LAZAR
INTERVIEW DATE:
March 25, 2002
Q- NAMES USED:
Lazar. I did not need anything else.
Q-. YEAR STARTED WRITING? YEAR RETIRED?
circa 1970, 1973/74
Q- AGE WHEN YOU STARTED:
thirteen
Q- WHERE IN NYC?
Brooknam
Q-. WHY DID YOU START WRITING?
After seeing names everywhere, I thought it was the coolest thing and knew instantly that I had to do this. I was just drawn to it. I had studied art when I was a child at Pratt University so it was a natural.
Q- WHO WERE YOUR WRITING PARTNERS (IF ANY)? STILL IN TOUCH WITH THEM TODAY?
I never really had any writing partners, because I preferred to work alone. It was a lot easier to be inconspicuous without other people. Sometimes I ran with WG and Stop700 but mostly alone. WG introduced me to my wife, so of course we are still very good friends.
Q- WRITING GROUPS YOU FOUNDED OR CO-FOUNDED?
WG and I founded WAR "Writers Already Respected" and Stop700 and I founded DEAD. Its been so long I forget what that meant. Oh well, if I ever find Stop, I will ask him if he remembers.
Q- WRITING GROUPS YOU BELONGED TO?
Last Survivors for a hot minute. EX Vandals for life.
Q- YOU WROTE YOUR FIRST TIME ON A WALL, BUS, TRAIN, OR TRUCK?
Publicly, I wrote my name the first time on a B49 bus with WG.
Q- YOUR FIRST HIT EVER, WHICH MEDIUM DID YOU USE, i.e. MARKER, SPRAY PAINT, PEN, ETC.?
Black Drimark
Q- WHERE DID YOUR NAME COME FROM?
I made it up, playing around with how certain lettersfit together.
Q- WHICH WAS THE FIRST SUBWAY LINE YOU HIT? (IF YOU HIT SUBWAYS)
IRT 2 & 3 trains.
Q- WHAT OTHER SUBWAY LINES DID YOU HIT?
All of them. My MO was to pick a different line every day and ride as far as time would permit, hitting every stop along the way and every train in between.
Q- WHAT YARDS & LAYUPS DID YOU WORK AT?
Canal Street R Line
Q- WHERE YOU "KING" OF ANY PARTICULAR SUBWAY LINE(S)? IF 'YES,' WHICH ONE(S)? WHAT YEAR(S)?
I was up on the D & F lines, but I was truly king of tagging trucks. Nobody hit more trucks than I did. There were tons of truck yards near where I lived and when I walked my dogs (trained German Shepards)late at night, I would tag at least 50-200 a day. I was relentless, doing this every day for several years. I was also king of Brooklyn buses, because there were 5 major bus lines within 2 blocks of my house. I would chill with the neighborhood guys on the corner many evenings and tag everything that came by.
Q- WHO WAS YOUR MENTOR? (IF APPLICABLE) DID YOU MENTOR ANY
OTHER WRITERS?
I did not really have a mentor per se. WG was my sponsor into the Vandals and introduced me to the Writing world. I did not mentor other writers because I only spent time with people that I thought could handle themselves and knew what they were doing. People that do not, can get you killed. From time to time, though I hung with some Brooklyn young guys like STUD, COOL CAT1, KOOL KITO, SLIM1, TAN1.
Q- WHICH WRITERS DID YOU LOOK UP TO? WHY?
I did not look up to anyone. There were certain guys that I admired greatly for their talent and leadership ability such as DINO NOD(RIP), PHASE2, SUPERKOOL 223 and STAYHIGH 149.
They were clearly head and shoulders better than their competitors at styles or executing their tags.
The people that I respected were those that either did the most beautiful or distinctive work or could get to places that no one had ever thought of before.
Q- DID YOU INTRODUCE ANYTHING NEW TO THE AEROSOL ART MOVEMENT? IF 'YES,' WHAT WAS IT? WHAT YEAR?
I can't say anyone has written the Letters L and R like I did.
I don't recall anyone else using part of one letter to form another quite like I did. I truly liked STAY HIGH149's angel with the halo. However, knowing that I was no angel, I decided to draw my own stick figure in the shape of R.Crumbs "Keep On Trucking" man as a devil smoking a j**nt. Otherwise, I was just another guy.
Q- WHICH WERE YOU FAVORITE COLORS TO WORK WITH?
Red
Q- WHICH BRAND OF SPRAY PAINT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TO WORK WITH?
Whichever brand was free.
Q- WHICH MARKER WAS YOUR FAVORITE?
Niji's, Midi-Wide's, Uni-Wide's and home grown wider.
Q WHICH WAS YOUR FAVORITE SPOT TO HIT YOUR NAME AT IN THE SUBWAY SYSTEM? (IF APPLICABLE)
Between the cars on the wall of the station and on the ends of the traincars.
Q DO YOU HAVE IN MEMORY A "FAVORITE" MASTERPIECE THAT YOU DID?
IF 'YES,'. WHICH ONE, WHEN WHERE, AND WHY?
Yes a piece Bama and I did several years back at the Wall of Fame. That was an honor.
Q- WERE YOU EVER ARRESTED FOR WRITING? IF 'YES,' WHEN,
WHERE, WITH WHOM AND BY WHOM?
Never. My sixth sense always alerted me to cops before they rolled up on me. I could typically talk my way out of jams with cops. Sometimes I would dress neatly and take the Wall Street Journal with me. What cop would arrest me? I was always very, very discreet.
Q- WHICH WAS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO 'RACK UP' AT?
Q- ARE YOU STILL PAINTING TODAY?
No. I worked on Wall Street for twenty years and had precious little time for anything other than being focused on business. I did become an expert at endurance sport training, a licensed bicycle racing coach and raced bikes for several years. That was my art for awhile.
Q- WHAT DO YOU PROFESSIONALLY TODAY?
I have found my latest true passion, something which mixes work, play and art together in one for me. I have become a commodity trader utilizing graphical interpretations and visual representations of math models to make trading decisions.
At the top of this page is a sample of what my world now looks like. This is the Dow from a daily basis as of today. This market looks like it may go further down for a while. Who knows, I may come back and combine some of the patterns of my new world with my old.
Q- ANY ADVICE TO YOUNG WRITERS WORLDWIDE TODAY?
If this is what you would pay to be able to do, then follow your bliss and do it. Do it well and give every ounce of your soul to what you love because you will never know where it will lead you.
Q- ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO ADD?
Becoming a writer changed me profoundly, because when I first started I was in prep school. I had never met anyone like some of the characters I met writing. I learned how to be able to relate to just about anyone from those experiences. Additionally, I learned how to read situations from my writing days. Also, what most people fail to take into account was that this was a very large natural selection process of defining your own identity and alpha male status based on your own terms; a phenomenon born in the number 1 city on earth.
Most of the writers who were very good were creative, smart, articulate and clever people. I truly believe that they would have succeeded at anything if they used the same amount of energy and focus.
Q- YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION?
Thank you very much LAZAR. Indeed Brother, you were
King of trucks in Brooklyn during the Pioneering Generation.
- MICO
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