Authors: Adam Mansbach
“Come with me,” RISK says. “There's a freight yard ten minutes from here. You can see what it's all about.”
The old man eyes him for a moment. “I'd need a new name, wouldn't I? I couldn't just write Tristan Brodsky, or they'd come straight over and arrest me.”
RISK nods. “Plus, it's too long. Three to five letters is ideal.” He can't tell if his grandfather is just humoring him, fucking around. But RISK is already wondering where he can score some cans, and whether Tristan is ready for the next hard truth of the graff game: that only toys buy paint, and the accepted method of acquisition is racking.
“How about BRONX? That sounds suitably tough, doesn't it?”
“That's so perfect, I can't believe nobody's used it yet. Especially since the Bronx is where hip-hop was born.” RISK winces, realizing his mistake.
What's hip-hop?
He doesn't want to derail the momentum by trying to explain. It never takes him less than twenty minutes to get through the speech, finish linking Afrika Bambaataa's breakbeats to Robert Moses's Cross-Bronx Expressway, graff and b-boying to school budget cuts. Friends of his parents and grandparents have forced RISK into the role of cultural translator often enough that he has the recital down. It's his duty to distinguish
rap
from
hip-hop
, describe the iceberg submerged beneath the visible tip of MC Hammer and the Fresh Prince, because RISK is safe to ask. Not to mention available. They'll never get the chance or the balls to query a black kid.
But Tristan lets it pass; he either knows what hip-hop is or doesn't care. “I imagine we'll need spray paint. There should be some in the toolshed.”
RISK bounds outside. The toolshed is really a tool chest, rotting into the soil of the side yard. He opens the hatch, and there, huddled next to bags of potting soil and Miracle-Gro and rusty hand tools, are four cans of Red Devil spray paint. Zone would shit if he saw them: Red Devil has been out of production for years. Writers fiend for it, trade five Krylons for one can. It's some of the highest-quality paint ever made, and the colors are off the hook. RISK picks the cans up one by one, shakes them to gauge the contents. White: full. Emerald Green: half full. Flat Black: almost empty. RISK picks up the final can, shakes it, and pumps his fist in triumph. A full can of Bermuda Blue, the rarest, hottest Red Devil of all. A shame to waste it on throw-ups, but what the hell.
Fifteen minutes later, the cans are in a knapsack, thumping against the small of RISK's back as he and his grandfather stalk toward the freight yard through the weak light of the waning afternoon. On the foyer table lies a note for Amalia:
Out vandalizing trains. Back soon. Love, BRONX and RISK (T. Brodsky & T. Freedman). P.S. Don't tell Linda.
Out on the street, away from cocktails and couches and the foothills of unpublished pages stacked around his desk, the old man doesn't seem so old. He's only sixty-eight, after all. A kid from the Bronx; RISK can see it now, as never before: his grandfather juking and weaving through the crowded city streets, looking for trouble or, at the very least, not always knowing how to avoid it. Tristan slaps 80 percent of all questions concerning his youth out of the air, but RISK's great-uncle Benjamin is quick to tout his older brother as the most feared stickball slugger on the block, and good enough with his hands that Ben, five and a half feet tall on his best day, never had to worry about bullies. Put all that together and you've got an athlete and a roughneck who whizzed through college by eighteen, plus knew his way around the jazz spots back when that meant something. Hell, young Tristan Brodsky was a fucking ghetto superstar.
“These trains travel from coast to coast, carrying cargo,” RISK explains as the neighborhood turns industrial, “and they don't clean 'em unless you paint over the serial numbers. Now that the subway era's over, a lot of writers have been turning to freights. It's not the same, but at least they move.”
BRONX is hungry for graffiti lore; it seems to have captured his literary imagination. RISK can tell by the intensity with which his grandfather listens. He's seen the old man in this mode before, watched BRONX swallow stories whole at parties and ask precise questions designed to draw out the kind of minute details that will keep the anecdote alive as he transplants it to the page.
RISK regales him proudly, flashing his expertise with tales of BLADE and COMET and their five thousand whole cars. Tells horror stories about head-busting Vandal Squad infamosos like Curly and Ferrari from Queens, Rotor and Wasserman from Brooklynâcops with the same lust for fame as any writer. He profiles icons: the one-armed KASE 2 and the magnanimous superstar LEE. Discusses the innovations of pioneers like PISTOL and RIFF 170, style masters like DONDI and SEEN. Touches on the esoteric theories of aerosol philosopher RAMMELLZEE, whose Iconoclastic Panzerism holds that letters derive their power from the angles of their intersecting parts, so
K
annihilates
C
and
X
trumps
Z.
The afternoon is fading into dusk, a prime time to be invisible but still have light by which to paint. They circle the fenced-off perimeter of the yard, gazing through the ten-foot chain-link fence at rows of rust-colored trains slumbering nose-to-ass. RISK has pieced here once or twice a month for the past year. Whenever somebody can get a car, this is the spot of choice.
BRONX's glance floats to the rolls of razor wire atop the barricade. “You don't expect me to climb that, do you?”
RISK finds what he's looking for: a four-foot flap some writer surgeoned open with bolt cutters years ago. He pulls it back, beckons his grandfather inside.
They half-jog toward the first row of trains, RISK glancing over at BRONX every two seconds to make sure he's all right with the pace until the old man grunts, “I'm fine.” They high-step the junction between two boxcars, the left one already covered in ugly silver Krylon throw-ups, probably the work of some kid from West Clusterfuck, New Mexico, whose backyard opens onto train tracks. That's the problem with freights: too much access and not enough accountability. Toys use them as practice walls, and nobody can find the culprits to backhand some sense into them.
There are only a few feet of space between the rows of trains. RISK and BRONX are well hidden, but at the expense of being able to see well themselves. No matter; RISK has painted in pitch-black before. He shakes the can of white sideways, leans over to BRONX, and continues the tutorial in a whisper. “Imagine painting a forty-foot, fifteen-color mural under these conditionsâonly it's darker, the trains are closer together, you're underground, and cops might raid you anytime.”
He steps up to the train, raises the can above his head, then freezes at the sound of boots crunching over gravel. RISK flattens against the train, looks to his left. Three figures are approaching. His instinct is to grab his grandfather and break out, but yard security doesn't roll that thick. RISK has been chased here only once in twenty-something missions, and it was by a single patrolman, whose darting flashlight beam gave him away before he got within a hundred feet. These must be other writers.
“Get down,” RISK hisses. “Hide.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees BRONX comply, scuttle between two train cars and disappear from sight.
Writers are like Siamese fighting fish; whenever two squads meet in an enclosed space, things could get ugly. That's why crews formed to begin with: not out of camaraderie, but for protection, because dudes running alone got jumped and robbed, or extorted for spray-can tributes. Not that this is the Washington Heights Ghost Yard circa 1979. The vast majority of cats out here in Connecticut are pleased to make your acquaintance. It's just freights; there's room enough for everybody. You usually end up trading stories and phone numbers, not mouth shotsâalthough the very provincialism of the scene makes some dudes feel the need to start shit, just to prove that they're true to the spirit of the thing. The most enduring stories in graffiti are about fights, after all, not art.
The trio stops short of the light slashing in between the cars. Two skinny kids on the flanks, RISK's age or younger, each holding a shopping bag bulging with paint. One sports a messed-up Afro and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, down almost to his knees. The other wears a hoodie, his free hand sheathed elbow-deep in the sweatshirt's front pocket. The guy in the middle is bigger, thicker, older. He carries nothing. Two apprentices, one master.
“Hey,” says RISK, standing in full view now. “Nice day to paint, huh?”
The master walks up to him and folds his arms over his chest.
“What chu write?” he demands. The standard question: name, rank, and serial number rolled into one. It can be asked a lot of ways, most of them more pleasant than this.
“RISK ONE. How 'bout you?”
“I never heard of you. Look like a cop to me.” He turns to his cohorts. “You ever heard of RISK ONE?” His tone makes the desired answer clear.
Instead of delivering it, the kid with the Afro scratches his scalp. “You was in
IGT
once, right?”
“Yeah,” RISK says hopefully. Being known is the better part of being respected.
IGT
is
International Graffiti Times,
aerosol grandfather PHASE 2's sporadically published newsletter, and getting a flick in there is the crowning achievement of RISK's career to date. Of course, smacking up a known writer carries infinitely more cachet than stomping out some toy, so it's also possible that this kid's photographic memory has just fucked RISK right in the ass.
The main dude turns back to him; he seems to have decided that RISK is worth impressing at least. “CLOUD 9, RTW,” he reveals, proclaiming his name and his crew's as if the words part seas and shatter boulders. They come close. Rolling Thunder Writers is one of the most feared collectives of the eighties. They ran the Coney Island Yard, the biggest in the city, handed out beat-downs like raffle tickets. CLOUD 9 is a lesser light, not in the class of RTW all-stars like MIN, BOE, RICH, and SAGO. But he got up. Straight letters, mostlyânot a master of style, but a workhorse with a nice clean hand, the kind of guy whose pieces you'd see in magazines by virtue of their sharing a car with burners by his boys. Had a famous fight with KYTE 202 from Psycho Artists at the Hall of Fame. Knocked him the fuck out.
“Oh, word?” RISK tries to sound impressed but casual, keep the fear out of his voice.
“Word. And who the fuck is that?”
RISK turns to find Tristan walking toward him, and his stomach drops.
He gives the old man a baleful stare. “My grandfather.”
“Fuck he doing here?”
RISK cracks his knuckles. “He's about to get up. First time ever.”
“You're shitting me.”
“Nah, for real.”
“What chu write, Grandpa?” CLOUD 9 shouts, as if he suspects the old man might be deaf.
“BRONX,” says Tristan, just as loud. It's the same authority-freighted voice that might boom forth from behind his study door, telling a visitor that he is too busy to socialize. But it sounds more vital out here, in the open air of the dark train yardâsounds, perhaps, the way it did fifty years ago, on some steaming city block.
“You from there?” calls the Afroed kid, incredulous. His fellow apprentice shoots him a screw face.
“Born and raised.”
CLOUD 9 shifts his stance. The gravel rasps beneath him. “How old are you?”
“I'm sixty-eight. And you?”
CLOUD 9 cracks a smile, drops his arms and lets them dangle by his sides. RISK nearly pisses himself with relief. “I'm twenty-five.”
Tristan walks up to him. “Well, that's nothing. I was in Baghdad when you were in your dad's bag, kiddo.”
CLOUD 9 throws back his head and laughs. “Shit. Y'all motherfuckers crazy,” he declares, and swings a splayed hand toward RISK, who startles, then recovers in time to extend his own. Their palms meet with a satisfying clap. CLOUD nods at the old man. “Go ahead, BRONX, do your thing. You 'bout to make the record books. Oldest writer in the history of this shit. Hope you appreciate I'm here to bear witness.”
Tristan takes a can from the knapsack. “Only thing I've ever painted is a lawn chair,” he apologizes, squaring off before the train.
“That's okay, BRONX. All gotta start somewhere. My first piece was wack as hell.”
Tristan depresses the nozzle, and an inch-thick caterpillar of color wiggles up the train.
“Paint top to bottom,” CLOUD instructs. “Control the drips better that way.” He bends at the waist, peers forward. “Whoa. Bermuda Blue?”
“Yeah, man. I found it in his toolshed.”
“Damn.”
Tristan steps back to examine his handiwork. A wobbly bubble-letter
B
floats before him, bleeding Bermuda Blue. It looks like a relic from 1970: the dawn of history, when guys first switched from homemade purple-ink markers to spray cans refitted with oven-cleaner nozzles. The old man shakes the can, then sets to work on his
R.
“You live out here now?” RISK asks CLOUD as they watch.
“Nah, still reppin' BK. My nephews. I'm showin' 'em the ropes.” He gestures behind him. “All right, you pussies are off the hook. Come introduce yourselves. Shit.”
The kids hustle to his side, offer RISK pounds, mumble their names. MEGA and SCRIPT. Thirteenish, upon closer inspection. Their handshakes are loose, no muscle behind them yet. No bluster, even. “Okay, now get to work,” CLOUD commands, and they scurry down the line.
CLOUD shoves his hands into his pockets. “Lucky thing you brought the old man out tonight. I mean, you cool. It's all love. But see, I wouldn't have known that.” He gazes past RISK at SCRIPT and MEGA, both consulting sketchbooks as they paint their outlines on the next car over. “These kids, they're fuckin' art students. They read the mags, think shit is sweet. I'm tryna make 'em understand that if they wanna write, they gotta pay some dues. Be ready to throw hands. Maybe catch a few bad ones, like I did coming up.” He laughs. “I brought these kids out here straight
looking
for a fight. Not giving a fuck whether they won or lost. Just so they'd realize graffiti ain't no weekend sport.”