Luz Fleming: Potreros
Episode Description
Why do we enter forbidden space? Sometimes we do it to flee peril, and sometimes we are drawn to it like an addiction. Join Luz Mob and friends on a cold winter night in the early ‘90s of San Francisco as they attempt to quench their insatiable appetite for bus yard destruction. And on this night, the Potrero bus yard’s boundaries meant to keep the crew out, might just keep them in.
RELATED LINKS
Trek: Noam Rappaport’s Gallery
Related Imagery: Muni Mobbin’s Instagram
Call-In Yard Tale: Joker One's Instagram
Music Included On The Episode
Luz Mob, "The S.F.C."
Luz Fleming, "Parka"
Luz Fleming, "The Grand Piano"
Luz Fleming, “Look At The World”
Bonus Video and Audio
EPISODE CREDITS
Written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Luz Fleming. Original Music by Luz Fleming and James Ash. Executive Produced by Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Andy Cotton. Yard Tales Design Director is Andy Outis. Production assistance by Davis Lloyd.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Yard Tales – LUZ FLEMING: Potreros
Luz Fleming:
This episode contains strong language and mature subject matter. It may not be suitable for young ears.
What up, this is Luz Fleming. You have come to the place where we tell tales of the train and 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.
Noam:
As soon as I got my hands and feet up on the fence, I felt a punch right in the center of my back.
AD:
Ah! They shot me! They shot me with something!
Luke:
What the fuck happened!? What was that!?
Luz Fleming:
Thanks for tuning into our first episode. Today, we'll feature a good old fashioned yard tale that happened back around 1991. I thought it would be a good place to jump off from, since it's a story of my own. One I share with some good friends who all had the insatiable appetite for bus yard destruction.
So sit back and let us tell you one of our favorite yard tales.
[Music: Luz Mob, “The S.F.C.”]
So why do we enter forbidden space? Why do we cross that boundary into a space where we are not supposed to be? There are millions of reasons, and some are a lot more intense and terrifying than others. Sometimes we are fleeing danger, but sometimes there's a danger on the other side of the fence that pulls us in, that calls to us and fills our every obsessive thought like an addiction.
And we might not have to cross that line, but we really really want to. And sometimes that danger delivers a little more than we bargain for. Much like the subject of today's podcast. There are definitely some poor choices made and some illicit activity. Don't try this at home kids.
So this story takes place in San Francisco in late ‘90, early ‘91. Hip Hop, the music, the dancing, and maybe more than anything else, the graffiti was alive and well in the Bay area in those days. And this culture brought together every race and class that the city had to offer on a scale that I've never seen since, by any other art form or activity.
So there we all were out there and the city was our playground. Let's meet the characters from this particular yard tale.
Luke (Find):
Find One MCS ROF, grew up in the Mission District of San Francisco.
AD (Cover):
My name's Cover One, San Francisco, California, BVD ICP THK PFK KMF Crew.
Noam (Trek):
Trek One PFK KMF. Nice to say hi.
Luz Fleming (Luz Mob):
Nice to say hi, indeed. And it's your boy Luz Fleming, AKA Luz Mob, Luserski Onerism, PFK KMF TTP. And we jump back and forth between our names and tags for this whole podcast. So I'll just let you know, Finder is Luke, Cover is AD, and Trek is Noam. And we all found ourselves in the middle of a bit of a tagging revolution you might say.
The streets and buses in San Francisco were very very active.
Here's Luke, Find One.
Luke:
Transit graffiti in San Francisco was popping. You would get on buses and they would be covered, like the windows would be covered. Every corner would be covered. There would be, you know, a hundred different writers up on one bus, right?
And it was like so much information to intake where you can take a bus ride and be on that bus for half hour and still not have figured out every single tag that you saw because it was so covered.
Luz Fleming:
So we were all bus hopping and getting up inside and outside of buses as much as possible.
And inevitably that led to hitting bus yards. And San Francisco had some great yards to hit, a little bit of a variety, and you could pick and choose depending on which yards were hot and which yards were a little more chill.
Luke:
Back in the days Potreros and Masonics were the mainstays of yard activity.
Those were the two main electric bus yards, right? There were Third Street yards, which is like a huge muni headquarters out in the Dogpatch behind the Potrero Hill projects. The biggest yard in the city, that housed, every type of non electric bus you can imagine from all the Roaches to the Crystal Tops, to the Stretchers, like just loaded full of buses.
Luz Fleming:
But on this night, we were going to hit the Potrero bus yard, or as we like to call it, Potreros.
Luke:
It was a great yard to hit because it ran through the Mission, which is where everything kind of mattered. If you were trying to get up, having your shit run in the mission was really kind of important.
And that's where it all started out here anyway. And then some of the extraneous lines like the 22, they would basically run from Potrero Hill all the way to the Marina. So it was like a huge long line. 7 Haight, 6 Parnassus, the 8 Market. The 14 Mission went from Embarcadero to daily city. So the Potreros were a great yard.
Luz Fleming:
But this night presented a bit of a conflict for me.
My cousin was in town visiting from Southern California.
Ezra (Iffy):
I'm Ezra Luz's cousin from the Los Angeles area, from a suburb called Palos Verdes.
Luz Fleming:
Me and Ezzy were super close. Of his three brothers he was closest to me in age and we just clicked. We skated together. We ran together, we did all kinds of stuff together.
And he came to visit me in San Francisco, and I went to visit him in Palos Verdes pretty frequently. And I was super excited for him to come up and hang out with us, but I definitely did not want to bring him to Portreros that night. He was so green, he definitely had never been to any bus yards before, he didn't even really write at that point.
And his mom, Elaine, my mom's sister, my auntie, would kill me. My mom would kill me if I got either of us into any trouble whatsoever. I couldn't just leave him at the house. Why would I do that? My mom would wonder what I was doing and why I couldn't bring him, and he would never let me leave him at home without bringing him. What could I possibly do that he couldn't handle too?
The only other option would be not to go to the yards, but that was not really an option either. I wasn't sure what to do. And it stressed me out, made my stomach hurt.
Luke:
I do remember your cousin being there and my recollection is mostly like of his kind of amazement at some of the debauchery that was very commonplace to us.
Ezra:
You know, what I do remember is it was always exciting to go to my cousin's house to go see Luz, because it was so different than, than where I lived and where I grew up.
As you know, I grew up in the suburbs, you know, and Palos Verdes. To be with my cousin in the city, It was really awesome because here we are on, on buses, here we are, you know, walking the city streets. And it was like, I'm like, how do you know, like, what bus do you even jump on or what trolley to jump on?
Like the whole thing was super excited and something I couldn't have done on my own.
AD:
Yes, I do remember your cousin. All I remember was “this guy hit the cop cars??” I thought that was just so crazy that he hit cop cars. And he had gotten caught for it. I thought, God damn, if you ever hit the cop cars in San Francisco and got caught for it, they'd beat your ass.
Luz Fleming:
Yeah, we'll get to the cop cars in a second but Ezzy from the suburbs of Palos Verdes definitely took some cues from us and brought them back home with him.
Ezra:
And it all started with a name. And I believe my cousin first gave me the name ARZE, which was my name spelled backwards, I guess at some point, you know, that started to feel a little bit too obvious.
So that evolved into IFFY.
Luz Fleming:
So he had a tag. He was getting up around his neighborhood a little bit, but he had scarcely even ridden public transportation by himself. So I didn't think too much of it.
Ezra:
All these moments I had up in San Francisco with, with my cousin and just tagging and you know, being in his environment and his world where he's doing graffiti art, you know, on his own bedroom wall.
That was very exciting to me. And taking that back home, you know, that was my creative outlet and I was a straight edge you know, punk rock skater kid. And like, so I didn't drink, I didn't smoke. I didn't do drugs. I didn't do anything like that. You know, and this graffiti again, not only was just my creative outlet, it was it was my adrenaline, you know, it was my excitement.
Luz Fleming:
So before you knew it, It seemed like within a year, at the very most Ezra had convinced his mom to let him bomb his own room. And then he started bombing his own neighborhood with some friends and they formed their own crew.
Ezra:
Which is really funny because again, we're from Palos Verdes and the next thing you know, we have a crew that is consistent of all these different areas of Los Angeles and all of which were a lot rougher than Palos Verdes, we're talking Hawthorne, Harbor City, San Pedro, Redondo, North Redondo.
Luz Fleming:
And then they started going ape shit and just started crushing communities that hadn't even really seen graffiti before, which raised some eyebrows and drew a lot of attention to them. And from what I could tell, they weren't super slick about it, especially Ezzy, and he got popped a couple of times and he really didn't slow down.
And I think the straw that broke the camel's back was when he got busted for tagging a cop car.
Ezra:
After a series of, of arrests, you know, the judge obviously, waned to make an example of me and he did. And of course, you know, serving some time in LA County getting out and, you know, at that point, everyone's like, okay, you know, it's time to go to college now.
Luz Fleming:
Yeah. I think I was ready to go to college or I was at least in the process of applying when I went to go visit him after he got out and I remember clearly being in their backyard next to their swimming pool. And Ezzy's mom, my auntie Elaine pulled me aside and she said, Luz, I think you might've been a bad influence on Ezzy. I didn't have much to say.
I think I hemmed and hawed and probably sputtered something like, "Oh, no, I don't think I was a bad influence on Ezzy. He made those decisions himself." but that always weighed on me. We'll get into it in more detail as this story progresses, but for now, back to that night.
Luke:
So AD, Cover One THK BVD PFK, like he had a car, which is amazing.
You’d have to take the bus to the Third Street yards at three in the morning. That shit's impossible. This dude had a car, so I was like…
AD:
I had my ‘84 Civic wagon. Four-door. Freshly painted black from Earl Scheibs and I think I had two 12 inch woofers in the back.
Luke:
For a minute he had the beat, but it got jacked.
AD:
At first I had living room speakers. Then I finally got subwoofers. And then when they got stolen, I went back to the living room, speakers.
Noam:
AD’s car, man. That was, I mean, it brings back so many memories. The black Honda Civic, driving all over town. So fun to be in that car.
Luke:
That was our driver dude. You know, every crew’s got a shooter and a driver. He was the driver.
Luz Fleming:
And so that night AD came to pick us all up. Me, Trek and Finder all lived in the mission so that was an easy pickup for him. And he must have picked up Trek and Find first, because I remember him showing up with a full car and me and Ezzy had to squeeze in the back seat.
Luke:
With way more people than should be in a small Honda Civic driving around, trying to go to a yard.
Ezra:
Well, I'm a small guy. And I remember all of us just jumping into this little car and just, you know, sandwiched in the back seat. Just everyone was, was in there. It felt like a sardine can.
Noam:
And we zipped over to Potreros.
Ezra:
We just go driving off. I have no clue where we're going. I don't know what's going on. All I know is like, my heart was like, was beating pretty fast. Not, I would say out of being scared. It was more of just, you know, being anxious.
Luz Fleming :
Yup. There he was, and he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. He was super excited, but also looking really nervous. And he was probably imagining that he was going to hit the bus yards for the first time and I was still not sure what I was going to do with him.
My stomach was starting to hurt again.
So I let myself get lost in the 808's of AD's sound system as we got closer to Potreros.
AD:
But we probably had the bass turned down while we were creeping on the yards.
Luz Fleming:
We drove a circle around the yard and parked at Franklin square park on Bryant and 17th, right across the street.
AD:
We didn't give a fuck, ‘cause we weren't running too far.
Luz Fleming :
And now it was time to make a decision about Ezzy.
Ezra:
We were pulling up to, presumably you know, the yard. And I was like, okay, like, yeah, let's go. Like, let's, let's all get out of this car. And then cousin saying, “no, you know, you need to stay here." wait, hold on here. Like. I'm out here tonight because you know, I want to go do this.
And I was feeling like, oh crap. Well now I'm actually scared. So getting out of the car, jumping a fence and bombing a yard, that for some reason, it wasn't as scary to me. That was adrenaline. You know, that was exciting to me. But now that I have to stay in this car, you know, by myself, it's like, oh shit. Now it's gotten real, someone's going to take the car away and I'm going to be in it. And like, that sucks, you know. I can at least spot for you guys is kind of, you know, what, what I was thinking. So that's that.
Luz Fleming:
That's right. I Told Ezzy he had to stay in the car. Not a great solution, but there were no good solutions.
Luke:
Yeah. I think like your urgency of convincing him to stay in the car was just you being protective of him. Yards offered their own brand of danger, but like, staying in the back of a car in the mission district, especially that area back then was not, like, it was a lot of warehouses and like weird shit.
So, I mean, I don't know if he did him any favors.
Luz Fleming :
Thanks Luke. It was a total fucking dick move, I know. But I made up my mind and that's what we were going to do. So we left Ezzy there in the car by himself and went up into the park to check out the yard.
Ezra:
I remember, you know, everyone just, just took off and I'm looking around and I'm like, I'm in the city it is dark. I'm in this car. I don't feel safe. Like I remember just like sinking, you know, down into like the carpet and just, almost like trying to get under the seats because every single noise was like, you know, spooked me out.
Luz Fleming :
I gave a look around, saw some figures lurking in the shadows of the trees. That didn't make me feel any better about my decision.
Ezra:
You know, at some point, you know, your adrenaline just kinda just, just gets to you. Every little sound and every little car that drives by, everything resonates.
Luz Fleming :
Alright, time to block all of that out and get to the task at hand.
[Music: Luz Fleming, “The Grand Piano”]
AD:
I remember it was early. I remember a lot of the buses were still on because you know, they're coming in from rush hour.
Luke:
I'm thinking like 7:30, 8 o'clock, like maybe late winter in San Francisco. So, you know, it was dark.
AD:
I kind of liked going early because it was easier to sort of get mixed up in the fucking hustle and bustle of the buses pulling in and out and drivers moving around and such.
Luke:
It was not super cold, but it was definitely like I was wearing a black Derby. I know that.
AD:
I remember it was kind of windy and foggy maybe that night, like usual.
Luz Fleming :
So we went up closer to the yard to get a better view.
Luke:
You look at a yard, the entire front of the yard is open. Giant buses have to come in and out all day long. If you took a square block and you put a fence around three sides and left the front open, that's what a yard looks like. And they'll put a building in a corner somewhere where there's a garage.
It's just like a big, massive parking lot. It's very well organized, full of lined up buses with numbers on their tops.
Luz Fleming :
There were all the pretty little buses lined up and waiting for us. And this gave us a good chance to look at the entry points and make sure they were clear and keep an eye out for Burns.
[Music: Luz Fleming, “Look at the World”]
Luke:
Burns is a security company that was contracted by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to watch their bus and train yards. And they were at every fucking yard and they all had these jackets that had these like, furry flaps around the neck and it says "Burns Security" on the chest.
AD:
And they had a notorious Burns at that yard, Jones. Jones is about 380 pound linebacker/lineman. You know, he played both positions. And one night we pulled up and he says, "Don't come in my yard!" and we tried anyway.
Noam:
Yeah, it felt like a game with the security guards a little bit, you know, like we were fucking with them a little bit. And you know, that was a common mentality back then in the high school days, you know, with the cops or whoever, you know, it was like, yeah, get chased by the cops or the security guards. It was like part of the weekends, fun, you know.
Luz Fleming :
But we didn't see any Burns creeping around. So we decided it was chill enough to go in.
AD:
“Look it's chill!” That was our term. “Is it chill?” “It's chill”.
Luz Fleming :
And just when we decided that it was chill enough to go in and we are going to make our move, this other crew emerged from the shadows in the trees. Had to be at least four or five of them and I didn't recognize anybody and was definitely on high alert because sometimes there was some skepticism. Sometimes there was a little bit of static, and other times it was just on-site with certain people in certain crews.
Luke:
There were a lot of other people that were around, like a lot of different crews were kicking it back then there were kids from ARM, PFK, me from ROF and MCS. Occasionally TTP, WCK before ICP came around. And so like a lot of writers were just kind of everywhere and I definitely kicked it with a lot of different people, but I think that night it was mostly like the PFK crew and maybe a couple of kids from ARM.
Noam:
And there was a bunch of heads there that I didn't know or recognize. I imagined Adrian knew them because he knew everyone.
AD:
I think I remember, I think it was, Daze and Sacred and there was a couple of other writers that I vaguely remember Luke rolling with.
Luke:
Might've been some MCS heads. It could have been like Ruin and Sire and fucking a couple of those dudes.
Noam:
And everyone was super friendly which was also kind of novel back in those days, which just added to the fun of that night.
Luke:
In those kinds of situations, right? The yards are a thing you're not the only one that knows about them. Other people figure out that maybe 7:30 on a Tuesday in late February is a good time to go to the yards. And then you went into them at the park. There was four of us, and now there's five more plus three that just rolled up. And so now there's a mob. It's like, well, we're here, I'm here. I got to get something for it. And so you try to figure out the best way to get in there, get your shit without getting tangled up in a bunch of other people, fucking blocking your way.
Luz Fleming :
So there we were, our stealth little crew of four more than doubled, and now we were a bit of a mob and we decided to just bum rush. Let's do it.
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And now, let’s get back to bum rushing the yard.
Luke:
But the thing about the back part of the yard was it was like 15 or 20 feet above the floor of the yard. And so if you go in the back, you have to kind of scale down like a wall and like drop in.
Noam:
So you climb over the chain link fence, and then there's like an angled cement wall that you can slide down.
Luke:
But then there was the front as well, which a lot of times it was like secure because somebody who would be like be chilling out front. But for whatever reason, when we're going back, then at that time we were like, you know, 7:30 or 8:00 on a weeknight. There's nobody in front. So you can walk right in. You know?
And so I think that night I, I had got kind of tired of hopping fences. And I think everybody was trying to hop a fence. So it was like, well, I'm just going to walk down the front and walk right in.
Luz Fleming :
This was it, the moment of truth. Do we cross that line? Do we hop that fence or do we turn around and go home? So many times before crossing that line you wonder if this is going to be the time you regret it. You wonder if this is going to be the time you wish you could uncross that line. But you know there's no uncrossing no matter what happens. But fuck it. Let's go.
Noam:
So we walked down the side of the yards and all 10 or 15 of us just bum rushed and jumped over the fence and ran into the yards.
Luke:
Getting hyped up and scoping out the yard gets you fired up and then kind of once you cross into the yard, like it's electrifying. Your senses are heightened. You know like you're fully, you fully become an animal very much like acutely aware of what was going on.
Luz Fleming :
That's right. You enter your own personal space of primal instincts. All of your senses are heightened. You can hear and see everything crystal clear.
Luke:
They're very well lit. It's like you walk into a yard. You're like, everything is kind of lit up. There's some shadows and stuff between the buses, but like big, giant lights, like above the yard, like a baseball park, right? The whole shit is fucking lit.
AD:
But the Potrero yards was unique because the ground was so fucked up in there and the buses were all parked in rows, but these rows look like, you know, a freight train that derailed.
Luke:
And then the smell is like sooty. Like if you've ever ridden your brakes really hard and your car makes that kind of burnt kind of toxic smell. That's what the yards smell like, you know, they're covered in grease and soot, they smell very industrial.
AD:
Right? All electric bus yards had a particular smell. I don't know what it is. If it's like sulfur or something, you know, it's the same sound, when the trolleys come off and they put them back on and there's that big spark. You can get that smell it's like a sulfur smell.
Luke:
And they definitely have a sound like it's almost like a living organism. It's like the buses breathe. And I think it has something to do with like their shocks and their breaks. But like, you'll be in the yard and you'll hear this, like hydraulic, like inhaling and exhaling of these like just big metal machines and you're like, it'll startle you.
Right. And so like, you hear this weird sound, like just hydraulic where it like lets out air you're like what? Just out of the blue.
AD:
And they make that sound, did, did, did, did, did.. And then occasional brakes, the little emergency brake.
Luke:
There's buses pulling in at the far corner of the yard, you can hear mechanics in the garage, like doing shit. There's all these hydraulic lifts where they push the buses up to like check their brakes and all that shit. And so it's totally not silent at all.
Especially like, On a quiet night where there's not a lot of other noise. Like the yards are actually very loud.
Luz Fleming :
But the noise I remember being the loudest by far, the one that drowned out just about every other noise completely, was the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. As if there were arteries running right through my eardrums. Just a loud drumming in my head that was very intense. But I would find a quick spot to hide, somewhere in the shadows, somewhere to take cover and that drumming would slowly taper off. And I’d catch my breath. Start to come out of the hiding spot. Look around, start to calm down a little bit. And then start to have a little fun.
AD:
Oh, I love it. It's so wild because the buses are so full of action on the street. And so many people, and the driver and they're just taboo on the street, you know, try to sneak a tag on the back window. But then they're asleep in the yards and you're all over the front bumper and hanging off the mirrors.
You can go sit in the driver's seat and play with the steering wheel, kick the back door. And it's like wild. It's like sneaking into Great America after it closed or something.
Luz Fleming :
And then you could start thinking about getting up. Hopefully you brought some good tools for the task.
Luke:
So this night I'm pretty sure I had Krylon Ultra Flat Black. When I hit the yards, I didn't really ever bring pens. The buses are fucking dirty. Your pen tips would get clogged up, the shit would just look fucking like crap.
AD:
I think Trek had a pen that night. I vaguely remember he had a pen and I remember thinking, fuck, I haven't brought a pen to the yards in years. It was all paint for me. But that, I didn't have the calligraphy skills that Trek possessed. He was magic with a pen wasn't he?
Luke:
I love a good pen, but when I was going to the yards always fucking Flat Black, Plum was a favorite of mine, Regal Blue, you know, fucking Cherry Red on a white panel looks great with a phantom. Like back then, like getting caps for your fucking paint, it wasn't easy. You couldn't go on the internet and order some shit and be like, I want a skinny cap, or a fat cap or whatever, but you could get phantom caps. So you'd go to a hardware store and get like Workable Fixative and just pop the cap. And there was a phantom. So, you can go get some phantoms and phantoms are great. Just a beautiful tip.
AD:
I think I maybe only had one can. I think we knew it was going to be short-lived. So I think I had, you know, three quarters a can of True Blue. I vaguely remember I had maybe a fifth of Flat Black that I was just gonna run in there and dust that, throw it and then get with the True Blue.
Luz Fleming :
And then you needed to be smart and quick and pick the best spots to get up.
Luke:
The strategies are like the front top corners of the front of the bus, right? There were small little white spaces, just big enough that you could fit a four or five letter tag with spray paint. So you would go for those, right? You always want to be on the front of the bus. You see it coming. It looks great.
AD:
And, and the buses were parked so close. It was really tough to get top corners.
Luke:
And another thing that was great to do was hitting insiders. Right? And so every bus had what we would call a headboard, which was the back panel above the last row of back seats. It was like a big white open space, right. And so if you're in the yards and the buses are clean on the inside, like go in there and just do a big perfect tag with Flat Black and a phantom.
But. If you get in there and the headboard is gone, and the ceiling is open, you could do a big, long, super fat, like extra vowels in the middle of your tag kind of flow. Or you try to cover the whole ceiling and just be obnoxious.
AD:
So I remember being in there tagging, and I remember bombing, and I kept hearing everybody else hitting their cans against the bus, and I'm like, "Shut up motherfuckers!" and...
Luke:
I'm coming out from doing an insider, towards the back of the yard I see the Burns step into the light, right. This guy was just three buses down, like looking. Sees me come out. So I'm like, I gotta get out. And so I turned to my right, which is toward the front of the yard and I started running.
AD:
And the next thing I know, I heard whistles and a lady yelling, "Graffiti task force, freeze!"
Luke:
All of a sudden I hear a pop, like I'm like, what the fuck was that? And I feel something hit my elbow.
AD:
And then Luke going, "Ahh!!" Finder getting hit in the elbow, "They shot me. They shot me with something!" So these rubber bullets were bouncing off of the buses. I, what the fuck are they shooting at us? I just remember one whizzing by my head. "Stop that they're over here!"
They're, like shining flashlights down the aisles and we’re like dipping back and forth from the rows trying to hide from her. And meanwhile, what the fuck is that? That's that infamous sound. It was like cork shot or something. I knew we needed to get the fuck out, but I didn't want to run and leave you guys.
And I remember it was, I was frantic, but I found Trek and Luz in another bus.
Noam:
And then someone yelled out, "Burns!" and everyone just scattered and ran back towards the fence.
AD:
I would sort of set the tone. Oftentimes when I was running out the yards, including that night, I would sprint fast as I could to let you guys know I'm running fast, better keep up with me cause I'm not going to be the one to get fucking caught by the tigers on the Serengeti.
Luz Fleming :
Again, with that animal instinct.
AD:
And when we hit that Hill, I think I got down into silverback mode and use my hands and my, like hyenas and just scurried up that bitch. And, but we had to go over that chain-link and there was barbed wire on it too, I think.
Noam:
Jumped up on the fence. As soon as I jumped up on the fence, I felt that hit from the rubber bullet. I feel like I heard it, but I don't know if it was just the wind getting knocked out of me. It didn't slow me down much because my adrenaline was pumping, and jumped over the fence. Got the fuck out of there.
AD:
I don't know how we did it, but I know we got the fuck over that motherfucker. I probably ripped the jacket.
Luz Fleming :
And just like that we were out.
AD:
As soon as you're out on the street. It was sort of, "Safe!" even though, now looking back, they could have just rolled up, put spotlight on us and had us right there, jumping out of the yards, anything, but for some reason I felt like once you were on the street, it was like, "That wasn't me! I don't know who you're talking about. I don't do graffiti." Right, I think when I jumped over the fence, I probably dragged my fingers along the concrete, like I used to always do to clean off the residue real quick and went to the car. I think I was parked right across the street.
Luke:
I think we all met up at the park across the street and kind of regrouped, and then...
Luz Fleming :
And then where the fuck is Ezra? I remember crystal clear, running up to the car and looking inside, and Ezra was nowhere to be found. Where the fuck did he go? What the fuck?
AD:
We're like, "God damn what did this dude get ran out?" I mean, we were surprised the car was still there and not your cousin, but I don't know if we left him the keys or not.
Luke:
I remember there was kind of like confusion and a little bit of chaos with you trying to locate your cousin. I was so hyped up and just kind of rattled from getting blasted in my elbow by who knows what, like, I remember just being kind of caught up in the moment.
Everything was frantic. We were near the car and you were like, my cousin's not here. And I think he may have took off and like ran up to the park to look for him.
Luz Fleming :
I ran up into the park, looked around, went up into the trees. There were some dudes in there looking at me like, fuck you want? And I had every single worst case scenario for poor Ezzy popping into my head at that moment.
Ezra:
For some reason, I recall actually throwing a jacket or something actually over my head. So if someone were to look inside the car, you know, they wouldn't see me.
Luz Fleming :
Yeah. That worked a little too well. And it wasn't just a jacket over Ezzy's head, he had made himself disappear into the floorboards of the car.
And remember, this is a very small Honda Civic, not a whole lot of room back there. All the while I'm starting to panic.
Ezra:
And then, you know, all of a sudden, I just hear this, this ruckus. It was all the guys coming back and trying to get into the car as fast as possible. And I think I recall someone just saying like, "Oh, like shit, like where's Ezra, like where where'd Ezra go? Like, you know, we're being chased down right now. We're being, we're being shot at. And, and, and Ezra is gone? So immediately I, I popped my head out.
Luz Fleming :
And to my great relief, cousin Ezzy emerges from AD's floorboards.
AD:
It's the funniest thing I ever heard. He emerged from your floorboards. He was underneath the car in the, in the fucking rear end differential. So your cousin emerged from the floorboards. So Iffy rises from the ashes. Amazing.
Ezra:
Everyone jumped in and, you know, we just jetted.
AD:
All right. He's here? Cool! Out of there.
Ezra:
It's just a blur after that, you know, I don't recall if we're running red lights or obeying any traffic laws, I just remember next being at my cousin's house.
AD:
I think we went straight to 668.
[Music: Luz Mob, “The S.F.C.”]
Luz Fleming :
668 Guerrero Street, which was a live workspace that my mom had renovated to accommodate her sculpture practice.
AD:
668 Guerrero Street, the warehouse, where we would practice on your wall. Your little hide out there? Man, I miss that place. That was the honeycomb hideout for sure.
It had no, it had one window with bars and 30 years of soot on it.
Ezra:
And it was crazy because you know, everyone's talking about, you know, being shot with rubber bullets.
Noam:
Comparing notes with Luke, he got shot too in the elbow. And I had a huge welt right in the middle of my back, which I was somewhat proud of.
Luke:
Shit hurt. Like it didn't break my elbow. My shit was swollen and sore for a week.
AD:
But yeah, that was, I think that was probably one of the fastest I ever ran in my life. When I heard them things bouncing off the buses.
Luke :
What the fuck happened? Like what was that?
AD:
I didn't really have time to think about what they were. I just didn't want to get hit or caught. And I knew if it was graffiti task force that they were going to try to throw the book at us as opposed to just, you know, oh, case got dropped. It was like, no, there was a new budget allotted and they were going to spend time and money on getting us convicted.
Ezra:
I think maybe for a brief second I was thinking like, okay, you know, it's kind of cool I was, I was in the car and oh shit. Like, like that was absolutely crazy. I kind of want to do that again.
AD:
But that was definitely the most incidental evening.
Noam:
Yeah a night to remember for sure.
Luz Fleming :
Yup. All fun and games when no one gets popped or stomped out or worse. Even some rubber bullets aren't too much of a deterrent for some.
Ezra:
In a very odd way, there was nothing discouraging that happened. You almost want to go out and do it again. It's not even almost, like you actually want to go out and do it again. It's like, you know, let's rest up boys, and tomorrow night is, is a new night. So, you know, let's go do this again. I felt like if I was discouraged that night, I wouldn't have gone down my own path of, of tagging and, and you know, doing graffiti art in, in Los Angeles. So definitely nothing discouraging about it. It was, it was all adrenaline and it was strangely enough, you know, somewhat addicting.
Luz Fleming:
I often think back to that day, poolside with auntie Elaine and I do feel bad. Maybe I was a bad influence on Ezzy. I know I showed him a lot of things that he wasn't seeing in Palos Verdes, but he picked up what was interesting to him from what we did. Whenever Ezzy came to visit, there was a lot of weed and beer and other stuff floating around, but Ez never drank or did drugs, his addiction was to adrenaline.
And maybe it is my fault that I showed him such an extreme way to get it, and for that, I'm sorry Elaine. I love you dearly. And I miss you very, very much.
And I'm sorry, mom, for all the crazy stuff I put you through, you saw a lot of it firsthand, but I don't think you ever heard this story. And I'm sorry Ezra. Not for exposing you to our belligerent ways and all the crazy stuff we did, but for leaving you in the car. That was wack. But God damn, did you have to go so buckwild with your own graffiti shenanigans? I thought I taught you to be a little slicker than that.
And for all the rest of you out there listening, Ezzy turned out just fine. He's a highly functional active member of our society with the most beautiful family you could ever imagine. As for the rest of us, we're all still here, standing squarely on our feet for the most part. It's impossible to think that those days haven't shaped the way we approach other boundaries in our lives. I'd like to think that it enabled us to face them without hesitation, like hopping a fence when you're getting chased out of Portreros.
The interviews conducted for this podcast took place on the traditional territories of the Ramaytush and Ohlone Nations, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, as well as on the traditional territory of the Tongva Nation or LA. I conducted these interviews remotely from the traditional territory of the Lenape and Canarsie Nations, AKA Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
And since conducting those interviews, I moved to the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations, Vancouver, BC, where I recorded and produced the rest of this podcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. This was a super fun episode to put together.
Thanks to Luke, Adrian, Noam and Ezra for telling their sides of the story. Yard Tales is executive produced by Jacob Bronstein, who also recorded Luke’s interview, and provided actual ambient sound of the Potrero Bus Yards late at night. Andy Outis, AKA Aply One AS, is our design director and Davis Lloyd is our production assistant. Additional music and sound design by myself and James Ash.
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, bonus audio and images at yardtales.live and check us out on Instagram @yardtales and Facebook @yardtalespodcast. If you want to leave feedback or reach out for any reason, you can email me at info@yardtales.live. Be sure to listen to the end of each episode where we will feature audience members own call in yard tales. And be sure to go to our feed and listen now as renowned visual and performing artist Guadelupe Maravilla tells his own border crossing yard tale.
Lupe Maravilla:
And I remember conspiring with my seven year old friend and the other ones to kill the coyote once he came out. And I remember having meetings with the other little boys outside that we're going to kill him. Like I remember I was so angry and I feel responsible for all the kids. And I said, if we kill him, there's no way we're going to cross over and see our parents again.
Luz Fleming:
And if you're still listening, that means you might've had a real connection to this podcast 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 the homey Joker One, take us out with his own call-in yard tale.
Joker:
Yo, what up, what up fam it's old school Joker One, Frisco's finest graffiti writer, or maybe dorkiest, I don't know.
I want to get into the story of the first time I ever got spotted writing my name on a muni bus. You know, at the time I was in sixth grade. I think I was 11. And you know, back then in 1986 in San Francisco and the circles that I was traveling in, everything was about muni buses.
I wanted my name up on every single bus. My favorite weapon of choice. In those days, I hadn't even graduated to getting an ultra wide yet. I had streakers though. You know, you kids these days, you got all the different colors. You got Sakura streakers solid markers, all that back then we had white and yellow.
That was what we had. And if you were fancy, you know, you could splice them down the middle and have one side white, one side yellow, and have you a nice two-tone mean streak. And that's exactly what I had in the inside pocket of my beat up jean jacket on this one random day, which I will never forget.
I walked up the long ass foggy hill every day after school to the end of the line 6 Parnassus, you know, and for those of you that know, it's like a little turnaround right at the top of this really steep hill at the bottom of that hill was my middle school, Hoover. I, you know, get to the bus and there's always like a little bit of a wait, right?
Cause it's the end of the line. The driver is, you know, sitting down and whatever dozing off or using the bathroom or laying down on seats in the back. And then, you know, you hear the electrical wires of the bus kind of pur and hum. You hear the hydraulic shocks release and that's when you know that it was time to board the coach, you know, as a bus hopper, you get on the bus.
And the first thing you check is the mirror position. Can the driver's face see you where you're sitting in the back of the bus or is it mirrored off to some other angle where, you know, you won't be spotted when you're hitting up. And then there's always like those ones that ride the middle of the mirror.
Right. So they can kind of see you, but they're not like seeing you exactly eye to eye. And this was one of those drivers. Anyway, maybe one or two other students on the bus, but that's it right. It's the end of the line, the bus is cleared out, starts going up the hill. Taking me on my way home, back to the Lower Haight it's now called.
So, you know, I assume my position, my, my favorite tagging spot, which is all the way back left seat. And that way can reach right up with my right hand and get a nice shot on the window. So, we start going and I'm watching the mirror waiting for my chance to hit up. Keep in mind I was still a novice.
I still was, was a little thirsty. The kids say nowadays. In retrospect, he knew exactly what the fuck I was up to, but my dumb ass, 11 year old, hungry, egomaniac skater, vaguely stoned tagger brain just thought that I was like hot shit skating across ice.
You know, I thought I was like the smoothest kid in the world. There's no way he knows what I'm doing. I'm just some kid sitting back here, but he was like, eyeballing me, you know? And I would sort of look away every time I saw his eyes, you know, hit mine in the mirror.
So he's caught on to that. You know, I bust my streaker out. I get in a proper position for the two-tone to have its full white and yellow glory on the window. I wait for his head to turn out of the mirror. And boom, I reach up nice, smooth, big, old Joker tag, right on the window.
Perfect position. Excellent tag. And we get to the next stop. He looks back in the mirror and he doesn't go anywhere. And he's staring at me in the mirror and I think from his mirror angle he could see the tag on the window and I was in my head, “shit”. He fucking noticed and sure enough, at that moment, the adrenaline starts kicking in and I can just feel my heart pounding.
I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, he noticed. I'm busted. What the fuck do I do? I got to get out of this bus. Right as the beads of sweat begin to form on my brow and my palms start to get sweaty. He just kind of looks at me one last time in the mirror, closes his eyes with a look of resignation like he doesn't want to deal with his shit, but, he's got to. I'm busted and he begins to rise from his driver's seat and come back towards me, you know?
So I pop up out of my seat and I begin to climb out of the window. Cause that's what we did when we got in trouble on the bus. And they even had these little metal handles on the top of the bus, where if you reached all the way up, you could grab these little handles and you had something to hang on to, and then you could just hang drop from the bus.
So you didn't have to go kind of go out head first. But he had other, he had other things in store for me. So he got up, he starts heading back towards me. I'm getting up and getting out of the window. And as soon as he sees that, instead of running back to me and trying to grab me before I make it out of the window, he runs back to the driver's seat, hops in and just punches it.
And at this time I'm already out the window. He starts punching it down the hill, going like way faster than an electric muni bus should ever go. And I was thinking like, Oh shit, this dude's like trying to fuck me up. So I'm like panicking and I'm just holding on for dear life. But I wasn't that worried because I knew that there were stop signs at every corner.
So all I had to do was like, hold on for that block and make it to the next stop sign. Then I could just hang drop and run, run off. And the driver, knowing this, he just blew the stop sign. Like he just went straight through it. So I was like, okay, this guy's trying to kill me. That's going to be my punishment.
And this is how I die. I'm going to, I'm going to lose my grip fall under the wheels of this muni bus. And you know, my life is over. And sure enough, he doesn't stop. There's stop signs at each corner, but he's just like increasing speed and blowing all the stop signs. Like, I don't know what this dude is thinking, but he, he legit, like didn't even slow down.
He's like going through stop signs. Meanwhile, I'm like flailing. My body's like banging against the side of the bus. I've got two hands. Held tight on this thing, but I feel like my grip loosening and I was going to fall, I was gonna fall. And so that's a, you know, it's like a six foot drop when you're hanging on the top of the bus and we're going like 45 miles per hour down the hill.
Luckily we came down to Ninth and Irving to the red light and he just had to stop. I dropped off. I think I crumbled when I hit the ground, I did not have a smooth criminal getaway. I like crumbled and rolled, banged my knee up pretty good. I was scared. My backpack was still on the bus. He had had his fun.
He had taught me his lesson. So he didn't, I thought he was going to try to get off the bus to chase me, but he did poke his head out of his window to see me off. And when I looked back and saw him looking at me, running away, the fucker was laughing. Like, he was cracking up, I mean, he won. He won that.
I mean, my tag was still running though. My tag was still running and you know, so I took off, I sat down with some stairs. After sitting there for a while, gathering myself, I have this thought and that was a, “I can't wait till I get a chance to fucking do that again!” And sure enough, that was the first of many times jumping out of bus windows to get away from random heroes and muni drivers who had spotted me hittin' up on their bus.