The New Dictators

You could get a good shot from there I just spotted a 'Romeo', an old tag of mine.

It was January, February '86 when we started writing our names...

it started around our own neighborhoods and then around Helsinki.

We were little boys back then and rolled in our own hoods.

Here in Itä-Pasila there was a lot of cool stuff around construction sites, train tunnels etc.

So there was a lot of surface where to make your own mark and from there it all started.

When you were a kid, you hardly had any patience to draw...

and if you had just been drawing images of war or something silly...

and then suddenly. Graffiti!

It seemed so difficult with its weird shapes.

So it was all about learning since we didn't know anything about it.

All we knew was that we wanted to write our own names, be painters and wreck the city

and we had to learn how it works.

We were so young that with our small allowances even getting the spray cans felt almost impossible.

When we went to tag our own names in a another part of town...

we found other people's tags and realised…

That there were others doing this...

and it was being done in every part of the city.

And then something just clicked in my head.

And I was like, goddamn, this is something I want to do!

I hardly knew what spray can was...

and I hadn't even painted a moped or anything before I went to do my first piece.

All the colours and shapes...

I had to master them...

The early eighties graffiti scene was extremely good...

because there were new people coming in and the progress was amazing

all the time more colours and characters started to appear

it was cool back then and you didn't run over anybody's piece

there was that respect.

And if some spot was already painted...

you went around looking for another one.

It was a fine and fruitful period for Finnish Graffiti.

Then a new phase started, which slowly developed into an 'all city phase'...

where I, writer from Herttoniemi, a long time tagger of the backseats of busses…

Got myself into slightly bigger circles...

And then we founded TDF: The Diamonds Five.

Which later on became TDC...

So the number of the crew members wasn't so strictly defined.

We started to sketch the pieces together And painted them together...

according to the plans...

so that everybody had their parts to play.

And we could make bigger pieces and do them faster...

And probably cooler as well

since everybody had painted on their own names...

and when we put our forces together...

we could go bigger and better.

Sometimes we went at it with a big posse...

something like 5-10 guys at a time wrecking trams...

sometimes things stayed cool...

there were always somebody looking out for us and telling us when to tag

not to go all out all the time...

that everybody should take turns and shit...

but because of the fact that we were such rascals...

it often got out of hand anyway...

and we were all a bunch of termites with markers

wrecking the shit...

Then we would force the doors open and run away...

then we would maybe walk around a block...

or then take another tram line...

maybe some of us started considering toning it down...

some wanted to continue...

and then eventually everybody went their own way.

Perhaps some of them started to think that...

since we wrecked the shit out of those trams

that we would eventually get caught and heavily sanctioned.

- We wanted to go... well... big… - Yeah big!

And what would be a better spot than that big wall next to Kulosaari Metro station

and of course we had couple of guys on a look out.

But at the end of the day they were just hanging around -Just there to hang out and feeling the vibes.

And it was a quite a surprise when someone went to check after hearing something like a car nearby.

He went to take a peek around the corner and found two security guards standing.

- Then we had to run like hell. - Yeah.

We had to leave all the spray cans and everything behind...

Among other things, my jacket with a note form school inside its pocket, which stated my name.

And then, one day a police officer called from the Pengerkatu police station...

asking if I had lost 73 cans of spray paint.

The officer then said what we had done looked goddamn fabulous.

And he would see fit that if we finish what we had started, since it was so fabulous.

On top of that we could paint the other walls of the building too as a bonus of sorts.

When walking between the Siilitie and Herttoniemi Metro stations, you could always recognize other painters when you saw them...

and then you were just like 'Yo yo, what's up dude? What's your tag?'...

and that is how you got to know other painters...

There were people hanging out at the Railway Station and Citykäytävä where you could find other painters...

When you saw cool tags, you were interested to know who and from where they were from...

you were kinda hunting for them and would usually find them hanging out at some local spots...

especially if you didn't know which school someone was going to...

since you could always find the bad boys smoking cigarettes around schools during recesses

you quickly got to know people from all around the city...

and then you would hang out with them for a while, tagging electric boxes or going on tram rides

and that was the mission, tagging together, that's it!

And it wasn't a big deal if you didn't become better friends

you just kept on going.

When the Lepakko Hip Hop jams started, you got so many contacts, which was awesome.

There were breakdancers, rappers, painters, everybody was united...

The jams in Lepakko were extremely nice and they had a really positive vibe...

like it is with real Hip Hop to have fun, which is the main point. Enjoy what you do!

It's funny how much this graffiti and hi p hop thing had united people...

last year someone could have been your worst enemy but when they became painters...

when you shared the same circles, you became friends on a deeper level.

Back then, there were no fights whatsoever, people had fun and respected one another...

We were competing for who tagged the most, painted the most, was the best beatboxer…

Was the best rapper, scratcher. There was no violence back then.

The first wave of painters were these fucking breakers, dj's and 'hip hoppers'.

But we came in with a rougher attitude.

If these old school guys had done 10-20 pieces a year, we did about 300 a year…

There was a big difference there already...

And of course they were tagging too, but we tagged the shit out of places... for real…

The amount of new people that came in just exploded.

And of course you could see that from the walls. There were new names and new pieces...

and in many spots the wall space got smaller and smaller.

We were the kings back then. We got new subordinates that worshipped us. And it was...

- We didn't really like the styles… - a lot of silver, hasty shapes and all...

it kinda killed the vibe…

We stepped out from doing pieces for a while because of that.

Some of them would just tag wherever… new buildings, old buildings, fine buildings...

There was no question about the fact that it wasn't some underpass...

or some electric box etc.

There was no chance that I would have painted a wall of some nice wooden building…

located within a garden or church wall...

When you really go tag, you don't fucking spare anything…

You don't have any specific targets, you just wrecked everything... homes, cars…

Fuck... we painted live frogs and entire trees with chrome...

shit like that...

Maybe that wasn't very romantic but...

The old school painters started to fade out a little and the new generation of painters were just starting…

So it really didn't look that creative… It was more about how creative you could be at wrecking…

You didn't go home before all your fucking cans were empty. You emptied them on the walls.

Quite quickly one could see the scribbling that had filled the walls.

But where it was most visible was at the Lepakko jams…

I think it was during the 1989 Lepakko jams...

where you could see that the clientele had really changed.

We would come into these jams with a big crew...

wreaking havoc and fucking people up...

Quite idiotic behavior.

Maybe they weren't too happy about that...

Because they really had this 'hip hop united' thing…

But we were...

maybe a little too crazy for that.

The early nineties were...

a golden age of sorts…

There started to be quite a lot of painters...

you had different styles and attitudes evolving in different parts of the city.

When the Citykäytävä hangarounds split up… in the end of 1991…

People started doing their pieces more...

and it evolved into this underground thing...

where things happened more within your own crew.

It didn't seem so serious then...

we thought that we are painting nice things with nice colours

and what we were doing was more beautiful than those grey concrete walls.

Sometimes people passed by when you were painting…

But they didn't seem to mind much.

You had to be careful in certain places

so that the cops couldn't see what you were doing...

because then you'd have to stop...

You also had to hide from the taxi drivers because they had this ULA phone connection...

that they could call the cops with.

But because no one had cellphones...

if someone would mind you painting, it would take time before they reach a phone...

and something would happen.

Feeling some pressure?

The marker's quite dry…

No, it doesn't matter…

It'll be classical.

- It wasn't that dry when it started to open up. - Yeah, yeah.

They got a deal to do a legal piece at Rekola station - Yeah.

We didn't approve of that at all…

I was at a juvenile institution at the time…

Fuck, that they would come to do legal pieces at our stations!

Yeah, are they these...?

Comedy and Krylon did this 52-meter wide 'Fuck The Cops' on top of it.

It was unreal, because it was summer and the track makes a slight curve...

from the Korso station...

and you could see this chrome mirror...

- that would reflect the evening sun. - Yeah, yeah.

What's up with this now?

Why is it not coming off?

There is still some left in the letter S...

What punishments could get from those things back then?

- You wouldn't necessarily get anything. - Mostly it was just a visit to the police station…

Where they would preach to you a little and they would then see about it.

Back in the day, in the mid-nineties and even at end of nineties...

you would usually do some reconciling and/or pay the cleaning fees...

which were quite reasonable back then...

and you would try to learn from your mistakes…

You tried not to get caught but that didn't always work out.

If you have started out with block letters…

And when the wall was filled with those...

the next option was to paint on top of them

and then you had to make it a bit bigger...

You couldn't be weak...

you had to be strong…

You had to have style.

Yeah, you had to practice first…

Before doing anything to the walls.

Graffiti quickly became popular and then it wasn't enough anymore…

That you would only be seen in many places...

It became more about how you were seen.

A kind of visual competition, where the thing was...

to make your name seen in the coolest possible way.

In the eighties big brand logos started to appear...