Gradient Magazine Feature: THE GRAND VANDAL by ERIC LEGASPI

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Written by ERIC LEGASPI & Photography by MATT FRIED

“Can you put some of that condensed milk in there?” He leaned over to me and remarked, “I loved that stuff when I was a kid.” The way that he found a cup of coffee, let alone with the option to include an estranged ingredient from his own childhood, with such swiftness was fairly impressive. A staggeringly tall man with lanky limbs, he had a disarmingly cordial sentiment that I’ve found in most native New Yorkers – one that seems to be as inviting as it is dominating. His short black hair swirled chaotically on his head and welcomed the sparkle in his brown eyes that belie his 40 years of age. RD dispels many of the preconceptions established by typical graffiti artists; his voice was gruff and forceful (free from the ubiquitous “hip-hop-isms” society has been acclimated to), his dress was plain and practical. These days he pays both rent and taxes. It all seems outlandish if RD is a stranger to you, and that is exactly the point.

Though he was born on the west coast, an array of incidents landed him in New York, living with his mother and going to school in the South Bronx. At a young age, he showed the glint of a rascal, “You know kids, when they watch cartoons, they root for Batman? Forget that, I liked the Joker.” The Bronx was the cradle for graffiti in New York, giving birth and legitimacy to a movement of new artists since the late 70s. Seeing a fully painted 6 train one morning made his eyes catch fire and, given his demeanor, giving in was difficult to avoid. “I started writing on the streets from the time I was 11-years-old to 13-years-old. Back then, my brother, he used to write with this guy Lace and a crew called ESA (East Side Artists) –then they switched it to ESP (East Side Party, East Side Playboy, Extra Sick Party) and they were just all over the 6 Train; all they wrote on was the 6 train. I grew up with them so I just started writing with them, probably until ‘85, ’86.”

Trains are the iconic conveyance of graffiti, stretching back to the bad old days of New York’s darker times, before the civilizing light of Giuliani and Bloomberg washed off all the muck. They were large, blank canvases allowing an artists’ work to travel vast routes of public boroughs, being seen by countless citizens and establishment types. Graffiti was a way to prove yourself as a youth in the city and it required a dedication that RD withheld, “On Friday night I’d go into the yard on 205th street and I’d stay there until Sunday morning. I’d just eat Fig Newtons, sneak out every now and again for milk or something, but that’s it. I’d start at one end of the yard – with the A’s and C’s – and just work my way over; sometimes five, six hundred cars… I used to bump into little Hazzy Haz, he’d be at it for a while, but he’d always go home. I slept there.” Even to exercise the unpredictable extent of his art, RD covered the inner walls and benches of MTA chariots (“the ugly shit on the inside”) despite the pains it cause to get there. Unconcerned with the murals on the surface he was faced with that inspired him to write in the first place, he stared right back, and filled every inch of the walls with oceans of black ink churning from his Flo-Master markers.

As with most stories in this city, half of RD’s exists underground. Wandering through an endless maze of subterranean track work, writers became rats, filling up the abandoned corners of tunnels with empty spray cans. Entering through a grating near the zoo in Central Park, RD and his compatriots would travel down a seemingly endless succession of stairs into the very bowels of the island. There, halfway to China, were cavernous tunnels set apart from the rest of the transit system, an entire rail yard underground. It served as a home to the now defunct JFK express train, eventually housing a virtual rainbow of other trains winding their way through the city’s veins; and all without a cop in sight. “We used to do whole cars down there for a while. Then before you know it, people started getting wind of it, and all of a sudden everybody and their mother was down there! We didn’t really care though, that’s where we lived and it ended up bringing more paint our way. We’d scare people out of there and take their cans.” Little does Bloomberg know that these were the beginnings of his Second Avenue subway.

Though his heart will always travel with the trains, he is just as accomplished as a street writer. Most of the shine has been given to the outer boroughs over the years, but the man is a fervent advocate for Manhattan Island. Considering the amount of time he’s spent on these streets, one would expect that he would have found an oasis for himself, some small pocket of privacy in which to commune with his art. Instead, he finds his space in the margins of a screaming microscope. “Favorite place is dead smack midtown. Most people don’t like that. It never sleeps. It’s busy. Anyone can go write out in the middle of west bumble-fuck Brooklyn, fuckin’ South Bronx or some shit. That’s simple crap. But writing with cars at every light, cops everywhere, it’s like BAM!” His thirst for high-value targets is quite insatiable. During the mid 80’s, he and his brother used to love hitting Mercedes’ and other luxury vehicles parked on the streets. Using all kinds of loud colors, they’d apply hot rod flame jobs onto the latest European import – orange into yellow, into red. “We hit about 20 of these things.

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We were hoping it would make the papers but it didn’t. You would think there would be something on the news – Someone has ruined these fine luxury cars– but there wasn’t.” Perhaps the owners became fond of their work.

In graffiti, the location of a piece can easily be more important than the actual look it reflects. Writers climb to the highest outcrops of concrete and dig to the deepest recesses of the tunnels to prove their daring attitudes attached to their skill. RD is a talented artist, capable of amazing feats with the simplest spray cans and markers, but as satisfying as a complex piece with interconnected letters, three-dimensional effects and the other bells and whistles might be, the real thrill comes from the mere act of getting away with breaking the law. “You got all these guys, they squash beef with everyone. It’s like Gandhi or something. Why you gonna write? If everything’s all gravy and you’re doing legal stuff, that’s not writing anymore. At that point you’re a muralist; you’re an artist, not a graffiti writer.” Graffiti might’ve gotten relegated to legal walls in Queens, found it’s way into high-priced galleries, or become championed by new stylists like Marc Ecko, but guys like RD couldn’t care less. “Crime, it just gives me goose bumps, man, even if I’m stealing an apple from a Korean deli or something. I don’t know why, it’s strange.” Even just mentioning law breaking, RD’s long fingers start to tap against each other and a crooked grin winds its way across his face.
Writing was always a great way for him to express his illegal creativity. RD and an associate had been breaking into a truck yard, hitting close to 70 fruit trucks while their drivers slept, leaving gaping holes and plenty of carwashes for their owners to pay for come morning. Eventually, the workers got tired of patching the fences and got guard dogs. When faced with Rottweilers, who can easily bite off your arm, a frontal attack is never advisable, so RD came up with a different approach. “I was going to poison the dogs, originally. Could wrap up some pills in a piece of some salami or something.” Thankfully, he decided against the drugs and fed the dogs the old fashioned way. “I kinda made friends with one of the dogs. You know, I’d go by and he’d be sitting there. I could probably gain their friendship, give them some chicken wings or something every now and again. Maybe start ridin’ him around the yard or something.” Not only did he save himself from being ravaged, but also his partner enlightened him to the money people pay for such fine animals. So began the great dog-napping. “I’d start stealing the dogs, writing on the trucks. They’d get new dogs, I’d steal them.” Why just bomb trucks when you can also walk away with a few hundred bucks?

Realizing to what extent the kidnapping frenzy could reach, RD started looking for other lucrative breeds, most notably a pricey Sharpe at an auto body shop one night. After cutting a dinner plate-sized whole in the fence, he set about baiting the hole with his trusty salami. When the dog wandered over, he reached in to put a leash onto the dog. It squirmed away, forcing RD’s hand further behind the fence, where he came into contact with a new challenge. “I pull my hand out and there’s a fuckin’ PIT BULL gnawing on my hand!” Ten minutes of kicking, punching, biting and other forms of struggle and all he had to show for was is a mess of broken bones and copious amounts of blood. “I pulled a lighter out of my back pocket and burned the thing on its nose and it finally let me go.” Not only did he lose the Sharpe, but his hungry friend got out too, giving the thief a run for his money. “You see how messed up my hand is? I’m not gonna pull down my pants and whip out my ass, but trust me, it’s like SWISS CHEESE down there!”

Like other writers, RD’s life was filled with these kinds of schemes and hustles, things that those who grow up outside of the city would never know. “In the 80’s, man, the streets were PAVED with fuckin’ gold. Everything was money.” There were various shoplifting schemes, RD would go to Bloomingdale’s, grab a few items, walk his way into the employee lounge and toss the goods out the window, down to eager hands waiting 4 storeys below. “Yeah, they had security tags, but you wouldn’t go through any security.” Cars, sometimes more than ten at a time, were run out of garages in convoys, racing across the city in the dead of night. They would mine the train tunnels, breaking into gang boxes and stealing power tools. When nothing else could be found, they sold the streets themselves. Eager to capitalize on the fall of the iron curtain, the boys got creative. “My brother and I broke up the concrete into pieces, we’d paint cycles and shit on them and sell them as pieces of the Berlin Wall. We had a guy sitting there behind us with a shopping cart and my brother was out there making all kinds of certificates. People were buying it like it was Starbucks coffee or something!”

While Wall Street and other capitalist lifers fought for reservations at Nell’s or played golf to unwind, RD and the booming graffiti writers took to having some fun with buses. First, they would head down to Chinatown for some fireworks. The weapon of choice was a “pineapple,” a toilet paper-size tube of black powder. From there, the miscreants would sprint up behind a bus as it would pull away from a stop, opening the rear doors just enough to slip the small explosive inside. “We’d wait a couple seconds then BOOM! The bus would stop, smoke all pourin’ outside. Looks pretty cool when you’re smokin’ angel dust.” When it finally got to be too much, it was off to the wooded area behind a heliport off the FDR, whisked away on the wheels of stolen bikes. “I always liked the water, it’s just…tranquil.” There, by the gently lapping, bucolic shores of the East River, many a weary writer would indulge in alcohol, any number of narcotics and God knows what else.

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Alarm systems don’t just work to protect houses, so one has to keep in mind the many ways to be alarmed, themselves, of oncoming police. Lining the ground with some broken bottles or light bulbs can save a writer from being caught off guard while bombing a subway tunnel. In shadier times, the pimps, pushers and prostitutes of rugged neighborhoods had networks of first responders. “Someone saw a cop coming, the call would go out and the streets would be dead.” There are also techniques and tricks one can use to become invisible, especially in a city of 8 million people. “Wherever I’m writing, I always try to dress appropriately. If I’m writing in the South Bronx, I’ll dress like a crack head bum. If I’m in midtown, I might wear a suit or something.” He is also very conscious of technique, forgoing a style for economy. There are plenty of artists who use big, exaggerated movements when doing complex pieces, but RD’s muscle memory allows him to execute a quick tag without breaking stride. He is just another guy walking down the street. If the first rule in self-defense is to never look like a victim, then the first rule in crime is to not look like a criminal.
His approach also houses more discipline than one might think. “I never drink or do drugs when I go out to write. I stay focused.” The name of the game for him is focus, and when he says that word he bangs his hands together and his visage turns decidedly serious. Having bucked the comforts of authority most of his life, he is a man governed greatly by his own will and sense of purpose and the fact that he has never been caught goes a long way to justify both. Still, when he gets the spirit in him and opens up about his craft and craftiness, he becomes disarmingly cheerful and you can see it in his eyes. They are not the weary saucers of an overworked professional, but rather the gleaming spectacles of a child – constantly prying, searching, yearning for something to get into. One could surmise that his current motivation has more to do with instinct rather than reason. His movements and thoughts have adapted themselves to this concrete jungle over nearly 26 years of writing graffiti and getting over on the system. He has developed a sixth sense about the rhythms of urban life and his encyclopedic knowledge of streets and habits of the police are a testament to his training. Those painted initials reflect not just the man, but the choices he has made and cannot turn away from.

This dedication is inexplicable, even to him. “To be true to you, at this point, I lost it. When you’re young it’s the cool thing to do, so you do it. Right now, I’d probably be older than the police officer that would be arresting me.” In many ways, he seems to be a man that has been passed over by evolution and time. He’s admittedly terrible with computers, comparing his typing to the movements of a “retarded pigeon.” Most of his friends from the old days are in jail or burdened with addiction and the smash-and-grab schemes of his past have been replaced with more eloquent and technical subterfuges. As successful as he might’ve been snatching purses and guard dogs, the good money these days lies in identity theft or insider trading, mastering hustles that can’t be honed on darkened sidewalks. The city has changed around him – drastically so – and he speaks of the good old days as anyone reaching middle age would. His day job and its steady paycheck seem to have softened some of his habits. But even to this day, RD refuses to pay for toilet paper, preferring to grab it from a restaurant, the Staten Island ferry, anywhere there is a bathroom stall – “It’s everywhere, why would I pay for it?”
His beliefs in paper products are not the only things from his past that have relevance today. As with any man facing a new generation, RD puts a great deal of importance on masculinity, a subject he feels has fallen by the wayside in recent years. “Today, you have these guys who aren’t walkin’ like they should…You used to have Ralph Cramdon, he was the king of the house, his wife wasn’t having it, and it was cute. Then you had Archie Bunker, he was just kickin’ ass… Now you have [Everybody Loves] Raymond, who can’t even zip up his own pants. Men have lost their masculinity. Even if you’re dragging your guts behind you, you walk with your chest out and your chin up.” It was very important to him that this statement go to print, something he felt a particular need to pass on to myself and the rest of us in our formative years. Since writing this piece I am noticing his initials on more and more fire hydrants near my own day job in “dead smack midtown.” I used to pass them without thought or acknowledgement as I traveled to make a living in an attempt to become a positive addition to society. Eventually, the letters will be washed away like any other blight in our fair city, but if I happen to pass them before the brushes have had their say,

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the first thing I’m reminded to do is straighten up.

Fame is an asset in most pursuits, but it gets you made if you’re a criminal, which is why I find it curious that RD has shown his face and told his story to a complete stranger. Some might find his admissions arrogant in the face of 26 years of luck, a dare to the Vandal Squad and the rest of Ray Kelly’s men to try and catch him. But his story should have ended tragically long ago and RD is nowhere near the wild, drugged-up hooligan he once was. That said,

To be sure, these attitudes were formed out of necessity as much as philosophy. The worlds of crime and graffiti are dominated by alpha males whose positions are maintained by projections of strength. Sensitivity, self-doubt, compromise, these are things that can have real and dangerous consequences in some circles. The precautions he has taken during his career have sometimes caught the ire of his fellow writers. RD, though, has persisted because he has brooked compromise – becoming a good enough vandal to have notoriety, but never risking too much for fame. It has been said that a man can’t change who he is; but then again, why should he?

All this said, why, after nearly 30 years on the streets, is RD still writing? It’s been said before that graffiti is an art by kids, for kids. But what happens when you’re not a kid anymore and you still like it? In some ways, he is still that child.

“I try to stay on top of it all, you know. I’m never out of the loop. I’m either like the top dog or I’ll trickle down to maybe the fourth, but never fifth. Fifth, I gotta get out there.”

As brazen a character as he may be, there is a certain discipline in his approach to his craft. Even if they can outsmart cops, addiction usually overtakes hardcore writers at some point, especially in the 80’s when one of the world’s most addictive drugs was making its smashing debut. RD has had his experience with crack cocaine, angel dust, and god knows what else, and came back.

He is one of the few active writers who have never been caught by the police or seen the inside of a prison. The city is clean these days and having passed by his “RD” in new places night after night, it amazes me that he refers to Mayor Bloomberg’s highly funded Vandalism Squad as Sasquach. “I’ve heard all these stories, but I have no actual proof that they exist,” but refers to it, as he would a low fence or any other obstacle he has surpassed.

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