@Rootcheck - Remember Your Roots @LAtaco / Vol.4
BELIEVE IT OR NOT EDITION + ANAHEIM ARCHIVE #1
At first the plan was to cram the story of that night in, but some history of Anaheim came up in the archives, small detour.
If you want to skip all that and jump straight into what happened that night, look for the BOLD SENTENCE as a jump off.
Back in the day (96-99) in Anaheim there was a big ass construction zone.
Disney was building underground tunnels, Cal-Trans was all over the place and they were mean as hell in general. During this construction big ass chunks of the 5(lots), the 405(lsds dtd ek), the 22(aubs) etc. freeways would shut down and black out completely. A lot of bombing took place, kings/crews came and went throughout the tag banging days. Just195 and Earn (some straight OGs in graffiti) were holding down the Anaheim Swap Meet with a little hip hop / airbrush shop. Just195 had a wall behind the swap meet, with Lucha libre wrestlers doing their thing in the background. A lot of writers met up there so speaking on Anaheim, Masterpiece was sort of a middle ground for OC to meet LA. Earn and Just called the shop Masterpiece and in 1999 the MP2k crew was formed there, a lot of them are still around to this day.
In a way, Just and Earn took writers in at Masterpiece, and gave them a gateway to something bigger. OC writers looked up to the LA writers, and in some cases OC produced the same originality. Getting way off the point, but the BALL yard, behind the indoor, is where the dudes in this story all met.
Trying to speak on the Anaheim Indoor is an article in itself, this story is about one night in the general area of the ball yard, one night that took Anaheim cops to the limit, Anaheim hasn't been the same ever since (construction + the death of freeway piece bombing in OC was less than a year down the line, little did we know) .
Most of you will take this as some bullshit, but there are 3 people who were there, if you should ever bump into them at a bar somewhere, find out for yourself. Here are those three people in a visual perspective around the time of this occurrence.
In those days, when the freeways shut down, writers went out almost every night. Knowing I was toy back then(everyone was once), there's always someone bigger and better no matter who you are - kids pheened for those spots, as well as we did. Keb5 had that hanging spot (a few others got some but that shit stood out) , they took the wood down before buff, AUBs killed it in general. SWIM = Someone I met - had the whole top of that inner curve of the 5, unreachable without a ladder with cars inches away, man shit was just going down back then. Forgive me for leaving %90 of the people/crews out, on with the show.
Trains were heavy, so there was a huge freight scene, a lot of time they would park them on the sides of the numerous freeways (in this case the 5), and with that setting in mind, let's get into a story.*
(I'll throw some flicks in for courtesy):
One night in Anaheim, after the fireworks went off, and the people all went home to their cozy casas, Cal-Trans decided to shut down the 5 once again.
Down the way people like GOE, DRUGS, THYST, TRES, PRAE, ISEK(Gi), OSO(Bair), Celcyius, Keb5, and many many more writers I can't think of at present were hunting. We ran into each other at Wally Worlds and shit, it was a good time to paint in OC. Every night like clockwork, when Cal-Trans shut it down, OC became a battleground. On this particular night, of the 3 people above which will be mentioned in order as 1 2 and 3, 3 had to work a night shift at Denny's from 12-6am. 1,2 and 3 were painting from sundown pretty much nightly, so it wasn't uncommon. At this time, the city of Anaheim was building those sound / anti graff walls / tunnels, and from the BALL YARD, you could get over to the 5 pretty easily. 3 had to jam out, so 1 and 2 decided to do just that - get over to the CLOSED section of the 5, and see what they could find.
After 3 took off 1 and 2 were mobile, so they parked at a little abandoned spot that was pretty well known to be safe - and was only a fence hop away from the closed wonderland called the 5. Remembering that night is a trip, just now I could smell the breath of the dog that barked in my face for 30 minutes, you'll find out why.
As we arrived to our normal entrance, we noticed 2 lines of nice metal parked on the way and decided it would be nice to add some color to that situation. It must have been about 12:45A.M at this point, and the freeway had been closed for a few hours. Normally when you're at a line you can hear almost everything, depending - at that spot you couldn't hear shit, so as 1 and 2 were painting, 2 heard a sound like someone banging on the car from the inside. 1 was completely oblivious and continued painting, as I scanned underneath the cars I saw what looked like boots on the furthest line, so I immediately got 1s attention and pointed to the disturbance.
HUGE MISTAKE.
1 listened for what seemed like 10 seconds there was someone there, but they didn't know we were there. After 20 seconds or so, the noise turned into what was DEFINITELY somebody WALKING on the furthest lines gravel. With that, 1 sprang like a track star, making so much noise that those boots started to follow the sound, and sure enough - it wasn't just some lame Cal Trans, it was the Highway Patrol, loud and clear. I was so far behind 1, the HP was talking to me as we ran at almost the same speed down the freeway sound wall, "stop or I'll shoot", "police", stood out - then as we made our way to the break, "slow down", and "come on" encouraged me to catch up with 1 and put some space in between the boots. We darted into SSKs old neighborhood, and was as out of breath as I was, he was pissed I said his name I remember, but noid' he was because I was too far from the cop when I said "**** fuck slow down", I knew we out ran the dude. Now we have the problem of being on the other side of the freeway, in someones hood, and in Anaheim, caught red handed painting freights...
This is not good for your life kids, do not try this at home.
We knew where we were, I remember this much to be brief - we decided to split up and meet at the car. We were already 1 and 2, on the run for evading at very least. Not even 5 minutes after splitting up, I was walking a back street when a woman cop in a cruiser jammed up on me hard... I knew I had to go - and go I did. I hit 4/5 gates and got out 3 streets over, only to see 1 walking down one of the main streets a stones throw away. Before I even had time to get to 1, he got pretty much sandwiched in by 2 cruisers in the open. I've never seen anyone so fucking sneaky, somehow we were hopping gates together again less than a minute later. 1, is a lanky dude, as am I, but this dude was on some NBA JAM on fire shit, while I was failing....
I decided to stop in the yard we were in and hug the inner wall and tried to get 1 to also, he just kept running and mumbled some shit.
I was in such adrenaline shock, I didn't even notice the HUGE fucking dog in the yard next to where I laid down, and believe this or fucking not - I COULD HEAR THE POLICE TALKING.
"Set up perimeters at blah blah", and shit like "7 cars, get the helicopter out here asap blah", no joke right? So here I am, 1 yard in from the police on the other other side of that wall, scared as hell he won't be lazy, and a dog, literally spitting in my face as he yaps - and I can hear the cops amped as hell like coyotes on a kill dude.
In a way, you'd think - this wraps it up right - that's the end... Caught, boring... NO:
1 kept going a few streets over and did the same shit, we both laid in different people's yards from about 2+ AM until the sun started to rise (3 hours or so)... The car was far, and they weren't done jamming up and down streets looking for us. I don't know how the hell this happened, but making an even longer story short, we BOTH ended up walking through the SAME Wal-Mart (The same Wal-Mart 3 worked at in the flick area in the day). They had 1 hemmed up (what the ***!?) as I walked around the corner they saw me and that was that, I had no power left, I ditched my over shirt in the yard I was in, I remember I was clean as a whistle but after that many encounters, they knew it was us man.
It gets WORSE...
3 just happened to have left his bag under the car, where they found it, his paint + some sketches and shit, along with his ID!
They had 3 hemmed up, thinking he was one of the two people they were chasing all night, they ran the car - it came back to 2... My story was: I was walking because me and my girl argued and I wanted to kill myself earlier, but I felt better. I had no idea who either of those people were, and I stuck to it, as they attached the BAG - with the ID - to the CAR - to...
ONE HUGE PROBLEM.
They gave each of us the same story "your friend said blah blah", but we all had one in return... NOTHING FOR THEM.
They hurled threats, held us for hours in hot cars, lied about numerous things including we're all getting felonies and won't see freedom for years, they were just generally HEATED. After they used the resources one might need to secure an ENTIRE city, they ran out of options and had to let us all go.
In the end, we ended up at 3s house - let go separately due to random shit, we even got to CELEBRATE (smoke)!
The lesson here is not don't snitch, but it's a lot easier on everyone including yourself if YOU DON'T SNITCH. There is no lesson unfortunately. It was just an insane series of events, there must have been 4/6 times each of us was "caught for sure".
Each little thing that they built up against us, every little threat, huge weights of time they promised we would lose, commonly taken from the lives of people like us, were lifted from our shoulders. After all the bullshit talk, all the threats lies and insults they could throw at us, we were free. Like I said, the story isn't a story at all, in fact, there's more to it depending which angle you approach it from. The fact is, that night - we were beat, but we beat the system - and it felt damn good to be free...
Free...
At last.
@Rootcheck is an archive of flicks from the mid nineties, documenting the exodus of OC writers to LA, As well as Archiving your favorite writers OLD shit. One original flick per tweet via the Twitter feed @Rootcheck, #Tacolife.
