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Tagged: A form of expression
My name is Alan, and my tag is "Sor".
I'm from around here, in Santa Fe.
Graffiti is vandalism, but at the same time it's not really. It's a good thing
because when you express yourself you say everything you have inside.
Graffiti is bad, because you form a gang and you get in fights
and you do bad things, you paint on the walls without permission.
The police usually don't like it, so they try to arrest you, but it's not fair because
you're trying to express yourself, you're not doing anything wrong.
You're not going to hurt anybody or kill anybody, you're just going to
paint a wall and express what you're feeling inside.
My name is Gabriel, my tag is "Nova" and well, graffiti is basically art.
It's a way to express your feelings, and many people don't like it and they
criticize us and very few support us, but it's something that we feel and
we want to show the people. Just like musicians express themselves
by singing, we express ourselves by painting on walls.
Even though it's not something very correct, but it's what we feel
and nobody tells us what to do.
With graffiti there are different things you can do, such as "tags"
and "bombs", and other different things. For example, tags are when you take your
and you just paint your name, or your "tag".
and bombs are doing something big that you fill up so it looks better.
This can be done legally or illegally.
What would you say to the people that are against graffiti?
That they shouldn't be against it because it's really not a bad thing.
It's something that we like to do and we're not hurting anybody by doing it.
And they have no reason to judge us if they don't know what we feel when
we paint.
You said that you can paint tags or bombs, how long does it take you?
A bomb takes us about 5 minutes, but it depends on whether you have your
design planned out, you could do it in seconds, otherwise it can take you a while.
But the longer you take, the easier it is for you to get caught.
If you can paint it quickly, you just do it and run away.
Tell us a little about what it's like when you get slashed and what it means.
When you get slashed, it mostly generates fights between gangs
You don't like it when another gang slashes your street or your neighborhood,
so you have to go and paint on their neighborhood so they know that you
won't stand for it.
And you have to have certain respect for other gangs, which you gain by painting.
If they slash you, you slash them.
If you could avoid this, would you? Or is it part of what you like to do?
If you can avoid it, it's better, this way there aren't any fights.
There are some gangs that get together and go paint together, these are called
massive bombings.
They come to an agreement and decide to meet somewhere, where they all paint.
And the police can't do anything because they are too many against a few cops.
How long have you been painting?
- Four years. - Same, four years. Since middle school.
How did you get started? What got you interested in graffiti?
The streets, basically. You see other paintings and they get your attention, and also because
it's a way to express yourself, so you feel like painting something and
you show people what you feel.
So you lay out what you're feeling in the streets.
I was also motivated by the street, looking at the paintings you see a few that are
amazing, and I think "What if I had made that?", so it made me want to paint.
Also, because I really like to draw, I started making letters and bombs and I really got
into it, so I started painting.
That's when I got really into it.
Tell us about your cans, the caps you use, everything you use to paint.
The things you use, the things you don't use, and why you use or don't use them.
Most of all we buy our paint illegally, because they're better and cheaper
than the common paint they sell at stores.
They sell you nozzles that don't paint the way we like, so we buy our own.
So we buy different nozzles, some are fat, others are called bananas, or skinny ones.
You learn what you like to use, what you need. You can get a gas mask
mostly so we can avoid any diseases because the gases can be harmful.
Just like politicians cover the streets with their propaganda asking you to vote
for them, we can paint whatever we want too, and we're going to respect
them as much as they respect us.
We don't want to be as big as them to rule the f*****g world.