Those of you who know me know that I am a graff junkie. Although I did not start writing and paying attention to graffiti until 1991, I have an older cousin who used to write back in the mid 80s. He’d drag me and another one of my cousins along with him as he caught tags on streets and trains from Flatbush to Sunset Park to Bay Ridge to Canarsie.

I didn’t know much about graff back then. The trains were bombed but I couldn’t read any of it aside from straight letter pieces and such. One thing I did know, though, was that shoe polish was popular, and one thing we always seemed to have in our house was shoe polish. Anyhow, can you see the “H” on the wall in this pic (that’s my sister chilling in the basement of our house in Brooklyn, circa 1991; don’t mind her)? That was me practicing writing with shoe polish when I was like 7 or 8 (which would have been 1985/1986 ;)).

I didn’t care about catching tags or getting up back then but I guess I was curious about writing with shoe polish. 😀 I remember there were circular grooves in the plaster of the wall which made it hard to write, and that’s why I wrote a capital “H”, because it’s made up of 3 straight simple lines. The grooves in the wall made it hard to write anything with a curve (“O” or “C”) or diagonal lines (“X”). I guess I could have also gone with “T” or “E” but I didn’t and I don’t remember why. So that’s how that “H” ended up on that wall. It’s probably still there. 😀