De 3 - 357 Essay @149st

DE3 357 ESSAY

Our crew formulated with three original members. RD of course, LACE, and myself DE3. In the summer of 1984 in LACE's kitchen over a phat spliff while scheming on some bicycles RD comes over and says "Yo I'm thinking about writing a number after my tag. I'm thinking about writing RD 357." LACE stood there a second with his hand on his chin then said "hold on a sec, I think you got something there that sounds like a good crew." I immediately agreed that it was. No doubt! Because at the time we had beef with a rival crew 156. In accordance RD was making up the number to come with back at this rival crew. We carried this knew message of hope on to the streets to all our friends in the neighborhood. The first recruitment was JJ 357. Him being one of our best friends also took up the idea that 357 was the sh*t! RD and LACE started bombing the 6s and took TAT crew off that line and continued to cross out whom ever got in the way from there on in.

I myself at this point had been arrested for an array of different things not to mention getting bagged on the Js and Ms down at the Brooklyn Bridge lay-up. At the turn of 1987 RD and LACE had dominated the 4,5,6 trains while I was working on the RR line in Astoria Queens lay-ups. RD's hunger grew and so did mine so we started going down to Sheepshead Bay and Kings Highway; hitting the Bs, QBs and Ds. I shortly after this time frame had gotten myself into some trouble with the local police officer in my school and it turns out your humble narrator assaulted this cop and was sent on a two-year mission upstate in youth facilities, but I had one advantage they let me come home every other weekend so I was right back there painting once more. Which was the cause of me not getting flicks of a lot of things I did on the trains.

By this time it was 1988. Oh what a year! And as a crew had decided to start hitting B trains underneath Central Park when they were still building the tunnels going to Roosevelt Island. We found this lay-up by chance. We use to go down to these tunnels before they even had tracks in them and break in the gang boxes for jack hammers and such power tools so we could support our drug habits and one day walked up towards 5th Avenues and saw the trains. From there it was a 357 from there on in up until the trains got cleaned up in 89-90. Many whole cars and widows-down pieces came from those tunnels and also the new birth of a lot more beef with writers like GHOST RIS crew and many other writers. There was very few that could actually get enough respect to do something in that tunnel and not get vicked in that lay-up when we were there. Among the living, were people like KASE 2, COST, KRT, and a handful of others. If we didn't catch you down there then we caught your sh*t and it was rolling out of there with big dicks on it or some sh*t. This is also where some of our street beef came from too like the war with JA we had but never did any writer or crew give us the competition that "TMR - The Master Race" gave us. They never seemed to back down on the walls or fighting in the streets. They remained pretty strong for awhile until MIRIAGE TMR (RIP) got killed in a car bombing and that's when they kinda' mellowed out.

Now onto the streets we go bombing Manhattan island, different parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx. Through the early '90s we were on pause from '93 to '95 '96. This is the part where things changed a bit. We (DE3, RD, LACE) had disbanded for a while. Then our interests in graffiti had become hungry again. I through a blanket of top-to-bottoms, floaters and, tags all over Harlem. RD met up with JUST and bombed a lot of gates in the city (Manhattan). LACE does pieces here and there, but we all still keep in touch and unite to do major productions.

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