All-City All-Star

XX I’m trying something very very new…it’s supposed to be a whole bunch of thoughts tied together by the main topic, which is going All-City. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, I’ll explain it later on. For now, if nothing makes sense just know that it will be clarified soon enough. Until then, I hope you like! XX

My story starts off as complicated as anyone else’s. I mean, I can’t start off by saying that probably no one else has ever had a life like mine. But, you know, they probably have.

But do I know them? Nah, I don’t, and I really don’t want to meet anyone like me. That would just be boring, ya heard?

So here’s the low-down on my life. You’ll get everything once you know the rules. Then I’ll tell you the rest.

“We only got three rules on this team,” Our leader Duran barked at us the night we joined. He was tall, and he had muscles. You knew before you even met him not to mess with him.

“We only got three rules, other than respect for your crewmembers. One; do not bomb sacred places. That is where our ancestry came from, and I will not have some little fucker from my crew making my own mama cry on Sunday!”

“Two; don’t bomb over anyone else’s work unless you’re sure it’s been there for at least a week. If you’re not sure, move on. We are a respectable crew! You will be disowned if I find out you do something stupid like that!”

“Three; don’t forget about this one. It’s the most important. When you’re done bombing, you gotta get out of there as fast as you can. If you get caught by the cops, I ain’t gonna come get you. You’re gonna have to call your mamas and daddies and they’ll be the ones who whoop your sorry ass once it’s out of jail.”

“Bombing is a deadly business, crew,” Duran told us, and by the look on his face, we knew he was dead serious. “I’ll try my hardest to keep ya’all in the network, but if you screw up it’s your own damn fault. Follow those three simple rules and you’ll be okay. Course, everybody slips up once in a while.” He let a grin slide across his face, and all of us loosened up a little. “For now, have a little fun. Thanks to ya man Lil Mookie, we got the area clear of cops for a while.”

Duran watched us from the chalkboard he’d found. He surveyed each and every one of us, like he was sizing up meat at your local Vons. When none of us moved for the entrance of the Court, he popped forward and made Lannae shriek. He laughed this great, thunderous laughter that was contagious to the rest of the older members of the crew. We were new kids, fresh out of the school systems.

“Well what’re ya’all waiting for?” he boomed, pointing at the streets. “Go get some paint and work your magic! Show us what you got!”

And that’s the day I started bombing for real. I’d only done a whole bunch of murals in my notebooks, too busy doodling and making new designs in math to pass. Now…now it was just me and the walls.

Time to show ‘em what I got, huh?

My crew’s called El Finman Fajiri Waati. It’s a mixture of Spanish and Baramba, from Mali. It means we are The Black Sunrise. Duran thought it up back when he and the rest of his friends thought up our crew. Way back before he got locked up.

Now it’s up to us to get him out.

But how do you get someone out of lockdown when you don’t have the money to get them out anyway?

Everyone says you can’t bribe The Law, but it’s a matter of business. As long as you have the money, you can do anything.

Euros, preferably. The Law likes their vacation in Europe, not down in the Urbz like the rest of us.

“Hetchy.” Why do people still call me that? “Yo, Hetchy!” I carefully ignore whoever’s calling me and continue on with my Tag. If it’s the cops it’ll be about one more minute before they get to me.

It’s not like I id anything special at Hetch-Hetchy—well, nothing special enough to be remember. I mean, all I did was write my name all over the dam there. Okay, so maybe it was more like a mural of my full name but that was a few years back.

Judging from how fast out work gets hacked, you would think everyone would forget by now.

I guess the name just stuck.

“Hetchy!” Christ, how loud can you get?

“Okay!” Okay, okay, I’m comin’. Who wants me anyway?

“What you think?” Benny Royale asks me, like I’m some judge. I look at the wall he bombed. His piece is ugly. What was he thinking? He just wasted a lot of good copper too! You don’t mess with copper and green unless you want your piece to look like—

“It’s ugly,” I reply honestly. “What were you trying to do?”

“Uh…I dunno.” They all answer me like little kids. “How can I make it better?” But then they always want me to help them improve.

“I dunno,” I tell him. “Why don’t you look at it and see?”

It’s all finished. It looks like La Mujer De Guadalupe, it’s so beautiful. Yellows, reds…all the hot colors are on top. The blues and greens…they’re on the bottom like they’re supposed to be.

I hope the cops come and take a picture of this as a warning before they arrest me; it’s been one hell of a war since they locked up Duran.

“War is El Finman Fajiri Waati is War.”

Yeah, Bombing is my thing. If I see a wall, I’m gonna own it. It’s what I do.

Mi, “Hetchy” Paz.

They find it the next morning, after I made Benny Royale cover up his work with a new piece. He’s a lost cause, but I don’t discriminate if I can get paid. Benny pays me to be a bitch to him about his work.

I can’t complain.

The police, aka the Gang Unit, takes lots of pictures of our work. Therefore, we sometimes get into the paper. It’s a special occasion, and Benny pays me double for getting cred in the paper.

It’s not like no one wouldn’t notice anyway. We covered the whole side of the building. Hell, my knuckles are gonna be bloody for days now.

Everybody in their shiny suits and snazzy cars…they gonna see my name. They gonna see who’s at war and who’s not.

They’re gonna realize that they don’t have a choice, either; they’ve already been forced into the war.

Benny thinks it’s funny. He thinks it’s awesome that we got into the paper. What he doesn’t know is that while it’s “awesome”, it’s also your mug shot. It’s what The Law identifies you with.

They match your style, then they figure out where you Tag. You don’t even know you have a pattern until they tell you that you do, since they’re clever enough to “figure you out”.

I never understood it. Why waste time trying to lock us up when you got real criminals out there? That murderer dude back in the day? Gangs? We aren’t gangs, and we don’t murder.

We only etch our names, our expressions, and our passion into the hearts of the streets. Take me, for example: everyone thinks I’m a legend because I managed to pull off Tagging a dam. It was a bitch, too. Had to get someone savvy enough to stop the water for a while, and then go at it.

I probably killed a lot of that environment thing the news keeps talking about.

Now Duran…he is a legend. He is someone everyone respects, even The Law sometimes. He’s tagged everywhere. Every single building in this city? Yeah, somewhere in the fiber of those bricks and that concrete, he has his name permanently impressed into them. He’s tagged globally. He used to have a whole album full of bombing he did when he was in Asia.

Asia likes tags. They like what we do. Europe is okay with it, where here is downright hostile. You risk your life when you go to war with The Law over where you can and can’t make beautiful artwork.

That makes it all the more worth it.