8/16
brought to you by babay melon

"If you believe what the New York Police Department’s Vandal Squad says, graffiti is the first sign of a neighborhood that is out of control. But if you look a bit closer, and start to decipher the names that re-appear over and over again all throughout lower Manhattan - on corrugated metal storefront gates, nightclub bathroom walls, delivery trucks parked in Chinatown, burned into the glass of SoHo boutiques with etching cream - there’s actually no question as to who’s in control. In case you need it spelled out, the large public announcement that graced the Brooklyn Bridge last year made it perfectly clear: Graffiti is alive. Fuck Giuliani” - brought to you courtesy of lrak.
From a historical perspective of New York graffiti culture, the Brooklyn Bridge, a protected national landmark, is the Holy Grail of tagging. It’s only been done successfully three times, one of which resulted in the fall and subsequent death of 18 year-old David Smith, aka “Sane, half of the famous Smith-Sane brothers who, along with sacred names like Cost and Revs, Ghost, Toxic, Kaws, Crash, Tracy 168 and Futura 2000, are now so legendary as to be bedtime stories for today’s new generation of graf writers.
Sitting next to me in a hooded sweatshirt with glittering letters that spell-out “New York” is a bloke who’s on a hell-bent mission to achieve that same level of fame. Smooth-faced, strikingly attractive and characteristically pissed-off about life in general, Earsnot (he once misread the word “earshot” in a skateboarding magazine, and adopted the name as his tag) explains the origins of his crew, lrak. “lrak literally means ‘I steal’” he explains. ‘‘Racking’ means stealing or shoplifting, which is what some of us do for a living. A never-ending gangsta rap soundtrack blares in the background as ‘Snot” (as his friends affectionately call him) glances across the room at his partner Rehab, a Skinny young kid from the Dominican Republic. “We figure that we’re making between $40-50,000 a year each boosting, and that’s not even counting what we rack just for our own personal use. Although I don’t really know why I steal clothes since I wear the same thing every day.”
Talking to anyone in lrak is next to impossible without being fluent in the languages of graffiti and New York hip hop, as well as their own secret vernacular of “islands” (lines of coke), “lizzy bags” (hidden linings constructed of aluminum foil placed inside of messenger bags, meant for passing through security checks with items that have sensor tags), or realizing that every person has a minimum of two aliases.
lrak is certainly not the Only active graffiti crew in New York, nor are they the only ones to “boost” (selling shoplifted goods to a “bumpy” - retail stores that purchase the items, then resell them to the public). What sets lrak apart, however, is the incredible relentlessness of their schedule, which is essentially seven days a week, 365 days a year, as well as the sheer audacity under which they operate. Riding down Broadway on skateboards at midnight, they carry stolen $800 Gucci bags, loaded with spraypaint, cutting through the middle of traffic and kicking the shit out of anyone who gets in their way. Their politics are nil, their singular passion is achieving fame through graffiti, and their motto iS: “Every night is New Year’s Eve.” The never-ending marathon of coke, heroin, alcohol and pills is funded communally by profits from boosting, and nearly every night they spend their last dollar on getting fucked up.
lrak also stands out as an anomalous, culturally-diverse crew, crossing all ethnic and socio-economic boundaries, summed up in their leader, Snot, who is black and openly gay (with a preference for large, middle-aged white construction workers). In a scene that is fiercely homophobic, he often uses the tag “Kwearsnot” just to taunt his peers. The Tattoo on his arm is of saddam hussien with a bulging cock in his trousers. “I think the man is very sexy,” Earsnot says. “I’m not going to hide my sexuality and inconvenience my lifestyle just because some people have problems with it.”
A comparison to the film Kids is inevitable when you hang with lrak. And some of the crew are friends with director Harmony Korine, who they say checks in with them from time to time to swap stories. Semen is a long-haired bloke from Jersey who lives in the projects, just above a fried chicken restaurant with a huge sign that reads ‘Wings and Liquor.” His signature tag, a smiling sperm, pops up everywhere on the route to his home. “When I saw the movie Kids,” his friend Area, the youngest member of lrak, says, stretched out in bed with his sneakers on, drinking a ghetto-vintage bottle of Thunderbird wine, “I thought to myself, ‘Fuck yeah! I wanna do that! Going to the coolest clubs, doing drugs all the time, fucking shit up. I’d do anything to be like that.”’
On what could be described as a fairly typical night out for lrak, we hit a graf writer’s party at a bar on the Lower East Side. Earsnot is in the back, smoking a blunt along with a few others, when the bouncer walks up and asks him to leave. He responds by blowing a cloud of smoke into the man’s face, and picking up a pool cue. The bouncer warns him to put it down, and pulls a knife to make his point. Three members of the crew jump the bouncer, as Snot is dragged out the door, holding onto a chair which he smashes to pieces. Snot punches the bouncer in the face, and the police arrive. But before anyone can be apprehended, the members of lrak jump into a white limousine (hired out for someone’s birthday) and speed off. They don’t get far, however, before the driver stops and throws them out for doing charlie and smoking spliffs. The car disappears and once again they are left on the street with nothing but a skateboard, which is promptly run over by a car and broken in half. Earsnot throws up his hands in disgust, and stomps away.
The episode back at the bar wouldn’t have happened, he says, if the bouncer had not upset the strict code of conduct they live by. A bar that is friendly to graf writers is treated with utmost respect, but as Snot says they singled me out because I’m black, so tuck them.” At that point, any form of retaliation becomes acceptable..."