I skateboarded down the steep San Francico-like hill on 187th street going down Broadway. A feat considered “psycho” by the guys in my neighborhood, but to me it was only a matter of timing the traffic lights and flowing in with the cars at the bottom.
I had a lot of changes going on in my life and felt nostalgic to see some of my elementary school friends. I skated to Benett Avenue to see my friend Elliot Silver. Elliot was a chubby, smart Jewish kid who wore cheap slacks and dress shirts. If it wasn’t for his love of sports, he would have been lumped in with the nerds or maybe not...Elliot was a very likeable kid.
I skated onto Elliot’s block in time to catch him coming out with some other friends. At first I wasn’t sure if he was Elliot or not. He must have lost at least 40 pounds but besides that, he dressed differently. He now wore burgandy Lee twill jeans, shelltop Adidas and nylon a BVD top. He no longer had a haircut that was parted in the middle. His hair was pushed back with a bleach blond tail hanging in the back. His ear was prieced with a feather earring. For the time, he looked cool. Very cool.
“Hey Elliot, what’s up? I can hardly recognize you.”
“Vinny, what’s up bro? Good to see you.”
He introduced me to his friends Isha, Anthony and a tall, skinny lanky kid named Raymond. I knew who Raymond was because his cousin Maria was my cousin/sister’s Patrica’s best friend and was was a constant presence in my house. Raymond was a dick. He liked to diss people at every opportunity. He wrote Sir and claimed that Tracey 168 had put him down with Wild Style. I doubted that though.
“I got juvenile diabetes. I almost died.”
“Oh shit! Thank God, dude...you didn’t.”
“We’re going bombing. Wanna come?”
“Sure why not?”
Then I thought about it. Bombing?
“What are we going to blow up?”
“You stupid ass, we’re going to tag up. Graffiti. Don’t you know shit? Sir told me.
I glared at him, hating him. I visualized knocking him down and pinning him to the ground with my knees on his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe. I would fit my hand inside his mouth and slowly force it down his throat. I would try to force my whole arm down until I can grab one of his slimey organs inside of him and squish it with my hand. I wasn’t sure how possible this was, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try. I didn’t like being dissed.
“Don’t call me stupid ass.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Come on, Raymond, why do you always have to diss everybody? Just chill the fuck out.” Elliot stepped in.
I kept my eyes focused on Sir’s eyes, making it a point not to blink. He looked away first. Faggot, I thought.
“We’re going to the Ghost Yard.” Elliot announced.
With a name like the Ghost Yard, it had to be fun and I was always down for some fun.
Elliot showed me homemade markers called “mops” made out of deodorant bottles, chalkboard erasers and purple ink stolen from a local supermarket. Elliot tagged E.T. and claimed that he was down with The Master Blasters, Iz the Wiz’s crew. Isha tagged Sinner and his brother Anthony wrote Star. I didn’t have a tag yet.
“Write Psycho. that’s what everybody calls you anyway, you crazy motherfucker!” Elliot advised me. It made sense.
On the way to the Ghost Yard, everybody randomly took tags. They all had impressive handstyles. Mine sucked and I knew it. I even misspelled psycho.
“Look at you, you’re fucking toy!” Sir barked as soon as I finished my first tag. I didn’t know what a toy was but it didn’t sound good to me. I wanted to kick him in the balls. I wondered why Elliot hung out with such a dick. Years later, I learned that Sir commited suicide by jumping off the roof of his building, landing onto a spiked steel fence in broad daylight during summer. Traumatizing half his block. I guess he was an asshole to the very end.
Elliot had the keys to the bobwired entrance to the Ghost Yard. I was impressed. We walked leisurely through the yard to where the trains were parked. I thought that maybe we should have been more stealth-like, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get dissed. We climbed into a subway car. Everybody started to bomb the insides. For no reason in particular except that I was mischievious, I started kicking out the windows. Everybody yelled at me at once to stop. I shrugged. Sorry!
We tagged up car after car and by the third car, two boys snuck up on us. They were older boys and we knew them from our elementary school. They acted friendly and asked a lot of questions. They wanted to know how we entered the train yard. Elliot bragged that he had the master key. I thought he was foolish for this. They asked how long we were going to be in the yard and instead of telling them that we were about to leave, Elliot told them that we were there for the whole day. They left abruptly. I was suspicious, but kept my thoughts to myself since I was the new jack in this scene.
About half a hour later the two boys returned. They warned us that Rolling Thunder Writers were in the house. We looked out the window and saw a posse of about 30 guys walking on the other side of the yard. The boys told us to follow them. We ran through car after car after car of the train. We jumped out at the first car to be greeted by a group of older guys. They looked to be 16-20 years and about six of them. The guy who seemed to the leader announced:
“Y’all know what this is. It’s a big vamp!”
The leader had his face full of scratches. His girlfriend must have fucked him up I thought. He was probably caught cheating, I decided. They made us take off our sneakers. Raymond had a ridiculous bandage on one of his big toes.
“What the fuck is this?” the leader laughed.
“Why don’t you fuck off?” Raymond shot back.
The leader smashed his toes with a softball stick. Raymond yelled. The leader whacked him a few more times on his legs and knees, causing him to make funny noises out of pain. I had a hard time not laughing.
“You guys are pussies. We’re jus little kids!” Elliot shouted. I thought he was brave, but there were no way that we could beat these guys. Not only did they have more guys then us, but they were so much bigger than us. I played the back and kept my mouth shut. I didn’t have anything to rob, not even fifty cents.
The leader whacked Elliot with the stick. This shut him up for a few seconds. He went into Elliot’s pockets, took a few crumpled up dollars and chucked his housekeys over a fence and into the East river.
“Where’s the master key?”
“You just threw it away, asshole!”
He was about to whack Elliot again, but Sir had to say something.
“What a stupid ass!”
All the guys jumped Sir, beating him with the stick and kicking him. The leader asked him, don’t you learn to shut up? Sir yelled and screamed, acting like he was in more pain than he was really in. I could tell that the guys were holding back because Sir was a little kid, 12 years old.
I found the whole affair funny and I had a hard time not laughing. I didn’t want to upset my friends nor did I want to get beat up by the big guys. I liked the whole vamping idea. Except that I would be the one doing the vamping from that point on. Hell, I didn’t even want to tag all that much. I just wanted to vamp. “Give me your shit, motherfucker!” I smiled, knowing that I could get into that.
The big guys threw us out the yard. Star and Sinner carried Sir out like a wounded soilder. He was moaning and groaning the whole time. I had to depart from them as soon as possible. I needed to be able to laugh in peace. I stashed my skateboard in Elliot’s building. I told him to hold it for me and I would pick it up during the week.
Later that night I went to Eddie’s house. Eddie wrote Resk. Little Man One and Rize TNB was there. It was the first time I met Rize. He was cool a guy and knew a lot about graffiti. He did whole cars on the 1 line with a guy named Sak. I told them all about misadventures at the Ghost Yard. I described the guys to a tee.
“That was T-Kid, bro.” Rize informed me. He should know because he was down with T-Kid’s crew, The Nasty Boys and Tat.
I loved T-Kid’s work. He was and still is one of graffiti’s biggest style masters ever. I was a fan.
“T-Kid? Cool. He fucked Sir up!”
Many years later I would get to meet T-kid and become friends with him.
Posted on October 07, 2007 at 06:53 AM | Comment (6 comments)
