The Rez is quite the mysterious place for us immigrants. All we know is that there are cheap cigarettes and fireworks galore, as we demonstrated in this post. For most people it’s a mystical world where the streets have no names and the residents don’t have to pay taxes. Grimy mooks such as myself have heard countless outlandish stories about this that and the third going down under haunted bridges and abandoned quarries. At the end of the day nobody knows anything because none of us actually spent a day of our life chilling on the Rez. I’m a big opportunist. So, as soon as I got a chance to spend some time there, I took it.

I don’t think I could of asked for a better guide then Dj Budda Blaze. Not only is he a Kahnawake native, he is also a good friend of mine and on top of it all, he’s a giant mook. Any mook who grew up listening to Off The Hook radio will agree that Budda is high up there with some of the most legendary mooks from the greater Montreal area. Not to mention that he is a notorious All City Chilleur just like myslef. With this being said, I knew that my day at the Rez was going to be eventful, educational, engaging and will probably involve good food, hip hop and a shitload of weed. This is how it went down.

First thing I learned was that the right way of saying Kahnawake is by replacing the Ks with Gs so it becomes Ganawage. I’m a big fan of accents so I kept that in mind and now, I always pronounce it Ganawage. On the way to Buuda’s crib, I spotted this dope mural so I had to ask him what that place was all about.

Budda Blaze: This is the local grocery store, Lafleur’s Meat Market, a staple around here for as long as a mook can remember. Way back when, this was an infamous chilleur spot. You could catch at least 25 young and older mooks alike leaning up on the stoop any day of the week. As a kid riding by on your bike, you could easily catch wreck from someone in the crowd be it verbally or physically. Sadly this all stopped when some Herb lost his shit after hitting what I was told was some wetwet in a spliff. This fool fell flat on his face right there on the cement and knocked out his front teeth. An anti drug march and a huge ”Up With Hope Down With Dope” sign hanging from a tree across the street quickly killed this chilleur spot. After many fine years of drinking, smoking and communing, it’s now just a spot for the Condors, the local losing hockey team’s, mural. Shout out to MASH aka Jye on that legal piece.

Kahnawake’s own MASH (IBF), one of the pioneers in the graff game here on the Rez. Last of the first, 10 years deep in the paint and one of 2 writers who does all the legal/contracted spots in K-Town.

Movember looking ass Dj Budda Blaze. People use to say that there was no cops on the rez but it’s a bunch of bull shit.

Even us Injuns need a lil swine in our lives. Speed does kill though, real talk.

You know you are a mook when you have a Ekco stencil on your front door. Shout out to my homie Master T, the Ecko king. I see you baby!

The good ol’ days, when swag meant free clothing and boy, was it up for the taking. Free Ekco stencil with my free kicks? Of course I’m gonna spray paint that shit on my door. It’s the Rez.

More signs of mookness inside the house with all sorts of random shit and drug paraphernalia.

What you know about the Emerald Card? Or the Google G1? Costco for the steak, Pure Hemp for the hash and Smoking Brown for everything else.

This shit looked crazy. Very unusual looking strain. I had to ask what it was.

He said it was The “Grape”. Crushed Velvet in texture, with a sweet heavy smoke. I’d have loved to have seen the colas of these fine trees. Any mooks out there got a line on this strain, holla!

Budda has all sorts of weird shit in his house including these bad-ass herbs wrapped around in bandannas. Is this that shit you smoke in the peace pipe then black out and go on a psychedelic journey where you fly through crowds on a silver wolf?

We don’t smoke this shit you mook, we burn it and use it to connect with the creator. Now some of you mooks may say that I’m getting a lil hooky or hippie now, but I say shut the fuck up and peep game from those who been here and doing these things for 1000′s of years; long before you mooks landed in North America. This is Sage and it is used to clean and ward off any kinda evil shit in your area (house etc). Sweet Grass (not shown here) is another wild sweet smelling grass (as the name states) that when dried & burned is used to purify yourself. Lastly another important herb we use is Tabacco. Burned, it is used to speak directly with the creator.

Well fuck, If we can’t smoke those herbs, we might as well smoke some more weed. Vaporizing makes me feel like some sort of drug addict. I know I am anyway but using a loud machine and sucking smoke out of some bootleg plastic bag makes it that much more fiendish.

Vaporizing always saddens Dr.Gonzo. Vaporizing means no contact high for this 119 pound beast. In-depth testing of this device has shown that this is the cleaner, healthier and more economic way to puff. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t get much use. Big up to Skunk Magazine for the link on this Voodoo Mystifire vaporizer.

After getting heavily medicated it was time to go out and explore this bitch. Cruising around, I right away noticed that there are tons of epic murals for pawn shops and cigarette shacks all over the place. They all seemed to be done by the same mook. I asked Budda to elaborate..

Here on the Rez, the graff game surfaced when a handful of young mooks started running around the edges of the town doing throw ups and burners on the pillars of the Mercier Bridge. Not long after these vandals discovered that the lay-up for the Adirondak junction heading down to the States was in their backyard. No need for any explanation besides the fact that many a train were killed until the whole lay-up was moved futher down the line. Like so many in the game, only few last and the proof is right here. Only two real writers remain and these two now do all the contracted and local commercial spots. Now I’m sure some young mook is reading this right now thinking otherwise. Options are like assholes.

The first thing I wanted to the local mook hang out spot. Every hood has one of these places. Sometimes its under the bridge or somewhere in the woods. Other places its a little nook behind a mall or a school. It could be a forgotten corner under a free way or an abandoned factory, the common trait between them all is the absence of police and regular citizens who will come between you and what ever intended mook activities you had planned at the chosen location. In Kahnawake this place is a beautiful crystal clear water quarry.

This is “The Quarry” a local rock quarry used to build many of Montreal’s bridges. They hit water over 40 years ago and since then, we have been using this spot as a local swimming hole. More so it has always been a place for the young and young at heart to commune and get wild with the bottle, and later on with the can. As you’ll see. When I was coming up, the idea of this place being destroyed and tagged to shit was as far off of a reality as there NOT being glass and broken bottles everywhere you stepped.

A young Mohawk mook in the background hiding out and twisting up a spliff. I seen him rolling around on his bike just a few moments after we left the crib and I swear I though to myself “look at this mook, I wonder where he’s going? Probably some mook hole where he could roll a joint”. Where else right?

A View from Bear’s. The Quarry has many named cliffs & spots. The Corner, the Ramp, Horseshoe and Turtles, just to name a few. The water has risen over 40 ft in the last 20 years so many a sailor drive have been done from these peaks. Now a days you’re lucky to find a 3 story leap.

There was all sorts of classic epic graff all over the quarry but it’s not every day you get the pleasure of seeing a “Piss” fillin. I’ve seen tons of tags like “cunt”, “bitch”, ”shit”, “cock” and “faggot” but “piss” is a rare one indeed.

This has already been gone over, BTW.

Tagged to SHIT, this is the Salt House. I brought HTO here to show him this hidden gem. This is the Summer spot real Rez mooks know about. You can smash, get smashed and smash on someone all in a summer’s day. My Nephew SEKE  (change that name already you mook, shits corny) showed up with some cans and a 40.oz of Vodka to get the day going on the right foot. Next thing you know these 2 mooks are running amok painting some dirty ass throw-ups.

This is one of the problems of being a mook. When I document, I have to step back and observe. But since I’m also a big mook, I want to participate and when I get all exited and start participating in the mookness, I don’t get to document properly. Shout out to Seke for coming through with the paint, spliffs, vodka and good vibes.

When I think about Kahnawake, I right away think of bridges. There is so much bridge drama with the traffic, poor safety and all. They also have a bridge that lifts itself to let boats pass. I’ve seen ones that open up before but one that lifts was a first for me. I got to see it in action. It was pretty impressive, I’m not gonna front.

The Train Bridge. I can feel the engines rumble in my bones when these monsters pass. The saying ‘silent ships passing in the night’ is some bullshit. It’ll wake your ass up in the middle of the night. Thank you Canada!

If you from Kahnawake & you’re stuck in the city you can always walk the Train Bridge. When you’ve been out all night and you have no ride home and you’re broke, it’s pretty much the only option. Grab yourself a transfer from off the ground and take the night bus through Lasalle, where you can get to the track and walk the bridge. Winter can be tricky and there is always a chance that a train will come rolling down the line but sometimes you have to do what you have to do and walk the Train Bridge.

When the night walls, a gloomy aesthetic of  hazy mist and spooky quietness transforms this area in to one of those places mobsters come to dispose of dead bodies and trade suitcases. Now, I’ve heard all sorts of sketchy stories about this area but the most fucked up one must be the one Budda told me when we first started to hang out.

A Few years back  my cousin and I were on the other side of the water from here. It’s a small strip of land between Kahnawake, the Seaway, the St Laurent and the island of Montreal. A sorta of no man’s land left over from what they diden’t clear away when they created the Seaway that leads to the Old Port of Montreal. We visited our other cousin Charlie, who was a night watchman for the bridge’s construction site . After a couple hours we left the site and walked back to the bridge to cross back to the Rez.

As we got closer, we noticed the bridge was up and a ship was on its way. We had to wait it out. We were at the street lights on the right in this flick,when we both saw two little girls walk up the circular staircase that runs all the way up each side of the bridge. I said, “do you see that? you see that, right?” My cousin Craig replied, “Yea I see that”. “You see 2 little girls walking up the staircase?” I asked. “Yup”. As I looked I saw one of the girls had an old school baby bonnet on her head and she was maybe around 8 years old. The style was from the 50′s. I shit you not kids, they were as real as the keyboard I’m typing on. We decided that since the bridge was up anyway and we had to wait, that of course we were going to follow them up. First off the staircase was surrounded by an 8 foot high fence with barbed wire on top. Once we hopped that and walked up to the top of the staircase, there was no one on top… The only place to go was to the center of the bridge on a cat walk where there was a little house, an office or maintenance type of building. The door was locked and the roof was higher than we could get to, so where the fuck did these 2 little girls go?

As we contemplated this, the lift bridge started to come down and we hurried back down the staircase to cross over. Stunned and in disbelief, my cuz later told me he asked his mother about the area. She said there had been deaths around the site when it was built in the 50′s. Children looking for a place to play? Falling to their death on the unfinished structures? I always wonder why they lead us up there.

All I wanted to know was what kind of weed were these mooks smoking that day?

MASH (IBF) Mercier Bridge pillar

Defunk Rez Crew FTW.

Jojo’s is the spot. You can thank them for all of the recent pyrotechnic shows (i.e Action Bronson finale & post show). Imagine “South Of The Border” meets your neighborhood  military supply store. Jojo’s also has a fine tree nursery for all you aspiring gardening mooks who want deals on your shrubbery. Dont go in there asking for weed you Mooks, I’m being literal.

Another thing that automatically comes to mind when I think of Kahnawake is K 103. I’m gonna let Budda break down the knowledge.

These are two of Montreal’s urban radio personalities. They hold down Hip Hop along with me at K103.7FM. The station is on the Rez and is the first station in Montreal to play Hip Hop, Rap and R&B on a regular basis. In the Mid 90′s no one was repping Hip Hop here, on a wide scale at least. Of course it took one young brave Mohawk to have the foresight. Hiio Kirby started it, Duke Eatmon brought it to the whole city. He passed that torch to Don Smooth & I and Nick Fury has been in the fold bringing the local scene to the forefront more so than anyone had done before. This is the corner stone for HipHop radio in the city. All respect due to the originator though, Butcher T who also did his stint at K103 and still holds down the lunch time slot every Friday on CKUT 90.3FM.

Hip Hop Rez radio history.From The Wu to R.Kelly & Biggie, we certified.

That day CeasRock was in the house promoting his new project The Exeption which by the way you can download from right here. I was sitting there thinking, “Who would of thought. A Russian Jew, an Iranian kid who was born in Italy, a black man, an Anglo Saxon and a Native American all chilling together, enjoying good music in a radio station on a reserve in Canada”. Never though of my life turning out this way when I was growing up. I’m happy it did.

Long story short, this place is legendary.

Biggest mook of the gang. Where did he find this piece of roller coaster safety equipment is still a mystery.

All this chilling got a mook tired and hungry. Back to the shack we went where we enjoyed the finer things in life.

No chilleur post is complete without some serious gourmet shit. In Kahnawake we have a Sunday staple, cornbread and steak.This is Mohawk cornbread and the steak is NY strip from Costco. No meal is complete without some veg, so we have some asparagus with white onion and garlic.

“Light the stove up. Go to the store, get some flour”. Mohawk cornbread is more of a dumpling than actual bread.

All you mooks, peep game. The secret to dope BBQ steak is butter. Cover your steak in a shitload of butter and season with Montreal steak spice or whatever seasoning you like.

Giving you straight gems here. Another secret to so many great dishes is duck fat. For frying anything from potatoes to chicken, this is the gold dust of cooking. Here we used its as a gravy base.

Mohawk cornbread’s main ingredient, oats.

The second is cornflour or Masa.

We combine these with kidney beans and mix.

Smoke break for HTO while I prep the cornbread circles. We even have a children’s song about cornbread.

Is it the Project Pat song called Ooh Nuthin’?

Mix your elements with some hot water, with cold water on your hands to shape your cornbread circles.

Bisto and duck fat. You need gravy with your cornbread and steak.

Boil to thicken and simmer til ready to serve.

NY strip steak buttered and soaked in worcestershire with Montreal steak spice.

We BBQ all year around in these parts. Creating that perfectly charred  X is key.

The finished product, Mohawk cornbread and steak with gravy served mid-rare, sliced and ready.

This was a meal to remember. That mooked out dumpling was off the hook and the steak reaffirmed my hate towards vegetarianism more then ever. Well done Budda! Another meal, another success.

After a big meal like that, fresh air is essential so we rolled a couple of spliffs and took a walk. We turned the corner and I noticed this monstrosity. I had to ask if he knew anything ab0ut it.

When you have loot, love D&D and are on house arrest, you build a huge castle on the water with an indoor pool and all.

Fair enough.

These streets with no names are like no other, an enigma on the edge of the second largest city in Canada. (Canada btw is Mohawk for Kanata which is “The town or Village”). I would never trade them for anything. I am always in the city and try to rep Montreal in whatever I do but could never live there. Born, raised and surely buried here, Kahnawake is my home. The Village by the Rapids AKA Kahnawake.

There are very few people that I know of out here in Montreal who pushed our city and it’s local talent as much as Budda Blaze and the man is not even from the Island. His love towards the city and dedication to the culture is an example of what pure belief and genuine admiration really is. Its that same open mindedness that drives us to explore outside of our comfort zone. That mentality that pushes us to go where we are not suppose to. A mind state that allows people like Budda and I to connect and share our differences in celebration and not in hate. This is what makes us All City Chilleurs. The best part of any All City Chilling is coming back home, wherever it might be. I want to thank Budda Blaze for giving me this opportunity to represent for his town for a change. Although Kahnakwke is still largely a big mystery to me, now that I have my token Indian as my Rez pass, hopefully I will be jumping off the quarry cliffs next summer with the hot Native girls without getting found dead under that mechanical bridge the next day.

Hope you enjoyed this special All City Chilleur episode. I know we have been slow with the posts lately but give us a fucking break. We have some ill shit lined up for you mooks and also another Mook Life party on the way. So stop crying, go read some of the older posts or spend your day looking at 15 year old sluts on Tumblr like I do.