BT Interview @149st

BT INTERVIEW

©2000, 2003 @149st Do not republish without permission.

What influenced you to start writing?
It had to be about 1974 I'll never forget I was in the 6th grade there was a kid sitting next to me with one of those giant pencils that you get from Coney Island and I see he's writing something in his book so I look at it and its all this crazy graffiti with all arrows and everything like that so I said yo what are you doing and he said I'm writing graffiti I was like cool can I get down with that and I just started practicing and of course the first name I came up with was snake my first taste of graffiti was in 1975 when I was in junior high school in 7th grade and I started practicing I didn't know nothing about Pilots Minis or Unis and at that time I was using El Markos and DriMarkers and just hitting the neighborhood hittin' the lamp posts and the phone booths and then from there you say '75 '76 I started walking over to the subway station I was hitting the station and riding in trains and hittin' in motion I didn't know nothin' about lay-ups at that time and this was late '76 and the people that I seen up at that time DEAN BYB, SMOKE TKC, HULK CIA, JEE 2 TOP, OE, P13 and IZ the WIZ.

By '77 I started to hit trains but still didn't know what I was doing I was finding lay-ups and jumping down in the tracks and going in between cars and I didn't know nothing about keys so I was going in between cars and the doors were locked so as a toy who didn't know nothing I was doing pieces on the doors I would do the out line first and then try to fill it in doing it backwards so that was '77 '78 I met this guy from the neighborhood he wrote ST and he taught me how to file down a skeleton key so from '78 on all the way up I started hittin' trains in '78 my first lay up was 18th avenue on the B line its a elevated lay up with a file down and that's when the B trains were still blue inside like the flats the half ridgies they were blue inside by this point I knew about Pilots and I found an ink store which we all know is pearl paint that was '78 in '79 that1s when I met AC '79 was a big year for me because that's when I teamed up with ROOK 3 and that1s the first time I met AC and JOE NUTS and that's when we teamed up and hit the Rs, Bs consistently and the Rs on a constant basis. So by '79 and '80 we really had the RRs and the Bs under control '80 that's when I met SES D.O.G. and we started to team up with a lot of people people from the Bronx BOOM ROCK, KEN 007 and BOM 5 so technically they were the TBK second division The Bronx Killers in 1980.

How did you take over the insides?
Me and AC hittin' during the week monday thru Friday we'd hit 59th, 53rd and 45th friday and saturday we'd hit 2050 Union it would take us two days to hit that because it would be double track then on sunday we would go up and hit the Bs then it got to a point that we literally had everything coming thru brooklyn hit all the Ns RRs and all the Bs hit and I'll never forget me and Ac we said yo we gotta' go where we ain1t got nuthin'' so we went to the 7 Yard and I'll never forget we went there on a saturday afternoon in the day-time we had no knowledge on how to get in we just walked around the yard we found a hole we went in there we stayed in that yard for two days we didn't come out of there till sunday around twelve at night and we hit every Seven in the yard we had Sevens hit that they pulled out and new ones came in and we hit those to and we literally kinged the 7 yard in 48 hours and we were like happy about that man dippin' and dabbin' we were hittin' City Hall a few times hittin' The Bridge ten in the morning hittin' the bridge hittin' Dewey Yard never fucked with the big yard though the big yard had that negative vibe like don't fuck with the big yard its transits ya know hit Dewey yard and basically that was our job monday thru friday we went hittin' and everybody had a little job and with that little money we'd get a nickel bag back in the day you get a five dollar bag of weed and roll eight joints out of it and you were happy and then you'd go to the ink store; Mongolie's Ink on 45th and 5th avenue and sunset park and go buy two pints of ink and that1s it and just go and do what you had to do that was literally our job i know for like two years i did that straight every day easily ya know and by going to different places we started to meet different people ya know my boys custom and MAGOO they took me to New Lots they took me to Euclid so now i1m hittin' the A1s and CCs I'm hittin' 2s and 5s me and custom going up to Gun Hill hittin'. lay-ups up there went to the D yard one time me and Ac and that's when we teamed up with BOOM ROCK aka MR. FRIDAY and BOM5 so now we had a bronx connection so were coming up to The Bronx and hittin' so for a good four years we hit pretty hard! and i got no complaints we had the Brooklyn BMTs all sewn up the Ns the RRs and the Bs nobody could touch us.

Have you ever hit the E and F yard in Queens ?
EKO from TKC crew brought me to Union Turnpike and we did a little bombing there but unfortunately we ran into somebody there we don't know who it was so weren't gonna' stick around to find out so we just left but yeah I rocked union turnpike that was nice.

Name all Brooklyn members of TBK?
BT, AC JOE NUTS, SES, RISK, DION 39 KROOK ROACH, ROA, RAC, SOR that's about it of the writers who wrote for the crew and of course we had the TBK girls that was LIL-LOVE, DAWN and BAMBI those are the TBK girls as you all know we were hittin'1 on a consistent basis 1980 I can honestly say by '81 I was hitting B trains that I was already up twice already i was hittin'1 them Three times over and ROOK started to slack a little and that's when me and AC really teamed up hittin' constantly 20 50 union hittin' 53rd, 45th the entire B line Dewey yard then we got to a point that we got tired because we were up so much on the Bmt1s that we went over to the 7 Yard me and AC in 1981 went over to the 7 Yard and broke weekend we went there friday night at 7:00 and left there sunday night around 11:00 we spent the entire weekend in the 7 Yard and kinged it.

It felt good when we got on that train monday morning we were up on it. To back track a little during the transit strike in 1980 at that time transit police were down with transit authority so when they striked even the police striked there was literally trains laid up every where 20 50 union was double track in fact there were trains laid up from 59st all the way to pacific street not one cop in sight me Ac Ses and Joe we stayed under-ground for about 2 and a half days we hit all the way from 59 and 9th street then went upstairs and hit all the Fs they were double track we literally got tired of hittin' we were hittin' so much. '81 non stop '82 non stop '83 non stop that's when I teamed up with a lot of people like CUSTOM, MAGOO. Through the '80s hooking up with AC, JOE, SES, CUSTOM, MAGOO. I know CUSTOM since 1978 hittin' on a consistent basis me and AC '79, '80, '81. Hittin' 53rd 45th Street constant basis going there basically this is how our schedule was Friday night me and AC use to meet up 6:00 I would meet Ac at his house and we would hit 20 50 union we1d break night there from friday night to saturday morning and hit as much as we can we use to start at 25th street and work our way down we1d make it to about 9th Street Saturday morning go home wake up Saturday afternoon go back to 20 50 Union finish it off to the rest of the night go home saturday night then Sunday hit 59th 53rd and 45th that was the complete weekend schedule and that would consist of me JOE, AC and SES.

Mostly me and AC because we were partners back then. It got to a point when you get so hungry to write they use to lay up the B trains during the day time from 11:00 in the morning till two in the afternoon I use to hit the elevated Bs during the day time I had the schedule down packed and I would get out of there let rush hour come watch my sh*t run and at 5:30 at night they would lay them up again I would go back in and hit them all again that was strictly a monday thru thursday thing everyday hittin' it everyday day in day out. Dewey yard that was a big weekend thing also constantly hit Dewey Yard no problems go in thru Dewey high school thru a hole in the fence a walk right in and the first set that was right there. There was always four sets of Ns right there and that's what we would start hittin' that's where we would get our Ds we would get Ms in there and the good thing was when you would hit the M flats they would switch over to J flats and at that time the Ds they use to be flats also so they use to switch over that's when you had the QB so that use to switch over, so just by hitting one line we were able to get over the city pretty quick. Quite a few times me CUSTOM and ROOK, we hit New Lots. CUSTOM took me to Euclid, Custom took me to the J Yard, so we got around a lot. We mostly stayed in Brooklyn and hit everything that was coming in and out of Brooklyn. We hit it all and only one time me and AC hit Astoria. We broke night, we went there during the day time and stayed a whole day there and hit every train there and Astoria was a guaranteed get-up. Once you finished hittin' Astoria you were king of the RRs. I was still dippin' and dabbin' in '84 and '85, that's when I teamed up with Roach and me and Roach went to the big yard and I'll never forget that night every train was clean. Clean trains, me and Roach by ourselves just hittin' sh*t like crazy! Basically that's the last time I went hittin' the next time I went hittin' wasn't until 1990 me and KROOK hit 86th Street. Ever since then we've been hittin' clean trains.

Back to TBK page