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EROS 1994 Tracks

Oldie but a goodie. Freestyle painted in 1994 with Chen under the south Minneapolis Tracks. This piece was really significant at the time and was a relatively different style then people were used to seeing in Minneapolis. I basically rocked a piece in what I consider to be a style in the culture of Cali graffiti at the time. It wasn't as good as what I was used to seeing but I was so infuenced at the time by writers that I had grown up admiring like Risky, Power, Slick, Hex, Dream (L.A.), Green and Charlie that it came out in my style. Originally, I painted with Chen but he never finished and I did. Funny thing is, while painting this, I had a younger writer (now a famous T.C. writer) and his Mom, stand behind me and watch me and ask me questions the whole time. I didn't mind. At them time, I was just flattered to have anyone take notice. Also, when I came back a few days later to try to get a photo, I didn't realize that there was a group of people sitting up on the embankment behind the wall. When I took the photo, I heard some people start screaming and yelling at me. I began to walk away and noticed that a small mob had decided to attempt to snatch my camera and jump me. As they approached, I took off running to gain a distance on them. I figured I had a better shot at fighting one or two that followed before the rest caught up. I ran about 10 blocks with some of them on my tail. I finally stopped when it was me and only one other dude. I grabbed the biggest rock I could find and quickly turned and started to go for him. As I got about 5 feet away, he realized that he was alone and that I had now become the aggressor and he stopped dead in his tracks. I think that he had thought that I would be afraid of him. With a giant rock in my hand, I wasn't afraid of shit. He paused and I started to threaten him. He couldn't understand me because he only spoke Spanish but knew I meant business. Right about then, a female approached and intervened. She stated, "He thought you were trying to take a picture of us. We are homeless and drug addicts. We were using drugs and he thought you took a picture of us. Don't hurt him." I told her to tell him I was only taking pictures of my graffiti. She did. He quickly changed his demeaner and when I saw him change to a nonaggressive attitude, I put the rock down. We clearly had a stand off that was based off of a misunderstanding. He looked me over and then they turned and walked back to join their group and I climbed the bridge embankment I was at and went home. It was A really intense sitiuation and I am glad that nothing bad ended up happening. It could have been bad on both our ends. Crazy times!

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Uploaded on December 12, 2010
Taken on April 24, 2009