Pade Interview on @149st.com
_The first time I went bombing trains was with my home boy REGAL RTW. We
did insides at 207th on the 1 line. I was writing 2RUFF and 2TUFF. I
did insides on the RR line in Brooklyn and during rush hour in midtown. I
started hanging with BILROCK 161 in late '79. He had a photo album that
he got from REPEL which really blew my mind. I would look that book for
hours drooling over pieces by CASE, FED 2, DONDI, PART, TRACY 168,
SLAVE, LEE, FUZZ ONE and countless other burners. I had seen JESTER, OO
ONE, PNUT and others growing up and their work was enough to catch my
interest but BIL's book opened up a whole new world for me.
I went by myself to the 1 Yard to do my first piece. One day I was doing insides in the 1 Tunnel when I met SEEN, MAD, and EASY. They invited me up to the Bronx to hit the 6 line to do pieces. That is where I started writing PADE. The first piece I was happy with was at the CC yard with BILROCK and T KID. BIL was at the end of his career and I think the last time he bombed was with me, KB,KN and others at the 28th Street. RR lay-up.
MIN was just getting going on the road to becoming the All-City King,(1981). I started to hang out with MIN ONE all the time. We did throw-ups and insides on the A line with writers like IZ THE WIZ, QUIK and SACH. We also did throw-ups in the E yard and the lay-ups at Sutphin/Van Wyck. The spots which we considered ours were the City Hall lay-up and the AA yard at 175th Street. We also felt at home on the Manhattan Bridge which was right around the corner from "The Way" Henry Street, home of TNS. I hung out with EL3(RIP), BYE(RIP), RICH 2, HEC, SEC, and others in "The Crib" which was an abandoned building on Henry Street Actually, the only line I never hit was the 7 which was still hot from the days of FUZZ ONE.
MIN was at war with everyone at the time and being one of his partners, so was I. MIN was at war with SAGO and I joined the fight when I started going over BOE. MIN wound up meeting SAGO and decided to squash the beef and hang out to hit the Coney Island Yard. I thought that I would probably have to throw down with BOE if I was lucky and didn't get jumped by their whole crew. When we got there they treated us with utmost respect and we became homeys.
MIN started to become interested in doing burners again when he was hanging with SHY147 and DURO. KEL MIN and SHY were doing pieces on the 2s and 5s and soon we were all doing pieces in City Hall. KEL 139 had a large influence on my way of piecing. I remember he would stand by me while I was outlining and punch my arm if my line wasn't straight.
I have dozens of stories of raids, rackings, beefs, and historical antidotes. Once at a raid at the 6 yard I got separated from my crew the cops were between me and the hole the fence. I followed EL KAY, a small writer who knew the yard better than I did, to another exit. As soon as we hit the sidewalk the transit police rolled around the corner. We ran right past them and up the stairs of the Westchester Square station, still carrying huge bags of paint. Jumping the turnstiles we went up to the platform. We stood on the platform, each looking down a stairway from above.
I heard the slow footsteps and the telltale rattling of keys, cuffs, gun, and other paraphernalia. Next I was looking straight down on his cap as it bobbed up the stairs. EL KAY jumped down onto the tracks and in a blink I was with him. As we negotiated the elevated tracks looking down to the street below I thought of what I always thought of up there. I thought of the writer who fell through a gap and landed in the street only to be run over by a bus. I just had to step carefully. I looked up to the platform where the police officer was walking at the same slow pace we were negotiating the tracks. He was telling us to stop. It was at that moment that I realized that he wasn't going to follow us onto the tracks.
At the end of the platform was a lay-up. We went down a few cars then crossed over to the northbound side planning to climb down to the street. We had just climbed under the tracks when a train passed overhead. I had my arm over a railroad tie holding on for dear life. We climbed down a pole and were in the street. After walking a couple stops we hopped the train and went our separate ways. I used my key to open a vacant conductors booth and rode back to Manhattan. I never saw EL KAY again but I always wanted to thank him.
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I went by myself to the 1 Yard to do my first piece. One day I was doing insides in the 1 Tunnel when I met SEEN, MAD, and EASY. They invited me up to the Bronx to hit the 6 line to do pieces. That is where I started writing PADE. The first piece I was happy with was at the CC yard with BILROCK and T KID. BIL was at the end of his career and I think the last time he bombed was with me, KB,KN and others at the 28th Street. RR lay-up.
MIN was just getting going on the road to becoming the All-City King,(1981). I started to hang out with MIN ONE all the time. We did throw-ups and insides on the A line with writers like IZ THE WIZ, QUIK and SACH. We also did throw-ups in the E yard and the lay-ups at Sutphin/Van Wyck. The spots which we considered ours were the City Hall lay-up and the AA yard at 175th Street. We also felt at home on the Manhattan Bridge which was right around the corner from "The Way" Henry Street, home of TNS. I hung out with EL3(RIP), BYE(RIP), RICH 2, HEC, SEC, and others in "The Crib" which was an abandoned building on Henry Street Actually, the only line I never hit was the 7 which was still hot from the days of FUZZ ONE.
MIN was at war with everyone at the time and being one of his partners, so was I. MIN was at war with SAGO and I joined the fight when I started going over BOE. MIN wound up meeting SAGO and decided to squash the beef and hang out to hit the Coney Island Yard. I thought that I would probably have to throw down with BOE if I was lucky and didn't get jumped by their whole crew. When we got there they treated us with utmost respect and we became homeys.
MIN started to become interested in doing burners again when he was hanging with SHY147 and DURO. KEL MIN and SHY were doing pieces on the 2s and 5s and soon we were all doing pieces in City Hall. KEL 139 had a large influence on my way of piecing. I remember he would stand by me while I was outlining and punch my arm if my line wasn't straight.
I have dozens of stories of raids, rackings, beefs, and historical antidotes. Once at a raid at the 6 yard I got separated from my crew the cops were between me and the hole the fence. I followed EL KAY, a small writer who knew the yard better than I did, to another exit. As soon as we hit the sidewalk the transit police rolled around the corner. We ran right past them and up the stairs of the Westchester Square station, still carrying huge bags of paint. Jumping the turnstiles we went up to the platform. We stood on the platform, each looking down a stairway from above.
I heard the slow footsteps and the telltale rattling of keys, cuffs, gun, and other paraphernalia. Next I was looking straight down on his cap as it bobbed up the stairs. EL KAY jumped down onto the tracks and in a blink I was with him. As we negotiated the elevated tracks looking down to the street below I thought of what I always thought of up there. I thought of the writer who fell through a gap and landed in the street only to be run over by a bus. I just had to step carefully. I looked up to the platform where the police officer was walking at the same slow pace we were negotiating the tracks. He was telling us to stop. It was at that moment that I realized that he wasn't going to follow us onto the tracks.
At the end of the platform was a lay-up. We went down a few cars then crossed over to the northbound side planning to climb down to the street. We had just climbed under the tracks when a train passed overhead. I had my arm over a railroad tie holding on for dear life. We climbed down a pole and were in the street. After walking a couple stops we hopped the train and went our separate ways. I used my key to open a vacant conductors booth and rode back to Manhattan. I never saw EL KAY again but I always wanted to thank him.
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A Fateful Night In The One Tunnel
Raided by the Ballbusters
The Ballbusters made problems for everyone in the 1 tunnel. They were a gang of Dominican drug dealers and thugs who lived between 137th and 145thst, just upstairs from the 1 Tunnel. A few of them wrote graffiti. They didn't believe in one on one fights, preferring the stomp out. At least we had some degree of honor and lived by a code of one on one fights. After me and Regal got our paint taken on the 1 train I went to the 1 tunnel with Bilrock Shock Sik T Kid and some others to look for Ballbusters. We waited in the first car on the Northbound side looking towards 145st. After a short wait two uniformed police entered the tunnel. We opened the side doors and as they passed the car we jumped out the other side. It wasn't a quiet exit. We charged out screaming. It was a comedy. Somehow a bunch of dudes fell on top of Bilrock whose arm got fucked up. We got away from the cops easily.
After that was a terrible night for the Vamp Squad. I went with Bilrock and we met up with Shock Tkid Rin Booze Sik and some other Vamp Squad members. When I got to 145 st. someone said that Babyrock from the Ballbusters was on the opposite platform and to go fuck him up. By the time I got to the other side Sik had already thrown him a beating and taken his gold chain. Shock and Rin decided to go uptown to assess the situation. We went up to 168 st. On the way uptown as chance would have it we ran into Cos 207 who was on his way home. Bil said "come and do a car with me and Pade" and Cos said "I'm down." While figuring out our next move at 168 st. we tagged the exit stairway. Then Rin said "all them dudes are home sleeping with their families" and we went back to 145 st. I was at the end closest to 137 st. on the southbound side piecing with Bilrock and Cos when I heard some loud bangs and shock yelling to haul ass. I followed Tkid and Dome and we got separated from the rest. The Ballbusters caught Cos and beat him with bats. He ended up in the hospital. Boozer also got fucked up with bats and Bilrock got caught up in the street, hit with a big pipe, and eventually was saved by some firefighters wielding pikes.
When Min suggested that we start hitting the 1 tunnel a couple years later I was hesitant to say the least. We were two white boys, not large in size although tough and fearless, and we were on the rampage. We were regularly going to all parts of the city hitting nearly every line. We especially liked the underground AA yard at 175thst. near the theatre where Malcolm X was killed. The New Lots Yard ,(2s and 5s) was another of our regular spots along with Grant Layup on the A's, the Union Turnpike Yard,(E's and F's) Sheepshead Bay. The Bridge, (J's), and City Hall ,(RRs), were my favorites because they were nearby and I could roll up on my bicycle.
That being said it was crazier when I went to the 1 tunnel by myself in late 1978 and was pretty much a toy. Or later when I went with Regal with a broken ankle....and hobbled into the layup. Shit when I start thinking of all the dangerous shit I exposed myself to back in those days it's hard for me to believe I survived. Did we have a deathwish? No, we were adrenaline junkies.
PADE
Interview on Subwayoutlaws.com
_ I first started
writing in 1977 in Manhattan. I wrote ZEUS at that time just a toy tagging up
around my neighborhood with a “ EL MARKO” I use to see a lot of graff on the
IRT's and IND's. I really admired JESTER’s work. He had unbelievable tag style
and BOMBED!!! That was in the days before the buff and every time I rode the
train I saw his shit. I remember seeing a clean car that FUZZ ONE had caught and
destroyed! I didn’t know how he had done it. In those days I used to take
moving tags in the last car. I didn’t know where the yards were. By 1979 I was seeing pieces on the IRT’s by LEE that blow my mind. I remember there was this T to B LEE with this green dragon on the 2 train that pulled into the station. I would take the train to every stop to check out this piece when I got to the other end to check out the dragon, the conductor stuck his head out the window and said “ It’s fantastic ain’t it!” I looked at him and said “Damned straight!”
I was hanging out with REGAL RTW in 1979 when I first did insides on a train I wrote 2RUF. We had pentel markers, a uniwide, and set up cheap skeleton keys that I had filed down. We use to pin out the nib’s on the pentels and fill them up with flomaster ink so they would drip big time. We use to call them “geebing “. At the time the insides the insides of the ones where pretty much trashed. You needed a marker like that to go over other writers and make it hard for them to go over you.
In spring of 1979 I met BILROCK 161 aka SAGE , prez of the Rolling thunder Writers. I used to hang out at BILROCK’s and look at his photo album he had shots of some incredible burners. I was used to running down the platform trying to take a mental snapshot of pieces. Now I could look at pieces by DONDI , NOC167, PART , FUZZ ONE , KEL , SHY147 (RIP), FED2, TRACY168 , T-KID, TEAM. The first time I did a piece on the outside of a train was at the 1 yard at Van Cortlandt park. I originally intended to hit the 1 tunnel at 145st and Broadway but there were dozens of work bums there. It was Saturday afternoon but I was dying to paint so I went to the yard in broad daylight. First they pulled out the train I was piecing on so I had to move down a row and start again. I went to the 1 tunnel with my homeboy REGAL and did a windows down, QUIK RTW showed up by himself and went and did a windows down whole car a few cars away from us.
Writers used to come from all five boroughs and knock on BILROCK’s window which was on the street level. BILROCK was at the end of his writing career at the time but I did go writing with him a bunch of times . One night we did a piece at the CC yard with MOOSE106 and T-KID170 and I think maybe BOOZER. By that time I was writing PADE. We also went bombing with KB and KN to the bmt’s. By this time BILROCK passed the RTW crew down to MIN aka NE .
I started hanging out with MIN a lot he got me in to throw up’s and started doing PD throw up’s which are the predominate letters in PADE. I wrote for a lot of crews, RTW, TVS, TD , WOW , TMB , TNS , ROC , TB , UA , RSC, FRESH KIDDS. I hit yards and lay-ups in every borough and many places that writers were afraid to hit. Grant lay-ups on the A train was pretty hot with the cops and I had to ride way out to East New York (from manhattan) with a big bag of paint. One time me MIN and BYE (RIP) got popped by a hot dog cop when we were almost to our stop. We ended up handcuffed together to the railing at Euclid ave. When he got us out of sight he punched MIN in the mouth really hard. A lieutenant came down to look at us. We said we were going to IZ THE WIZ’S house, because he lived nearby, to paint canvases. They gave us summonses for carrying spray paint on the train. I had always heard of how hot city hall lay-up on the RR line was. It was supposedly stupid to even try to hit it. “ That spot become our shit!” I knew so many ways to get out of there that I felt as safe as in my own crib! The AA yard at 175th was also my home away from home. MIN would get back home at 4am,Then we would charge over to 175th street and open the exit hatch from the street and go down stairs to bomb. the bridge was anther spot we would go in the middle of the day. We would go after morning rush hour walk down the stairs to East Broadway and get Chinese Food.
The E line truly was hot and I have been chased and raided hitting the E and F trains about 50% of the time both in the yard and on Sutphin. When I think of all of the yards and lay-ups I bombed I know that I killed shit! I hit RR’s, M’s, J’s, LL’s, D’s, AA’s , CC’s, E’s and F’s , 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and the train to the plane in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx . My only regret is that my efforts were unfocused. If I had had stuck to one, two , three , even four lines I might have gotten a little more fame. The only line I never bombed was the 7 line. The only writer that was all city to me was JESTER. Being that I was MIN1’s partner I had war with everyone. At that time war necessary to keep writers real, and Protect our lay-up’s from becoming brunt, and discourage toys. Nothing personal to anyone I robbed, punched back in the day. I would like to give some advice to youngsters out there today. Learn your history about writers before you and where graffiti comes from. The transit Authority did their best to erase my work and of my homeboys and countless others. Don’t let the origins of an amazing art from be forgotten. PADE
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I was hanging out with REGAL RTW in 1979 when I first did insides on a train I wrote 2RUF. We had pentel markers, a uniwide, and set up cheap skeleton keys that I had filed down. We use to pin out the nib’s on the pentels and fill them up with flomaster ink so they would drip big time. We use to call them “geebing “. At the time the insides the insides of the ones where pretty much trashed. You needed a marker like that to go over other writers and make it hard for them to go over you.
In spring of 1979 I met BILROCK 161 aka SAGE , prez of the Rolling thunder Writers. I used to hang out at BILROCK’s and look at his photo album he had shots of some incredible burners. I was used to running down the platform trying to take a mental snapshot of pieces. Now I could look at pieces by DONDI , NOC167, PART , FUZZ ONE , KEL , SHY147 (RIP), FED2, TRACY168 , T-KID, TEAM. The first time I did a piece on the outside of a train was at the 1 yard at Van Cortlandt park. I originally intended to hit the 1 tunnel at 145st and Broadway but there were dozens of work bums there. It was Saturday afternoon but I was dying to paint so I went to the yard in broad daylight. First they pulled out the train I was piecing on so I had to move down a row and start again. I went to the 1 tunnel with my homeboy REGAL and did a windows down, QUIK RTW showed up by himself and went and did a windows down whole car a few cars away from us.
Writers used to come from all five boroughs and knock on BILROCK’s window which was on the street level. BILROCK was at the end of his writing career at the time but I did go writing with him a bunch of times . One night we did a piece at the CC yard with MOOSE106 and T-KID170 and I think maybe BOOZER. By that time I was writing PADE. We also went bombing with KB and KN to the bmt’s. By this time BILROCK passed the RTW crew down to MIN aka NE .
I started hanging out with MIN a lot he got me in to throw up’s and started doing PD throw up’s which are the predominate letters in PADE. I wrote for a lot of crews, RTW, TVS, TD , WOW , TMB , TNS , ROC , TB , UA , RSC, FRESH KIDDS. I hit yards and lay-ups in every borough and many places that writers were afraid to hit. Grant lay-ups on the A train was pretty hot with the cops and I had to ride way out to East New York (from manhattan) with a big bag of paint. One time me MIN and BYE (RIP) got popped by a hot dog cop when we were almost to our stop. We ended up handcuffed together to the railing at Euclid ave. When he got us out of sight he punched MIN in the mouth really hard. A lieutenant came down to look at us. We said we were going to IZ THE WIZ’S house, because he lived nearby, to paint canvases. They gave us summonses for carrying spray paint on the train. I had always heard of how hot city hall lay-up on the RR line was. It was supposedly stupid to even try to hit it. “ That spot become our shit!” I knew so many ways to get out of there that I felt as safe as in my own crib! The AA yard at 175th was also my home away from home. MIN would get back home at 4am,Then we would charge over to 175th street and open the exit hatch from the street and go down stairs to bomb. the bridge was anther spot we would go in the middle of the day. We would go after morning rush hour walk down the stairs to East Broadway and get Chinese Food.
The E line truly was hot and I have been chased and raided hitting the E and F trains about 50% of the time both in the yard and on Sutphin. When I think of all of the yards and lay-ups I bombed I know that I killed shit! I hit RR’s, M’s, J’s, LL’s, D’s, AA’s , CC’s, E’s and F’s , 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and the train to the plane in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx . My only regret is that my efforts were unfocused. If I had had stuck to one, two , three , even four lines I might have gotten a little more fame. The only line I never bombed was the 7 line. The only writer that was all city to me was JESTER. Being that I was MIN1’s partner I had war with everyone. At that time war necessary to keep writers real, and Protect our lay-up’s from becoming brunt, and discourage toys. Nothing personal to anyone I robbed, punched back in the day. I would like to give some advice to youngsters out there today. Learn your history about writers before you and where graffiti comes from. The transit Authority did their best to erase my work and of my homeboys and countless others. Don’t let the origins of an amazing art from be forgotten. PADE
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