Claw Money: Key To The City
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
World renowned graffiti writer, fashion designer, and cultural icon Claw Money recounts the many borders she had to cross in order to land in the space that she calls Claw & Co. When life puts a fence in your way, you climb it. When it puts a second one, you rip your pants.
Related Links
• Follow Claudia Gold AKA Claw Money on Instagram.
• Check out and shop her Claw & Co collection.
EPISODE CREDITS
Written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Luz Fleming. Original Music by Luz Fleming, James Ash, Sajato Jarrett, Names You Can Trust, Greenwood Rhythm Coalition, Midnight Lab Band, Oneman AKA Internet Provider, Monk One and Easy. Executive Producer: Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Andy Cotton. Cover art and episode art by Andy Outis. Production assistance by Davis Lloyd.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Yard Tales – CLAW MONEY: KEY TO THE CITY
Luz Fleming:
This episode contains strong language and mature subject matter. It may not be suitable for all ears.
What up, this is Luz Fleming. You've come to the place where we tell tales of the train and the bus yard, the tenement yard, and the prison yard. We detail close calls and chase stories. We dig into larger conversations about crossing boundaries, the other side of the tracks, borders and forbidden space. Whether to make big life changes to forward the artistic or professional practice to escape peril, or just for the sheer thrill of it.
Claw Money:
I see this fence leading to freedom and I climbed over it and then there was another fence, and I was like, “Shit!”
Luz Fleming:
Today. It is a huge honor to have Claudia Gold, AKA Claw Money share some of her amazing and hilarious tales with us. Claudia is a world renowned graffiti writer, fashion designer, and cultural icon. Join us as she shares her accounts of running the streets, doing graffiti nightlife in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, her undying love of fashion and how all of these things collide to make one of the most influential brands of its kind. Claw & Co is truly a result of crossing boundaries.
Being crossed out, taking a leap and emerging on the other side, even bigger and stronger than before. So sit back and let Claw Money tell you some of her favorite Yard Tales.
Claw Money:
What up everybody? It's your girl, Claudia Gold aka Claw Money from TC5 FC and PMS crews. Just to name a few. Coming to you live from New York City.
My mother is from Belgium. Her parents packed her four siblings up in a car and drove all over Nazi occupied Europe until they could get on a boat. And I think they were going to go to South America, but my grandfather saw that the boat docked in New York and he had a third cousin there and I guess he wrote him.
And when they docked his cousin came up and said like, “I’m going to take this family.” They were able to disembark in New York and not have to go on to South America. My mom was six when she got here and they lived on the Upper West Side and that was kind of a weirdly rough neighborhood. It's hard to imagine, even though it was very beautiful.
Riverside drive in the hundreds was pretty rough in the fifties, sixties, seventies. I mean, I remember there used to be like pimps and hookers when I would go visit my grandfather when I was a kid and I would be like, “Ooh, mommy, like, look at that, man. He has the coolest outfit on!” and she'd be like, “Don't look at him.” I’m like, “I love him!”
My grandmother was born in the Lower Eastside. I grew up going to Delancey street where my store was as a child. I would say like a couple of tons of a month every other week or something, my father always needed something onto Delancey street, but I think it was just an excuse to go to Ratner’s, which was a very famous kosher restaurant that had the best pea soup and onion rolls in town or something.
Later it hosted the Lansky lounge that was kind of popping in the early two thousands. And it also had one of the most beautiful sign with all tiny light bulbs that said Ratner’s in a script, almost like Pepsi Cola or something, it was had this pink ribbon. It was beautiful.
I loved going to Ratner’s with my dad, but my dad was always like, “I got to get socks! We got to go to the Delancey Street.” But I think there was such a tie to that neighborhood because that's where, you know, half of my family came from.
But I'm originally from Fresh Meadows Queens. I moved to Long Island to go to junior high school. As soon as I could, I moved into Manhattan at the tender age of seventeen to attend college at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology).
I was very interested in fashion. I was like always making clothes as a kid, making some crazy outfit out of something. And you know, when my parents were having a party and I'd come down, like in my like crazy and they’d, “Ooh, Claudia!” And I was very good at fashion illustration, I was like, I'm going to be a fashion illustrator because those people had jobs.
They drew pictures in the newspaper and it's very glamorous and they just, Ooh, lots of style, lots of squiggles and suggestions and lines in the face and crazy hairstyles. You could just dream up anything. I really loved it.
My father was very down on me at that time and was like, “I don't even know why I'm sending you to college. You're completely incapable of being responsible.” You have to live at home.” “No, I'm going to get a job.” And I moved into the projects on 10th Avenue and 27th. It was only for six months and I moved in with these two guys, and it was like two hundred and thirty two dollars for like the tiniest room that barely fit a twin bed.
But after that, my grandfather passed away and I moved into his apartment on a 113th and Riverside. and I basically never went to college after that. I never went to class after that. I was like, I'm good, I’m uptown now, bye.
My love of fashion didn't ever wane, even when I stopped going to college, because I started working as an intern in college, and those people hired me as an assistant designer. So I immediately was sort of indoctrinated into the schmatta business, the like the real commodity garment business.
I was an intern at a brand called Fortune Cookies that was owned by Anne Klein, which Donna Karan owned. It was this company. Uh, Takio a Japanese company and Narciso Rodriguez was my boss. It was this like younger Anne Klein, Fortune Cookies. Like it was like trying to be Betsy Johnson, but like Betsy Johnson for the office, kind of like, it was like an outerwear division.
I stayed in this like outerwear where I worked for like two or three different coat companies. One line had faked fur, one line was sort of like sporty, like a Nautica or a Polo, another line was like weird like color block, like fake ski Obermeyer jacket.
At that time, I was writing a lot of graffiti and it was very hard to get to work on time because I was up all night painting and I was expected to come into work at, you know, nine thirty, the latest or something. And I would have to drink so much coffee to stay awake. That when I was doing these flat sketches, you know, it's like a picture of a garment, really two dimensional that shows all the details where the pocket is, where the zippers are, where the placket is, where the drawstring is.
Right. And you hand draw the stuff and you draw the little stitches, you know, a double needle. My hand would shake from the coffee. When I was doing these little tiny stitch marks. And I was like, “Oh my God.” I have to erase it ninety five times. I have to redo it. Like I started like messing up and I got fired for being late.
And I went to a club that night just being like, you know, let's get fucked up because I don't have a job. And they were like, “Can you work the coat room?” Like, so our girl isn't here do you want to make a couple hundred bucks or whatever, and that was that. I was indoctrinated into nightlife culture, where I stayed for a long time, which was perfectly in sync with my graffiti schedule and let me really experiment and go crazy with fashion behind the bar, as my, you know, runway. It was just sort of like the perfect early twenties storm for me. It really, it was good.
Also bartending and working in this all female bar environment with my sort of like feminist mentors, like who to this day are like my moms and best friends and really created this very like safe space for me throughout entire downtown, because I'm a bartender here. This guy's a bartender there, everybody gets to know each other. So every bar in the East Village was sort of a secret hideout for me If something was to pop off, which I used very frequently to sort of escape danger.
I remember this yard in an abandoned building crumbled building that was on 14th and 4th.
I guess this is like ’93, something like that. This was the first time I ever saw Shepard Fairey, like Obey Giant poster. And it was, there was one on the, on the right side of the yard. Anyhow what had been a terrible winter that year I was always painting by myself, but I like scope this spot on 14th and 4th. I'm like, that's my spot. I just would walk by it all the time and be like, there it is. There's my spot. That's my spot.
And it was so out in the open that I really needed to have lookouts on every corner. I needed one on Broadway, I needed one on 4th Avenue and I needed one, both sides of 14th street and on the avenues, because it was just an entire block of invisible fence.
You know what I mean, you could just really see what was going on. And it was very cold winter. Nobody wanted to paint with me. I had plans to meet both Dante TC5 and Divo KGB, because I knew one of them, wasn't going to show up that night at midnight on fourth avenue and 14th street. And so now it's like 12:30.
I'm like, “Oh of course they’re going to be late.” So it's 1:00, it's 1:30 and I'm like, “Tonight's my night. I have to paint this.” I have my paint like I got to do it.
And I'm standing there and these dudes were like, “Yo, what's up mommy?” And usually I'd just be like, “Ughhh” But I was like, “What are you guys doing? Do you want to look out?” And they were like, “What?” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I want to paint that wall. Will you guys look out?” There were three of them. I was like, “You stand there, you stand there. And you watch all the cars that come up 4th Avenue and let's have a code word” Or something, you know, like owl, or something. “But like, If it's sketchy, but I want you guys to tell me every time a car comes. I don't care if it's not a cop car, just tell me because I got to just like be cool.”
I threw my paint over. And I climbed the fence. So I'm painting, I’m painting and I'm like really going fast. I haven't stopped once I could see lights, but I'm just like, “Why aren't they saying anything?” Of course, they’re not saying anything they're staring at me painting because they're just like, “What the hell is going on? What are we doing here?”
Like they’re watching and I'm like, “You guys! Come on, like you got to let me know!” So anyway, I finished fast because they were like the worst lookouts. I also wrote like, “Burn your bra” So I was like trying to come in with like some seventies feminist statements. I'm with these like three dudes that I just met, that everybody had like their like hood nickname.
They were like Nuts, Cisco and Polo and so I put them up and, you know, I'm like trespassing. I had to climb back over the fence and I was like, come on, let me like take you guys for a drink.
And I, when I see pictures of that wall, and I just remember that, like I could just approach like someone on the street, like human to human. It was sort of like opening up like a border of like humanity to me in some way that like I was in this situation and I like asked three strangers for help, who could have just been like “Nahhhhh” or like “Give me your paint” or it could have gone south, but it, it didn't.
Um, I always felt like graffiti connected me to the people of New York City in this way. Where there were no borders at all, but I just felt like so enveloped in love from New York City, from the street, from the cars, from the weather these dudes, like it was almost as if I had the key to the city, borderless entry.
I used to paint a bubbly style of my name, kind of seventh grade girly bubble letters, very junior high school denim notebook with like a bunny next to it in a rainbow or something. So I used to paint this bubbly C-L-A-W, I started putting hearts in the A and then I started putting the nails on the claw and I was just always doing pieces, CLAW, CLAW.
I was doing all sorts of crazy pieces, but like silver outlines and back then, you know, we didn't have fancy caps or anything. So like over sprayed, silver outlines, I mean, I was just trying all sorts of wild stuff and it's funny because probably 10 or 15 years after I was painting like that and I got better, I would look at those photos and I would get stomach ache and I would just be like, “Oh, this is just like, so embarrassing.”
And then when I was putting my book together in 2005 and I was looking at them, it was almost like I was on some next level shit. I was really like, I had no borders or boundaries. I was just like on my own experimental, I'm going to do a silver outline with like over-spray everywhere and I don't care.
It, it looks great.
So, uh, when I started painting graffiti, the trains were done. They had put in their full 1989, like last graffiti run train, like, it's a wrap. They're going hard and the guys that I was being mentored with or friends with that were trained writers were just like, “Yo, if you didn't paint trains, you ain't shit.”
So we lowly street bombers also wanted to have mobility. So we really started painting all these truck lots and there used to be big, giant truck, lots all over the Lower East Side. There was one on Houston Street which I believe is a Whole Foods. Now that was one of my favorites and I think that's actually where the CLAW icon was developed in that actual truck yard, that's Whole Foods, shout out to Jeff Bezos.
And there was one on Delancey street by the Williamsburg Bridge, where my store was, which is now some fancy high rise, Essex street crossing co-op development, I don't know. But those trucks would get around and people would see your stuff, whether it was, you know, uptown or on the west side, or you were in a cab.
And I feel like we all knew we got a lot of play out of the trucks.
One of those nights. I was in there with this kid, OSHA, O-S-H-A, wherever you are I hope you're good.
Real low key. I guess this truck saw us when they were opening up the gate. He slowly, like, drove his truck in like silently with no lights on and I was like, “Is something coming?” Like, because you kinda can't hear, I also used to paint with like a Walkman or something dumb like that because you know, I'm in the truck yard who’s coming to the truck yard at three in the morning.
I would say that I was running around for a full 10 minutes and it felt like 12 hours. It was scary because I didn't know what they were going to do. If they were going to like grab me and call the cops or they were going to like beat me up. Or they were just going to be like, literally shocked. And I see this fence leading to freedom. It was pretty mild eight foot really structurally, like well-made chain-link fence and I climbed over it. And then there was another fence that was like 15 feet high, about five feet behind it that I just didn't even know was there. And I was like, “Shit!” Meanwhile, OSHA was in there too, but he had scaled the double fence with ease, like, and I guess he was waiting for me, like by a tree or something.
And these guys started climbing over the five foot fence and I just went up the 15 foot fence and I'm sitting on the top and I'm like, fuck, “Can I jump down?” Oh, I can't, that's not my thing. I'm not good at that. So sitting on top of it, I'm like, “Oh my God, I got to jump down.” These guys are coming for me and I jumped, but of course my pocket got caught on the top of the fence.
And I just was like, “Oh my God.” So I was walking around, like holding it, trying to like, knot it together. I think I went to the bar that I worked at to have a drink and, uh, put some paper towels in my pants so nobody would see my butt. Coincidentally, I always started wearing like two or three safety pins on my clothes in case that happened. So I can just not be completely indecent. But I got away and that was that and I think I was back at the truck yard the next night.
Luz Fleming:
What's up everybody, this is Luz, the producer of Yard Tales. I want to take a minute to ask you for a favor, a show like this takes a lot of time and effort to produce. We're not a big team. It's mostly just me. We don't have any sponsors contributing money or influencing what I make or what I say. This is independent media.
If that's something you support, please help me to keep making this show and providing it to you for free by donating to Yard Tales, a single dollar counts. But if even a small percentage of listeners gave the price of one of those 10 pound pastrami sandwiches from Katz's Deli, you get the idea. Just go to yardtales.live/donate and click on the button that says “donate”.
Now that's yardtales.live/donate. Any amount is really appreciated. Thanks so much and now let's get back to those truck yards where Claudia’s iconic CLAW badge was born.
Claw Money:
In those truck yards is where the CLAW came to be. I'll tell you how the actual CLAW came to be. So I’m writing CLAW and then I started writing, like CW or I was writing CLW and skip the A, if it was like a small space. Then I started doing CW and this kid, HEC, who passed away, R.I.P., just went into the truck yard and they're like, “What the hell is this?”
And they painted with bucket paint, H-E-C in yellow bucket paint like humongous, but it was only over like the C-L-A, and so I think I was on like 23rd street or something, and I was talking to someone and I saw the truck and you instantly know what your truck is because you recognize the other graffiti that's on it.
I see this truck coming and I'm like, “Oh my God, there's my truck.” I'm like, “Wait, wait, wait, let's just hang out a second my trucks coming.” And this truck rolls by and I see this like yellow bucket HEC over my CLA and the W which is the claw, but more of a W shape, less paw I guess. Okay was just sticking out.
And I was like, “Oh, I'm going to kill this guy!” But then I kind of just like looked as the truck was rolling away from me and I was like, “There it is. I'm never going to write my name again.” So he really actually did me a huge favor in retrospect, but I remember being pissed and being like, “I’m going over his whole shit.”
So you want to talk about beef? Okay. Let's talk about beef. I have beef with somebody who isn’t practically, isn't even considered a graffiti artist, CHICO, he was like Walmart, the Walmart version of TATS crew or something, right. But actually, you know, it's funny because Martha Cooper did a book of, you know, R.I.P. walls and he's got so much stuff in there and it's actually just so brilliant and amazing.
Weirdly now I'm like a huge fan. I think like in the early, you know, in the eighties and nineties, I wasn't such a fan, but he had so much stuff. So in the early nineties, I was painting with PINK a lot and painting, freight trains and stuff and this young woman was coming from Amsterdam to visit LADY PINK, MICKEY, MICKEY TFP.
I'm going to say this is ’92 and I at the time was, uh, kind of mentoring a young QUEEN ANDREA. She was like 16 year old girl and PINK was like, “We got to get an all-girl wall. We've never had an all-girl wall. Let's do an old girl wall!”
Yeah, okay, so I'm in the East Village every second, I have learned that you ask stores for permission to paint the wall. They say, “No.” They close on a Sunday and you paint it. You're just like, “Okay, you're not going to let me paint. I'm just gonna paint.” And especially as a woman, when I would paint in the daytime, whether it was legal or illegal, and a lot of times stuff that looked legal was completely illegal.
I just pretended like it wasn't, I would make a fake note and I would just paint. And then I would try to use my gift of gab with the cops if they came and say like, “Come on, oh no, I'm painting a mural for the community.” Like whatever, so, I saw this huge wall on 11th, between BNC that was on this like insane thrift store.
And it had these like really weird flowers painted on it and tags all over it. And I just would look at that wall constantly and be like, “I got to paint that wall.” and I realized the store was closed on, I don't know, Sunday or Monday or whatever day it was closed. I was like, that's our day. So MICKEY, PINK, QA and myself all painted that wall.
I have a picture of that too. I think I wrote like “females represent” or something corny. Um, but it was like a big deal and it was a big deal to PINK at the time because there had never been like an all woman production wall.
And when we're painting the wall, who rolls up but CHICO, I had never met him. I just always saw all his murals. There's the laundromat mural with the Tide and the Ajax and there's the vet mural with the German shepherd and the parrot, and there's the, all the R.I.P. walls. And every corner CHICO had in the East Village, Alphabet City, like it was just CHICO world.
And he's like, “Oh yeah, how'd you get this wall?” I was like, “Oh, you know, I asked them if I could paint the wall, whatever.” And he was like, “Oh yeah, because I've been trying to get this wall.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” Whatever, a week or two later I was in this crew, this, uh, Alphabet City crew called THE VIOLATORS. They were like, oh, my little homeys.
They rang my bell. I was living on 6th Street between 1st and 2nd, on the crazy Indian restaurant street. And they're like, “Yo, CHICO's painting over your wall.” I'm like, “What are you talking about?” They're like, “He's painting over your wall!” I'm like, “What do you mean!?”
So I put a can of spray paint in each of my back pockets of my, of my jean shorts. Um, I put on a sweatshirt and I walked over to the wall. And I was like talking to these guys and I was like, “Okay, you guys can go.” And they're like, “No, no, no, no. We're not going to go. We're going to like, lurk, like just in case something pops up.”
And these kids were, they were like so young and so small. Like they, I just was like, “Just go.” And they were like, “No, no, no, we're staying.” So I walk up to the wall and I'm like, “Yo, what are you doing?” And he's like, “Who are you?” And I'm like, “I’m CLAW. We met like couple of weeks ago.” And he was like, “Fuck you bitch! You can't come down to the East Village and fucking think you own it. This is my neighborhood. You're not fucking painting here.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I was like, “What?” And then all these dudes that I didn't realize were like hanging out, just started like kind of closing in on me and I was like, “Okay, okay. It's like that? Okay, bye!” And I walk away and these kids come up to me and they're like, “It's cool.” And I'm like, “Grrrrrrrr Ughhhhhhh”
So I called PINK and I was like, “This dude's going over my wall.” Needless to say, I won't say who I was with, but I drove around with a bunch of people to all of his walls, with a ton of bucket paint in the back of this, I believe it was a wood paneled station wagon, and I would jump out every corner and take the can and go, “Bleh!”
And I guess we probably got about like 20 pieces in one night, and next thing I know CHICO was after me, who knew CHICO was so like completely like deeply embedded in the Lower East Side gang life, where like dudes were showing up to my bartending job and pulling guns on like the staff there being like, “Where the fuck is CLAW?”
And he got my number and was leaving me like all sorts of crazy messages, like, “You owe me 500 cans. I'm going to fuck you up!” Right, and then he doesn't get me. I am avoiding my house and being downtown, like the plague, I'm calling all of my boys that are uptown, I'm like, “Yo, what's up? You want to hang out?” I'm a totally come uptown. I'll be uptown. I'm leaving my house now, whatever let's do something. Let's paint. Let's go somewhere. Like, come on!”
And I guess he called up PINK and said, you know, “Where’s CLAW, I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna fuck her up” And I got really mad. And when he called up PINK and said, like, “Where's CLAW?” I felt like she should have been like, “What do you want CLAW for? Maybe I was there. Maybe you have problems with me.” Because that's what I would have done. If somebody would have called me beefing about something that I participated in, I wouldn't like play dumb and say, “What are you talking about? Oh, she was just mad.” I felt like she really like hung me out to dry to take all the heat myself.
Not that anybody else needed to claim anything. Anyway, he got me on the phone and I was like, “Fuck you 20. I got 20. I'm going to get them all. Don't you fucking threaten me. You owe me 200 cans. How about that motherfucker? Right.” And he was like, “Call the dogs off enough. It's done.” And I'm like, “Okay, it’s done.”
But I got this weird reputation of being this like bad-ass bitch, because I had to, because my mentor, like really didn't look out for me and as a woman, I just thought there would be no way that she would like leave me in a vulnerable situation.
And really that really informed how I began to mentor young women and I felt like when it was my turn to be the OG that, toy or no toy, I'm going to love the shit out of you and help you no matter what and have your back, when you're all by yourself, going to work in a crazy neighborhood, like, I don't know, you should be able to like bank on the fact that I got your back.
If you're in my crew or not, like, I don't know, it was an interesting life lesson, but I'm here for the girls. I'm here for the girls. I've never told that story to anyone like on a, like as a, as a real like recorded thing. But yeah. Anyway, I got, I got, had a really like tough reputation in the East Village after that, like for like CHICO was like scared of me.
But that also was weirdly the catalyst to get me into TC5 because I was friends with like DOZE and PSYCHO. I think I told them what happened. And they talked to him before the beef, before the paint throwing happened, he painted a chick, this giant woman with like a huge butt and on her jeans he wrote “CLAW” as sort of, you know, like a, here I'm not really going over, you I'm putting you up.
Like, but it was like right on her butt cheek before Juicy Couture and I was so mad, I was like, “That motherfucker put my name on her butt.” I wish I had a picture of it. It would be like so awesome. I don't think I ever did, but, um, the TC5 guys rolled up to the wall and was like, “Cover that up. She's really pissed.”
Like, don't do that. And then I think they saw how, like crazy I went on this and they were that's when they like put me in the crew, PSYCHO was like, “You're down. You're just, you're just what we're looking for.”
I moved to Los Angeles in 1995 because of beef. Really, the cops were after me. We had like terrible beef, me and my boyfriend at the time. And I just didn't want to deal. I just wanted, like I had some friends over in LA and just needed like a change of scene. The walls just were like closing in on me in New York, I just was like, “Get me out of here.”
So I called my dear friend, Sophie, a very accomplished costume designer. Go look her up. Sophie De Rakoff, and I'm like, “I need a job. What do I do?” And she's like, “Ooh, darling!” She's British, “Come be an assistant with me on this shoot, we all will do is iron clothes and smoke cigarettes.” I was like, “Sounds great.”
So we started working for this woman, Jen Pellington her husband was a big video director, Mark Pellington and we started working on this like insane Bon Jovi video with, I don't know, 600 extras. It was really like an epic job, but that's all we were doing is steaming clothes and we'd like to smoke a million cigarettes.
And I was like, “This is my shit. This chick is telling everybody what to wear. Like, this is me.”
And I started really pursuing styling gigs and assisting styling gigs. And I was working like a dog in Los Angeles and I was also bartending because I needed to make money. And I was just working like seven days a week, like all day and all night. And I broke up with my boyfriend and was like, “I have to like, I'm going home. Like, why am I here?”
And I moved back home and I said to myself, “I’m going to be a stylist, but I'm not going to assist anybody.” That was in the late nineties where I made this cautious decision to really kind of like pursue editorial and all sorts of very creative music video, like stuff that really was badly paying, but really, um, great creatively.
And then I started getting lots and lots of jobs and started really establishing myself as a stylist and costume designer and later fashion editor, and fashion director. And I met a MISS 17. She became my assistant and she kept trying to get me to paint and I was just completely not into it. I was like, “Oh, that's for you young kids, like go crazy.”
And she got me out there painting one night and lo and behold, I had never painted and had like an immediate reaction on the internet, because there was no internet. When I painted it was all kind of word of mouth. All of a sudden she's sending me link after link after link. “Oh my God CLAW’s back. I'm so excited. I've made my day. I walked down avenue C, I saw a giant CLAW, I can’t even believe it. All my dreams are coming true. CLAW’s back, CLAW’s back.” I couldn't even believe how much positivity, because I just didn't really associate that with graffiti. Ah, this is like ’99, 2000 around then and she was getting a lot of shit on the internet.
A lot of it was like those like horrible, like forums and streets are saying things and it was just like tons of anonymous, fake shit talking accounts and most of the criticism that was lobbed against her was that she didn't, she doesn't paint her own shit. Right and I said to myself, “What are they going to say?” If I paint with her, are they going to be able to say that same like, “Oh, she doesn't paint her own shit.” But it’s two she’s, like what? Because that's what they always say. So. I just was like, “You know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna back this young woman and we're going to go painting.” And we started painting a lot.
So now we're painting a lot. It's 2001, 9/11 happens. All of a sudden New York just dries up, there's no jobs. I was also wheeling and dealing vintage. I would buy lots of crazy vintage to use in my styling. I'd wear it out and then I'd sell it. So I had this job and I was like flipping all the stuff to mostly Japanese customers, but to all the good stores, Downtown Resurrection.
Foley and Corinna, but there were like tons of them. And I also was curating all the eyewear in the cool, streetwear stores, like ALIFE and UNION, Nom De Guerre, Prohibit. So now all my Japanese costumers that were coming in every two weeks to buy Snoopy sweatshirts or seventies denim and bunnysacks and Converse and all this stuff that I was just be able to sort of just grab it and go stop coming.
All the production companies that I was doing music videos with and catalogs and commercials stop shooting in New York and all the jobs moved to California. And, um, just painting graffiti, painting graffiti, painting graffiti, and all of a sudden there were CLAW’s everywhere. Everybody started saying to me within a two week period, I think like 10 people said to me like, “Hey, you should do a CLAW for my t-shirt line. Oh, hey, you should do a CLAW for my denim line. Oh, I'm doing this thing. We should do a t-shirt, we should do this.” And I went to sleep one night and I woke up, I was like, “I think I am going to just make a t-shirt and let's see what happens.”
That mushrooms into a business within three months where I made this little girl's wife beater with a red and green and yellow CLAW and a pot leaf on the back that said “Homegrown New York City.” And the stores were saying, “Can you make it in black? Can you make it for guys? Can you make it on gray?” And I made that shirt in like a million different iterations before I was like, “Oh, I'm going to come up with some other designs.”
And boom Claw Money was born really out of the ashes of 9/11, and out of me not having work. And from that, I was still painting tons of illegal graffiti and it was, like, you know, an advertising campaign. And that was, I was just going crazy supporting my super exclusive, you know, t-shirt and sweatshirt brand.
And then of course it became a real job and we expanded into eyewear and outerwear, sneakers and lots of, um, you know, legendary co-brands and things that have really changed the landscape for women in fashion, not just in graffiti.
Luz Fleming:
Thanks so much for sharing your tales with us today Claudia. Persistence and perseverance truly does pay off, keep doing you. The interview for this episode of Yard Tales took place on the traditional territory of the Lenape Nation or Alphabet City, Manhattan. I recorded and produced the rest of this podcast on the unceded territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations, Vancouver, BC.
Thanks so much for joining us today. Be sure to check, Claw Money out at clawandco.com, on Instagram @clawmoney and be sure to check out her amazing book, “Bombshell The Life And Crimes Of Claw Money.”
Yard Tales is executive produced by Jacob Bronstein, Andy Outis is the design director, production assistance by Davis Lloyd. Original music and sound design by myself, James Ash, Sajato Jarrett, Names You Can Trust, Greenwood Rhythm Coalition, Midnight Lab Band, One Man AKA Internet Provider, Monk One and Easy. Shout out to Andy Cotton for the dope theme music.
Thanks for letting me put a little remix on it for this show. If you like Yard Tales, be sure to follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And please use Apple Podcasts to rate and review Yard Tales., because it really helps point more listeners to the show. You can find more information, images, and additional audio at yardtales.live and check us out on Instagram @yardtales and Facebook at Yard Tales Podcast.
If you want to leave feedback or reach out for any reason, send an email to info@yardtales.live. Be sure to listen to the end of each episode where we feature audience members, own Call-In Yard Tales and be sure to tune in next week when Chris “FREEDOM” Pape tells his own inner city spelunking Yard Tales.
Chris Pape:
Sure enough, just as it was told, there was a plank of wood there and there was a blown out hole in it. And you slide down to this embankment that, you know, it was just dirt and rats and stuff like that. And then you'd have like a six foot drop down to the train tracks eventually. And then there they were five tracks across and freight trains and stuff like that.
It was exhilarating.
Luz Fleming:
And if you're still listening, that means you might've had a real connection to Yard Tales and maybe you have a Yard Tale of your own that you want to tell if so, go to yardtales.live/callinyardtales for detailed instructions on how to do so. If we dig your story, we'll feature it in a future episode.
And now we'll let AROE77 take us out with his own Call-In Yard Tale.
AROE77:
I write AROE, A-R-O-E, AROE77. The crews I'm down with are SBF, ROF (Renegades Of Funk), X-MEN, FLOE Crew. I'm also down with DBS crew PI Crew, FMR and PMS. I was with my boy. ISUE, I-S-U-E, so there was used to be this really good freight spot that we'd hit all the time, never had a problem.
On a reservation, Santa Domingo and New Mexico, little south of Santa Fe and it had a little platform. The platform wasn't very big, I would say maybe 50 feet long, something like that. And, um, so this day there, it happened to be pulled up right there. And it was like, uh, I guess sometimes like there was maybe half a car or something.
It never really worked out, but the car was like perfectly lined up with this, you know, small platform where, you know, the platform extended for the whole car almost. So it was just, it was perfect for us that day. The freights are usually a little bit high. We, uh, we usually would bring out a crate or something cause these, these freights weren't box cars.
So they weren't as low, box cars were usually a little lower. So these were a little bit higher. We usually brought something to stand on, so we could do a nice, like bigger piece on them and, you know, get like at least halfway of the car. But with the platform, the platform is about four feet high. It went right up to the bottom of these freights and it was perfect, you know, so we were super psyched cause we could just reach up and cover almost the whole surface of the side of the train.
So we were doing basically top to bottoms, where the letters go from the bottom to the top. And, uh, between the two of us, we pretty much had the car filled up. This day they had lined up perfect and we were, we were probably painting for two hours before anything happened. We were almost done. I think I was maybe like outlining some clouds or something, you know, we had the outlines done, but, uh, you know, we're finishing up, we're hanging out.
We got all our paint, you know, was smoking cheeba too. Train was coming out great and I remember very well it was, it was the sun was setting and, you know, it was just like those beautiful colors that you get at that beautiful fade in the sky, you know, no clouds, just orange to yellow, to blue, or, you know, if you ever, New Mexico, you, you know, these, these beautiful, uh, sunsets.
I have a bad left ear, so I usually paint on the left side, which I was painting on the left side. So my boy who had great ears and hawk eyes, he was, he was there. And so I'm sure he heard it first and we kind of like, you know, guard our stuff and get, you know, kind of tuck back a little bit. See what's going on. Step away from the train.
And we hear these guys like, “Freeze!” These, you know, plain clothes guys basically on top of the trains running towards us, guns drawn, and we're like, “Oh shit, time to dip!” Like, you know, you start freaking out. They have their guns drawn. They're running on the top of the train coming toward us pretty quick.
And what I really remember when I, when I see it in my mind's eye is like, I can still kind of see the guy's face. He was a Native American guy, his short hair look like a cop and, you know, graffiti writers, you don't freeze, you run. So we dip behind us into this old factory, this abandoned factory. We stash our paint.
We figure they've gotta be on our tail, right. We're looking around while we're stash in our paint. They're not right behind us, which was strange because it felt like they were right on top of us when they were coming at us. We stash our paint. We run out, you know, an open doorway in this abandoned building and there's a fence.
This whole area is fenced in. There's a fence, we look down the road, we figured this probably cops parked on the road, like looking for us. And, uh, we don't see anything. We don't, we're like, “Yo, this is crazy.” Like, I guess maybe they thought we were going a different way or something, but we're looking at each other we're freaking out.
We’re like, “What should we do?” We're like, “All right, well, let's, let's just dip.” And, uh, we jumped the fence. We run across the road. This is the only road coming in or out. We just ran out into the middle of nature into these hills, like cross this little arroyo and actually remember there was, there was some water that we had to run through, which is rare because you know, in New Mexico, there's these arroyos, these dry river beds are usually dry.
And I remember we had to go through a little bit of water and then hoofing it up these hills and the wilderness, middle of nowhere, you know. We keep, you know, going, going, going and not looking back. We're just like, you know, “Fuck it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go freaking out.” So eventually we get on top of this like big hill.
We're kind of like looking back down over everything. We see tons of cop cars, tons of sirens. But, you know, we don't feel anybody chasing us. We don't see anybody coming up. So it starts to get dark. And we start seeing like all the lights flashing from the road they're hanging out. They're obviously like searching for us or something.
There's a bunch of cops looking for us. Meanwhile, my car, I had driven, I'm parked in this like dipped out spot, kinda near the abandoned building. And I'm like, “Fuck, uh, my car is right there.” They're probably going to see the car, figure something out. I dunno, if get the license plate, blah, blah, blah, run the plates, blah, blah, blah.
So we call our boy, PESKY, who's in our crew SBF and we tell him what's going on. And we're like, “Yo, we need a ride.” And then we're trying to figure out how we can link up with him because we're in the middle of these hills. So we're like, “Well, we can go down to the road.” You know, this type of area by the road, you know, if you go this direction, and he's like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
So it's like pitch black so we, we make our way, and this is pretty far, we we've probably hiked about mile two miles at this point out from where we were. Then we got maybe like another half mile to go to the road where we're trying to meet my boy. So we get down there. Cars go by every once in a while. This is like, you know, pretty deserted area. We see cars, we know what his car looks like, but it's hard to tell in the dark, we don't want to be seen by a cop.
So we're like hedging, our bets, trying to. Trying to think, uh, should we make ourselves seen by this car? “Nah, nah, nah, nah.” But luckily my friend, like you was driving slow and I dunno, you know, I guess maybe it was all the years of like painting together and knowing each other, you kind of have this, maybe this connection that's unexplainable.
I remember seeing his lights go down and we're like, “Is that him?” Like, you know, the brake lights come on. And we're like, “Is that him?” We’re like, “Yeah, I think it is.” And just like, you know, running to the car, getting in like, “Okay, let's go.” But that, wasn't the end of that spot. We, we still painted there, which was funny because, uh, actually we let it die down for a while, but we went back to that spot like, oh, let's go see if our paint is still there.
Sure enough, got all our paint back. Our bags were still there and we had stashed our weed and a pipe somewhere else, like in another little spot in that abandoned warehouse. And that was still there too. And we're just like, “How did we get out of this?” But we were a little more careful from, from then on, but I think that was the beginning of the end for that spot too.