WAR 42

If you don’t know about Mike Marshall I suggest ya’ll start checking for him. There song explains where he comes from I’ll sure heard some of his shit before. Also check out the album he did with Equipto – K.I.M. shit goes hard.

http://www.myspace.com/petelewisbuddy

[...]

A pretty recent opinion piece written by SF Chronicle opinion man C.W. Nevius lays out what most of us already knew: San Francisco IS a great place to get up in. Whoops.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/28/BAGL16O8RT.DTL&hw=graffiti&sn=002&sc=941

Below, he goes on speculating as to what kind of measures need to be taken up to put a total halt on writers operating in the city. Mandatory jail time anyone? Predictable.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/19/BA9316IUMQ.DTL&hw=graffiti&sn=002&sc=906

Share your opinion with him if you have time: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com

Don’t forget to scroll all the way down to the bottom and check out the reader comments.
Read how all the wannabe William Porters out there feel. Whackos.

tko roller done by guer and kenr 42 cinco de mayo 2001 los angeles cali 91/110 interchange

The underground artist has found his scrawl space in the mainstream, with his work emblazoned on movie billboards, custom cars and video games. He gives products ’street cred’ and counterculture cool.
By Chris Lee
April 4, 2009
Mister Cartoon eyeballed a blank spot on the giant graffiti mural and rattled his can of spray paint. An aerosol hiss filled the air. With a few fluid swipes of his beefy arm, an image began to take shape: a cluster of storm clouds massing above a Windex blue hot rod.

“If I knew the cops were coming to bust me, I could probably finish this whole thing in an hour,” the street artist joked.

Cartoon is standing atop a ladder in front of a 14-by-48 canvas in his cavernous warehouse studio in an industrial cul-de-sac just past L.A.’s skid row. His work in progress would hardly qualify as vandalism. The billboard was commissioned by Universal Studios to publicize the latest entry in its street-racing movie franchise, “Fast & Furious.”

The burly Cartoon, with a shaved head and gang-inspired tattoos creeping down his forearms and up his neck, has become one of corporate America’s hottest image makers. He’s in demand to imbue products — even celebrities — with “street cred” and counterculture cool.

Cartoon (born Mark Machado, but call him that at your risk), 39, readily admits he perfected his craft practicing public defacement as an outlaw tagger. He’s a big shot in lowrider circles — the artist has 11 prize-worthy customized show cars. His ability to create visuals encompassing Chicano gang and lowrider culture, ’70s New York graffiti and Japanimation has made Cartoon a sought-after tattoo artist, car customizer, illustrator and fashion designer.

“It’s definitely a rush seeing your art on a billboard,” Cartoon said. “Working with design agencies, designing concept cars — it’s a long way from my dad telling me to get a real job.”

Cartoon’s graphic designs, illustrations and artwork have also been used to add visual punch to a crazy quilt of pop cultural offerings:

He rendered the gang scrawl seen throughout the bestselling video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” He designed clothing for companies including Levi Strauss, Stussy, Vans and Supreme. He designed a customized T-Mobile Sidekick. He did detail work for a concept car for Scion. In 2005, Nike hired Cartoon to create limited editions of its Air Force 1 and Cortez shoes.

“The mainstream is coming around to his aesthetic, not the other way around,” said movie producer Brian Grazer, who is planning a film based on Cartoon’s life. “He doesn’t change. He’s still hard-core. He’s a gatekeeper to that world.”

Aaron Rose, an authority on underground art and co-director of the street art documentary “Beautiful Losers,” has showcased Cartoon’s creations in three exhibitions. He said the artist’s identification with the corporate establishment has helped distinguish him from the scrum of street artists trying to go legit.

“The corporate apparel brands embracing him and promoting his work was a big step in rising out of the underground,” Rose said. “Nike is a big stage. Suddenly he’s got 5 million more fans. It gave Cartoon cult celebrity status.”

Mister Cartoon grew up in San Pedro, the son of working-class parents who operated a printing shop. As a youngster, he fell in with a crowd he describes as “knuckleheads and sickos,” but he stops just short of admitting gang membership.

“I have been affected by gang culture up close and personally from a young age,” Cartoon said. “My parents would go to work and I’d run the streets. I could have been locked up or killed.”

When he was a teen, his style was heavily influenced by the abstract, brightly colored graffiti — usually letters — found on New York subways. When he was 17, authorities charged him with $30,000 worth of vandalism. The artist — who augmented his tagger alias Cartoon with “Mister” in a bid to be seen as grown up — was prosecuted as a minor. He avoided going to juvenile hall by pleading guilty.

He says he was put on probation and fined $3,000 — in that era, juvenile graffiti vandals were responsible for repaying one-tenth of the damages they caused. Cartoon said he paid the sum almost immediately by accepting one of his earliest commissions: a mural for a boxing gym.

“I used graffiti to pay my graffiti debt,” Cartoon said, chuckling.

But within months, the tagging lifestyle had lost its allure for the artist.

Through a fluke, a photographer for Car and Driver magazine asked him to make a gang-graffiti backdrop for a photo shoot, resulting in Cartoon’s first portfolio-worthy tear sheet.

“Some guy pulled up to San Pedro High School and said, ‘Hey, who’s the best graffiti artist in school? I’ve got a job for him doing a magazine cover,’ ” Cartoon recalled.

Obsessed with car culture, he began airbrushing T-shirts at custom car shows and gradually picked up pointers on painting murals on car doors and hoods. At age 20, he landed a job as an illustrator at Hustler magazine and soon parlayed his work doing ribald cartoons there into a sideline designing album covers for Southland hip-hop artists.

At a record release party in 1992, he met Estevan Oriol, manager of the stoner rap trio Cypress Hill. They became friends around the time Cartoon was getting a lot of tattoos. Oriol convinced Cartoon that tattoo art would be a natural progression from the kind of art he already was doing. The manager hired Cartoon to create an album cover for Cypress Hill and brought him on tour with the hard-partying group.

“I let him sketch on me,” Oriol said. “I showed the guys from Cypress Hill and made them get tattoos. When we’d go on tour with Goodie Mob or OutKast, I’d say, ‘Get tattooed by my boy.’ ”

Photos: Mister Cartoon
The tattoo that finally earned him a reputation, though, was created for Eminem. In 1999, less than five years after his maiden efforts with a homemade tattoo gun, Cartoon rendered a city scene on the rap superstar’s upper left arm. Thanks to Eminem’s towering cultural presence at that time, Cartoon’s business achieved a critical mass. He hit the mainstream.

Cartoon has since etched his stark black designs (working in the style of prison tattoo artists, he never uses colored ink) onto a Who’s Who of pop stars and pro basketball players, including Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer. His minimum fee is $1,000 per session. (“If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it,” Cartoon likes to say.) Although he refuses to be pinned down on the dollar amount, a large-scale tattoo like the “50″ that he inked over most of rapper 50 Cent’s back and shoulders reportedly costs about $20,000.

It was in 2002 while shooting the movie “8 Mile,” recalled Grazer, Imagine Entertainment co-chief, that he heard about Cartoon from Eminem. He traveled to the artist’s studio and, on the basis of a strong first impression, Grazer signed a deal to produce the artist’s biopic, tentatively titled “Ink.” He also hired Cartoon to executive-produce another Imagine feature, “Lowrider.”

“He had this giant underground following,” Grazer said. “I like his tattoo stuff, the car stuff, his detailing. He’s original and smart. His story is interesting.”

Nike, however, balked when Cartoon proposed designing collections for the company in 2004. “It took a year to convince Nike. Proposals. Meeting after meeting. ‘Cartoon? He’s a tattoo guy. What does he know about fashion?’ ” he recalled hearing from Nike representatives. “I didn’t take it as an insult. I was just working. Multitasking. I thought: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ ”

The artist persisted, and now his limited-edition sneakers — a model he designed in collaboration with Lance Armstrong is due out in July — regularly sell for hundreds of dollars above suggested retail.

Nike says it now counts Cartoon’s limited-edition redesigns of its Air Force 1 sneakers (such as the model he emblazoned with a skeleton, spider webs and “L.A.”) among “the most coveted releases in our history.”

In keeping with his image as a hero to the lowrider set, Cartoon drove his heavily customized ‘64 Chevy Impala from skid row to the Sunset Strip for the unveiling of the “Fast & Furious” billboard late last month.

Once there, the artist hit switches to make the car’s front end bounce up and down on hydraulic springs before photographers, reporters and cameramen assembled for the event.

Michael Moses, executive vice president of Universal Pictures’ marketing and publicity, said the studio hired Cartoon — whom he described as “the foremost graffiti artist of our city” — to create the billboard in an effort to reconnect the “Fast & Furious” franchise with its street culture origins.

The studio gave Cartoon an unusual degree of independence to depict key scenes and vehicles from the movie, personalized with his signature visuals: There were mucho macho muscle cars, an idealized femme fatale, a Mexican Dia de Los Muertos skeleton and the movie’s name emblazoned in gothic gangster font.

Neither the artist nor the studio would comment on the price tag for the mural. Local graffiti artists Revok and Toomer assisted Cartoon in painting it.

The billboard is Cartoon’s second movie assignment. He established his film publicity bona fides last year with a poster featuring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the crime drama “Righteous Kill” — an image reminiscent of faded newsprint, a wanted poster and a graffiti stencil.

“He’s real. His whole group is,” said Peter Adee, president of marketing and distribution for Overture Films, who picked Cartoon to design the “Righteous Kill” poster and Oriol to photograph it. “They’re into trying to get to an idea that’s as commercial as possible without selling out. They do mass production of images, but at the same time it’s not homogenization. They stay true to their art and roots.”

Mister Cartoon, a married father of four, traces most of his personal and professional success to the awakening he experienced in 1997 when he made the decision to give up drinking and other “mind-altering substances” he favored after years of touring with Cypress Hill. A friend from the tattoo world, Baby Ray, helped Cartoon improve his tattooing technique but also provided a dose of tough love and spiritual guidance.

“I don’t expect a trophy or a cookie or a pat on the back,” Cartoon said. “I made a decision to change my life and help my family.”

That decision resulted in the clarity to pursue his ambitions. But to hear the artist tell it, making good on those plans is also a matter of following the rules.

“Am I gifted or especially talented?” Cartoon said. “No. I got all this through hard work. Through respecting my old man. From taking direction from people. From painting when everyone else was asleep. I just found something I really love and practiced at it my whole life.”

chris.lee@latimes.com

Young Tagger Stuck and Killed on Highway 60, Riverside County

A Riverside teenager witnesses said was tagging the center divider of Highway 60 near Hall Avenue died early today when he was flung over the center divider after being hit by a car and run over by several other vehicles, the California Highway Patrol said in a news release.

Blake Locko, 17, was pronounced dead at the scene, the news release said.

Witnesses reported Locko and another person standing in the car pool lane of westbound Highway 60 about 2:15 a.m. when Locko was struck by a 1995 Saturn driven by Pomona resident Ramon Rodriguez, 22.

The force of the collision sent Locko flying over the 5-foot concrete center divider into the eastbound car pool lane where he was hit by other cars, the news release said.

There was no information about what happened to the other individual standing with Locko.

Colton resident Anthony Gicking, 27, returned to the scene after striking Locko in the eastbound lane.

Rodriguez, who suffered moderate neck injuries, was transported to Riverside Community Hospital for treatment, the news release said.

When did it become acceptable for people to lay down absolute garbage masquerading as pieces? Don’t pretend like you haven’t seen it. The awkward letters, inconsistent lines, overuse of dots/clouds/arrows, fills that look like the inside of a 2 yr old’s diaper. Hipster graffiti, semester style, hot garbage… whatever you want to call this emerging “style”. It used to be you put your best foot forward. Now apparently you put the foot forward that just stepped in dogshit.

But hey, if you have…

A) The right amount of drugs
B) The right amount of hip connections
C) The ability to fool people
D) More than one pair of skinny jeans in your closet

…well hey, you’re good to go as a member of a new writer subclass that differentiates itself simply producing terrible fucking graffiti.

I remember a higher standard that writers were held to when it came to determining status as a major player. You know….clean lines, proportioned letters, multi-color fills. I mean, the things that take practice, dedication, passion. I guess building a strong foundation of talent has been forsaken in the face of tpromises of quick success and glory.

Graffiti always needs new direction and imagery to stay relevant and fresh in the minds of both it’s participants and fan base right? Then why aren’t we seeing more pieces, throwies and tags that should be making the likes of Saber and Revok re-evaluate the amount of time they spend in the studio and in the streets?

Well, instead we now have fools writing the equivalent of a Myspace blog on the wall. What’s this about your “shattered heart weeping over the echos of time in 2009″? Get the fuck outta here with your cryptic nonsensical bullshit.

The crisp alleyway pieces I remember seeing everywhere? Hmmm, seems to be harder and harder to come across the more I go out. Instead, I’m treated to blobby letters rocking sunglasses riding on clouds crusted with stars. Wow, your Peter Max-inspired bullshit was TOTALLY worth dodging four blocks worth of addicts, broken glass, needles and undercovers to get to.

The scene I’ve grown up with has gone from bombing a wall, racking some tall can King Cobras and bum rushing the show to…sipping lattes and listening the latest offering from “Panic At The Disco.“?!? Everytime I meet these particular writers, it’s hard to tell if I’m talking to a man or a woman. Sometimes it’s both actually. Yikes, check for that adams apple son. Really, I’d rather kick it with people I can count on when the shit flies. Not someone that stands back from the action because they were too afraid of their vintage shirt getting wrecked.

Please, someone explain what it is I am missing when I see this stuff. Obviously the hidden meaning behind those crappy letters and lazy fills continues to elude me. There has to be a reason why there are ENDLESS threads on sites like 12oz Prophet where moderators and resident jerkoffs alike crow endlessly about how edgy and cutting edge this stuff is.

Really, it pains me to see a bad ass Natrl thread sink into obscurity while some no-name, rainbow painting, vespa-riding geek enjoys weeks worth of being in one of the top slots with legions of bandwagon jumpers applauding their excessive and “ironic” use of arrows and sparkles. It’s like when you see a really hot girl with an ugly dude. You wonder what the hell you’re doing wrong and you go nuts trying to find answers that just aren’t there.

Personally, I think trying to assign ANY type of meaning to this emerging style gives it way too much credit. Real talk, it’s a cheap shortcut to fame and recognition for those starting out and a sign of laziness for the heads that have been pushing cans and markers for years. If anything this new breed of graffiti gives legitimacy to the efforts of city government and other entities that would like to see graffiti eradicated completely.

Hey, I’m not one to say what is and what doesn’t count as graffiti. That’d put me on a level with a lot of the people I look down on and well, I couldn’t forgive myself for that. But look… what I do know is what I like…and I don’t like this shit one bit..

My greatest fear is that I’m alone in feeling this way. Prove me wrong people.