THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

Conversation with Fred Gall’s Mom:

Freddy got his first skateboard on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. He won one of those real cheesy boards. Freddy was playing one of those big spin wheel games and he won, but it was one of those games where you could win really big prizes. They had washing machines, TVs, and things like that, but all Freddy wanted was the skateboard. So what were we supposed to do? He wanted the skateboard so we got him the skateboard even though we could have gotten all these expensive prizes. But he took that cheesy skateboard and that’s all he cared about and he did really good with it. So next Christmas, I got him his first real professional skateboard, a Lance Mountain. I can’t remember what kind of wheels or trucks we got him but that doesn’t matter. Freddy loved that Lance Mountain.

“Tracker Trucks called, all the way from California they heard about Freddy, the little guy with the big moves, and they wanted to come see him.”

After that I would take him every weekend to the contests under the Brooklyn Bridge. I remember the fourth time we went there Freddy put his skateboard down and charged the bank. At that time Freddy was just a little kid. He put the board down and rushed right toward the bank and over into the street in the middle of traffic, like a mad man. I almost had a heart attack.

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Most of you already know that in the first issue of our magazine we did an article on CLOWN the founder of  T.I.T.S crew.  When we put the issue together, we had a lot of east coast content and we wanted to do something on a west coast writer. CLOWN immediately came to mind.  Everyone here at the mag referenced him as a major inspiration, especially since most of the staff was heavy into graff during the time period where CLOWN was out there pushing TITS crew really hard.  I recently contacted CLOWN again to see if I could do an interview with him about the clothing line.  It was at that point that I found out the real story behind the brand.  TITS (the original graffiti crew) sent over this article and asked if I could post it up, so here you go.

Those Tits are Fake!

1995 was the year.  The graffiti writer known as “Clown” was looking to draw some attention to his name.  In a joking manner, the four letter word “Tits” was brought up.  Bang! A light bulb popped into the heads of a few other fellow graffiti writers of the time and after a few months, “Tits Crew” was born.  It took only a short time to form the crew which originally consisted of 10 members.  Soon after, Tits Crew was a smooth running graffiti organization.  At the time there weren’t many other groups who had four letter monikers to represent their crew, let alone four letters that even spelled out real words.  This excited the new group of graffiti artists because they all had a common goal, destroy and this new name for their crew was going to grab attention.  Original meanings for the acronym of the crew were brainstormed quickly.  “Time is too short”, “Terror in the streets”, “Thunder in the sky” and “Clown’s original, “Two in the shirt”.  It was genius.

“In other words, he stole the name of the crew and started to profit from it .  Marek never had any contact, any arrangements or any approval from Clown or any other member of Tits Crew.”

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THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

I found a video of you doing a live set with Morcheeba from England. That bugged me out. It got me so amped up because I would never have expected seeing that combo. A lot of times artists stick to what they know and are too scared to do collaborations with artists outside their genre. To see a rapper from Newark, NJ doing a collaboration with a lounge band from England was refreshing to see. You seem to link up with a lot of unexpected people.

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You know what I’m into Big Joe? I’m pursuing entertainment. PERIOD. So any big entertainment figure I see, I introduce myself, I introduce Green and from that comes a lot of, “What you doin? Why don’t you rap on something?” In the case of Morcheeba, they actually sought me out because of the Fugees album. They said they liked the Fugees album and they are kind of like the Fugees over there. So they contacted my manager in England and we did it. I did a whole UK tour with them. We did Italy, Portugal, the whole thing.

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If I could go back in time I would try not to have met Eminem. I wouldn’t have met him and been his friend……Not this time, just straight business.

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You, Animal BMX, and Skavanger BMX also seem to have some strong ties. You rock their gear in your videos and they use a lot of your tracks and Mr. Green’s tracks in their videos. How did that come about?

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It is that time of year again for a brand new installment of the “Friends With Knives” stencil group show which will be held at Crewest Gallery in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, August 9th. This year PaperMonster has brought together an impressive lineup of artists including: Blek le Rat, Broken Crow, Chris Stain, Dave Lowell, E.L.K, Greg Boudreau, HAHA, Joe Iurato, Koleszar, Henry Quiara, Leckomio, Mefee, Nathan Phaneuf, PaperMonster, Peat Wollaeger, Scotch and Shai Dahan. This is a wonderful opportunity to view a huge range of stencil styles and stencil art techniques under one roof. For more info on the Friends With Knives group show visit: http://papermonster.wordpress.com

Friends With Knives Stencil Group Show
Opening Reception: Saturday August 7th @ 6pm
Crewest Gallery
110 Winston St.
LA, CA 90013
213-627-8272
http://crewest.com