MY history

It went down like this. I have always loved Hip Hop and graffiti and grew up skating with my little high school crew. We would take the DART bus downtown, skate around, drop a few tags and just felt like we were part of the city. Better watch out, DAZE, comin in hot (I was 14, shut up). That all faded away, but it’s really where this all began.

In 2014, started going out on good weather days only and I mean really good weather days. Dry, 70 degrees, super sunny. I would go take flicks of freights, but I only knew a couple spots, such as Addison and Carrolton. I didn’t know about the spots now that everyone paints at. That same year, decided to venture out some more, again beautiful weather day, and went to the Trinity River Bottoms and found the spot where it appeared a graff event was held. Since emails were on some of the pieces, started reaching out to people. At the time, this website was called liveLIVEco.com and was working on getting artists on the site. My plan was to get artists of all walks of life on site and help them promote their art work. It was supposed to be an art collective, but damn was it hard trying to get people to send me actual pics of their art. Lui The Great or Oxygen, did get back to me over email, we met up at Angry Dog in Deep Ellum. I told him what I was trying to do and he was interested but it didn’t go much further after that. That same day, went to an art show at his buddy’s place down the way at Capital L, and watched him do some live painting. After that and for a few years to come, just really tried to make liveLIVEco.com happen, but didn’t get very far. Everyone loved the idea and artists agreed, used to have 20+ artists featured on the site with some pics of their art I had taken, but none of them ever sent me anything new, so it just got more annoying than it was worth my time.

That brings us to 2017, we were driving to dinner to go to Eno’s in Oak Cliff, drove past The Fabrication Yard, which I did not know about at the time. Decided to go back the next day and check it out. It was Sunday morning when I got there, no one was there and a cop pulled up and announced over his loud speaker that it was not a safe area and I should leave, which I thought was hilarious. I kept strolling around and taking pics, the left to go explore other areas. This is what really popped it off for me. The Fab Yard really is a great place and IDGAF if you think it’s lame. Even the biggest hitters in town go there to paint and/ or hang out. Only a small handful of people I know avoid it and don’t like the spot, so stop lying to yourself. This is where I met everyone and since I started posting up pics on Instagram, I had captured everyone’s curiosity and so when the writers were able to put the face to the IG account, everyone was actually pretty appreciative. I had caught some shit about posting up exact locations or being too loose with writers privacy, but I learned from those mistakes and had adjusted my ways, cuz I’m respectful and not an asshole. I just didn’t know. I had this “genius” idea of making a graffiti art map, which I now know was a stupid fucking idea.

It’s all a snowball effect. I would go to the Fab Yard, talk with people hanging out, recognize the pieces and wanted to put the person with the piece, NOT IN A COP WAY, you annoying fucks haha. I just wanted to meet people and build this experience up. Then I started having people hit me up over IG from out of town who wanted to meet up and paint spots. Had them meet me at the Fab Yard for the most part, I didn’t have any other spots I felt like I could take outsiders too (see I was already learning). Everything started to evolve past just taking flicks at the Fab Yard, street stuff and freights when I met Ronin. He was making a documentary about West Dallas, which included the Fab Yard and other areas and the culture involved. Ronin introduced me to more writers he was interviewing for his doc, writers like Bocho, Slic and Kone. Then that lead to me starting to write myself. Because of my website name at the time (liveLIVEco.com), I chose LIVE, which I know is not original, but whatever that is what I went with. Ronin was basically like, are you just going to stand around and take pics or are you going to paint? So that changed a lot of things at that point.

This is where everything kicked into high gear and is a night and day difference to my life now. At the time, I was married, but no kids. I am still happily married, but we have a kid now (raising kids takes a lot of time if you didn’t know). At the time, I was working for a small advertising agency and had just lost one of our biggest clients and had to lay off the team. The clients we had could support me and the owner but nothing else. We ditched the office in McKinney, TX and went fully remote. I didn’t care about work anymore. The clients weren’t demanding, my boss was busy doing other personal shit and I wasn’t going to sit around in front of my computer all day for nothing. Flash forward to today, I work for a new advertising agency and have tons of clients. Anyways, back in 2017 - 2018, I started going out, every single day. Roaming the streets, finding new spots, going to the Fab Yard. It was non stop. It was like being a kid again when you would go out and play and be home for dinner. And that’s what I did. Kept meeting more and more people, not just at the Fab Yard and this whole thing just kept growing. Specifically writers like Debt and Tomb, who were curious about who the fuck I was, but also wanted to be careful. I popped off at Debt over IG, because he was giving me shit about posting too much at the Fab Yard. I did not know it was Debt, just thought it was some dude and at the time, I was getting a lot of “advice” at the time from various people and it was getting real old. The conversation calmed down, he told me who he was and he wanted me to meet up at the bar the next day to chat/hang/I don’t know. Got to the bar, asking around for Debt, the bartender played dumb. In walks Tomb (didn’t know it was him), he sits right next to me and asks me about the beers I like and shit like that. Almost an hour had passed since I got there and messaged Debt again that I was going to bounce and he was like NO NO, stay stay, I’m pulling in. Then Tomb introduced himself, Debt walked in and we had some beers, started chatting. We then went out and took flicks of spots they had hit and this is what really changed my way of knowing where to go take flicks. Then the magazine comes into play.

The magazine, the fucking magazine. It’s been maybe the best and worst thing about this whole experience. It was February 2018 and it would not stop fucking raining. Cold and rainy was not good for any of the shit I liked to do. I had all these pictures and was trying to keep the website updated and then decided to make a coffee table book. Came to find that was very expensive. Changed gears and decided on a magazine. I put together a lot of pages of pictures and kind of my story and felt something was missing. It was interviews. I reached out to the writers I had come to know and they all surprisingly agreed. Even Debt

Still writing…There is much more to my story that I will continue to fill in