Before I moved to Pittsburgh people used to ask me, “Yo, where you from” and it used to be a long story. I was born in New York but moved every 2 years my entire childhood. I’ve lived all over the United States, 6 years and 3 different cities in Germany, and never completed more than one year in the same school or school district. Because of this I’ve always hated explaining where I’m from. Yea, I was born in New York, but left before my first birthday and couldn’t really claim I’m from Germany or any city or place I lived in.

This all changed for me in the 90′s when I moved to Pittsburgh. I met up with what would soon be know as the 2789 crew almost immediately after arriving. We all ended up hanging out together because we were all trying to hook up with the “901 girls” (4 of the dopest females on the 9th floor of an Art schools megadorm). We all sold or smoked mad weed, we were all Mooks, and more importantly we all painted graffiti. After officially starting our new crew in 1996 and becoming in many ways tighter than I was even with my own family, I finally felt at home in Pittsburgh and try to do my best to represent that city’s and the people I know from there.

Pittsburgh itself is a beautiful city despite it’s devistated economy. The illest suspension bridges over 3 rivers and old school architecture from the late 1800 through early 1900 mixed in with the new buildings. The people are what makes it though. Blue collar and proud, even the suits wear black and gold ties when the Steelers play. Even when the Steelers weren’t winning no one whined about it like in most other cities and you stayed loyal to your team. In a lot of ways it’s vibe reminds me of NYC, you aren’t smiling and all friendly to strangers and a fair weather friend to your crew. You keep your distance from nobodies and strangers even if they think you’re rude and unfriendly, but have your crews back no matter what, in tight situations along with the good times. Pittsburgh is the definition of real down to the core.

What I’m about to share with you is what I consider Pittsburgh’s golden age of graffiti. They’re from a time when the best thing you could paint with wasn’t artsy euro paint, it was cans of stolen rustoleum, and using the stock tip was normal. If you wanted crisper lines sometimes instead of paying for a NY thin or rusto fat, you went to the store and stole the caps off of bug and tar remover for your car or whatever other aerosol caps they had and tested them out. We even discovered a bug and tar cap that had an extension, with the extension in made a thin line, when you took it out it was the ultimate fat cap and could empty an entire can in seconds. They didn’t even have specialty paint back then and nobody got sponsored. In fact, I don’t think there was any way to make money with graffiti. Even if you put out a magazine you didn’t get rich, you probably lost money and you made the magazine because you loved graffiti.

Just getting flicks of your work was an entirely different beast back then. You had to steal or borrow a camera, then steal the film for it, then have the least suspicious looking guy in the crew get them developed at Giant Eagle and walk out without paying. There wasn’t any graffiti photo’s on the internet to jerk off to and bite from, you only found them in peoples photo albums if you were lucky enough to be allowed to look. Back then you didn’t get your style by biting MSK or whatever other crew from 1000 miles away, you got schooled locally by other people who were schooled locally. Not trying to brag or nothing, putting in work is putting in work, no matter what era it is and they were way less harsh on offenders back then compared to now where you get punished worse than rapist and murderers in some cases. I’m just trying to put these shots in context and explain just how important they are to me.

Most of these were taken during the mid to late 90′s up until 2001 on my old Kodak film camera. The majority of them were shot by me or my crew since we all pretty much shared the same camera or prints. Some of these were taken by people outside the crew but the photo’s ended up in my photo shoebox, then in the folder I stored all the scans or Pittsburgh stolen shots in, so I don’t know who to credit exactly for any photo or which ones were taken by me anymore. This is an unbiased look at the scene at the time, this is not just 2789 crew shots, some of these writers I even had beef with back then. Anyway, I hope you’re collecting photo’s yourself to look back at some day, but for now, here’s some of mine: