get them. Once again, I went through the fence, down the embankment, down to the far left end of the wall, and quickly gathered the cans back in the cardboard box that they came in. The worker was still there, urbanely chattering away at me. When I tried to make my way back up the embankment, it was too slick to do so without both hands pulling me up, which was impossible with the box of paint in one hand. I tried a few attempts to make the ascent with one hand, until realizing the futility of what I was doing, but gave it one last try with a long running start. I was almost to the top when my feet started slipping and then completely went out from under me. I landed hard on the arm that was clutching the box, slid most of the way down on my elbow, and before I could stop my downward momentum had rolled over and slid the rest of the way down on my face. Without really knowing what had just happened, I found myself dazed, in a heap at the bottom of the embankment, laying on a pile of spray cans, gushing blood from a long, deep gouge on the bottom of my forearm, and trickling a bit from a silver dollar sized road rash on both my right cheek bone and eyebrow. The worker rushed over to me, obviously shocked at seeing the fall I had just taken and not sure whether to help me up or hold me down until help came. His tone of voice had turned from cool and friendly to concerned and confused. I got up slowly, partly expecting that I wouldn’t be able to walk away on my own, but everything was working well enough
to allow me to slowly pull myself up a piece of electrical conduit and back to the gap in the fence. After all that, I had to leave the cans behind again, cursing myself for being so stupid as to go back there. When I got back to the street level the second time, I cautiously looked around before going out the fence. Everything seemed all clear, so I slipped out and started limping back to the hotel again, down the same stretch of sidewalk that ran along the tracks. I could see that about a hundred yards in the distance, the track workers had come outside the fence, onto the sidewalk, and were doing some kind of work there and looking around in the bushes with their flash lights. The worker that approached me had been so friendly that I saw no reason to even walk to the other side of the street, let alone take another route to the hotel. In the condition I was in, still a bit stunned, I just wanted to take the most direct route back. It took over a minute to walk the distance to where they were, and I curiously and absent-mindedly watched them go about their business as I made the long approach. I hadn’t been in Tokyo long enough to notice that their beat cops look nothing like the imposing figures that they do in most of the rest of the world. Almost none carry guns, there’s no barrel chest from a bullet proof vest, no tactical SWAT equipment harness or bulging pockets on their uniforms, and no combat boots. Their uniform has the innocuous look of any other harmless civil servant: a bus driver, sanitation worker, or maybe even an MTA track worker. When I finally got to where the workers were, I didn’t want to disturb whatever they were trying to do, so I turned sideways to carefully walk between the six or eight of them that were there. I had nearly made my way through them, when one turned around, looked at me, pointed, and started shrieking in Japanese. I figured that just because he didn’t share the same tolerant, even helpful, disposition of the worker that I had encountered on the tracks, there still wasn’t any reason to worry.
PHOTO: OSVALDO CHANCE JIMENEZ
I held my hands up to chest height, palms facing him, and pushed them gently in the air to make the international “calm down” gesture as I kept walking. All of the other workers spun around, surrounded me, and joined in with their own medley of shrieks. One grabbed each of my arms and the one who noticed me first put his hands on my chest and started pushing me backwards into his coworkers. I thought that if I just got out of their way they wouldn’t be so mad about me being there, and kept trying to calmly push my way through them. I managed to free myself from the grip of the two that had my arms, trying to do so in the most unthreatening manner possible, but they still stayed very close. I pushed the one in front of me aside, and was just thinking that maybe I should start running, when suddenly two different uniforms appeared in my path, with a much more aggressive stance and each with a long wooden stick the size of a skinny baseball bat, cocked back over their shoulder. I could see in their eyes that they would have no hesitation in beating me into submission if I took one more step. I froze in my tracks, still not understanding what was happening, until I saw every type of vehicle pulling up from every direction. They came on bicycles on the sidewalk, and in cars, motorcycles, and vans in the street. Then I saw what was unmistakably written in bold block letters, in English, on the side of one of the vans: POLICE. I had unwittingly walked right into police that were looking for me in the complete wrong location, watching from afar as they looked for me, and completely undetected until I was literally standing right in their midst. In ten seconds, the six or eight police that I had mistaken for the track workers that I had passed in the same place earlier, swelled to at least twenty five police, and I was quickly and triumphantly handcuffed and corralled into one of the vans. Before they closed the door, a senior looking, uniformed officer came to the van and repeatedly yelled, “You graffiti!” over and over. I shook
my head and responded, “No, art- thought that he was going to physist.” each time. Clearly unsatis- ically assault me at any second. fied and disgusted, he slammed the door and the van sped off. I repeated the same “artist” defense as before. The uniformed To add insult to literal injury, I had cops with him stood me up, did been a mere few blocks from the a thorough search of my person, Harajuku police station the whole took all my possessions from me, time and after a ride of scarce sec- and marched me back down the onds, was in its underground park- long hallway to a room where they ing garage. When they took me attempted to administer a Breathaout the van, another team of offic- lyzer test. They were visibly horriers came from inside the building fied when I refused their request. to meet me, tied a stiff, blue rope One officer gesticulated the act around my waist, and shuffled me of taking the test and passed it into an elevator. I was led off the back to me, thinking that maybe I elevator with a tug of the rope, didn’t understand. I refused again. and down a maze of long hallways on the third floor of a very mod- My intention was not to cause them ern building that still smelled of trouble or aggravate them, but I ranew construction. The hallway led tionalized that I didn’t want a pubthrough a series of key coded se- lic drunkenness ticket. That was curity doors and into a huge open still the worst thing that I imagined room that had about thirty desks in would come from the arrest. What I it, where I was finally brought into a found out later was that had I taken small, adjoining office, and tied to a the Breathalyzer, I would have cerchair with the blue rope. The door to tainly walked directly out of the stathe office was shut and locked and tion at that moment. Later I heard I was left alone, utterly befuddled. stories of people that I knew getting arrested in Tokyo for offenses as Within a whirlwind three minutes serious as smashing out the plate from the moment that I was first glass window of a McDonalds store spotted by the police, I was al- front, but being released immediready locked in a small room of ately without even being charged, some strange building that I had because they were too drunk to be no idea where or what it was, held responsible for their actions. handcuffed and tied to a chair, still bleeding, and without any He demonstrated again and I reidea what was in store for me. fused again. Their frustration was It was 1 a.m. and I had been in palpable. The detective came Japan for seven hours. I had al- back in and the three of them led ready missed two nights of sleep me back towards where I had and was fast closing in on a third. been locked up before. On the I had heard stories of American way back, he stopped to show friends being arrested for graffiti me a scene straight out of “CSI in Japan and being released with- Miami”: some sort of forensic sciin a matter of hours or a day, so entist covered from head to toe in still wasn’t so worried about my a bulky Tyvek jumpsuit, with the fate. At that point, I was also ex- full head covering and respirator, hausted and drunk enough to not who was meticulously dusting the even really care and I scooted my very cans that I had slid face first chair towards the wall to rest my down the cement hill on top of. head against the cold cement. He screamed again, “You graffiti!”, I had drifted off to sleep for what his spittle splattering my face, and felt like hours when a detective added, “We make fingerprint! You burst into the room with two uni- tell truth!” I shrugged and shook my formed officers that I recognized head. At home I had been arrested from the time of my arrest. He for this same thing around fifteen started screaming the same accu- times and always played dumb. A sation, “You graffiti!” right up in my few times it completely got me off face, but in a far more disturbing the hook, so I figured it was a sure and threatening tone than the other thing that they’d let me go there. officer, to the point that I sincerely
PHOTO: TANYA ARAKAWA
PHOTO: GOGY ESPARZA
My maxim had always been: “If they’re asking questions, they don’t know anything.” Seeing that I was unresponsive to the sight of them collecting forensic evidence from what was obviously my property, they tied me back to the chair and locked me in the office. For the next hour, every officer in the station who spoke a few words in English came in and tried to communicate with me, leaving when it became evident that I had no idea what they were talking about. For the most part I really was completely confused by what was happening, but in certain instances I could gather that they were trying to figure out where I was from and why I was in Japan, but most of all why I didn’t have my passport with me. I figured that if I played the roll of the ignorant, hapless tourist long enough, they’d tire of the fruitless interrogation and let me go. I also figured that they couldn’t want to see me get in too much trouble just for not having my passport with me and painting on some old, abandoned building on the railroad tracks. After all, wasn’t it widely accepted that when traveling it was best to leave your passport in the hotel safe? And of all places to get caught painting, the tracks had to be of the least consequence, because whatever I was doing would have been a mere ripple in an ocean of graffiti. I had come very close to taking the train from the airport into Tokyo, but decided against it when I saw that it required a transfer and still left me to find my way a handful of blocks to the hotel. It was cheaper by a few hundred yen, but I figured I wouldn’t complicate things right away and opted for the bus directly to the hotel. Had I chosen the train, I would have saved myself around four hundred thousand yen and weeks of complication, in the end. In any other city in the world that I’ve ever been to, seen pictures of, or even heard of, it’s always the train tracks that have the concentration of graffiti on them. The streets of a city or even small town can be completely clean and devoid of any markings, but the second you look at the buildings facing whatever railroad tracks may
be there, whether subway, commuter rail, or even freight, there will always be something there. In most places, there will be quite a lot. Tokyo has about the same amount of writing, stickers, stencils, wheat pasting, and even legal murals, as the streets of Manhattan. It’s obvious that a great effort is made to keep both public and private property clean, but there’s simply too many people doing new work on a regular basis and there’s just too much surface area to keep up with. However, unique to Tokyo is the fact that there is barely a single speck on any surface within the entire subway and train systems. Had I seen that, I would have known there was a reason for this unique phenomenon and stayed the hell out of there in the first place. When the police finally realized that they weren’t making any progress in their attempts to get through to me with the near non- existent grasp of English that anyone in that precinct possessed, I was led out of the little office that they were keeping me sequestered in and to a desk in the large, bull pen office outside. They pushed me down into a chair, an officer holding firmly onto each arm, and held a phone up to my ear. I saw a clock that read 5:00 and realized that I was beginning to feel mild delirium from the lack of sleep and hours of drinking, when I legitimately couldn’t figure out if it was a.m. or p.m. I heard a tiny voice saying my name in very strongly accented English and realized that it was coming out of the phone. The voice introduced himself by name, as a civilian employee of the police interpreters center, and went on to explain in very fair English that I had been arrested for graffiti, but was being held on an immigration violation for not having a passport with me. I told him that I had no idea what the graffiti charge was based on, that it was a huge mistake on their part, and could hear the puzzlement in his voice when he asked me if he understood me correctly. Incredulously, he asked again, and I stood by my claim. I admitted to him that, yes, I had in fact left my passport in my hotel room, but that the misunderstanding could easily be cleared up by
having it brought to the police station by a friend. He asked that I pass the phone back to the police, and the officer who was holding the receiver to my ear got back on. I could see he was overcome with shock as my claim of innocence was relayed to him, and watched as the indignation spread throughout the room when he passed it along to the rest of the cops. They found my audacious claim more insulting than I imagined they would and I hoped that my old charade wasn’t going to backfire on me. The phone was passed around between the interpreter, the cop, and myself a few more times until they eventually became fed up with my denials and led me back to the little private office. I sat there alone, nodding off for a while. One of the officers came in with some Japanese documents to for me to sign, but I refused. I was taken back to the phone and the exact same round robin repeated. When I was returned to the little office, I started to get the feeling that they had never dealt with someone who so flatly denied their guilt in the face of such incontrovertible evidence and started to get nervous that I may be doing the worst thing possible. Before I could think too much about it, I was nodding off again. Over the next eight hours I was questioned intermittently by some new detectives, with an interpreter finally present, but only concerning the matter of the immigration violation. The questions were mostly related to why I was in Japan, where I was staying, for how long, why I was detained, and why I didn’t have my passport with me. I was relieved when several hours had gone by and not once did the matter of the graffiti come up. For those short hours I grew quite satisfied at how clever I was for maintaining my innocence and outsmarting the police, but I was ignorant of the reality that they were just stalling as another department prepared a whole new case against me. At 3 p.m. a friend who I was traveling with delivered my passport and I signed a prepared statement admitting only to the crime of the
immigration violation. There were some more documents to sign to have my property returned, with which they even tried to give back the two empty markers that I was arrested with, but I refused them and pointed to the garbage can. Within an hour of having my passport arrive, I was outside on the ground floor of the building, in a fenced in area with a gate that opened to the public sidewalk. I was finally unfettered by the rope and handcuffs, maybe bruised and battered, but standing in the open air with only a push bar emergency exit standing between me and my pending release. I had only lost sixteen hours of the trip due to the arrest and was looking forward to the remaining days. For ten minutes they kept me waiting just inches inside the gate, while all of the cops assembled for what
THEDEAL WENT SOUR
PART2 SERF’S
REVENGE
I wish I could describe the feeling in the room without using a reference to “The Matrix” but I can’t. You know the scene when Neo finally does that awkward lean-back while dodging an insane amount of enemy fire? The near-stillness of the moving objects fluttering around him that is then sped up? How suddenly the surrounding sound that was muted before filters rapidly back into a loud BOOM as Keanu I figured would be some ceremo- goes from slow motion to real time? nial farewell. I wanted to tell them that they could forgo whatever That’s how I’ll remember it: the they were preparing and just let me sloppy hiding of evidence and go, but decided against interfering the erasing of internet posts and with what was probably a vestige the coordinating of the alibis. The of some ancient tradition. I was stressful hand-brushing of the foreactually expecting the entire pre- head and the witchhunt for somecinct to make a formal apology, as one to blame. We all agreed that it well, and didn’t want to miss that. was Pablo’s fault – that fact was Finally they were ready, and as certain to us like the blue sky – but the gate was opened, several of in the end it was all of our faults. the cops grabbed me firmly while Once we accepted that inevitable the interpreter read a document truth, as intense the moment was, aloud. My heart sank as he made it was over. We are vandals—interhis way through it, reciting that the national vandals now—we all know charge of the immigration violation the risk and the only rule we follow was dismissed and I was being re- is every man for himself. Well, there leased, but was now under arrest are other rules (fill-ins over markfor “investigation of suspicion of ers and yadda yadda yadda) but graffiti”. The gate was slammed in the trenches when those lights loudly, for maximum psychological come on you are nothing but a effect, and I was handcuffed again roach in a tenement apartment. and led back into the building. LOVEME decided that he had What evidence did the Organized enough for one evening and calls Crime Division present in the con- it early. MINT followed suit. SERF spiracy case against me? What and I were electric. We were in towere the conditions like after I was tal vacation mode — far from the transferred to the Tokyo county “lay low” mode we were supposed jail? What pictures of Curtis and his to be exercising. We both needed graffiti did the police print out from drinks. I needed it more, as the the Internet, in an attempt to get comedown from the rush of almost me to snitch on him? Was anyone being locked up abroad was proelse arrested? How many weeks fessional steel-cage wrestling bruwas I held in jail with no charge? tal. I received a text from NAW with How many fingers did my Yaku- directions to some bar not far from za cellmate have chopped off? the hotel and thankfully in the oppo-
PHOTO: OSVALDO CHANCE JIMENEZ
site direction from the scene of the crime. Our responsible adult selves committed to being well behaved, banning the shenanigans like our first night in Tokyo. Our manic, compulsive ignore-what-our-responsible-selves-just-committedto selves grabbed some markers and a couple more cans of paint— and a camera to document it all. The bar could have made millions in the Williamsburg part of Brooklyn. It had a seedy hotel feel with red velvet walls, plus a ski-lodge sensibility that came embellished with elk horns and exaggerated antique picture frames. The chandeliers that filled every inch of the ceiling were as Victorian as they where dusty—though the dust took nothing away from their eloquent beauty. NAW was outside smoking a cigarette while Will and the two models that came with us, Tanya and Kamaryn, sat inside what looked like the tableau of a sexy high fashion Goth photo shoot. In the back of the bar there were a couple of older Asian gangster types smoking cigars, and a bald, leather-faced bartender that could have been the Japanese Vin Diesel. I felt his aggression in my heart when he told me I couldn’t take a photo in his bar. The disconnect between my heart and brain became apparent as I just turned the flash off and marker mopped his entire bathroom. I love tagging bathrooms.
person I was supposed to be. The more drinks we poured, the later the night went, and the more removed I was from our “Tokyo Escape”—the more it set in. Excitement like that you don’t hide. This was me receiving my Boy Scout adventure badge—and what was the purpose of having one if anyone didn’t know? (This particular conviction me a “what the fuck is wrong with you” award from SERF – who said as much as I played look out for him while he was discreetly defacing half of Japan.) We paid our tab and left what could easily have been—décor-wise—the inside of a Betsy Johnson purse for a better party with a clientele that was less “townie”, and one without a murderous edge. Le Baron, a well known “It” bar in France, had recently opened up a Tokyo outpost . We opted out of taking a cab and walked what felt like thirty blocks to get there. The girls skipped in their slender heels and giggled charming drunky girl stuff while the boys leaped-frogged over each other scribbling on any surface within reach. Our friend had been in jail for no less than two hours, and whatever lesson we should have learned from that mess we sent it skyrocketing it out of Tokyo like a clown in the circus cannon. By the time we got to Le Baron it was around 3 in the morning, and the Tuesday or Monday (in all honesty, by then I had lost track of the days, and I was only in Japan for two days) night lull had cleared out the spot, which was closing their doors. DJ LINO, a good friend of ZOOTED (whom we had not heard from since the “Great Hand Job” escape), who had a three-month DJ residency in Japan, met us outside the dead venue and suggested we all go back to Club Jumangi in the Roppongi Hills District. It was “Models Night”, also known as “No Need to Twist Our Arms We Are Going Night”. I took a deep breath after vomiting bits of the previous night’s anxiety in my mouth and swallowing it and pulled up my jeans. And then we all split up into separate cabs.
While everyone chatted up the “Great Alaskan Escape” (Will and the two girls shared the same flight to Tokyo, which had to make an emergency landing in Alaska, delaying their trip by a day) I joined NAW for a cigarette outside. Before we left the hotel room we all had agreed not to tell ANYONE about NEWS’s arrest, as to not anger our sponsor or endanger the upcoming exhibition and not get paid. Of course, after three drags off my duty free cigarette my diarrhea of the mouth made its appearance. I topped off the gossip with a “but don’t tell anyone else” cherry that decorated the NEWS cake NAW would eventually share with the rest of the group. For someone whose sole means of income was based on keeping things quiet, I There’s some rule in Tokyo nightsucked at being this clandestine life where if you are hired for a
residency, you’re not allowed to appear in other competing nightclubs. DJ LINO’s residency was at a club called Feria, a spot rumored to be owned by a member of The Yakuza, a very well known and feared Japanese mob or gang or whatever you picked up from any nineties action hero movie. None of that meant anything to this New York City DJ as he used his tongue to grant us free passage into Jumangi, a club we paid to get into the night before but were now being ushered into for free like celebrities. Since it was “Models Night”, any female (or male? We never found out) model got to drink top shelf liquor for free. We had two of them, both ethnic-looking with legs longer than the attention span a simpleton could have used to pay attention to anything that wasn’t them. The ladies received their magical free booze wrist bands and the men feverishly sent the ladies to the bar for drinks so many times you could have swore our models were cocktail waitresses. The activity in the booth we acquired for ourselves reached microwave popcorn levels of frenetic movement. DJ LINO and his imported Swedish arm candy were the first to leave our 4am straightout-of-a-movie night bowl of excitement. Before he exited, he introduced me to a friend who was selling the coveted green plant I’d been looking for. Before he even told me the price, I was already pulling out yens. His boy slipped me what I would normally pay $10 for on my block: an honest third of a gram. “Okay,” I tell myself, confident that getting stoned in Japan was going to be cheaper than my duty-free cigarettes. “How much?” I asked, scanning the room as if I could spot a Japanese undercover cop. “5000 yen”. The DJ might as well have stopped the music; everyone in the club might as well have turned to me and gasped in unison. I paid what equated to $75 for a $10 bag of weed. You only live once. Right? Soon enough Will and NAW decided to leave with the girls in tow - leaving only SERF and me to troll
PHOTO: ARLO ROSNER
PHOTO: MINT&SERF
the spectacle of a Tokyo “Models Night”-gone-afterhours. If I don’t mention how apprehensive I was about the intense one-on-one hang out time I was going to have to with him then I’d only be telling half the story. You would swear SERF was bipolar by the stories you would hear of him—he is known to be as charismatic as he was chaotic. Before I could find out if the rumors where true, we were approached by a bouncer, who upon finding us quickly proceeded to talk on his headset while shouting accusations none of us could understand. Then another bouncer followed, translating what the first bouncer was shouting at SERF.
that lead to the exit, I ditched the paint that was seeping through my jeans like a Tell Tale Heart. SERF still had the bag of cans on him and when we reached the exit one of the Nigerian bouncer posted outside tries to snatch the bag from him. This prompted SERF to flail his arms like he had just caught a rebound in a basketball game. The Nigerian then tried to bear-hug Serf but couldn’t find a grip on SERF’s wiry frame and wound up hugging himself. Another bouncer, a chubby Ukrainian in a Men’s Warehouse suit, popped out of nowhere from the left of me and gave chase—but quickly fell victim to SERF’s fancy footwork. The bouncer lost his footing and fell flat on his face. When he “You graffiti up our bathroom.” fell every single item in his pocket “Yo ,what are you talking about? I and one of his shoes exploded from didn’t even go to the bathroom.” his person like a cartoon cloud.
I learned that if you wrong someone else, the law doesn’t interfere as much if both parties can settle the dispute themselves. Another thing I learned was that when you hand a person an item you use both hands as a sign of fair play and transparency—even when a cashier would give me my change in coins, they handed it to me with two hands.
When we first entered the club a bouncer had searched the plastic bag SERF was carrying with him, which still held a couple of spray cans. The bouncer didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t booze and SERF had promised to keep it in his bag. SERF kept repeating that he had kept it in the bag and didn’t go to the bathroom, but the bouncer wasn’t having it; he was calling more staff over and pointing to the hidden cameras that were in the booth we occupied. Exhausted from being accused of something he didn’t do, SERF demanded to be taken to the bathroom and shown what exactly he was being accused of. I followed, knowing exactly what they are going to see: a huge SLUTLUST tag I took a couple of minutes earlier with a Krink mop marker. The drips from the ink were still running wet down the wall, staining the fingers of a really pissed-off club manager.
SERF’s moves went from basketball court to football field as he sprinted down the block—knees nearly touching his chest—as the Nigerian bouncer again joined the fiasco and followed. The only thing missing from this montage was theme song from “Benny Hill”— something way too funny for me to even consider with the consequences we were facing. Soon they both vanished around the corner to the right. I, under the disguise of feigned confusion, slowly shuffled to the left of the street, undisturbed in the opposite direction of the commotion. My only thought being “We Kawana was the owner of the club just saw Pablo get arrested sev- Feria. He was about 5 ft 7 with a eral hours ago—what the fuck?!” real chill backpack rapper feel about him. He’d come to the live It was 5 AM in Tokyo and the only art opening that LOVEME and THE person who knew where the hell we MIRF did, as a guest of DJ LINO and were, and who had the room key ZOOTED. You had to love ZOOTto our hotel room, was now gone. ED’s hustle—he’d had no problem And I had weed—a drug I would negotiating a party for us complete find out later that’s very punishable with a flyer and enough bottles to by Japanese law—on my person. stock up for prohibition. He somehow also got Kawanas to consider But let’s fast forward for a minute. having our gang do art in his club. You’d think that a bunch of arrogant Tokyo, also known as the Eastern New York graffiti writers whose Capital, is a beautiful florescent idea of a live graffiti show was to empire in neon and plasma. As rag each other’s name until the wall far into the future the ever present was textured into overlaying colors technology of their daily lives goes, and perceived disrespect would their traditions are based in roots be a turn off to someone with such deeper than the shallowness of our a pristine five-star nightclub, but Western philosophies and appear- no—Kawana loved it. Being that he ances. There are as many temples also studied and lived in New York as there are skyscrapers. One thing from time to time, he thought what
“%^$^%#%^$&^$*&%&^$@#@ #&^*(&(*&%^$%#$@^@&!!!!!!!!!!!!!” From what I gathered we were being kicked out. SERF led the pack with an intensity that could only be described as a General going to war. The entire staff of the club followed his march with me several steps behind like a curious but cautious shadow. Before we descended down the stairs
Apparently Tokyo is very model-friendly, complete with model houses that could double as out of state college campuses. I also saw the foreign women that came from all over Africa and other 3rd world countries because Japanese businessmen spend fortunes for the touch of an “ethnic” girl, and how in some marriages a stop at the blow job shop before you got home was widely accepted and encouraged. I saw mega gambling stores where the prize was a basket of ball bearing, and pet adoption stores that kept the animals in what appeared to be vending machines. Every street had a confusing alley to go with it and the building numbers were based on the years the building was made and not any particular grid order, making getting around without a local a guaranteed fall into the rabbit hole. Basically what I’m trying to say is that Tokyo was as traditional and mysterious as it was very advanced. And very weird.
PHOTO: MINT&SERF
we had to offer was the best feel for his club and asked us to go at it. In my life I had never seen a venue ask for hooligans to tag up their bathroom, and here he was asking us to do that to his entire club. Did I mention that he was the Yakuza member that owned the place? One day we met a friend of NEWS—a Japanese kid that knew him from back in the states from his INKHEADS days—who invited us out for some authentic Japanese barbeque in a tiny local eatery. Japanese barbeque is basically anything you can grow in a garden, wrapped in meat. Even the meat was wrapped in meat. When at some point in the conversation we mentioned our art project in Feria and Kawana’s name, everyone within eavesdropping distance gasped and NEWS’s friend face went blank. I wish this moment was made up. He then told us a story of how Kawana got into a tiff with a sumo wrestler who then punched him in the face. The sumo wrestler then made a public apology, paid him like a million dollars and disappeared. Do you know how bad ass you have to be to make something as big as a sumo wrestler vanish? And we have to tag up his club?? Talk about your artistic anxiety. I saw firsthand how bad ass Kiwanis was when, after a group of his staff couldn’t control a drunk and unruly patron, he calmly approached the wasted guy, disarmed him of his 9mm, and then casually walked him out. This was an ultraaggressive drunk that was shaking down canopies, punching in walls, and grappling with five bouncers at once while screaming his lungs out. Now he was walking out very relaxed and calm like he was headed towards his first communion. But back to us. We had no filter. Nothing scared us; we were too drunk to rationalize anything. Like a toddler’s first time playing with fire, one minute we were cautious and the next catastrophic. One night in Feria ASSO and SERF thought it would be cool to play a game of “Why are you so pouty? Here, catch this beer bottle!”— which resulted in ASSO getting a black eye and blood shooting
out of his cheek like a water gun. We didn’t even as much as look for First aid; we just hopped in a cab and went to what I found out was the freshest fish market in the world. ASSO held his face together with bar napkins while NAW and I sniffed raw wasabi to the sound of Ghostface Killah’s “Fish” coming from ZOOTED’s iPhone. I even boothed (inserted into my asshole) some of it, and till this day I don’t know why. A better use of my time would have been trying to find some medical help for my friend’s battered face, or some legal advice for my arrested friend, but no. I stole the cup I was served beer in and we got chased out of the first market. Even LOVEME, whom I had met for the first time—my impression of him was that he was more reserved than the rest of us—got into the act, dying his hair blonde and tearing up the dance floor with the smooth moves that he learned from an episode of “Beavis & Butthead”. ASSO’s wrecked face was a perfect analogy for our trip. We were out of our faces for six days straight, not one of us ever exercising any restraint or common sense at all. Now let’s rewind back. The lights of Roppongi where starting to shimmer before my eyes in my minor panic at being alone. Everyone looked suspect. With Serf vanished, for the first time during this trip I was by myself and the xenophobia was starting to set in. I felt like a child in one of those “I forgot my son at an airport” commercials. Every step I took was another one met with a vomiting Asian or an aggressive African who felt I really needed a blow job and knew just the girls with the skill sets for my ailment. In retrospect my anxiety made it feel like I was alone for an hour; in all honesty, it was about two minutes. DJ LINO and his Swedish meatball of a model where standing right outside to the left of where everything had just went down. They weren’t even aware of the malarkey SERF and I had gotten ourselves into, and didn’t waste time in asking me questions and quickly shoving me into a getaway cab. I wasn’t even being chased, but that didn’t stop
me from ducking into the back seat when we drove past the club. The ride was what I could only describe as a couple of lefts and rights. My overwhelming “vandal on the run” fright night had me on blackout levels of drunken nervousness. How I got to White Room—another after hour’s club in Roppongi (every club felt like it was an afterhours)—at 6AM still eludes me to this day. How I randomly found ASSO in front of a 7-11 also eludes me. I told him about SERF and he told me about how he was at some club called “Club Asia” (racist?) and was chased out and had to escape by wriggling out of his really cool shark t- shirt. The shark t-shirt anecdote subdued whatever tension I was feeling (not really; I was too alcohol-dumb to be scared, which is a very necessary emotion needed for basic survival: drowned in booze) and off to White Room we went. We said goodbye to DJ LINO and did ping pong shots with two Canadian girls till eight in the morning. ASSO slobbered on one ‘til she bounced his fingers from her vagina, and I promised the other one marriage if she ever came to the States and needed a work visa—you know, just being the jolly old wing man. Both girls abandoned us with our liquor boners and we stumbled out into the eyeball-rape that was the Tokyo morning sun. We walked half a block until we reach a major intersection where we could catch a cab, then realized we were only around the corner from club Jumangi. Before I could do an “uh oh” and turn the other way, we magically bumped into SERF and ZOOTED. That brought out the way-too-intoxicated, happyto-see-you cheerleaders-in-highschool greetings from both me and ASSO. ZOOTED thought this was hilarious, especially being that he’d slept twenty hours from when I’d last seen him the night before and was now in great spirits. But SERF was not amused. Not in the slightest . “Yo you motherfuckers look crossed-eyed,” he said, a disgusted look on his face.
PHOTO: OSVALDO CHANCE JIMENEZ
PHOTO: MINT&SERF
“Son what happened?” I asked. “I got fucking chased out because of you! Why did you even take that big ass tag in the bathroom?” My eyes rolled back into my head like a turn on a losing slot machine and the letters ‘TILT’ popped up. “Fuck this I’m out.” “But yo where are you going?” “I’m going back to the hotel with ZOOTED to get breakfast.” He stopped a cab; they both got in. “Yo son hold up we going wit you…” I went to reach for the door, but Serf grabbed it and slammed it shut, punctuating the moment with a “FUCK YOU GUYS!” as the cab sped off. ASSO and I just looked at each other. Then broke out into laughter. We got some food and went back to his hotel room, where we shared a bed and promised to never tell anyone. Later, I woke up and walked all the way back to the hotel room I was sharing with The MIRF. After sleeping most of the day off, I asked SERF what happened, not remembering our previous conversation. “Motherfucker I got arrested because of you. I ran as fast as I could but then my legs gave out and that Nigerian fuck caught me. They held me in jail until the club owner accepted my apology or some shit. They had me in a cell for like four hours till DJ LINO and ZOOTED came and got me.” “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wow, um, well how did you apologize? Did you say I’m sorry?” “Fuck no…” #PPP
PHOTO: ARLO ROSNER