INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES | ||
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Howard Gribble: "NSR" stands for North Side Redondo. | ||
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Howard Gribble: As if a sky crisscrossed by wires was not ugly enough, this garage at 190th st. and Crenshaw in the Dogpatch area of North Torrance has been inundated with graffiti...and bad graffiti at that! Dogpatch, taking its name from the Little Abner comic strip, was a predominately lower class white neighborhood, perhaps accounting for the lact of artistic merit here. Or perhaps the writers were just stoned. Whatever, it's a mess!. | ||
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HS: You mention in your caption that Bird may have been one of the original "taggers." Is this statement drawing a distinction between "taggers" and other more traditional cholo writers? The spread of their writing over areas outside of their home territory? Is this what makes a tagger? HG: Most of the Bird 1 graffiti that I saw was much less elaborate than the example that has generated so much interest. It usually just featured "/BIRD 1" /with/ "F13" /underneath. The frequency and wide area over which I observed this makes it seem likely that his primary motivation was to (a) get his name up as often as possible and (b) over as large a geographical area as he could manage. That seems to me to come pretty close to constituting what's today called a "tag". There is an example of this in the latest set where it appears that "Bird1" also executed two adjacent and similar pieces but using other names. | ||
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Howard Gribble: This is an interesting piece because of the inclusion of "white KKK", a seeming reference to the Klu Klux Klan. Also note swastika (though rendered in mirror image) dotting the "i" in David. It should be noted that any affiliation with the racist organisation is highly doubtful. | ||
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Howard Gribble: This roster of gang members is proceeded by the legend "somos locos", which translates, "we are crazy". Of particular interest is the seeming collaboration between east side and west side factions of the Wilmas gang, historically bitter rivals. | ||
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Howard Gribble: This Avenues gang roll call appeared on the concrete lined banks of the Arroyo Seco flood control channel. In the distance at upper left "Barbarians", a club or gang name. | ||
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Howard Gribble: In the 1950s the term "mighty" often proceeded the gang name. | ||
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Howard Gribble: "WF" for white Fence. "WFT" probably stands for White Fence Tinys, junior members of the gang. | ||
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