Not Pretty

In the first part of this City Arts special report, available online via our March-April issue, we met Clone Roc and Auras, of 2FTC (pronounced “two feet crew”). Both are 22 and prefer to use their street aliases. They comprise half of a “crew” of Tacoma graffiti writers that recently painted murals on two local buildings with the permission of the property owners. They and some of their friends joined the author at a Georgetown pizza parlor to talk about graffiti—both the bad (it’s almost always illegal) and the beautiful (it’s now widely accepted as art) sides as they see and live them. They also discussed their ambivalence at gaining legitimacy as “graffiti artists.” 

Tagging is graffiti at its most familiar and dangerous. It’s against the law to spray paint a nickname, or “tag,” on a street sign, bridge or building. Or anywhere, in fact. For community activists like Darren Pen, who spent January’s snow days frantically rescheduling the blessing of Foss High (part of the neighborhood’s response to the fatal shooting that occurred there on January 3), there is another serious issue implicit in tagging: potential gang-related activity.

Pen is a team leader at Safe Streets, a nonprofit organization aimed at strengthening community in Tacoma through general neighborhood cleanup and education. He organizes “block parties”: groups of volunteers to help small businesses and homeowners cover up unsightly or reappearing tags.

Pen showed me tags he believes are clear signs of the presence of violent gangs; they’re scrawled on the sides of houses on the Eastside. He’s near expert at picking out the key symbols: dollar signs; the Star of David used for anti-Semitic purposes; “B” for “Bloods” and “C” for “Crips,” notorious rival gangs. Although Pen approves of graffiti-inspired art, he makes no concessions for what he calls “gang tags,” which he estimates to comprise around ten percent of tagging in Tacoma.

Safe Streets operates with textbook adherence to the Broken Windows theory: fix the problems when they are small to prevent crime and deter antisocial behavior. Thwart taggers at every turn. The assumption is that if a tagger’s work is eliminated before it is seen, the tagger will not return. Like commercial outdoor advertisers, taggers want a substantial guaranteed audience.

Two children, very young, appear from behind a fence that Pen’s block party is painting. The kids, Angel and his cousin Kevin, tell me “gangsters” tag their fence; it makes their house “look ugly.” I watch as the children enthusiastically take brushes and rollers from Pen. I’m touched that they are doing their part—and horrified that there is no more than this flimsy fence to separate their families from the malign impact of gangs.

“Safe Streets,” Pen says, “is here to empower citizens to get involved.” He’s convinced that Tacomans are willing to wage an organized fight against gang tags. What will they do, I ask, if the tags reappear? “Safe Streets will paint over them again,” says Pen.

Paul Ellis of the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce and the downtown Business Improvement Area (BIA), a coalition of stakeholders in an 84-block area, is also concerned by the local tagging epidemic. An article in the October 19 issue of Tacoma Weekly refers to tagging as a plague that’s mercilessly afflicting Tacoma, and the BIA’s statistics appear to support the assertion: In 2005, 263 tags were sighted in the downtown area and removed. In 2006, there were 602. Authorities say that graffiti remediation costs taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars every year.

There’s been a general consensus that graffiti represents the activity of dangerous people, Ellis affirms. But that may be changing. “A young man who did the structural engineering for the Washington State History Museum explained to us that his interest in architecture began because he was a tagger and a graffiti artist,” says Ellis. “This opened a lot of people’s eyes to the fact that these aren’t just thugs that live on the street all their lives. These are creative young people who may find a different path out of all this.”

Ellis says this story has stayed with him. He draws a strong distinction between taggers and graffiti artists. And he’s adopting tactics that recognize the distinction: On the one hand, he is working with the police department to step up enforcement of the law, enacted by the City Council in 1999, that makes tagging a crime. On the other, says Ellis, “I’m also talking with a lot of merchants about how we can involve graffiti artists—and give them some venues to exercise their creativity.”
I’ve heard several people express interest in the “space for creativity” concept. But when and where remains undetermined. Legal venues have so far appeared only on private property, volunteered by the owners.

Meanwhile, the enforcement prong of the BIA plan is showing results. Four perpetrators were apprehended while tagging and arrested on January 1 at Seventh and Broadway by a covert joint BIA and Tacoma Police Department “graffiti patrol.”

Detective Ron Lewis of the Tacoma Police Department has arrested more than a few taggers: 21 to be exact, all of whom pleaded guilty without a trial. “Taggers come in all races and genders,” he says, “including good kids and kids that have some criminal history. This is a culture that some kids embrace because it really does not require a particular skill—just the desire to put a name out there that others will recognize.”

How much of a priority is arresting taggers in Tacoma? TPD Detective Barry McColeman tells me straight: “It’s not as high as shooters or rapists or drug dealers or domestic violence abusers or child molesters or car thieves or meth cooks or burglars. But it is a much more visible crime.”
When I tell 2FTC about the January 1 arrests, they shrug. It’s all a part of the scene. If one of your crew members gets arrested, they say, you try to bail him out. If you can’t, you “crush” [tag] the city in homage. “Free Clone.” “Free Auras.” Anything’s good publicity for a graffiti writer.

Graffiti i– Bad, Beautiful
and Dangerou–

According to Auras of 2FTC, there is a huge difference between “people who want to paint” and “people who just want to gang-bang.” Many of the people I interviewed seem comfortable with this assessment. Nonetheless, there is intense competition between crews. It’s not often that crews bump into each other, but there are sometimes fistfights.

Many of the graffiti writers I met like to appear tough. They’re egotistical. They smoke and drink.

Some are casual drug users. A member of 2FTC showed up at one of our meetings with two ripe black eyes, the result of a “little scuffle” the night before.

One graffiti crew wants to put its tag where other crews will see it; gangs use tags to mark their turf and warn off other gangs. This is where I sympathize with people who have a hard time distinguishing between gangs with spray paint and graffiti crews who want to paint. How do you stop one without stifling the other?

Graffiti has earned 2FTC a lot of recognition and respect; maintaining both is important to them. They have no illusions that they can transform the destruction of property into a respected pastime. Nor do they want to. Without the risk of getting caught and competition among peers, graffiti wouldn’t be graffiti. Being the best graffiti artist in Tacoma means painting the best and the most in high-profile spots.

And, problematically, it means continuing to tag even when there are walls available to paint on legally. “I believe that to be a graffiti writer you have to do it all,” says Auras. “You gotta piece [paint large murals], you gotta bomb [paint many surfaces], you gotta tag, you know, everything. That’s how you keep your rep up. That’s the scene.” If your tag isn’t all around the city, how does anyone know you’re a graffiti writer? Tagging is Graffiti 101, where the basic skill begins and writers like these gain their reputations.

Clone Roc has had several art shows with 2FTC and other artists in which he’s sold graffiti-

inspired canvases and even shoes he painted, making skillfully embellished brand-name sneak­ers just a touch funkier with hot pinks, lime greens and dark purple splatters. (They look great.) He and the crew have also painted live at the Museum of Glass and at a 100th Monkey Party, where he says he made hundreds of dollars after connecting with interested collectors. Whether you call him an artist or not, Tacoma is buying his work.

The 2FTC members are not paid for their mural painting and they supply all their own materials. But the crew’s piece on the side of the Sixth Avenue Art Gallery, owned by Charles “Kelly” Creso, and a second enormous mural on the Embellish Salon on 11th and Market, not far from where the taggers were arrested in January, are affording Clone Roc high visibility for which he can claim credit without fear of criminal reprisal. (The Embellish wall, provided by salon owner Patricia Lecy-Davis, is the impressive work of 2FTC and their friends, JRat, Pubs one and Keger.) “Yes, I’m getting legal murals in Tacoma,” Clone Roc confirms, “but there’s still nights when I have to go paint trains or destroy [cover with tags] a building. That’s how I integrate myself into the city.” Whether Tacoma buys Clone Roc’s work or not, I think it will continue to literally cover the city in more ways than you might know.

Graffiti is Graffiti is Graffiti

After we finish our pizza, Auras and Clone invite me back to the Audio Dose recording studio in Georgetown’s shadowy warehouse district. The studio is run by J. Lee, a producer and musician from Philadelphia. He’s bankrolling an album by Top Left, the hip-hop group Clone Roc and Auras pioneered. Top Left refers to the Northwest region, where everyone involved in the project is from.

Sleeping semi-trucks line the streets outside, while almost $70,000 worth of equipment fills the two rooms inside the studios. The guys get right to work. Auras records a couple of tracks he’s just written.

I’ve noticed that Auras and Clone Roc are always, always drawing. They pass a spiral notebook back and forth and sketch in it as they talk to me. I can’t read or understand the writing, but I see their wrists move confidently, quickly. In school, they say, they used to barter sketches for free lunches.

Suddenly, Auras realizes he’s left some new lyrics at home. He calls his mom on Clone Roc’s cell phone and has her read them to him.

Auras has a sense of promise about him. He’s shy, but funny. He’s very friendly, but I can tell he wants to get back to work. “Without music, without writing, I wouldn’t be alive,” he asserts. I’m not sure what that means, but in the moment, I can’t help but believe him.

Later, Niles, 23, another talented member of 2FTC, tells me, “Graffiti artists aren’t concerned with longevity.” I don’t think he’s talking about mortality; it’s a reference to the practice by writers of painting over their large murals so they can start new ones. It’s a matter of practicality. Graffiti writers only have so many walls to choose from.
Sometimes they must recycle a canvas to keep painting. It reminds me of Tibetan monks’ practice of destroying their carefully crafted mandalas almost as soon as they finish them. There’s an awareness of futility in the face of change that the graffiti writers I met seem to grasp intuitively. They don’t get attached to their finished works.

They have an impulse to move on the instant something is complete. The result: they’re always making new work. Always improving as artists. And always staying two steps shy of assimilation into the mainstream.

How can I fairly represent these young men after just a few meetings? Looking beyond the layers of the image they effectively project—their street cred—I’m convinced they’re serious and work hard at their craft. But I know, too, that their love for this rough and ready medium of expression leads to a fierce disconnect from conventional society. Once you’ve tackled a freeway sign, a train car or the entire side of a building with a spray can—and gotten away with it—you’re probably living pretty large. “Normal” can never be the same.

Despite its destructive impact on property owners and affected neighborhoods, graffiti seems to me to be bringing together and mobilizing the citizens of Tacoma in many different ways. Graffiti crews. Block parties painting over graffiti. Patrons of legal graffiti murals. Neighborhood organizations. Law enforcement. Business groups. Civic leaders and policymakers. And everyone who glimpses graffiti as part of their everyday world.

Just as the brilliant purples and lime greens of the wall on Eleventh and Market force passersby to stop and stare, every tag I see is a reminder that there is an undercurrent of life beneath this city’s struggling infrastructure. It’s a life force that needs to be considered, confronted, maybe given a place of its own outside of established museums and civic institutions.

Perhaps Tacoma’s graffiti writers have to be brought to make reparations. Perhaps they should be taken seriously as artists. Neither solution feels like a satisfying end to this story. So the city is working towards reconciliation as best it can: by creating spaces for both social reform and unconventional forms of creativity.

In the meantime, 2FTC and other graffiti writers in Tacoma will continue to paint where they can. On legal walls, on canvases in their garages, illegally in corners of the city in need of a “special touch.” The desire to create something—very public art—or to win some respect they aren’t finding elsewhere is what drives the graffiti writers I spoke to. Knowing something now about what makes the writers write, I can’t help giving every scrawled tag I see more than a passing glance. ‹

Photography by Aaron Locke