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The transit system in New York City from the early '70s into
the mid-'80s is the blueprint for the whole graffiti or street
art movement.
Throw your hands way up in the sky
If you came to jam and party tonight...
Graffiti-writing, breakdancing, the MCing and DJng,
they were individual things that were happening,
but they were all happening at the street level.
[SB1 VO] I definitely believe that writing is part of hip-hop.
I think there's a shared history that they have.
Everything I was doing was influenced by hip-hop,
even though the art form of graffiti came long before that.
[Staff161 VO] A lot of times, people that don't have an outlet
to express themself in poor communities,
they use graffiti as a form of communication.
[Bobby VO] Back in the day, everyone was painting the
trains.
The part that we loved: they didn't sit there, you know?
Like, these guys wanna do a wall and it sits there.
But the subways move.
They don't know where you did it.
It goes here, it goes there.
You looked out the window and saw your name going by.
That's great.
[Staff161 VO] The main purpose was to get your tag around.
Your tags on the train would get you all city because the trains
went around the city.
The cars were completely covered,
inside and out.
Ceilings, seats, windows.
Some of the cars, you couldn't even see out the windows.
So when David Gunn was President of the New York City
Transit Authority, their culture was one of zero tolerance.
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If the train had any graffiti on it,
it would go immediately out of service,
and then, when it got into the yard,
they would either remove the graffiti or they would paint it
over.
[David VO] We will not allow a graffiti train to go into
service.
[man] You think anybody's gonna miss the graffiti?
We won't.
The last graffiti-covered subway train ran in May of 1989.
Yeah, the trains were gone.
[man VO] Once the subway graffiti was getting
aggressively buffed, graffiti-writers went in a
different direction.
It was right around the time that the subways died that the
freights began.
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Writing on the trains and painting trains has been a
life-long addiction.
[Dr. Daks VO] I can't really put my finger on it but I can't stop
doing it, you know?
It never gets old.
It was hard to get to it, but once you do have access to
it, it's like a treasure trove of joy.
[man VO] I feel like it's a waste of paint to put it on a
wall.
It should be on a freight train where it's gonna last and it's
gonna ride around.
[man VO] Like, instead of five boroughs,
you have 48 lower states.
Some of the lines are going into Canada,
some of them are going into Mexico.
That's a North American movement right there,
not just one city.
[Ichabod VO] I hide my face because graffiti's illegal.
There are those people who would be interested in prosecuting it.
I'm not trying to ruin anyone's day.
I just want to make art and I don't own any property.
We're vandals, putting our name up in spots we shouldn't be
doing it, hopping fences we shouldn't be hopping,
sneaking past guards we shouldn't be sneaking past,
pulling fuses in light poles that we shouldn't be pulling...
we're vandals.
It costs us money, it costs us time,
it costs us our freedom, it puts a strain on everything,
and it's a dangerous place.
Like, every time you go out, you might not make it back.
[SB1 VO] It's my escape.
It's what allows me to get away from everything else in life.
Try to keep up, good luck, 'cause I'm driven.
[footsteps]
[Maple VO] I do some serious homework, yeah.
I think that's a big thing that people might not realize.
I would say there's more man hours put into just walking and
looking and driving, and not even having paint on you,
not even considering going to paint.
[Maple] This is kind of a normal routine: go check where
you're thinking about painting, whether you're checking to see
if certain spots have train cars,
what kind of cars are there, double-checking if there's any
work going on.
The more desirable cars, it would be,
like, a refrigerated box car; they're large,
white, flat, so that's kind of what we,
like, loosely plan for, because this yard happens to hold them
often.
But, like, a color scheme could change entirely based on if we
walk in there and there's, like, a dark blue box car that happens
to have no graffiti on it.
Maybe that becomes the one that's more desirable.
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[Maple VO] I've been called "the graffiti soccer mom."
I'll make sure I bring hand warmers,
battery pack, three sets of batteries for the headlamp,
you paint at night.
I label all my cans because a lot of people kind of get lost
in the dark.
These fit up to three cans on the side perfectly.
I feel like I think of too much stuff,
but you always get out there and something will happen.
It always does.
I learned early on that the reporting marks on a lot of the
trains would get your graffiti gone over,
so I started meeting people that would tape the numbers.
When you go over the numbers, nine times out of 10,
the workers are gonna just put the numbers right back,
and nine times out of 10, they're gonna put it in a way
that destroys your piece, so it's always best to respect
that.
I do spend a lot of time and money and effort to come out
here and paint these pieces, so by taping them,
my hope is...
that my graffiti might stay a bit longer.
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[man] So why do you do this?
[sighing] Ugh...
You had to ask this question: Why do you do this?
[sighing] Ugh...
I just genuinely like being able to go create something that goes
away.
I don't wanna paint canvases and sit and stare at them in my
house.
With painting trains, I know whatever I'm painting in that
moment is gonna be gone and, potentially,
gone forever; I may never see it again.
I just-- I don't know, I kinda like that: putting something out
there and not knowing how it will come back to you and just
letting it go.
When you look at freight train graffiti...
I mean, it's beautiful, but it's dangerous.
It's incredible art, but yet, it's vandalism.
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[woman VO] In southwest Washington State,
a man and a child are dead after they were hit by a freight
train.
[sirens]
[Robert VO] It is trespassing.
To do it, you have to go onto somebody else's property.
You are defacing something that somebody else owns.
It is just plain dangerous.
Every three hours in the United States,
a person or a vehicle is struck by a train,
and that is a staggering statistic.
[sirens]
When you're standing next to a train or have crawled up onto a
train, the ends of that string of cars could be a quarter mile
away, could a half a mile away, and you have no idea what is
going on at either end.
Are those cars gonna move?
If you're not ready for it, it can be a jolt that can throw you
off your feet or physically to the ground.
If you slip and fall, getting between the train wheels and the
rails, it will separate parts of your body,
it will kill you.
Why take this risk?
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[Visah VO] I was attracted to how big they were,
how small they made you feel.
I kept wondering who was out here spending time writing on
these trains.
The fact that something that fast could go by or through a
city or through a town without any care,
it would just demolish anything in its way.
[Visah VO] Graffiti is contagious in the way that it
spreads.
It creates more graffiti, it creates action,
it creates momentum and activity,
so just by doing it, it spreads like a virus.
You know, I have a life outside of this,
but this is an addiction; I'm out here right now because I'm
addicted.
I've learned a lot about people, how they move, you know?
'Cause a lot of graffiti starts by watching people.
Yeah, I got a radio here so I can listen to any type of
communication so I know what's going on at all times,
and then I also have an optic so I'm able to see from far away.
No guessing games.
I wanna be in control and have as much information as possible
so I can make the best decisions.
[laughs]
loud music playing in the distance
Yo, go offer him a bag of weed to turn down the music,
like in 'Hustle and Flow.'
For real, you could ask him.
Go ask him, bro.
Be like, "Hey, we're filming a thing.
You think you could turn it down just a little bit?"
See, you gotta teach the youth, man. [laughs]
Yeah, I mean, these kids...
You can't take these guys anywhere.
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[Metue VO] What does anybody need to know what I look like?
I'm not trying to sell my art.
To remain anonymous, you can start up your own identity,
your own persona.
When you say "Visah," when you say "Metue,"
you only think about what you know about us.
[Metue VO] I do this for me, I don't do this for anybody else.
My fuckin' kid doesn't go to a better school because I do
graffiti.
My girl doesn't like me more because I do graffiti.
It's temporary, man; it just leaves, you know?
I paint it, it rolls away.
That's how much I don't have an ego.
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Maybe we can find some rail workers to talk to out here.
[man] Maybe.
[Dr. Daks] We should talk to somebody while we're here, eh?
We're doing a piece about how trains have built this city.
And we're wondering if you had any thoughts on it.
Oh, are you?
You're new to the city?
Have you ever noticed graffiti on the trains?
Yeah, is graffiti something that's frowned upon?
Yeah, what is your personal opinion of it?
Yeah, there's is, yeah.
How about you?
What are your thoughts about the graffiti on the trains?
Oh, you're not?
Oh...
I'm gonna go ahead and say you like it.
[laughter]
[Dr. Daks VO] I'm Dr. Daks.
I'm here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Graffiti's been the most grounding thing I've ever had in
my life, so it's like a comfort zone for me.
It's something I've been doing my whole life,
it's something I've been playing with since I was nine years old.
My earliest graffiti memory was when I came to visit Atlanta,
Georgia in 1984.
It was the first time I ever saw it and I asked my brother what
it was, and he told me; he was like,
"That's graffiti."
So I was like, "Like 'American Graffiti?'" and he was like,
"No, nothing like that."
He was like, "These guys write their names on everything,"
and that shit blew my mind.
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I started making money first from actually selling weed,
selling acid.
I'd got the idea from my friends at school;
they'd all had older brothers and were involved in trapping,
trapping being drug-dealing here in Atlanta.
So I kinda just was able to, like,
get into the punk scene and the emerging,
like, hip-hop scene through, like,
my drug-dealer trapper friends and then through,
like, the gay people I met like house music DJs and was able to
kinda immerse myself in that world,
and then from there, I just spread my wings,
you know, and was able to start traveling abroad.
I noticed a lot of times, doing graffiti kept me alive.
You know, a lot of times, there was raids,
people getting killed, just bad stuff happening,
and it was always when I happened to be painting
freights, and I used to be like, "Oh, man,
I wanna go to this party real bad,"
but I was like, "There's always gonna be a party.
This opportunity to paint freights with these guys on this
night will never happen again."
Painting freights was just always-- it was like my
anti-drug.
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When SB got in touch with me, he called me up and wanted to meet
up with me and I thought he was gonna beef it up with me,
and he ended up taking me under his wing.
I had been writing all these different names like "Busy" and
"Rel."
I thought, like, "Okay, well, if this shit sucks,
no one will know I did it."
One of the names was "D-A-K-S," and SB,
he said, "That name should stand for "Destroying All Kinds of
Shit."
[SB1 VO] So I'm SB1.
Started writing in Brooklyn in 1983.
Moved to Atlanta 1989 to attend college,
and, you know, I had pretty much hung up graffiti;
I was done with it.
In '91, met a guy named Hens.
We kinda hit it off, we started talking,
he's also from New York.
We were like, "Yo, we should go paint."
After a couple of missions, I was like,
"Yo, we should start a crew."
And so that's really how Network got started.
This is the day we started the crew.
That's Brain, that's me, and that's Hens.
In the beginning, you know, we were painting really small,
but as you can see, this is when we started to try to step our
game up.
That Daks piece is incredible.
[Dr. Daks VO] Yeah, I met SB right after he started Network.
And Network was really important;
even though it was new, I knew it was,
like, a special concept.
And one night, we were painting a rail box and then he just came
up and wrote the Network sign with an arrow.
And I was like, "Oh, what does that-- what's that supposed to
mean?" and he goes, "Oh, you know what that means,"
and I was like, "Yeah, I done fucking made it," you know?
[SB1 VO] I think it's a never-ending train-wrecking
organization of rail kings.
I think that's it.
I didn't realize that we were probably the first freight train
writing crew.
It was really started just to get that logo on as many trains
as we could.
So when I met Baser, he was doing freights in Miami.
From there, it just-- it snowballed.
My earliest memories of graffiti were growing up in New
Orleans, Louisiana, in the French Quarter in the 9th Ward
and just seeing the names up everywhere.
My buddies and I would go breakdance in the French Quarter
for money, but writing was way much more of an adrenaline rush
and way more outlaw and more rebellious.
Graffiti, to me, means writing my name on a train,
leaving a stain, and continuing a tradition,
a life-long lifestyle tradition that I fell in love with,
and I can't ever imagine not doing it.
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[SB1] Baser's a wild dude.
He's the guy in the crew that keeps everybody straight.
If you've got something that you're embarrassed by or
something that you're self-conscious about,
yeah, it's over.
You know, that's a big part of probably why he's called "the
mouth of the South."
I'ma fuck you up!
[Dr. Daks VO] I met Baser through pen-paling through SB.
Started trading photos, and he was a smart-ass.
He used to send my packages back and be like,
"This wasn't equal to the trade I sent you,"
and he would send my pictures back with a new package and
would write, like, "This is what a real train looks like."
He was just a prick.
I remember I got to the point where I kinda liked him,
but then I also kinda wanted to whoop his ass.
[indistinct], motherfucker!
Train graffiti and freight train-writing is its own culture
because it's its own movement, so there's a lot of loose terms
that people connect with.
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[Maple VO] What is a "reefer?"
Well, it's not marijuana.
"Reefer" is short for "refrigerated box car."
I like to call 'em "reefers" because they fuckin' burn.
A "hopper" is any kind of car that you load from the top and
empty from the bottom.
A "hopper" is a car that you can hop trains on easily that
has a deck on both sides on the back.
A "holy roller" is a freight car that carries automobiles.
[man VO] And it has, like, grated material on the sides.
They can be any color, as well.
But it has these little holes in them for ventilation.
A "flat car" is what everybody loves,
it's what everybody wants.
It's a car with no ridges, damn near no rivets.
Also very desirable among writers.
It's almost like a virgin for most of these...perverts.
A "trash car" is essentially a freight car that carries trash.
Yeah, you can smell them from a mile away;
they stink.
It kinda sucks painting them but...
A "yard" is a freight train yard,
which could be anywhere from, say,
five, 10, 15, 20, 100 train tracks.
A "piece" is when you start with the letter style,
and you start to create a master piece out of that.
It's kind of short for "master piece."
When you have good style, it's like your pieces can tell a
story.
You have to go big or go home, because motherfuckers are gonna
go over you.
"End to end," from ladder...
All the way across, over the door,
to the other ladder.
Not three-quarters, not "We did both panels,"
all the way.
Where you paint from one end to the other end.
End to end.
Shoop.
A "whole car" is when a car is painted from the top to bottom
and the end to end.
End to end with no breaks.
A "bull," that's the railroad police.
Their job is to patrol the yards and just basically keep order on
and along the rails.
They can be as mean as a bull and dangerous as a bull.
"Benching" is watching trains to look at,
count, criticize the graffiti.
[Baser VO] I'm definitely a bencher;
I've always been a bencher, I always will be a bencher,
I love benching.
I can't even get away from it.
Anywhere I'm at -- a wedding, a funeral -- any time I hear a
train, I'm...
I'm about to move towards it and figure out how I can out of the
situation I'm in and see what's rolling.
Well, here we are.
This is the bench, the Atlanta bench.
This place has a ton of history.
People from all around the world have come here because this is
the ultimate freight benching destination.
This is where it all went down.
Bim, that has owned this liquor store for a long time,
he still allows us to hang out here.
So back in the day, what did you think about us hanging back
there?
Did you care?
No, it's really cool, not bother me.
[Dr. Daks VO] You know this place is the most sought-after
destination to watch freight trains?
-[Bim VO] Yeah? -[Dr. Daks VO] In the country?
Like, one of the top three, for sure.
We love you, Manny.
We love that you let us hang out here so much, man.
-So many memories. -Yes.
I grew up back there.
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When you see a train -- a piece -- moving on a train,
I don't know what there is about it.
That'll make you feel like a kid again.
Writing is the one thing that I've always been able to rely
on, come back to.
It's the one constant in my life for probably the last 40 years.
You know, a big part of it for me was I always knew that I
wasn't an artist, and a lot of the graffiti I was seeing was
really good, and it was almost intimidating to me.
Like, I'm never gonna be that fresh.
So I said, "Maybe I should just stick to taking pictures."
It's important to take pictures because it's important to
document -- this is an art form -- 'cause it ain't gonna be here
forever.
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[Faves VO] I am Ted Faven.
People also know me as "Faves."
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I think one of the reasons I'm so interested in this particular
subculture is that it's just so naturally part of my history.
I don't know what it was but ever since I was a little baby,
I was enthralled, I was overwhelmed by the sight of a
train.
Early on, when I started documenting this stuff,
I wanted to correspond with other writers that I had a lot
of respect for, and we were trading flicks.
So now, at this point in the process,
I like to go through it and see what I can do with some of these
shots.
Because it's going by so fast, I have to keep the camera clicking
away, and it's only after you go into it that you could really
make heads or tails.
When I first got into it, I was just taking flicks 'cause I
wanted to amass a collection and maybe trade with other writers,
but I never considered that my images would be any better than
the rest of them.
Yes, I have a lot of photos.
I mean, shit, this is just 2021 here.
You know, it-- it's a lot of photos.
Here's 2020 shots.
Once I started documenting freights,
I realized that because of my knowledge of timing,
positions of the sun, getting proper backlighting and all
that, I started seeing that I had an edge in the game.
People started responding far more positively,
and they'd go, "Holy fuck, bro, that's the best photo I've ever
seen of my stuff."
And so, as much as I was always a writer,
I did, little by little, start becoming a photographer.
I try to incorporate my day around where and what time
certain trains will be coming through my area.
At about 2 o'clock, I turn this computer on and the train
passes, I get a perfect preview of it,
and about 30 to 35 minutes after it passes,
it comes right here.
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If I have any regrets in regards to the amount of time and energy
over the years that I've put into graff and freight culture,
it would be that unfortunately, along the line,
I was not able to find my queen, as I thought I would.
But, on the other hand, I thank God that I have something in my
life with this much passion, you know?
There's so many people I know my age now that they never really
had anything to occupy their time and their passion for,
and they're just stuck with drugs, alcohol, and TV.
So I'm really proud to be a part of this culture and I'm proud to
have a passion for it.
[Robert VO] The trains, railroads,
they're a tool that we developed to help build the United States.
It is Americana.
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It was really post-Civil War that railroad construction
exploded, and into the 1860s, '70s,
'80s, the mileage doubled, quadrupled literally across the
country.
If it wasn't for the railroads bringing in raw materials,
taking out finished product, the steel industry never would have
been as productive as it was.
Prior to the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad,
going across the United States...
six, eight months.
That timeframe got cut down to about 10, maybe 14 days.
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If you want to look at the grandfather of graffiti we see
today, we've really gotta go to the Great Depression.
Hobos actually are migrant workers,
literally people going from town to town trying to find a job.
[man VO] They ride the roofs, they ride the box cars,
but these boys don't seem to care because they're
California-bound.
[Robert VO] The railroads came in and,
hey, cheap, free transportation.
So the hobos took advantage of the railroads.
Now, as a hobo, when you go out on the road,
you don't use your true identity;
you take on a road name.
Oh, lady, would you be so kind
As to give me something to eat?
Hobos began doing that; they began marking freight cars that,
you know, they were here on such and such a date,
or if they left a message.
When we talk about a graffiti-writer's moniker,
we're looking at their symbol or the letters that they have
chosen to represent themselves with.
When I first started going on the trains in '87,
'88 on the freights, I was starting to see Colossus of
Rhodes, Michael D-Kid, I saw some Herbys,
The Rambler, Bozo Texino, and I started seeing them repeatedly.
The beginning of 1990, I was completely done with aerosol and
was solely doing monikers and nothing more.
There was so much moniker history and I just-- I grew to
love it more and more, and I read books on hobos and train
travel and hopping trains, and it just filled my heart and I
loved it and I wanted to be a part of that.
I document as much as I can 'cause I know how fleeting it
is.
I wanted to try to keep track of how many I was getting.
That was a good day: three Santa Fe hoppers.
[The Solo Artist VO] So I started a spiral and putting how
many of each car I got each time,
right up through about 2011.
I'd estimate that I've done probably somewhere near 125,000
drawings.
I know it's an illegal activity, but in my heart,
I'm not trying to commit an illegal activity by any means.
It's just being part of the environment,
just being part of the surroundings,
that's what I really like.
I guess that a lot of you folks out there,
when you look at me, you think there's no difference between a
hobo, tramp, and bum, but there is.
No, a hobo will work, a tramp won't, a bum couldn't if he
wanted to.
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[Coaltrain VO] People go around telling stories that,
you know, I'm a drug addict, I'm a wino under a bridge,
or pshh.
Train tramp, that's what I am.
[Faves VO] Over the years of my documentation of monikers,
one of them that stands out is a gentleman by the name of John
Easley, also known as "Coaltrain."
You never know who's gonna be behind these drawings or whether
or not they truly live the life, but I could certainly tell you
that this character in every way is part of this whole railroad
culture.
I'm gonna put one right here, just wherever I can find 'em to
put 'em.
All right, I'm not doing any cowboy hats;
I'm burned out on it.
They...
they just don't draw right.
[Coaltrain VO] Living in Eugene, Oregon, now for about 30 years,
and I still live in a tent.
My mom went to prison for about three and a half years on a
five-year term for stabbing my dad in the gut with a butcher
knife.
So we went and spent about three years with our aunt and uncle.
And on the weekends, I would run down with some other kids,
and we'd ride down to the train station and jump on the commuter
train.
I got the extension cord taken to me a bunch of times,
you know, but that didn't stop us,
and the next Saturday, we were back down there again.
Well, my grandfather'd sit up there on the train tracks
drinking vodka with his friends and stuff when I was about 15,
and I'd go up there just doodling and scribbling around
on the trains.
He hated my drawing, he hated me 'cause of my long hair and I
wouldn't get my act together and get a job,
and he said I wasn't an artist, I was just a damn vandal,
is what he'd call me, and he'd pull his knife out and start
coming at me with his knife.
[Coaltrain] Now, remember, I'm not an artist...
I'm a vandal.
[Coaltrain VO] As far as I'm concerned,
I'm not under any authority on this planet.
And they always say, "Yeah, he didn't listen to my commands,"
and all this.
Well, go blow it out your fuckin' ass, pal,
fuckin' cop and whatever, you know.
They always think you're supposed to get on your knees
and bow down to 'em.
1980, I got out of prison.
I knew I had to do something or else I was just gonna end up in
prison again.
I was out to work for a railroad,
which never happened 'cause a convicted felon's not gonna work
for a railroad.
That's when I just said, "Fuck it,
I might as well just write my fuckin' name on everything in
this fuckin' town."
I put full time into it, just writing my name on everything I
could get ahold of.
I was just doodling around, just drawing a cowboy hat or
something trying to come up with something.
I didn't have a name for it, and I was drawing them on the coal
cars.
They just called it "Coaltrain."
I started getting rumors that the railroad cop -- his name's
Roger Bryant -- was gonna shoot me next time he saw me.
[chuckles]
So I went down there and took my markers and I wrote,
"Roger Bryant ate John Easley's shit right here" and put an
arrow right there and then took a shit right there and then
walked away.
There was nowhere that that fucker was gonna look at
anything in that train yard anywhere without seeing my name
on it.
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[Ichabod VO] Yeah, I started writing late.
I gave up drinking.
Basically, I put down the bottle and picked up a can and...
that was 24 years ago and I've been going ever since.
[Dr. Daks VO] Ichabod has been the ultimate numbers guy.
He's a stampin'-ass son of a bitch, you know?
Any time I watch a freight line go by,
I'd be willing to make a bet that he's gonna be on a car.
That's how much he's up.
Unbelievable.
He is the greatest freight-writer that there ever
was.
[Ichabod VO] I delve deeply into my interests.
I don't like the word "obsessive,"
because it suggests a lack of control over your own
activities.
I exercise plenty of control over what I do.
I continue to use good judgment.
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I read an article in The New Yorker by a guy named Tim Page,
who wrote about being a socially-awkward kid,
some fairly intense narrowly-focused interests.
And I'm reading it and I'm like, "Wow,
this guy sounds just like me in, like,
almost every way I can think of."
About halfway through the article is the reveal,
and he was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome.
I'm like, "Oh, wow, I gotta check this out."
One of the most prominent features of Aspergers Syndrome
is something called "executive dysfunction."
We overthink stuff and have trouble pulling the trigger and
acting.
What that leads to is an understanding of why I'm so good
at graffiti.
If I'm in a studio and somebody wants me to make a painting and
there's no deadline, I don't get a lot done.
Graffiti, you have to get in, do it,
and get out; you can't just, you know,
come back later and finish.
So the illegal aspect of graffiti is what enables me to
be productive, because I have to finish;
I don't have a choice.
I'm trying to devote more time to what I love and less time to
things that are drudgery or just,
you know, cause me stress.
I have to do something that's meaningful to me,
because I'd rather die than, you know,
go to a cubicle just so I can earn enough dollars to pay for
overpriced rent or this and that.
I have to make my trade-offs, and I love painting trains,
and that's front and center.
So, what do I have to do to do that?
Conserve resources and money and -- most importantly -- time.
I thought about, what would I do if I had a lot of money?
And the answer would be, I'd travel more and paint more
trains.
And it's like, well, why can't I do that now?
I have my whole life.
I have all of my time, and it's my time to use.
So, I only spend a little bit of it earning just as much money as
I need, so that I can spend my time out painting trains.
You know, I have friends telling me,
"Oh, you're living the lifestyle,
I'm living vicariously through you,
I wish I could take a road trip, but I got the kids,
and I got the mortgage and I got the-- you know,
I'm working full-time," and I'm like,
"Well, you know, we make our choices.
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We met thorough a circle of friends as graffiti-writers
years before we ever really talked.
Yeah, I would see him at parties and bars and...
I think I always just thought he was too cool,
so I just never really talked to him.
Which is funny because that's exactly what I thought of you
too.
He's always been a really prolific writer in Seattle,
and it wasn't until, you know, just a couple of years ago that
I was like, "I'd like to hang out and get to know you."
[Aerub VO] It all escalated from there.
I was raised in a authoritarian religious household where I was
force-fed the dogma, and I rejected it with every inch of
my body, and graffiti was my church.
The drugging and drinking was just part of it.
When I was little, my dad went to prison,
and my mom, she was homeless and so me and my sister were in and
out of foster care, um, just in really bad areas,
seeing graffiti everywhere.
I really just liked the excitement and the way to,
like, let go.
I think I was in a bad place when I started doing graffiti,
so it was just kind of an outlet.
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[Aerub VO] Then we got married, and I asked her--
[Merlot VO] You painted it on a train.
Yeah, we were in the middle of nowhere in Kansas,
and I had asked her to marry me spray painting it on a train.
People have hinted at that what we are doing together as sort of
this dynamic duo...
But it's just luck that we just share the same love.
I couldn't imagine not being in the relationship I'm in to where
if I were with someone that didn't really understand
graffiti and the culture, would they understand me going out and
painting at night -- would they be okay with that?
I feel like that could ruin a lot of relationships.
I think we're all right.
[Aerub VO] I began to see a therapist,
and when I got sober, I didn't feel I needed to do graffiti
because it felt impulsive -- like it was part of the drug
addicted behavior.
I took five years off; it kind of helped me work though that
darkness.
But he's not completely sober, 'cause he married Merlot.
[laughs]
Ah, geez...
wow.
That's, yeah...
touché.
[interviewer] Tell the story about how you meet,
and were you both graffiti-writers before?
Yeah, we both did graffiti.
We were actually in the same crew,
um, and we actually met at Baser's house the first time.
So, then we just, you know, got together,
and it worked out.
I mean, it was the best thing that's ever happened to me.
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[Sicks VO] I can't even imagine how people do it in
relationships where people don't have that other person who does
the same thing.
Yeah, civilians wouldn't understand this world...
[Gsouth VO] At all.
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[Sicks VO] Miami...
it's like crumb-snatching down here.
We definitely don't have enough trains.
We have it a little harder than everyone else.
[Gsouth VO] There's no through-line here -- it starts
here, it ends here.
Everything that comes, goes back.
This city was full of spots, now we're down to three or four
spots.
We protect them like it's our house,
and if other people -- they go in there -- we'll go over them.
Mm-hm, yes.
We will take their stuff, and we will get them our of there at
those spots.
And then luckily the word gets around, also.
And yeah, the word gets around that if we catch them in there,
there's going to be problems.
Our crew -- WH -- started in 1993.
WH stands for "Writing History."
Our crew is mostly overall good people.
We're good people until...
until we have beef with you.
Right, and then we just...
[laughs]
Then we just get in mode.
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[Ichabod VO] There is a big beef going on between two crews right
now on the freight trains.
It's really not my biz.
I know a couple of people on both sides,
but it's not really my place to tell them,
"Hey, like, let's quit this," because,
you know, the issues run deeper than anything I could really
referee, I think.
We were in the middle of a huge graffiti beef on freight
trains and on the streets in Miami, Florida.
This beef has gotten more exposure because,
I guess a lot of pretty pieces are getting ruined.
You know, you may have people crossing each other out here and
there, but this is so on-going and is really just vicious.
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[spraying]
[Asic VO ] The beef between WH and us is a full-on team versus
team thing.
It's probably been going on just a little over two years.
[freight train passing]
Sometimes I have a hard time biting my tongue.
I don't think that I have an ego,
but I do think I have an issue with being able to keep my mouth
shut if I see too much ignorance,
or excess, or brazen fuckery parked in front of me looking
for a reaction.
ETC is my team.
It's a Canadian-based team originally out of Vancouver, BC.
The beef between us and them...
it started with Crow going over people he had no business going
over.
One guy not minding his own business,
and he starts slamming our crew-mates.
We were like, "All right," you know,
"let's let it go, whatever," and then it just escalated.
A little ways down the road, Gsouth and I were going over
each other.
I got a call that there was a WH stamp over a panel that
Yuri and I had done...
turned it into a full team on team.
We caught one of their whole cars,
and did a whole car over their whole car.
How much more out of hand does it get when it's whole cars over
whole cars on the railroad, you know what I mean?
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[Gsouth VO] As you can see, our crew has gotten stronger
with this, their crew has lost a half-dozen people already.
You can't win.
We have unlimited supplies, unlimited players in the game.
We have complete savages in our crew.
Yeah.
[laughs]
That are unleashed.
Like, this is what we do.
[Asic VO] It's already resulted in an ass-whopping.
These dudes are like wanting to spend their time just beefing
forever and trying to measure dicks with a bunch of strangers.
I don't want to do all that, like,
I know how big my dick is, and I'm happy with it.
[Gsouth VO] We could all fight tomorrow.
You could do a pay-per-view, and it won't matter because you
crossed us off more than two or three times.
It's never going back.
The only way for it to end is for them to stop running their
crew.
The fact that it's a national conversation is the scale of
what it is.
This is probably the biggest team on team beef that freight
train graffiti has ever seen.
Just don't go over us.
[laughs]
Don't go over us, 'cause I promise you we will not stop
goin over you.
Do not go over us.
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[Tic Tac No VO] Freight train graffiti is bad...
full-stop.
It projects an image of insecurity -- which I believe is
not accurate about the rail industry -- and it encourages
people to trespass on railroad tracks because they think
painting graffiti on trains is cool,
and they can get away with it.
I believe that freight train graffiti is a surmountable
problem if there is organized will and a systematic way of
approaching it.
It's a lot more complicated to deal with it at the national
level, but I do believe there are ways of containing,
discouraging, and ultimately defeating graffiti.
So, my solution is to take a different approach than you're
going to paint everything over, because all that does is create
a canvass for the next person to come along.
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What I do is to vandalize the vandalism,
and disrespect the graffiti by partially painting it over but
largely leaving it up.
So, the people would see if I'm going to write graffiti on top
of that it's too much work so, I'm going to go someplace else.
You don't want to cover it all up,
you want to leave a lot up.
The whole point is to make this look worse,
so that you don't create a space for somebody else to come along
and do something.
Don't tell me what kind of a day to have.
Watch this...
[Tic Tac No VO] My original concept was blast it with
paintballs.
The problem with that is that it was completely ineffective,
and also, you may have the unintended consequence of the
SWAT team showing up.
Oh, missed a piece!
[Tic Tac No VO] There have to be ways that we can deal with
this, because I think what I'm doing is right -- and more the
point -- somebody has got to take the first steps,
and I'd like to think that what I've been doing are some first
steps.
[Rachel VO] Painting on trains is really dangerous.
I don't they see the risk that people are taking.
The injuries are catastrophic, and they can be very fatal.
Fucking freight trains will kill you.
They're no joke.
I can't think of anything else more terrifying than that much
metal traveling that fast.
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A train traveling 55 miles an hour can take over a mile to
stop.
So, that's 18 football fields for a train to stop.
[Ichabod VO] The train is so long, the people running it
can't see you...
there's so many dangers on the train tracks and in the train
yards that, um, you really have to be an expert on that before
you even think about venturing in there.
[Gsouth VO] I mean, any accident in the freight yard could be
your last day in the freight yard.
I've fallen through freights where my friends have grabbed
me, and literally had me like three inches off the ground
while the train's dragging me.
I've got hit my moving trains -- I don't realize the train
starts, and it jumps and hits you in the side of the head.
Some of the most dangerous times I've had is when we've
actually been chased by police...
and we've had to run down the tracks.
I've tripped and fallen on the railroad track.
I've had guns put to my head.
[Necske VO] I've seen trains derail -- scariest thing ever.
Craziest sound on earth is a train falling over on
the tracks.
In my head all, I could think was, like,
"If this train fell over, you're an ant," you know?
You're just like... and you're gone.
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We were trying to figure out what was going on,
and before we knew it, one of the trains had moved,
and we both got hit.
One of us got severely injured.
The screaming started immediately.
Thankfully, we were able to communicate for a second,
and he was able to duck and save his head from getting hit.
He was in bad shape.
I did whatever I could at the time.
Within the split seconds I tore my shirt into pieces and made
tourniquets.
I tied off as much as I could to try to stop the blood.
It was like living through a nightmare, man.
It was like a movie, you know what I mean?
I was a young alcoholic who was involved in risky things like
jumping off bridges and daredevil stuff.
And so, one night I climbed on top of a train,
and I surfed it, and it was the most exhilarating experience I
had in my life -- I felt like a superhero.
And so, the next night I decided to do it again,
and, uh, except that night what I failed to realize was that the
ceiling of the tunnel had a grate on it.
So, I ended up in the hospital for a long time.
It was, uh, really difficult to imagine my life without this art
form that I had, you know, learned and loved,
and after going to rehabilitation to,
like, learn how to live in a wheelchair,
I realized that I was actually quite capable of doing many
physical things.
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My friend and I put it to the test, we...
rolled into this train yard, and,
uh, we painted some pieces, and it was,
uh, a significant triumph for somebody who thought they would
never paint again.
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It is definitely a dangerous undertaking.
People die in all kinds of circumstances that are
unforeseen.
I've known people who've been cut in half.
I know people who have lost part of their legs.
I've seen people almost die right before my eyes.
It was totally insane.
This is tens of thousands of tons of iron moving
relentlessly, and it doesn't know that you exist,
and it will squash you.
I'm living proof -- I'm a survivor -- I know.
I moved to Atlanta specifically,
sheerly, and for only one reason: to be around trains,
to watch trains, to watch them in motion.
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But I would meet a girl.
My name is Liza.
I wanted her to know what I do, and why I was in Atlanta.
The trains at first were not a battle.
We were both young, and we didn't have kids -- he was very
passionate about it, and I wanted to share that interest
with him.
It was exciting.
It was an exciting new world.
We got married.
When we had children, I would take them to the bench mainly
because that's where my heart was.
We had a playpen in the back of the truck, yes...
here at the bench.
[laughs]
I'm Elijah.
I'm Emilio.
[Elijah VO] The freight trains -- they're really interesting.
I love the look of them -- the graffiti's awesome.
Yeah, it's pretty cool watching all the-- how people's minds
work with all the art.
I felt proud at the time that I'm with my children,
sharing my passion with them.
We used to grill out here, you know,
just have a good time all the time.
We'd be here for five hours, maybe more.
[Baser VO] It was very, very hard to leave that place...
you lose track of time.
My wife really struggled with why are you there so much.
It never dawned on me that there is such a thing in a
relationship that is called neglect.
The trains pulled him away from the family.
[interviewer] Was it almost like you were in a three-way
relationship with the trains?
At times.
It became a problem, and I understood it.
Like, I wasn't in denial, but I couldn't figure out how to
balance it.
There was plenty of nights that I would call him and say,
"When are you coming home?"
He wouldn't come home.
She started realizing that, he's not going to change.
My marital life was over.
It was all my doing.
So, I clearly understood the bench life you choose,
the wife you lose.
I've come to terms with it, that this is so much a part of
him, and it's who he is.
My ex-wife and I are still respectful.
We share our children.
I do miss my kids a lot, you know?
That's what I suffer from the most, you know?
Almost half and half the year we see each other -- there's no
beef -- but clearly, there's mistakes I've made that,
um... I can never fix 'em.
I have a new family now, and I'm still struggling.
I just remind myself that I'm not in this family alone,
and my passions shouldn't outweigh my partner's --
it's not going to come before them --
but I definitely still am called to the rails.
[boy] Hey, mom.
Hey, dada.
Where's the table?
[laughs] Where's the table.
Put that down. You gonna come sit with us?
Mm-hm.
-All right, come on. -You can jus sit here.
You want to change your shirt, because there's a stain on it.
Yeah, go change your shirt and put a mask on.
The low point for me was when he was arrested,
and I had to go to visit him, and the mere fact of going into
a jail and hearing the door shut -- the clang,
the sound -- it is horrible.
It is horrifying.
My sententing was six months incarceration -- 180 days --
and three and a half years probation with a ridiculous
amount of restitution.
Yeah, we both did jail time in Tallahassee,
Florida for freight train graffiti in 2006.
And spent a lot of money.
And spent a lot of money on lawyers.
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My name is Joseph Sullivan.
I'm an attorney here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Prior to that, um, I was know as "Sug1."
atmospheric hip-hop music
Graffiti is probably the most dangerous sport you can
participate in.
I have bullet wounds, I have knife wounds,
I have scars from broken bottles,
razor wire scars on both hands, and I can't count the times I've
sprained my ankle jumping over, you know,
couplers or jumping from boxcars.
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Through my experiences in graffiti, I've learned to take
care of myself.
I operate my entire business on graffiti principles.
Being willing to fail when you are,
you know, a little toy out in the train yard,
you're going to get stomped on constantly,
but rather than quitting or getting angry about it you have
to learn to come back and better yourself.
hip-hop beats
The reason I was successful early on as an attorney was
because people knew me as a graffiti artist.
I was a tough fighter.
I was tenacious, consistent, and I readily questioned authority.
Graffiti sparked my interest in law.
As a criminal defense attorney, you know,
people are calling me when they get arrested.
I'm one of the only people that believes their version of the
events.
And I have either represented or been a consultant on freight
train graffiti cases across the country.
What my friends and family told me is,
"We always knew you were smart, but we didn't understand why you
wanted to paint trains all the time."
It just goes back to a search for identity.
Nowadays, I also want to help carry on the tradition of style
writing -- or, you know, capital g Graffiti -- by showing other
writers, you know, you can be successful in life in addition
to being, you know, successful in just the art form of
graffiti.
So, I try to always help the kids with like the new guys and
stuff, tell them what not to do, tell them where not to be.
I mean, like, having someone be able to tell you what you can do
and what you can not do, and how you can be safe in the yard is
very important.
I think that's really, like, one of our jobs is being,
like, you know, older freight guys.
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I'm NECSKE...
Never-Ending Crazy Styles Kill Everything.
I come from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
been painting here a long time.
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When I was a little kid -- I was ten years old -- I lived behind
a steel mill, and we'd ride the trains around just to have fun.
And then, you know, what'd you do with the trains?
You grabbed a rock, and you scratched on them;
you wrote your name, you know, just to say,
"Hey look, I was here."
Writing my name became a representation of myself,
and when I represented myself I wanted that to be the best it
could possibly be, and it grew into other things,
and the art just kind of took over in a lot of ways for me.
Every time I'd paint something, it's a personal reflection on
what I'm doing -- a story, a time,
you know, what was going on in my life -- and it's kind of a
release for my anxieties.
It became my every day.
About 30 years ago, I started the NSF crew.
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My greatest accomplishment is keeping NSF where we are --
painting more trains than anyone else.
I probably have over ten thousand cars right now.
It's been dominate force on freights for over 20 years.
Everyone in our crew is someone who's out to be a leader and be
aggressive with their art.
So, we're all the same way, and I love it because it's a family.
You learn from the young people as well as you teach them.
You know, I've learned a lot for the newest guys I was painting
with recently because they just have a different perspective --
times change, it's just life -- you know,
you learn different things from the next generation.
Hopefully we can keep passing that on.
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[Staff161 VO] I wrote graffiti on subway cars.
1973 was a big year in graff-writing in New York City.
Freight trains wasn't a motivation early on for the mere
fact that you just didn't see 'em.
You didn't know where they went.
We did get some tags on there and maybe a few pieces,
but it wasn't a big motivation.
But now there's a lot of spray paint on freight trains,
and, so, it changed.
Freight trains are basically -- I wouldn't say the evolution,
'cause they always was around -- but the evolution of freight
trains is the continuation of what happened in the 70's.
[Mone VO] It's almost unreal to see guys from that generation
actually getting out there.
It's really inspiring to see -- not only they're still around --
but they're actually taking to the freights and doing stuff on
them.
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[Zephyr VO] I did my first subway piece in '77.
My history on the subways...
it gives me some street cred sort of.
If you were in the book 'Subway Art,'
then you're like lionized.
And I'm in 'Style Wars.'
[Zephyr VO] From where I stood and watched the trains pull in
and out, I thought, "How could a human being have his name on
every car?"
They're trespassing it, they're beating the system,
they're getting their names up, right?
Identity's a funny thing in graffiti,
particularly on one hand, you know,
still being active it's like, I look silly,
but on the other hand, life is short,
and so my attitude is like, if you're enjoying it,
keep doing it.
When I decided to make a so-called comeback in '93,
I didn't know about freights getting painted with any kind of
seriousness until the night friends have literally held my
hand and, like, led me to the front of a freight train.
I'm in front of, like, this totally messed up train -- I
mean, it was rusty.
I don't want to sound elitist [laughs] but,
you know, if you've been painting subways and you look at
a freight train, you're like, "What!?"
Everybody says the same thing about graffiti,
it gets in your blood, and it's like an addiction.
Your common sense might tell you "enough is enough,
time to stop, quit while you're ahead,
blah blah blah."
I'm just an idiot, so I've just done it longer than most people.
If my name on freight trains has some impact on the freight
culture, I love that.
I mean, that's really cool.
[Vinny VO] Everyone in my family wrote, you know?
It's like cousins, brother...
My father used to tell me when I was a kid,
"Either you were going to do it to the extreme,
or you aren't doing it."
All I did was basically hit all the letter trains.
My goal back then was: try to get every car,
every train that I could without getting caught.
If I didn't get one side, I tried to get the other side.
That's when I started getting into drugs, you know?
Vinny's had the highs in life and the lows in life.
When I mean low I just don't mean broke a shoe lace...
I'm talking low -- losing family,
losing his self-worth, going away for a while.
I know Vinny since we were kids.
The man's friendship means more to me than anything.
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I'm not an artist.
I'm probably in the top ten horrible writers in the world,
but I try, and that's as good as it's gonna get.
That's it, that's all I got.
I can't even make a round O.
Do you know that, man, looks like a fucking egg.
You say, "Hey man, failing is life."
Don't be afraid to fail.
Always strive to be better.
hip-hop beats
Taking Vinny back to the freights was like taking Vinny
back in 1973.
Just to watch him write, just to watch him do Vinny,
like, how many people from 1976 before can say he wrote
with Vinny?
So, I tell people, "You know what?
I'm not in retirement no more.
Back up 50 feet," you know, "let me do me."
If you would have told me in 1992 that,
you know what, 30 years from now it's gonna be rare to see a
clean car, I wouldn't have believed you.
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[Ichabod VO] I see a lot of garbage on the trains nowadays.
I'd actually like to see less people doing it;
just the people who know how to do it right.
[Take 5 VO] It's a blur -- I don't recognize the names,
everything looks the same, nothing stands out -- and so,
that's what happens when you just have over saturation.
[Mad VO] When I was younger, we would get excited if we saw
graffiti on one car out of, like,
40 cars that went by.
But now it's the opposite, I get excited if I see one clean car
go by.
The problem is, it has not risen to the level of an
industry problem that has commanded top-level attention.
That needs to change.
[Robert VO] Freight companies have increased their patrols.
They are looking -- they've seen the patterns -- they are
watching.
You know, there is more surveillance cameras that have
been put in place to observe what is happening.
[Faves VO] I gotta say, in the last few years -- as much as the
freight culture is watered down, and there's a lot of bullshit
running -- there are a bunch of new,
amazing, incredible artists that are carrying on the torch and
leading the way for a great future.
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[Aerub VO] Graffiti is the beauty of art with the danger of
crime and trespassing.
I have so much safety in my life,
that it's nice to just have something exciting.
We're trying to just do the most we can,
the best we can, and keep it going -- keep this thing going
generation's deep.
[Mone VO] There's been other things in my life since I was a
kid to now that I've gotten into for certain periods of time
and maybe just got out of it, but graff is one of those things
that's always been constant for me.
[The Solo Artist VO] I don't see any specific target time of
stopping.
It's just as long as it's in my heart,
I'm going to keep going.
[Visah VO] Graffiti is just one generation away from being
expired.
All it takes is one group of people for it to fall off,
and it's done.
[Metue VO] If we don't carry on what happens to our crew it just
fizzles out.
So, people have to keep it going.
You have to keep teaching young kids.
The youth is the future.
[Baser VO] It's still so much fucking fun,
and it's still exciting.
When I'm achey and tired and my neck hurts and my back hurts
and my feet hurt and I maybe consumed way more fluids and
fumes than I should have, but the fun is there, and the fun is
what matters the most to me.
[Dr. Daks VO] I'll go paint freights, and it'll just light
me up on all other ends of my life, and make me want to have
more sex, it'll make me want to paint faster and better -- it
doesn't matter what it is -- but it all starts with the freights.
[Faves VO] Very often when I'm out in a train yard,
I'm on my own, I'm lost in my thoughts,
and it's therapy for me.
I think about a lot of the friends I've had,
friends that I've lost, things that didn't pan out the way I
thought they would.
So, as much as I love being in the yard,
and putting my sketches up and all that,
it can also be somewhat emotional for me.
Graffiti's a revolution.
It's the first and only art form I know of that is done by kids
for kids and now it changed the world.
[Ichabod VO] I keep doing it because I love to do it.
I'll keep painting as long as I can,
and as long as I enjoy it.
[Take 5 VO] I can't tell you how many messages I've gotten from
wheelchair graffiti guys, and I'm so happy that I was in a
position to, like, offer advice or love or understanding to
those people, because it's hard.
As a person who goes through a transformative experience,
like, you need community, and you need activity,
and you need, like, lots of love,
and the graffiti community -- they gave me that.
pensive guitar music
[Coaltrain VO] In fact, I swore that I was going to do it until
the day I died -- until my last dying breath.
I'm 61 now -- I'm gonna be 62 here in a couple more months --
and I'm pretty well tired of it, man.
You can only do so many of these [laughing] for so many years,
man.
You know, it's going to be there long after I'm dead.
It's just like Daniel Boone carving his name in the tree
with his knife or Davy Crockett carving his name into something,
you know?
It's there.