Hip-Hop History Month, #12

This one is going to cause controversy, I'm sure, but I have to get this one off. I will NEVER deny that New York is the Mecca of hip-hop. There is zero question, and absolutely no doubt. However, what I am gonna say, may ruffle quite a few feathers.

What would you say if I told you that "graffiti started in Los Angeles"? "Crazy", right? Hip-Hop History month story #12. Let's get it!

So the L.A. River and the Arroyo Seco have always been magnets for people because people here found shelter in the nexus of railroads, bridges and water and they used all those things together. And it's always been a magnet for graffiti even before the paving and you can see the remnants of that even today in terms of whitewashed walls, and spray cans everywhere. There’s constant production of writing in the city and that has not changed for the past hundred years.

Some artists who started painting graffiti in the river in the '80s & '90s when it was still a no-man's land, made sightings of dead bodies, drug deals or shootouts. They discovered all that was commonplace. Since the Army Corp of Engineers moved to channelize the river in 1938, the river's 51-mile stretch of grey concrete walls and low police presence has offered graffiti writers not only a large canvas for colorful murals, but also the lure of adventure in a place seemingly devoid of laws. That experience is not unique, with the river playing host to tags that date as far back as the early 1900s, making the river a physical timeline of the human experience along it.

Long before pushes for cleanup efforts and arts initiatives, the river was largely regarded as a repository for urban runoff. Graffiti artists were brought life and vibrancy to the river, something that had been missing since it was paved over. Even so, conversations about the future of the river have excluded graffiti artists who have been trying to carve out their place in larger plans for the river.

Referring to how deep graffiti's roots in the river go, there is graffiti that predated the channelization of the river. One tag dates back to the early 1900s and was found on the rafters of a bridge near the Arroyo Seco Confluence. It read "Kid Bill 8­-3­-14" in Western font. It is believed that the tag and others like it, often with "Kid" preceding the name, was left by vagrants who traveled by the trains that line the river; yeah....."hobos". The group also found graffiti left by Pachucos, or "Zoot­suiters," in the river from the 1940s. One piece read "Killer de Dog Town 8­-9­-48" and was written with tar collected from a local train yard and painted in the rafters near the historic William Mead Housing Projects near Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Living in the poverty-stricken neighborhoods surrounding the river, Pachucos would mark the territory of their gangs, which had formed in the face of the increased racially-motivated violence and discrimination against the young Mexican­ Americans.

For the past hundred years, an alternative written record has been tied to L.A.’s built environment. The infrastructure of railroads, bridges, storm drain tunnels, harbors, and rivers has sheltered discrete but overlapping communities that send messages stone on stone.

This vernacular history is inscribed mostly on concrete with rocks, chalk, charcoal, pencil, spray paint, and sometimes railroad tar. It is a chronology of presence—mostly names and dates. Some of it has been preserved due to flukes of infrastructural design. Other, older marks survive because their writers found odd places that were protected from the elements and were out of reach.

I feel, there is a strong possibility, like b-boying and pop-locking was taken to the opposite coast by visitors or people "re-rooting", graffiti made the exact same transition. Hobos travel by train. The LA River was secluded and away from the view of police. There was time to "express" and immortalized one's self. Logically speaking, it makes complete sense.

There’s tons of shows about gangs, street gangs, motorcycle gangs, all that. But nothing about graffiti. You know why? Because nobody shares information; it’s hard to get. But me, I LOVE this whole hip-hop culture with all my heart, and I love my personal roots as well (Southern California). So much so, I want California to get its just due in its contribution to the foundation of the culture that birthed me.

New York, may have elevated it some when they ran with it, but just like all the other elements, evolving is natural. Like Kool Moe Dee did by causing the transition of rapping. Like Grand Master Flash did with Djing, like Rahzel did with beat-boxing, and like each generation of b-boys raised it up pa notch. There is ALWAYS a beginning, and that beginning should be respected and duly noted.

If you have an open mind, there are books on the subject you could read that would show pictures and time lines like Susan A. Phillips' The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. Or The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River: Volume 1, by Evan Skrederstu, who started bombing in the LA River in the 90s, and he describes what he found down there. The information is there, you just have to be open to it.