JAMES

Kill Pretty: Did you grow up in Santa Cruz?

JAMES: No, I was born in LA. Then we moved to Holland. We lived there for two years, moved to Canada, lived there for two years, moved to Redwood City, lived there for two years, moved to Australia, lived there for two years. Yeah my dad worked for an international construction firm. Did a lot of stuff for the military and government. He passed away but before he died I was like, “You never really talked about what you did, Dad.” And he was like, “Well, in Holland there was this big power plant that was sinking into the ground and going into the water and our job was to lift it out of the water while it was running and put a foundation underneath it.” Yeah, shit like that. We lived in Chicago for a little bit then he moved us back to Santa Cruz and just quit. Then he worked at the cement plant. So I lived there from ten years old on.

KP: Do you remember the first time you saw graffiti?

JAMES: Yeah, I visited New York with my parents whom were both from New York so we went spring in ‘79. We were still living in Chicago. We went to visit relatives in Jamaica, Queens. So we took the trains and I remember seeing full whole cars. I was nine years old at the time. It made an impression. I remember my parents saying, “God, this place just went to hell.” It was before Ed Koch had started and they were just getting out of the 70’s hell hole. I remember seeing subway graffiti and it put a little bug into my brain. I saw it years later when Hip-Hop came along and I got really into Hip-Hop.

KP: How old were you when you started getting into Hip-Hop?

JAMES: 14. It was graffiti first. I was decent at it and when you’re a kid and your decent at something you go full bore. I think people say the same thing about skateboarding and surfing. When you get good you’re like, “Oh! This is my thing! This is all I’m about!” So that was it for me with graffiti in junior high. Then I discovered the Universal Zulu Nation through a friend that DJ’d at this club we used to go to. He got us all involved in that.

KP: You were going to clubs at 14?

JAMES: We had an all-ages club in Santa Cruz called Club Culture. It’s crazy now because I hated punk rock as a kid. I hated it. The weekdays were all punk rock and the weekends they called Soul Night because there was no Hip-Hop, no one used that name yet. So we would go to the R&B/Soul Nights and that’s where you’d see breakdancing and what have you. During the week they would have...I see flyers now and it’s like, Misfits, DRI, GBH you name it they all played there. But yeah it was all ages so I got to go in. It was only around for a year but it’s all in the comic.

KP: So is that the year the comic starts?

JAMES: 1984 was when I started 1985 was the year graffiti became, “Okay, let’s do this! Graffiti crews..." I saw Style Wars and decided to focus on graffiti. I had a crew, had beef, all that stuff.

KP: What was your crew?

JAMES: USA crew. We were the United Street Artists. It's the crew from the TURK 182 movie. It was about 10 of us at its largest time. We racked paint together, we bombed together, the classic story of guys who all fought each other and then liked each other and formed a crew. That's what the comic is about. 1985 was the graffiti year.

KP: What was it like being a full-on graffiti writer in such a small town?

JAMES: Believe it or not in the 80's Santa Cruz was a little rough. Looking back now it is such a small pond but it felt big. Definitely as a kid. It was our world. We had gangs. There was enough shit going on that you could probably bomb in the daylight and no one would care. It was also a hippie town so people were okay with it. San Francisco was the same at that time. I had friends up there and I used to visit and you could just write on shit and people would just walk past you. You know?

KP: But you could bomb all of Santa Cruz in a day right?

JAMES: If you were really determined you could do it all in a day.

KP: So do you think it was different writing in a town like that versus a city like San Francisco? I imagine if you do a rooftop in Santa Cruz everyone's gonna see it.

JAMES: It wasn't like that for us. For tagging, it was an all-city thing, sure. It was more just doing good work and impressing each other. And maybe getting crossed out by the other crew in town who happened to be the friends of someone's cousin. It's a small town so it was very insular. It was a small enough community that we were influencing each other and affecting each other.

KP: So who started USA?

JAMES: Me and my friends. None of them paint anymore. I mean I don't paint anymore. All of those guys have companies now and are doing random stuff. ATAK, BEZAR, RICO, DESIGN, VANDEL, ZEL and RAVE. ZEL and RAVE were San Francisco kids who had family in Santa Cruz and would come down and school us because they would talk about the Frisco writers. Like DUG, DUG was the man of San Francisco at the time. I eventually got to meet DUG years later. "DUG gave us our names!" I was like, "Really? Is that how that works? That's strange." I DON YOU RAVE! Hahaha. So yeah, we had a little bit of San Francisco influence. They would show us the latest stuff that people were painting in San Francisco. "These guys are the Reckless Writers, these guys are the Writers of Doom." They were like the two big crews at the time. So we had a lot of influence from San Francisco.

KP: What were you writing at the time?

JAMES: I wrote COUNT, OPPOSE, RIVAL, so I wrote a bunch of dumb names. Then I wrote JAMES in '87 and wrote JAMES from then on.

KP: You have a very cartoony, straight letter style. When did that style come in to practice?

JAMES: I tried to look like New York for a very long time. Then just said I like THIS stuff. Then started doing my own thing. Then graffiti died in the mid 80's. No one painted. It was miraculous to find another writer, I'd practically hug them. At least I didn't know any. I met some a couple years later. I think when that happens, when you feel like you're the only one you kinda just do whatever and those were the best years. That was the most fun time. It was just the stuff I like and years later you find out your stuff is influencing kids years younger than you but young enough to see your stuff first and decide they're gonna be a writer. So basically straight or kind of somewhat straight letter and then TEMPT moved to town and everything changed.

KP: Was there graffiti in Santa Cruz before you?

JAMES: I don't think so. I never saw any. We were definitely one of the first guys to do pieces. But DONDI, ZEPHYR, and FUTURA had come to Santa Cruz in '83. I didn't have any idea who they were until a year later so when they did it they were totally under the radar. They did a piece up at the college and then the metro said, "Graffiti artists! How about you do a bus?!" Could you imagine? They had them do a bus. Martha Cooper or somebody took photos of it. I remember seeing the photos of it and they're all, "Look at us! We’re on tour!" That was the first time DONDI had ever flown on an airplane before. I was completely oblivious to that stuff when it happened. I think I saw the Buffalo Gals video and was kinda like, "What's this?" Then that record came out and I became obsessed with that record and that's how I got into Hip-Hop. Buffalo Gals is the first rap I ever heard. The Clash came to town in '84 and a bunch of kids from my junior high were like, "We’re going to go down to the Santa Cruz Civic and The Clash are gonna let us come on stage and breakdance while this dude does graffiti behind us." I was like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" And they did and they showed us the passes and stuff. These kids were like fucking rockstars for a week because The Clash let them come up there and do that. The guy that was painting behind them while they were breakdancing was actually FUTURA.

KP: When did TEMPT move to town?

JAMES: 86-89 I was all by myself. Then meeting TEMPT was a big wake up call. I started seeing his stuff, was like, "Fuck, who is this?" My friend Daniel who I had known, he was a graffiti writer from San Jose who moved to Santa Cruz, we became friends. Around that same time we were at a party and he's like, "You know that TEMPT you see everywhere?" I was like, "Yeah." He was like, "That's that dude!" I was like, "Whhhhatttt!" He was this tall Chinese guy. I was like, "What the fuck." So he introduces us and I was like, "Hey, what's up?" He's like, "Sup? You one of these guys that does pieces every now and then, huh?" I was like, "Yeah, basically." "You see, that's great and everything but I BOMB." He gave me this whole lecture about bombing. I was like, "Jesus Christ who the fuck is this idiot." Then we ironically became really good friends. He started painting a lot and I would run into him. He'd be like, "Yeah, you should come bomb." So I went and painted with him. We became good friends, he's a really good dude. He's in a really bad way right now...

KP: How did TEMPT coming to town affect your writing?

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