Dick Tracy by Caine 1.
He is a sweaty man, due to a diet of fast food, coffee, and stress. He sits with a smug air that is the flip side of being frustrated. Frustated people are never happy, only smug. He’s got thinning hair, bad teeth, dirt under his fingernails, he hasn’t smoked for three years, but his fingers are still yellow, and he is spilling out of a wardrobe straight out of Sears. The nicotine-stained nubs are searching and pecking at the keys of an old Smith Corona and the rotten mouth is cracking wise with his partner, a man with all his characterisics and some wet nuts on top. Together they sound like a couple of row-home wives over the back fence, their banter comprised of a whole bunch of dropped names; who they know, who they’re gonna get. They sit and flex their graffiti knowledge and I try to look impressed. Of course, as they talk I learn some things about them too. The average graffiti cop is smart, but not that smart, works, but not that hard. They are detectives, but they are graffiti detectives. What is that? It’s sort of like being a store detective. Nothing to anybody except for the petty criminals they chase and the property owners they serve.
On the other side of the dime, Homicide DTs are some of the last heroes we have these days. There’s at least three dramas on TV weekly detailing the exploits of world-weary, quick-witted gumshoes. The flatfoots face the reporters at press conferences, get their picture in the paper, and receive the pats on the back for cracking the big case. Graffiti cops, in comparison, spend their days catching kids painting illegally. Cool. If homicide detectives get all the love, what do graffiti cops get? Well, certainly not bragging rights (“Ayo I caught JA!” “That’s real good Steve, what the fuck is a Jay-eh?”). Their job is really nothing but the easiest tour in the squad, next to the guy who makes the donut run. Of course, these thoughts sit tight in my temple; it’s best not to be a guidance counselor to the frustrated man; it’ll just prolong my stay in his confines.
He continues to brag as he lathers Wite-Out (for the third time) on the report he is typing. I try to look awestruck while I ponder how these guys fiend for graff. In a world where they have as much juice as Fish on Barney Miller, the celebrity game becomes an antidote to the career blahs. They measure the job they do with who they caught, like the guys with the gold shields, but instead of catching a serial killer, it’s getting Chaka or Desa. So they wear the writers they capture like that #1-Dad pendant this cop is wearing. Now I feel like I have a microscopic glimpse into what a cop in L.A. must have felt when he caught GKAE. I hope he had a clean pair of underwear in his locker.
GKAE has a voracious appetite for writing graffiti. There are maybe two other people in America who have gotten into more trouble, but he’s not settling for third place. Money is definitely going for the gold. What is the most trouble a writer has gotten for writing graffiti? Many writers have done time, stretching back to Cornbread, who copped a stretch in juvie hall for writing on an elephant at the Philly Zoo. While the list of incarcerated markers is long, I’m looking for the strongest course of action taken against writers strictly for the act of writing. The losers are (drumroll please): JA was served with a 5-million-dollar-lawsuit by the City of New York and the Long Island RR, went to several depositions, then countersued the city on the basis of police brutality. Both parties agreed to drop their respective suits. Number 2: Philly youth Rakan was sentenced to 12 years in jail by a judge with mayoral aspirations. This was knocked down on appeal to a year house arrest. There’s about a seventy-five-way tie for fourth place. A lot of writers are serving more and more time for smaller offenses—six months being a standard length—and by all indications the trend will continue for the time being. Third place holder GKAE is an unassuming, clean-cut youth, the epitome of “Wow, you don’t look like a writer?!” But he does plenty, with his eyes letting you know he’s capable of whatever his impulses want him to do. He’s also at that age of being a punk, doing things just to grate on society’s last nerve. There isn’t a real writer alive that can’t hang his head with a smirk on his face, then tell you of some atrocity they committed in their youth. We’re all punks at one point or another. Hopefully, we’ll step back away from that behavior and never forget what we did, just wait for the cosmic payback that will balance the debt of damage. By any account, GKAE has a lot to answer for, and he can’t blame anything really. He’s got the two-parent home, the good neighborhood, and good friends, some of whom even seem to be going places. So what’s his issue?
RD honors a favorite flatfoot.
“Shaddup and smile for the cameras.”
He just likes graffiti. A whole lot. Okay, when he was his most prolific, in the summer of ′95, he had some girlfriend problems, and maybe was a little depressed, like some teenagers with girl problems are. That combination of love for graffiti and hate for the hurt in the daily hustle is a particularly powerful one. GKAE went out for thirty-five days straight that summer, painting three to four simply styled pieces a night. “When I’m going all out like that, I’m not normal at that point. I detach myself from reality in a way. People who saw me were like, ‘You look like a zombie.’” The fast-paced onslaught was enough to make him hotter than habanero for a minute. Then he made an up north trip to the cool climate of Seattle.
Word was sent to the Seattle police department to be looking out for GKAE by a cop who cruised the internet chatrooms and found out through the prevalent gossip where he was. In due time, GKAE was picked up for writing—“I caught a tag on a piece of wood”—and the LAPD was dutifully informed. The cop flew into town, took photos of GKAE’s work, then flew back home and filed an affadavit that testified that it was the work of the same writer wanted in L.A. GKAE posted bail and soon after was picked up for underage drinking. “Don’t worry,” the cop says. “We’re just breaking up the party, we’ll let you go in a few hours.” GKAE sat in the cell and let the alcohol work through his system. Then sobriety came and hit him on the head when the arresting officer told him that there was a $100,000 warrant on him issued by the County of Los Angeles. He stayed in the system long after the alcohol left his.
L.A. cop comes and collects his quarry; “Did you ever see on every jumbo jet, there’s a seat in the back with no window?” GKAE sat in that seat and disturbingly learned the hunter loves graff as much as he does. His parents, already beaten down by years of bouts with their ‘bout it ‘bout it boy, offered the best advice they could, “You’re just punishing yourself.” The salesman and his housewife already mortgaged the house a second time for $43,000 in earlier fines and couldn’t afford a proper legal defense, so he was entrusted to the care of a “public pretender.” What happened next is comedy, in the tragic sense.
The bail was one hundred thousand dollars, or ten thousand in cash and a fat chunk of collateral. It might as well be a million to the maybe-middle class family, so GKAE cooled out in county while the wheels of justice lurched forward like square rims. “LA County is the single biggest county jail in the country.” So he enjoyed a long wait in the company of the County, in a jail that took racial tension to new heights. The whites apparently are of the real peckerwood variety, and after four and a half months of regular shit, he was almost given an extra-heaping portion when he helped a black inmate he had befriended on his way in. The other guy was transferring to a better prison, but couldn’t wear any colors. So GKAE traded his plain sneakers for the brand-name ones the other guy had. This set off a near riot in the block, and his future prospects were even dimmer. He was headed to state prison, where a minimum of sixteen months awaited him. In light of these ugly developments, he decided to “take the fucked up probation, the fucked-up restituition, the fucked-up community service, take the whole fucked-up deal and deal with it later.” What he did was apparently trade his life for the rest of his life.
“I feel like I have to do so much shit that I don’t do shit.” He’s got one hundred thousand dollars to pay, one thousand hours to work, and three years probation. This deal requires him putting his life on hold for a long time, so he won’t even lift a finger. He sees his P.O., who is so far very cool with him, but it’s just a matter of time before he’s in front of a judge, standing on shaky ground next to a shook legal-aid lawyer. There’s no way the judicial system is going to let his impudence get in the way of jurisprudence. He’s going back to jail, this time state, for three years, and that fine, community service, and probation are still going to be waiting for him at the gate when he gets out. There’s no doubt that he’ll have all the reason to be a nerve-pinching punk for years to come.
Most of the graffiti he did in ′95 was painted in gold spray paint, and because of GKAE’s extensive work in the medium, we were able to ascertain that gold spray paint fades quickly, turning brown and then soon seeping into the surface. Ironically, as he was going for the gold the paint was going going gone. It is a fact that paint fades, and once faded, it has done no damage to the structural integrity of the surface it is applied to. Who’s the vandal here and what’s been vandalized? What’s left of his vandalism is negligible on society, but society created a one hundred thousand dollar crater in his wallet and will to grow into a productive adult. For what prize but fame would a judge and a cop be so determined to leave an everlasting mark on the life of GKAE?
