99% Invisible - 409- California Love Scared Straight

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Walter Thompson-Hernandez was just eleven years old when he was admitted to L.A.'s infamous Scared Straight program for graffiti related crimes. In this episode, Walter, through a chance encounter, checks-in with his friend who went through the program with him, their anti-tagging arch-nemesis, and how they have turned out after all these years. Part autobiography, part reportage, California Love is a richly sound-designed audio tour that takes us into the homes of communities that are touchstones to Walter’s life. Subscribe on iTunes or through their website

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. I love podcasts. I really do. Not just mine and the ones I'm associated with, but I listen to dozens of podcasts a week, and I'm always looking for some spark that excites me, comforts me, challenges me, entertains me. I love seeing the proliferation of podcasts. It would never occurred to me to mock it. Like, I know the joke. Everyone has podcasts now. But I always want more. You know, not all of them are for me. But when one hits, I just get excited about its existence. I get excited about

existence in general. And this happened to me when I was listening to a new show called California Love. It's a podcast about seeking to understand what it means to belong and not belong to the places that we are from. And the episode I thought would most resonate with you, my beautiful nerds, is about graffiti, which is a huge part of the visual expression of cities. There is a culture war being played out before our eyes in the back and forth between tigers and anti-tackers. And this kind of humane story is about those sides and what it feels like to be in the middle of it, where the stakes to an outsider can seem so low, but actually couldn't be

higher. This is California Love. Here's Walter Thompson Hernandez. It's spring 2017 and I'm on the 733 bus line heading west on Venezuela Boulevard. I'm sitting in the back of the bus. It's the early afternoon and there's nobody else sitting next to me. I'm listening to music on my headphones when I noticed an old friend hop on. It's Ivan and we used to be in the same circles when I used to tag in the early 2000s. Ivan hasn't changed for a bit.

He still weren't oversized t-shirts and still speaks from the side of his mouth like he used to when we were teenagers. His hair still cut really low too. It's been more than 15 years since we last saw one another. Oh s**t. What's up man? We dabbing each other up and hug. He sits next to me.

Hey you still right? Yeah. I do still right. This is Live, and I was wearing the gray crew neck sweater and matching sweat pants at the officers at Issue Timmy. My last name was written on the back of my sweater to identify me. In 97, the scarier straight program meant at the downtime at LA Central Police Station three times a week. Twice a week we had classes and on Saturdays, that's when we had boot camp.

They made us do push-ups, burpees, squats, spritz, and more burpees and all on the station's hot roof. About two dozen of us all under the age of 17, were in the program. Usually because of the judge had ordered us to attend for some crime we had committed. One of the guys was a graffiti legend named Sight, a South Central writer whose name could be seen throughout the city.

He was what writers called an all-city bomber. His stuff was everywhere. I was like, damn, that's sight. What I do remember is all the cops getting mad at me, screaming at me in my face. The saliva, all of my face. Do not touch my face! Some people were there for skipping school, fighting or violating probation. Beside a night, we were both there for a graffiti vandalism. I started tagging with a group of friends I had met in middle school.

And once I learned how to tag, I began to go out and paint the streets. Maybe it was all the things I was seeing and experiencing at home that drove me to be as far away from it as possible. My mom had a boyfriend at the time. This white dude who was unemployed and smoke weed and drank heavily every single day. He was abusive and controlling towards me and my mom and he and I would often physically fight which led to numerous visits from the police. Home was definitely summer I didn't want to be. In sight, home life, it was just as rocky as mine. Me and my mom were sleeping in parks and in the car, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for night.

We slept in a lot of back streets, in South Central LA, like Western, Imperial. And then the sharps will kick us out. And we'll move on one block over. graffiti was a lot of things for me. It was an outlet. A way for me to take out the rage, the pain, and the hurt I was experiencing at home.

The streets and the walls, they're basically my therapy. I existed when I did graffiti. I existed. That's why I started doing that sense of awakening, rebirth. The first Saturday that sat and I were there, the inmates and guards took turns yelling at us. And he and I smelt at each other the whole time. Ha! We thought they were suckers. Our moms were both with us that day, and when you the guards couldn't put their hands on us,

so we felt safe, and we talked our s**t. The scare straight? It actually didn't scare me straight. In fact, it got me deeper into graffiti. About two years after I finished the program, I started catching spots with a guy named Aloe. He was a pretty well known writer in the graph world. In the crazy part, he looked just like one of my favorite rappers.

Yeah, everyone used to call me Tupac. In just a few months, we became like brothers, and we joined the same crew. You were young and willing to do graffiti, so I was like, hey, we could be besties and let's do this together. I'll talk about an overhead right now, but he's really only three years older than me. He and I spent every day together painting the city. This means going out and tagging. I remember there were times I'm like, I don't really feel like doing this.

He's like, come on, let's go. And I'm like, all right, let's go. And we would go and then it's like, once we're there, it's like, so glad like I did this. There's a lot of people, like I knew a lot of people too, and not everyone, they'll say, oh yeah, yeah, let's go, let's go. But who really wants to go? Who's really gonna go?

Alo and I spent a whole summer together, and our bond was stronger than any relationship I've had as an adult. Because he was also unhappy, and temperamented by his home life. We were just kids, but we understood each other's pain and how ignored we both felt. Alo taught me how to tag on the municipal of our bus lines. We caught spots in the panels and the overhead lights. I taught him how to do everything that he knows.

Shut up! So, describing him into a transparent case, so people wouldn't be able to see it. There has to be some way for you to make what you just wrote, pop out into the world. So usually what we would do is we would take dirt from somewhere. So we lick our fingers and rub the tops of the lights. You would smudge that on the spot. The dirt would end up filling the spaces of the graffiti spot that you just caught.

Bam! Now your spot's gonna be seen. I used to show them different slap tags and how you ride on a slap tag. For those of you that don't know, post office used to have stickers that people use for mailing and graffiti artists would just go and grab them. They're free stickers, we could just write what we want on them. We sometimes go back to Adelos House after painting and lock ourselves in this room.

Just smoking, drinking there, playing music, a lot of wood, a lot of two-puck. A lot of knives, a lot of biggie. Just right, just right, just right. We wrote our names all over the city because we found invisible and it was fun. I existed when I did graffiti. I existed. We painted fewer overpasses, national boulevards, Robertson, Crenshaw. We painted billboards on Venice boulevards.

We painted out the Belmont yards, the Alley River and the Monty Yards. We were everywhere. But our names rarely stayed out for more than a few days. For four years I tagged, and for four years a white dude named Joe Connolly painted over our spots. 98, 99, 2000, and 2001. The sky Joe made it his mission to buff our tags using paint and equipment he had purchased himself. Seeing him buff out my throw-ups wasn't a good feeling because creating that art took a lot out of me. Like this one time, when I spent an entire night doing a piece with large bubble-style

letters on the rooftop near Peacol & Roberson, and it was gone the very next morning, and I knew it was Joe. And it wasn't just us, it was all of us. There was a whole city of kids putting up spots trying to be seen, and then this white guy named Joe would come out at any races again. Joe was definitely a villain. It felt like he was our villain. You could ride all day long, but you're never going to get up in the morning so you

s**t because I'll be buffed. You couldn't even read the sign earlier. You could not read the sign. It means Joe Connolly. They call me the graffiti gorilla among other things. Look at that, not beautiful. I mean, it's not like it was with the day that made it, but it's nice. Isn't that nice, look at it? Joe was a one-man antigraphy unit. You may have seen his infamous sign up at Peaco and Fairfax, it says. The graffiti no longer accepted here sign up at Peaco and Fairfax, it says.

Graffiti no longer accepted here. Please find a day job. Thank you, 1993. Joe Condo the Graffiti Gorilla. Joe used to chase us out of the modiards and paint over our spots. We all thought he was a sitting employee, but really joked it alone. After the King writes, a neighbor organized out the building was still burned out, trees didn't want to get planned. They're all these people wanted to fix the neighborhood, helicopters were, so I went to this meeting

and they had all these things that they wanted people to do was like seven or eight of us there. So I'm sitting and I'm thinking, I'm not gonna say anything. I'm not volunteering for, I mean, I'm working seven days a week, I got two little kids, I'm making money. I'm not, so they said graffiti was the last thing on the other thing.

They said you're taking graffiti. I'm like, yeah, cool. That would be excellent, because there's no graffiti around. I go out the next day and I start driving around. I'm like, oh my God. Okay, we out, right? to chill. And then, at 4am, I got a weird craving for Hawaiian punch, so we decided to walk the raft. And then, you took a streak, and then, for some stupid reason, I was like, hey, let's record this. And I took this video camera that I had. We didn't make it to the store. We crossed the street and you

decided to start tagging on a trash cab. And my dumbass instead of looking out looking back I'm looking through the lens at you and police pulled up on us. The cops handcuffed us, made us sit on the curb, and then separated us for questioning. I was already on probation for a previous graffiti offense. I thought I was for sure going to Juvie. The cops asked me, back then I hadn't started also using my mom's last name Hernandez. So I said, Walter Thompson, and the cops were like, That's not your name. That's what I was lying to him.

They thought Walter Thompson sounded like an 80 year old white dude's name. And now that I'm thinking about it, they were kind of right. I remember them asking me about that. So what's your friend's name? And I was like, bezel? Because I was not trying to give up your name. I didn't know what she said. So I was like, bezel and the cop was like, What the fuck are you doing? I was like, I don't know, I to give up your name. I didn't know what she said. So I was like, bezel. And the cop was like, what the fuck am I?

I was like, I don't know. I don't know his name. Because I was like, maybe he's not going to give his name. So Aloe and I start laughing at the cops when I believe in me. But the cops, they didn't think it was funny. They got mad and they got frustrated. And put us in separate cars and took us back to the station. I went home after three hours. But A Ella, he was there for almost three days.

If you look at this Nomea's site, SIGHT, to Mom kicking me out when I graduated from high school. She kicked me out because she thought she could afford to take care of me anymore. So here I am thinking I'm about to get ready to go to Community College. Nope. I used to sleep in my home, he's a garage. I used to sleep in the garage with a dog right here, normally, the end of 76. Because he couldn't let me stay in his house, but he's like, yeah, I got a garage. And sometimes me and a dog are fight over who will sleep on the couch.

That's where graffiti really kicked in the high gear because I was out depressed, lonely, hungry. And this is only the end of my spirit to letting that trauma out during graffiti. There's a human need to express yourself. Unfortunately the lower classes and the impoverished don't have the spaces and the walls to this be creative. They don't own nothing.

They can't write in their own apartment building and they can get kicked out. They don't have a house doing the backyard. So where are they gonna do that? The streets where they can't be. They got stars, and they got, they got can't control. It's popping at the top. This something's been in the game for a while. This is nice.

Once I started noticing it and all that, I got interested in it and then I started studying it and going out, mainly with taggers. Isn't that s***? And I said, look, I just wanna travel with you guys. They're like, oh, you stupid, boy, but I'm like, okay. I said, well, I'm gonna learn about this no matter what. I just wanna learn.

See that, see where skinny and goes up and it pops right there with that little circle? That's called can't control. There's nobody, I don't think there's anybody in the world that gets graffiti like me. I don't I don't it would take a lot A lot of people get they don't get that graffiti has to start with all these tags And then it moves to a throwrup and then it can be a mirror and it can be a burner it can be a production it can you know and so only a small amount of people are going to be able to get to To the art side of it the real art side of it whatever that might be and then make a living out that's cool

But if they don't they don't allow the tag they won't get there and if in the world would really suck if we didn't have graffiti. I'm okay, yeah, some of this stuff takes a while to get to, but if you get out of every day, it takes no time. I don't get excited by graffiti. It doesn't bother me that it keeps going up. It has to go up, otherwise the artist can't emerge. And they should be entitled to emerge. I mean, it's, and a lot of them, their stories are interesting to hear. Well, I'll kind of can read it. So why would I keep painting out graffiti if, if I enjoy it?

Because A, they have to do it. Two, they expected to get painted out. And three, kind of gives them a fresh canvas to keep going. It all sounds like bulls**t to me too. How could somebody love graffiti so much and spend every single day destroying it? It doesn't really add up, right? It sounds like something he says in front of Tagger

so that he won't get beat up. A top set, your mom's here, you're out. After getting arrested that night with Aloe, I changed my life. My mom was a reason. She picked me up from the station at 6 a.m., and it wasn't the first time. But there was something about that ninth,

I was different. She looked worn out. She looked like a mom who had no more fight left in her. I was really tired of disappointing her. I was afraid of her being afraid for me. And I knew I had to change things up. I remember trying to call you and like you were avoiding me. And then I finally got a hold of you

and then you said something like, oh, I'm just kind of busy right now. And I was like, you busy for me? What the fuck wrong, what's going on right now? Please leave a message and come to the tone. I stopped answering his calls. Yeah, like you just pretty much ghost me from right there. I started going to class again. It was just like, yeah, what the hell, there was.

I started playing basketball again. So I'm getting cheery as I'm seeing this right now. I stopped smoking weed and drinking too. After that, I just... I think I couldn't find anyone else to really connect with. And then I actually started getting more into into fighting for some reason. I was never a big fighter, but all of a sudden I'm like Mr. Motro Man and I want to fight everybody. My best friend and I wouldn't see her talk to each other for 17 years.

It was one of the hardest choices I ever made because I left friends behind who I considered a family. And it hit the hardest when I'd see their names on walls and not my own. It felt like they carried on with their lives and forgot about me. And it was harder because deep inside, I knew that it was something I brought up on myself. I left the world where I was completely seen, only to re into a world where being seen wasn't guaranteed. And for a 14 year old, it was all really confusing. I wanted to change. And soon, the entire Alligua Fita world would also change.

We return with more California love after this. By 2006, sight had briefly stepped back from graffiti. He was no longer homeless, but his mom was. He was working to save money to buy his mama home because he wanted to rescue her from the park she was sleeping in. He was going to school at a community college and working two jobs. And my grandmother was like, after she saw how productive I was and how serious I was, she was like, look, why don't you just live here?

About the time I walked away from graffiti, what used to be a misdemeanor offense was now a felony. Graffiti artists started doing hard time for their art. Some people in Outlay refer to this time as a terror campaign. It's when taggers homes were reportedly being rated, like they were drug dealers or members of a violent gang. It was a perfect sunny day at St. St. John's LA. As Q. We say, in a couple days before Thanksgiving, 2006. You hear loud bangs on the door?

I'm in a bed naked. Sleep. My auntie go open the door. I told her, don't open the door. I don't know who that is. She open the door. I'm in the bed naked sleep my auntie go open the door She open the door anyway The police come in looking like they're in war gear Just like seven eight of them on top of your head put your hands on top of your head They got assault rifles with beams coming out of them. They pulled me out into the main din and they're like,

where are the drugs and where are the guns? I'm like, there's no drugs and guns here. You got the wrong person. You got right at the wrong house. There's no drugs or guns. They're like, where is the guns and the drugs? Do you want to check these? I think it's worth it.

They're tearing up the whole house. They put some shoes on me, no socks, pants, no belt, shirt, handcuffs me. They walk me outside. We got a whole neighborhood outside watching, you know, those are people be. They took me down to the sheriff's station and on Watts. And they were high five and they were high five and they were like, yeah, we got this door.

We've been looking for this door for every, I'm like, wow. When I'm out through my head on line, I didn't know graffiti is this serious. If I knew graffiti was this serious, then I wouldn't have met messing with it. And get me an interrogation room. I don't know law, send me down. They sit down a folder of paperwork about six inches tall. All photos of stuff I did in LA. And they open a folder, pictures and I might do this.

All, the stuff was all old, dude. There were like, if you date these, till more recent date, we'll let you out today. I'm like, for real. But, it wasn't for real. Sight was charged with multiple accounts of non-violent felony vandalism.

He says the evidence he signed ended up being used against him in court. According to him, they had him date pictures of his tax to a more recent time, to land within the statute of limitations. Sight was facing around 30 years in prison, so he did what he had to do, and he took a deal for eight years and eight months. His sentencing was just part of the city's draconian antigraphy movement, and multiple hometown heroes like him were arrested.

City attorneys say, it's about time, taggers are treated like criminal gang members. In 2009, then Allys City Attorney Carmen Truchanich had a mission to go after writers. He and his staff began to gather street-level intelligence and prepare injunctions targeting graffiti crews. While sight was in prison, a lot of taggers reached out to him to provide support, including one he didn't know that well,

but who I used to be really tight with. Alou wrote me while I was in prison. I met him only once in person on the minutes bus. I never hung out with him like that. He went to prison for something that we were all doing. That could have been any one of us is what I'm saying. So it's like, you got to pay respect to him. For him to only meet me that once or twice

they want to be like, hey, I'm going to reach out to this dude. All I can say is graffiti did that. We wrote together every, yeah, like every three weeks or so. What am I doing? How's everything going? Just trying to see where his mind was at. I felt good, man. I felt like I wasn't alone.

I felt like I feed his biggers and what. There's more than what people think it is. I was in there for about five years because I was like good behavior, fire camp, all that stuff. And then he was like, you know, like a year or two if I got out, he was like, I'll pick you up from prison.

And he did they pick me up. Then my first meal took me down the Venice Beach. Bringing the salty air, you had to crash at the ocean, put my feet in the water. It was good man but I felt I felt broken, I felt vulnerable. This is just all of our stuff to get rid of that. The graffiti. We think, we think this all we need. We're not 100% sure. Well, the city, you know, they, they, they, I hate to say they killed my kid to this day they never apologized about that.

He went on a school field trip and died in a drowning incident. They had told Namah that there was gonna, there was never gonna be any swimming out there. They had told Namas that there was never going to be any swimming out there. The way it happened and all the things that happened in the city, the city could have helped me and they never chose to help me. They chose to desert me. They've never said, we're sorry about your son. That's I think one reason why staying graffiti abatement is because I'm not able to fix my

life because you can't ever control. It's like trying to hurt cats, you can't control. So I can control graffiti, which makes people's lives better. So for me, it's just, I spend probably a small fortune on it, but it really saves me mentally. By 2015, I was working as a journalist and writing about race and identity. One day, I received a call from a child her friend, Nikki, telling me about the company she had just started in Compton. Nikki's company was primarily hiring undocumented workers and formerly incarcerated people

to groups of people who live with the most stigma. I walked inside of the lobby and saw a frame newspaper article featuring a black man standing in front of a graffiti wall. I took a step closer and he looked really familiar. I took another step forward and noticed that the wall read SIGHT in big and bold letters. It was sight. Oh damn, that's sight from Scarest Straight. Do you know a sight? I asked Nikki.

Sight? She replied, yeah he works here. He's actually in the back driving the fork lift. Let's go see if he's back there. What are the odds? The three of us went out to lunch that day and began reminiscing about scarce straight angriffiti Something told me to ask side about aloe because there weren't a lot of other black graffiti artists. So what I have to lose Aloe site replied. Yeah, that's my boy

My jaw dropped all the way to the floor. Give me his number, I said. I called him and nobody answered. I went home after lunch and later that day received a phone call from an unknown number. I answered in this mysterious voice asked, Hey, is this best though? Hey, is this Bessau?

Alo and I met up a week later at Earthcafe in downtown LA. I was nervous and I was scared. Because even though a lot of time had passed, I didn't know how he felt. Maybe he felt abandoned by me. When I saw him, he didn't really look like Tupac anymore. He now had a fro and tattoo sleeves halfway down his arms. Honestly, he looked like he had been through a lot, but he still had that same charming smile and that same laugh. So much had happened since we last saw one another.

He had gotten married, he had survived two drug overdoses, he's vegetarian, and of all things, like of all the things in the world, he was studying to become a lawyer, a lawyer. We talked about our families, about food, and our friends, and towards the end of the night, he looked at me and said he had something to give me. I was just like, hey, do you remember this? And I remember your face was just like, wow.

He handed me a slap tag. Remember those post office stickers he talked about earlier? Well, I had filled this one out the same night we got arrested. Before that, we were to wine punch craving. This slap tag got our names on it. It said Bezzo, it said Al-O, and it said our cruise. And he had kept this one slap tag through the years, through everything. And now I had that slap tag.

And it's one of the most important things in my life. Meaning up at Sighten-Alo, I'd prompt him to see what our own nemesis Joe was up to. Maybe it was closure I was seeking. I don't know. So I found Joe on the internet. I contacted him, and I spent a few days with him. It turns out Joe hasn't changed. He's still covering up for feeding

and he's still doing it for free. I was wrong about Joe. This dude really surprised me. He lives in South Central with his wife and cares for interviews people. So I think she probably was in a yard where she was like a dog where there's a male slug. I really expected Joe to agree me

at the door of a red mega hat on, but he did it. He does have an award from Trump though, for graffiti abatement, evolved things. President Trump, best guy in the planet for community in the state of California, 40 million people, and I know someone who's got one ofion in the state of California 40 million people and I know I'm the only one who's got one of those in the state of California. Anyway, Joe actually hates the government. These people don't give a f*** about our people.

What he means are everyday people working class folks and especially people of color. And Joe's also really into fitness. He's an abit bike rider, an former football player from the Southside of Chicago. Rudy, that's the guy's story. What do you mean, though? Remember the film Rudy? The class? That's the guy's story.

That was my thing, man. I wanted to be a walk-up football player, and D. And then that's the guy's story. He got there three years ahead of me and took my crazy. Oh well. Here we are. Yeah, here we are. I decided to bring Joe and Sight together because I wanted them to talk about how they

perceive one another. Sight thinks Joe was a part of the problem, you know? Just another white dude who's part of the system to lock the black and brown people. Joe, on the other hand, had never met Sight, the human. He buffed out a lot of his pieces but he didn't know the man. He thought Sight was just another dude from the hood who got caught up in the human. He buffed out a lot of his pieces but he didn't know the man. He thought sight was just another dude from the hood who got caught up in the system. So I invited both of them to my aunt's house to talk because it was a neutral space. I wanted both of them to feel as comfortable as possible. I mean I really didn't know what was going to happen. Sites like you know somebody who is really chill and really mad love but...

Site! Get your ass in here! Just kinda out there. Let's stop! Come on! Are you mad? So you still put the f***ing walls? Yeah? Yeah, you really? That's good. I like that.

I mean... I said at my aunt's dining table and talking about what they agreed on. Graffiti, when you're looking on the outside of it, it's just ugly, it's horrible, it's dissonant. But once you step foot into that world, it's a whole another perspective on the matter. You'll never be able to relate unless you hang out with graffiti artists or art graffiti artists. You'll never be able to relate.

It'll just be judging from the outside in. Insight with him messing around. He came ready. He even reached out to the graffiti community on Facebook to see if that had any questions for Joe. Do you wanna hear those questions? Yeah, let's go. Shy and blanks,

wanna know why you buffed out the rooftop in 92 and told him to get day jobs. I thought it was just funny. It was just funny. It came from an American Express commercial. Another person asked, why did you, some of the questions were really angry. It was just funny. It came from an American Express commercial. Another person asked, why did you... Some of the questions were really angry.

That's CalTrans. CalTrans is so insane about how they buff burners. Saito Joe, he was really hated. A lot of people plotted on you, on they plotted on your family. Wow. A lot of people went out to your kids secretly. I can't say who.

Okay. And it's almost similar to like, I don't like say it, I don't like be disrespectful, but like, you know how a cop goes out and shoots a kid or arrests kids, and people feel that pain forever. Yeah. It's kind of like the same. It seemed like the news that people went after Joe's kids

really affected him, especially since Joe had lost his son. He was physically shaken and he really let down his guard. Joe revealed a difference to him that people weren't used to seeing. It didn't feel like a performance anymore. It felt like we were finally getting the real Joe. After I lost my son, I lost my grandmother, my parents, my brothers, my in-laws, my sister-in-laws, a lot of artists, a lot of people I knew, a lot of people in my community. There was a time in like 99 through 0708 where there's a lot of funerals.

There's just so many funerals and it just, I mean, it's a lot. And then with a lot of things that mainly with my son, and they're still fall off from that, which is now almost, it's almost 21 years. You know, and so I just kind of then just really became a lot. I don't mean to get you off, you know. No, no, no. You know, I've, I've, I've, I've met a lot of different

graffiti artists, at least about a thousand of them, that I know more. I the same story as you? Are similar. Yeah. And I'm listening to you. I'm listening to you. And what people don't know and people forget is any kind of painting is therapeutic.

Yeah. Painting, doing art, activates one side of the brain that helps heal trauma. Yeah. Painting doing our activates one side of the brain that helps heal trauma. Yeah, you've been doing some trauma. I feel that the more the longer that person paints reflects how much healing they need and how much therapy that that painting provides, I still do it because I still suffered the trauma It acts has not been rooted yet uprooted. So and I see it in you You might not be doing graffiti, but you are painting over it. Oh, yeah, yeah, it is still in a way therapeutic and provides a sense of relief and

The other side of that is that it's fun. It's competitive. And there's some people that are game, and so we were not. In that moment, I think Joe finally felt seen in her too. He wasn't in your face, Joe, the wild Joe, the Rarararal Joe, you know? He was soft, and he was gentle.

And site, I'm pretty sure he felt the same way too. People see walls with graffiti on them and think that the people responsible for the tags are criminals. But it's hard to know that there's a whole life behind the spray paint that emerges on the wall. And to be real, it's impossible to see the things that people are dealing with at home. It's already hard enough being a teenager, but imagine not having a way to express yourself. That's really hard. Some see it as property damage, but what about the damage people are experiencing in their own lives?

Each piece of graffiti is a window to someone's life. Sometimes though, the window is hard to see through because there's writing on it. But each window and each wall tells a different story. The walls are the first thing I see when I travel to a new place. They tell me everything I need to know about where I'm at. They alert me of danger. Tell me who lives in that community. And who I need to be aware of. Let's go back to that bus.

Spring, 2017. I'm on the 733 bus line and we're heading west on Venice Boulevard. I'm sitting in the back of the bus. It's the early afternoon and there's nobody else sitting next to me. I'm listening to music on my headphones when I notice an old friend hop on. It's Ivan and we used to be in the same circles when I used to tag. Ivan has a change for one bit. He's still wearing oversized t-shirts and still speaks from the side of his mouth like he

used to. In his hair, it's still cut really low. It's been more than 15 years since we last saw one another. Oh f***, what's up man? We dab each other up and hug, and he sits right next to me. Hey, you still right? When I even asked me if I still wrote, I paused. Because the truth is, nothing's really changed. I am still writing. I'm just not writing on walls or buses or freeways anymore. But I'm still writing

to be seen. Yeah, I told Ivan. I do still write. The lead producer for this episode is Elizabeth Nakano, supporting producer Tumiko Adams. Our editor is Arwin Nix, our senior producer is Megantan. Our sound engineer is Valentino Rivera, original music by Andrew Epe. This episode was written by me Walter Thompson Hernandez with help from Elizabeth Encano. Angela Bromstad is our executive producer. For more information on this episode of Scarrett Strait, go to l-a-s-t.com forward slash California Love. California Love is a production of Alaya Studios. I'm the host, Walter Thompson Hernandez.

Thanks for listening. I really appreciate you. This is just one of an eight-part series. I encourage you to subscribe to California Love so you can hear the more. We'll have a link in the show notes. 99% of visible is Delaney Hall, Kurt Colgstead, Sophia Klatsker, Katie Mangle, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sean Riel, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Leigh, Chris Baroube, Abbey Madon, and me Roman Morris. We are founding members of Radio Topia from PRX

and still based in beautiful, downtown Oakland, California. You can not fret while the new episode from us next week. In the meantime, check out and pre-order our new book. It's called The 99% of Visible City at 99pi.org slash book. Or pick out and discover and share a cool story about design at cities in the built world and share it with your friends at 99pi.org. Radio topi.org.