member the way your tita Irene looked at you, the only time you ever saw fear in her heart, spouting out of her eyes, drizzled by a foggy glare in her weathered eyeglasses.
member how you felt when she said those words, one of the only times you ever saw her cry, that mean señora who always rolled her eyes at your tito Lalo for anything he did wrong, or even right.
member how strong you felt as you heard “no me quiero morir, hijo” and how quickly that melted you into the tiles below, right after you somehow got the words “ay, tita” through your infinitely knotted throat.
member how weak you became. cherish, appreciate that feeling, this only comes once in a lifetime.
member how you ran out of that room, out of the house…
Clovershrooms’ art ranges from slapping stickers on public bus stop signs to spray painting political messages on walls. Her most notable street art creations include vibrant psychedelic mushrooms. Her hair is often equally vibrant when dyes it purple or lavender. She started immersing herself in street art culture in high school. The main medium for getting her work out in the streets is stickers. She paints them and then she pastes them all over Los Angeles.
Clovershrooms message eventually reads, “La Migra, La Policia, La Misma Porqueria” which roughly translates into “ICE, The Police, The Same Malice.” Los Angeles, CA.
MY IMMEDIATE REACTION ABOUT WHAT YOU DO IS GRAFFITI ART, BUT HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF AND WHAT YOU DO?
“I think I’m an artist. I’d say I’m writing out a message that I want to tell people.”
WHAT IS THE MESSAGE BEHIND YOUR ART?
“The message is self empowerment and love. Clovershrooms is a thought that grows like a fungus. I recently got in STH, S2H. It was introduced to me as “Straight To Heaven”, or “Straight To Hell”. It’s cool. No tagger gang. It’s strictly for the arte. I write “Saving The Hood” which coincidentally fits almost perfectly with my message. I really want to make that a movement, slowly but surely. I also write ‘Sick Twisted Hyna’ on a more personal note.” Clovershrooms does handmade stickers. She doesn’t respect people who print out their stickers from a computer program and put them out on the street.
“Some people have them made. I like painting them. You didn’t do that, that’s not you.”
WHAT IS YOUR ARTISTIC STYLE?
“It depends on how you’re feeling.” She said she painted some mushrooms yesterday.
“They looked blue and horrible. Just miserable.”
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES THAT COME UP BEING A FEMALE STREET ARTIST?
Clovershrooms touches on the various experiences where she’s had to dodge boys’ attempts to go on dates or have sex with her. She said that boys in graffiti tend to trivialize female street artists’ creative growth and capability. She recaps an encounter she had with a local graffiti artist who thought her friend who painted just wanted to have sex with other graffiti artists.
“‘Does someone help her? Are you sure? Are you sure she just doesn’t wanna fuck?’
I was like what the fuck?! Homie what the fuck?”
There are guys that will be like, ‘Hey want to hang out? We should blackbook.’
It’s like, ‘No, I don’t really know you.’
But they insist.
‘You should come over to my pad and see what happens.’
He told me we were going to do a sticker trade, so i gave him my number.
I didn’t know him. I just knew he was from UPN.
He ended up texting me, ‘I’m really attracted to you.’” The same guy had texted Hers in a previous occasion with the same intentions.
“‘Are you down to fuck?’
He was like, ‘Oh that wasn’t meant for you.’
‘Lets exchange fuckfaces. Oh my bad I was really drunk that wasn’t meant for you.’
That happens a lot. There’s always going to be guys that even if they really like what you do, they’ll still try to fuck.
I dont know what it is.
What? Girls that paint just want to fuck? No.
My friend is like, ‘What have you been doing?’ and they’re like, ‘Thats really good. I can help you.’
If a guy writes they’ll be like, ‘Oh he writes,’ but if a girl is not that good, guys will be like, ‘Oh do you need help?’ Especially if she’s starting.
WHEN DID YOU START GETTING INVOLVED IN STREET ART?
When I was in middle school, I used to catch tags. When i was in high school I went out there.
I would hit up before I went to shows because I never really had anyone to go with.
That’s why I don’t go as often.” Clovershrooms that the challenging part about being a graffiti writer in South Central is that she doesn’t know many other people who do graffiti. Her friends will sometimes accompany her, but she says it’s not the same thing as going with another graffiti artist. She said her friends will sometimes go with her just to give her company, but she feels bad because they are not really into that scene.
“It’s something you just do, not something that someone tells you to do.
I’m doing it and its going to stay up there. It’s not like a thought that you keep to yourself, someone else is going to see it.
It’s going to make someone’s day. It’s going to get someone distracted. It’s going to make them think something different.
It’s good to see people you know. It’s like a secret club. Not everyone knows, but everyone can see it.
I want to do more sign painting. I want to make t-shirts. I want to go bombing, illegal bombing, but I also want to do legals. I need to get a car first.
I do want to make something big and make sure it stays there.
I’ve really, really been wanting to paint Zapata out there in the hood. I met this guy who said, ‘I don’t know anything about my culture. I don’t know who Zapata is.’
I’m like damn, people don’t really know who he is or anything.”
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD TO SEE POLITICAL MESSAGES?
“People in the the hood should know because they have the right to. They have the right to know where they stand. We are nican tlaca. Not everyone listens, so the need to write is for our photographic memory. You know, not everything is in the books they have in schools and the youth aren’t in school either. So the way I see it is, ‘decorate the streets, educate your peeps.’
Urban Vandals is what I use to rep when I was younger. Back then, it was more about the rush of vandalizing property. Slowly, I started incorporating political awareness and stenciling quotes for people to see: the young, the elderly, blue collar workers, white collar workers, tourists. I’m a peace advocate. My plan is to leave a thought, a book, an article, a painting, a mural, a scribe, a video, a recording, a piece in whatever form I can. It doesn’t really matter as long as the message is there. I know damn well a revolution doesn’t happen overnight. We’ve been strong since 1810. I may not carry a rifle and bullets across my chest, but like comandanta Ramona I’m on the same fucking quest.
I continue always in the struggle for la gente, El pueblo. In the past two years, I’ve kept my distance from organizing, but I will forever stay active with what I paint and leave behind when I leave this body of mine. I combined what I love: art, culture, and the struggle, and I’m going to leave it on the streets, tunnels, sewers, trees, wherever I can so it can be seen by many minds.”
When you visit Hers’ house, a green array of succulent and leafy plants greet you from behind the iron gate. There are so many plants, they almost cover her parents’ home from sight. At 14-years-old, she started painting flowers inspired by the garden her dad has cultivated throughout the years. Hers is a 20-year-old street artist from South Central Los Angeles whose most visible artwork has been flowers. She, however, says she is far from being a delicate flower herself. She loves Led Zeppelin and gore.
HERS repaints her mural after someone wrote a penis on her flowers. Los Angeles, CA.
MY IMMEDIATE REACTION ABOUT WHAT YOU DO IS STREET ART, BUT HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF AND WHAT YOU DO?
“My message is more eco-friendly: flowers coming out of the concrete. When I was younger my brother would come home with bags of cans. He gave me my first can because he owed me some money. I was like, ‘How are you going to pay me back?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, you can have some cans.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, alright.’”
She was 12 then.
“I went through different phases“I grew up in South Central. There’s graffiti everywhere.”
The fact that she saw spray painted figures, murals, and letters everywhere she went made her want to give graffiti a go.
“My friends were from these different crews.”
She started painting at 14.
WHEN DID YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN STREET ART BEGIN?
“Vile he has been part of this class/ workshop on Saturdays at Self-Help Graphics. It’s this art studio place. They have galleries and a selection of artwork. They have art shows. Well he works there. It’s in Boyle Heights on 1st Street in front of the Gold Line.I would post my stuff on Twitter and Instagram and I was following him. And I guess he started following me too so he started looking at my stuff. And he says, ‘Hey I have this class on Saturdays. You should stop by and I could help you paint.’I guess he saw potential.”
Hers posted her work on Twitter and that’s how Vile, a well-known graffiti artist and her now mentor, found out about her. She met many other writers through the workshops he teaches. A lot of them are from the San Fernando Valley.
“Now we’re more like friends. He still teaches me. He still teaches me a lot, but we get along like friends, like buddies. But he’ll be like, ‘No, what are you doing?’, and I’m like, ‘Gosh let me do what I’m doing.’
She said she takes his advice to heart, but she doesn’t let him steer control of her creative process.
“He’s always saying that I don’t take his advice but I do. I just don’t like people telling me what to do so I’ll be like ‘shut up’, but I’ll do it.
HOW LONG AGO DID YOU START GOING TO SELF HELP GRAPHICS & ART?
“Like a little bit over a year now.I still go to the classes.I go to the studio during the week and to hang out, or there’s also silkscreening, or I’ll hang out with the other guys that go to the class.We’re from the same crew, ER crew, a graffiti crew.”
DOES ER STAND FOR SOMETHING?
Everyday Ritual. Painting is an everyday ritual. We try to do it every day.We’ll hang out there, it’s kind of like our headquarters.
She is currently in the Everyday Ritual street art crew.The self-help graphics studio in Boyle Heights is where they practice and hang out.
HOW DID ER START?
“It started a few years back. Actually [Vile] started ER over here in Los Angeles, and theres also an ER in the valley.And so the guys from here linked up with the guys from there.They’ll come by and we’ll paint together. They don’t care how far it is, because it’s LA. People do notice stuff in the valley because there are only a few graffiti artists in the valley, but here in L.A. more people are going to see it.That’s kind of the point of graffiti. You want people to see it and like you can take pictures now, but if people see it in person, then you’ll get more recognition.That’s not to say that you’re in graffiti for the fame, because you really aren’t going to be getting fame, a lot of people don’t know who you are.You want your work to be recognized and it just feels good. Even if people don’t recognize your work, I’ll pass by my spots or whatever and it feels like really cool like ‘That’s me.’Yesterday me and the homegirl were on the Blue Line passing Flower and Washington. I have this spot in the alley and I’m like ‘Oh look over there,’ and she’s like ‘Oh are you there, are you there?’, like saying it really loud and I’m like ‘Shut up.’ I was just trying to show her and she’s like ‘Which one are you, the pink one?’ and I’m like ‘Shut up.’I want people to see it, thats the point, but I don’t want to get in trouble for it. I want to keep doing it.I honestly don’t think that graffiti is bad. I don’t think it’s bad at all. People give it a stigma because it’s illegal, but you look around and you see all these advertisements that people are pushing at you and it’s ugly. It’s ugly to see these bland letters and straight lines telling you to buy something like, ‘Oh rent me, pay me, buy me or eat me!’ or whatever and it’s just annoying. Well if they can tell me to do something, then why can’t I put my own name on there?It’s just stupid to have to pay for a spot on the street when its all public.In graffiti theres a lot of older people, a lot of OGs. You get to meet more of them.A lot of the people i know that are graffiti artists are older than me.I think Vile is the oldest one that I know. He’s 37.For the most part, they’re older.”
IS IT INTIMIDATING TO WORK WITH MEN?
No. Being the only girl sometimes will get you a bad reputation, but you have to know how to enjoy yourself because there are a few cute guys, and you wanna make out with them or something but you can’t.It can get you in trouble. Practically everyone knows each other or they’ll know someone who knows someone else. Word gets around and you don’t wanna mess up like that.It’s already hard enough getting respect as a painter, but people will always hate on you and if they think you’re a slut. They’ll say, ‘Well she’s a slut don’t take her seriously,’ or like, ‘Yeah, hit her up she’s a slut.’Women who paint don’t easily see the same respect that comes to other men who paint.”
IS THAT WHAT YOU’VE NOTICED?
“Well I don’t really hear that about myself but about other girls. On Instagram especially, there are girls that will post their graffiti, and they’re with their cans and with their hair done dressed up with makeup on. They’re giving off a different image.Are you really doing it for the painting or are you doing it because you known that guys will look at you because of it?Thats not why I do it, but it does get you attention from men.That’s also a reason why i don’t have a boyfriend because it will just complicate things.”
HOW?
“He’ll get jealous. I’ve always been the not jealous type, but the guys that I seem to meet will either be jealous or intimidated.Just because i paint they’ll be intimidated by me. Not to toot my own horn, but its true. Guys wanna be better at something than their girlfriend. Or there will be guys that don’t want you to do it. There will be guys that’ll be intimidated by other guys, intimidated by you, or theres also the guys that don’t paint, that don’t know much about that.It’s hard to find a boyfriend if you’re a painter, but even if you do, painting complicates the relationship. It’s not that painting requires you to dedicate time to it, it’s that you want to dedicate all your time to doing what you love doing.So until i find someone that can be my partner in crime, I don’t want to rush into anything.I have a hard time making emotional connections with people.I’ll be called cold-hearted sometimes.I remember there was this one guy, he paints also, I saw him painting a couple of times. I was painting this wall and he was there watching me because he was also painting it and then he said, ‘Oh we can be the next Dabs and Myla,’ this couple that paints together. They’re really cool. They have a similar style or I guess they developed their style together so like when they paint it all looks like one person did it, but it’s both of them.But yeah he said we could be the next Dabs and Myla being all cheesy because I was painting flowers and he told me that I was a delicate flower that needs to be taken care of and I’m like, ‘What dude, I’m as delicate as a brick. I don’t need no man.’ It was just cheesy and I don’t like that.”
SO YOU GET ALONG WITH THE GUYS IN YOUR CREW?
“Yeah, they’re really supportive. Me being the only girl, they would give me a hard time at first. They’ll be talking crap but whatever, I don’t get butthurt about it. It’s just teasing because I am the only girl. It doesn’t get to me because I am confident in my work.But what did get to me I remember this one time we were all hanging out and there was this guy hanging out with the crew. He was trying to get in the crew, but he didn’t know how to paint. He could draw really well, he just didn’t know his color schemes.We were hanging out talking crap and taking jabs at people and he called me a groupie, like a graff groupie, because I was the only girl there. I was like, ‘Dude shut up, I’m not a graff groupie.’ The guys in the crew were like , ‘yeah she actually paints with us’, and he was like all whatever and then again he said it, he called me a graff groupie. I was like , ‘Shut the fuck up. I’m not a groupie.’ He pissed me off because first of all, I’m actually in the crew and I actually paint and put in work and like who are you to come in and call me a groupie in front of the crew, it’s disrespectful. I just told him shut the fuck up to get out of my face. It got me really mad just because he had no idea what he was talking about. He was just there hanging out. He was learning how to paint. If anything he was the graff groupie.”
She was really angry about being called a graff groupie. She doesn’t like it when people don’t take her seriously.
“That started causing drama. There’s these panels that we practice painting on at self-help and he works at home depot and he had brought the paint so we could practice with. He said ,’Oh I stole this from work’, but he was probably trying to sound cool. He probably paid for it.All the other panels had legit pieces there and you always top the ones that are not the best. You leave those, let those run for a while and eventually they’ll get topped. So then I said okay i’ll just paint over his. I got a can and I was practicing my name, because I’m trying to develop my letters. Then the other guys came out. Vile came out‘ooh hers just dissed blah blah blah.’I was like ooh shit , because I felt bad and it didn’t looked finished to me.”
Rather than create something big out of nothing she calmly explained she thought the panel was left unfinished and wanted to start a new project.It was a misunderstanding.
“I didn’t mean to diss him.When you write on top of their stuff, it’s called dissing, it’s disrespectful, that you’re disrespecting them.and that starts drama.There’s always going to be drama sometimes being the only girl.There’s legals, which you ask for permission.And then there’s when you actually go bombing. You have to scope out the area and make sure it’s a good spot.You don’t want to go and just paint over anyone because you don’t want to start drama.If drama does start, they’ll look for you and they’ll go over it.They drew a penis over one of my flowers.It was probably little kids but I have to go and fix it. I’ve already let it run for a while.At first it was a tag and then I went over their tag. Then they drew a penis over it.Tags you can go over.There’s rules and you have to be carefulThere’s areas you don’t just go over and paint.I want to go to East LA and paint because theres a lot of good spots over there. I’m not very mobile and I don’t like going on my own. I don’t like calling guys over and saying lets go paint, especially if I don’t know them.It takes planning to know where and when to paint.I want my own car. I think once i get my own car I’ll be painting a lot more.”
WHAT WORRIES YOU AS A STREET ARTIST?
“I worry about someone coming up and stabbing me, like a crackhead or some guys in a van.The area that we live in isn’t safe. I love graffiti and I love art but I don’t want to risk my life for it.”
Having a car would make Hers feel more in control of the situation and therefore safer.
“You can’t paint when you’re dead.I’m kind of selfish. The thing about graffiti is that since it’s out in the streets, its going to be for everyone, but most importantly, its a feeling that you get that you have to act on. If i don’t paint for a while ill feel lazy.Some people get satisfaction out of going running every morning and feel that their day is accomplished. When I paint i feel that my day is accomplished.”
Hers says that while her art will be accessible to the many different people in her neighborhood, she paints for the sheer satisfaction she obtains out of painting graffiti.“I’ve been doing it a lot more lately.”
WHAT IS YOUR ARTISTIC STYLE?
“I think mine is really cute sometimes. I hate it. I wish i could draw like a guy.”Hers says that she loves her neighborhood., but she can’t deny the danger it poses to her as a female street artist and resident in general.“You wouldn’t really paint around here in the neighborhood.”
Hers describes the immediate area surrounding her house as hands-off for painting opportunities because they are guarded by local gangs who will threaten your life for marking over their territory.
“You want to go out into the main streets.If you paint out in the neighborhood there could be cholos.They mark their territory to let you know this is their area and that’s how you know not to paint there.If they see you painting out in the neighborhood at night they will chase you. Some of them have guns, some of them have knives. I already know that.I know what happens to other people.Thats stupid. I don’t want to die.”
She goes into a story about a boy that used to paint. He started hanging out with a local gang and he was eventually shot dead. She says that growing up in her neighborhood, you have to make friends with people that won’t expose you to danger.
“I don’t like painting at night because of the area that i live in.It depends if somebody picks me up. It depends on who you hang out with.I think thats what helps you to survive. You gotta know who to hang out with.”
WHAT TYPE OF ISSUES COME UP BY VIRTUE OF BEING A FEMALE STREET ARTIST?
“There’s always going to be a perv telling you something. I’m pretty sure guys who write don’t face that.I should get a girlfriend.”She thinks about that nuisance and jokes that if men thought she was a lesbian maybe they would leave her alone.“That’s why I have two separate Instagram accounts.There are some girls that will post their graffiti and then they’ll post some pictures of themselves half naked and I’m like where’s the fucking respect?”
Hers keeps one professional Instagram dedicated strictly to her work as a graffiti artist. She keeps another personal Instagram account.
“I think its more real because we’re born around it. Over here the scene is bigger and everybody sees it.I want to paint everywhere. That’s the point. I want to be everywhere. The fact that we’re in L.A., I already feel like I’m doing something.It’s here, it’s New York, It’s Chicago. It’s all the big cities.People stick to bombing sometimes and the tagging. I’m all about it. I love it, but you wanna grow. You don’t want to stick to just doing throwies. You want to develop your style.”
A throwie is a the basic version of a graffiti bomb which is an explosive, colorful, and bold creation illustrating a name.
Rosa Cabrera grew up in South Central LA with her mom and four other siblings. She has that “still waters run deep” personality about her, and her art is proof. Rosa doesn’t necessarily go out into the street to paint. She paints in her notebooks, on cloth bags and canvases. However, the style and lettering she draws resembles street art bombs. She learned this art style from friends and family.
Rosa painted this name bomb on a canvas bag. It reads “ALMOND”.
When I come into her house Rosa is laying on the bed with a plush pillow on her stomach. Yoti hints it’s that time of the month again. We all groan. Walking into her house has the opposite illusion of walking out of the movie theater. I had been standing outside her door wearing sunglasses to protect my eyes from the bright sun and walked into an extremely dark room. They were watching the new Netflix show “Orange is the New Black.”
WHEN DID YOU START DRAWING?
“I started liking surrealism.
That’s when I started painting.
I started hanging out with Erick Garcia and he did graffiti.
I met other people that did the same thing.
My sister’s boyfriend used to have this art book with different kinds of styles and words.
I would try to learn the styles.
My dad used to draw. He was really good. He also did tattoos. Well I didn’t really meet him, but my sister would tell me.
My brother draws really good as well.
Also, my sister Christina used to draw animated characters.”
Rosa says she doesn’t really have a fixed style. Her portraits, her designs, her letters, and her canvases say the same thing. One could attribute her broad range of artistic style to her influences: the friends and family she took after.
“After seeing them drawing, I wanted to do it too.”
I can hear an ice cream truck playing music outside her house.
WHY DIDN’T YOU END UP TRANSFERRING YOUR ART ONTO THE STREETS?
“I guess I don’t really do it because I haven’t practiced enough that I think it would be okay.
I would go with Erik sometimes and I would just see him do it.
It’s just like that’s not my thing.
I just like doing canvases, paper, and bags.”
She doesn’t paint with spray cans. Being a writer or street artist hasn’t appealed to nineteen-year-old Rosa. She says she prefers to create at her own pace and in the comfort of her own elements such as in her home. Although she doesn’t directly participate in street art subculture, her artistic pursuits represent traces of that subculture.
“It’s difficult. You have to practice a lot.
In here, I can draw right then and there.
Having to go and do it out in the street you have to get permission.
If you catch the wrong block people will come and kick your ass. If you’re not from the street or the same hood people will try and kick your ass.
Erik would tell me ‘I got a spot for us.’
And I’d be like ‘What do you mean? Can’t you just go anywhere and do it?’
You have to ask for permission.
Sometimes Tron would be like let’s go at one in the morning and at night. I’d be like ‘I have to sneak out and be careful that no one hears me. What if we have to run? I’m a bad runner’.”
People like what Rosa draws. She was selling shirts for a while.
“I wouldn’t say I have a style. I just put things together.
I used to draw in class sometimes and they would see it and ask ‘Could you draw me this, could you draw me that?’
I kinda don’t like it when people tell me to draw something for them because I feel pressured.
I start thinking it has to be perfect for them.”
In these cases, she says that she starts seeing her art as someone else’s product that she has to perfect rather than her own creation.
Again, as with street art, she says she feels she can’t do things at her own pace.
“When I feel like drawing, I do it. but when people tell me to draw I don’t want to do it anymore.”
She expresses that her creative spark and drive vanishes.
She doesn’t draw for others.
“It was something different before.
Sometimes I see designs or pictures that other people do, like famous artists, and I want to do it because I know I’m not going to be able to afford the real thing.”
Rosa shows me her sketch book which is filled with cartoons, names, and other colorful drawings. She talks about her drawings.
“They remind me of feelings, of certain things in my life.
Like this one, I was watching an anime.
The legs aren’t part of her legs.
I feel like I need to draw something.
Something pops into my mind. A time I that I remember and I just want to draw something that’s going to remind me about it.”
For a while she had her own business gig going on. She was painting on shirts and selling them. She describes how she got the idea back when she was talking to Yoti, her best friend, during a sleep over.
HOW DID YOU GET THE IDEA TO START SELLING SHIRTS WITH YOUR OWN DESIGNS?
“We were texting at one in the morning and we were like ‘I’m bored’.”
They were texting under the same roof, but Rosa says that it was because they were sleeping in different rooms. Yoti slept in the couch and Rosa slept in her room which she shares with her mom.
‘I know.’
She explains that when she’s on Tumblr or anywhere else on the internet, she’ll see cool designs that won’t necessarily be sold on shirts, and she wanted to make those type of designs a possibility.
“I wanted different designs on my shirt, different, weird stuff that I was obviously not going to be able to find at a clothing store.
I was like ‘I should start making shirts,’ and I started thinking about stencils.
‘I should start making stencils and put them on shirts. We should go tomorrow to downtown and buy the shirts and the paint’.”
WHY DID YOU STOP SELLING SHIRTS?
“It’s hard when you don’t have an actual machine.
People started asking for a lot of shirts.
I wasn’t even buying the right paint.
It washed off.
I needed to stop. I didn’t want people paying me money and getting a crappy shirt in the end.”
In the end, she ended up making ten shirts.
She described that project as hard. She didn’t have the right equipment to complete the increasing orders people were requesting or the detailed stencils they wanted.
“I had to stay up all night trying to paint. I was going to school as well and trying to look for a job.
My brother told me he was going to get me a machine. I didn’t get it.”
She laughs as she says she knew he would forget.
She is self-critical about her art. She says she paints like a kindergarten child because she describes her creations as simple and not detailed.
“I feel people wouldn’t like it
There’s already people out there who actually do good art.
I’d rather not.
But when other people say the same thing, I say ‘No, you should do it, it doesn’t fucking matter what other people think’.”
WHEN DID YOU START PURSUING ART?
“I’ve always liked painting like in kindergarten and doing finger painting.”
It wasn’t until seventh grade when her art teacher encouraged to continue to paint.
“She’d buy me canvases because I couldn’t afford them.”
WHAT WOULD YOU TELL OTHER GIRLS SUCH AS YOURSELF WHO ARE PURSUING A PASSION FOR ART?
“Go for it. There’s no rules to it.
I think there’s a lot of girls people don’t know about. People see more guys doing it.
That doesn’t mean there’s not girls doing it.
I would say girls are a little more shy.
They don’t show off about it.
Guys want to show off, make it more of a competition.
I guess that’s why they’re more advertised sometimes.”
I had the pleasure of interviewing three really down womyn who break your expectations of what a “lady” should be. These womyn are tough, brutally honest, cute and yeah they’re graffiti artists. They make up part of the South Central Los Angeles graffiti subculture, which like graffiti subculture in general has been traditionally male-dominated. These talented womyn are currently no older than 22 years old and have been painting from a very young age.
I interviewed them last summer when I expressed my interest in writing an article about women who were street artists in South Central Los Angeles. And if you’ve heard anything about this little piece of LA, it was probably depicted (as is often the case) as a blighted, dangerous and crime-ridden urban neighborhood in South Los Angeles. Their cultural heritage background is Mexican. Their art has been influenced throughout the years by various elements from their family to their neighborhood environments. I kept their stories for almost a year now (which I admit has been selfish on my part). I started writing that article I promised them I would, but stopped when I resumed school. As a result the interview is not current; it was taken last summer and some things may have changed in their art and life style. Nonetheless, these interviews still expose the basic essence of their experiences with street art and art in general. It is now that I place a spotlight on their stories as artists.
Since they are three unique artists I will introduce them separately. I will start with Rose, followed by Hers and finally Clovershrooms. I present you their experiences in the graffiti underground of South Central Los Angeles.
What separates illegal advertising from street art? For one, billboard companies who erect billboard ads without permits get fined an average of $100 per day in Los Angeles; street artists who paint without authorization on public property are tagged with felonies. While advertisement illustrations ask the public to buy products, street art invites the public to look at color. The first type of public exposure is normalized, while the latter form is criminalized.
More than just petty vandalism, street artists offer the average by-passer what others would pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to have: art. Street art is free, accessible, uncensored and unapologetic, from the murals in the alleys of the Mission District in San Francisco to the graffiti bombs in the billboards of LA.
Graffiti originated in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, eventually expanding worldwide (France, Brazil, Spain, Africa). Graffiti wasn’t the offset of people writing and drawing on walls, however. Humans were drawing stories on walls since prehistoric times. In New York, graffiti started out underground in the subways during the 1980s. When people saw their names traveling from city to city on the trains, the subways of New York were suddenly transformed spanning like this for a decade.
Graffiti might be alarming and threatening to some because it is an uncensored manner of speech. Following the shooting of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer, street art portraits of him and messages of solidarity popped up across Oakland which condemned the death of young black men at the hands of police. In Palestine, graffiti is shown in the towering walls of the West Bank. An article in Global post titled, “West Bank: Ultimate holiday for graffiti artists?” touches upon this. The messages reject Israeli occupancy. Mujeres Creando is a group in the country of Bolivia with a high indigenous population that writes graffiti messages dismissing patriarchy and colonization.
Graffiti overall is a defiance of the way which society judges what is art and what isn’t. It does so while renouncing that some people have more freedom of speech than others because they are able to pay for it.
“Neither the land nor women are territories of conquest.”
Evelin Ramirez and Dorian are two self-proclaimed sluts currently residing in Oakland. Evelin is originally from Nayarit, Mexico and Dorian is from Erie, Pennsylvania. Evelin organized SlutWalk San Francisco for three years and is now working as a legal assistant. In this interview, I ask them about being empowered sluts and how they combat rape culture.
Do you call yourself a slut?
Dorian: I definitely call myself a slut and have for quite sometime. For me that means that I take a lot of pleasure in deciding for myself what I will and won’t do. Coming to a point where I can embrace the word slut has meant coming to a point where what I’m doing is about me and not necessarily based on how someone is perceiving me. My identity isn’t compromised by whomever I’m engaging with or whatever behaviors I’m engaging in.
Evelin: Right now I am just abstaining from sex and I’m not promiscuous per say. I was married to somebody for six years so I tend to be more of a serial monogamist. I do what I want with my body. I dress it how I want. I sleep with whomever I want. I don’t let people impose rules as to how it should look or how I should feel based on their perceptions of who I should be. For me, it’s more of a political definition. When I do have sex with somebody, I do it because I want to. If I feel like I want to share physical intimate space with somebody I’m going to do it.
What is empowering about using the word slut to identify yourself?
Evelin: For me, it was ridiculous to think that there was a certain type of woman that deserved to be raped or sexually brutalized. Not only is there a certain type of woman, we have a word for her. She’s usually defined as someone who is sexually promiscuous or sexually permissive. She probably wears revealing clothing or tight pants. She probably exposes her breasts or allows men to enter her physical space without having a lot of boundaries. [Sluts] could be really kind people, really smart people, really talented people, but society has deemed that this person who looks this way is a slut, and this slut allows people in her personal space therefore when she gets raped, she deserves that. That logic means nothing to me. After the research that I did, rape survivors spend about $150,000 of their own money to recover from psychological and physical damage. I don’t see how that is warranted by the fact that this woman didn’t have the right boundaries that society deems appropriate to prevent sexual assault. I get really offended when anybody has anything negative to say about somebody who doesn’t conform to the archetype of the modest woman. There’s sluts who don’t wear make-up. There’s sluts who don’t wear tight clothing. I’m a slut and I dress like a freaking nun.
Dorian: In terms of what is empowering for me is that now I can call myself a slut. I wasn’t the first one to use that word to describe myself. That’s been leveled at me since I was like 12, since I was little. At the time it was just an easy thing to call me. It was something that was used to shut me down and to shut me up for a really long time. My world cracked open once I started claiming that for myself, because for me now, slut implies agency, and that’s what freaked people out about me. They were so quick to call me a slut because they saw that I was moving through the world my own way, and that is really, really threatening to some people. It’s been a vulnerable place to be in, but it’s also been exhilarating to actually be able to state what I want, what I’m looking for, and what I’m drawn to. It has put a lot of people off and it has really distanced me from certain people. It’s a litmus test at this point because if someone is really that offended by the way I am living my life, then it’s probably best to keep that distance. I’ve been able to find this really wonderful community of other sluts and like-minded people in the process of being able to call myself that.
How do people react when you tell them you’re a slut?
Evelin puts her arms out and stands back as if she couldn’t believe what she heard.
Evelin: I get a lot of that, especially when I was trying to invite people to the walk. Slutwalk doesn’t translate very well into Spanish. So when I was coming up to people inviting them to “Marcha de las putas,” they were just like that.
Dorian: I feel like a lot of people laugh when I say it. They think I’m kidding, and I mean I am being flippant when I say it, some part of me. But I get a lot of uncomfortable laughter or I get people who are like “No, you’re not that slutty. No, I wouldnt call you slutty.” And it’s just like, I just did. I don’t care if you call me slutty, I am the one calling it. I had someone confront me today and they were like “I don’t understand how you can call yourself a spinster, but then you’re also a slut. How does that work?” For me, they overlap. That says to me that I’m deciding for myself and I am moving through the world as a solo person. It’s some weird, internalized shame thing for others, but no, I was ashamed before I started calling myself that.
How did you start organizing with SlutWalk?
Evelin: I saw it on a gossip website and I e-mailed them. They said there was nobody organizing it in San Francisco, and if I wanted to start it. Honestly, my intention was only to volunteer and do something that someone was already doing. I didn’t realize they were going to put me in charge. Once they asked me, I just couldn’t say no. I felt it was really important and I didn’t want to say no. I had no intention in devoting so much time to it. We did two annual walks and they were really successful. It opened up so many new doors, but that was never my intention. I was feeling lazy when I first contacted them. I started the whole network, the coalition and then six weeks after I started, I met someone who was interested. But the first six weeks, it was just me going out with my stupid little flyers. It was awkward.
Did it get you out of your comfort zone?
Evelin: Oh yeah. I suffer from a panic disorder. I am a childhood rape survivor, so by the time I was six I had been raped twice. I wasn’t called a slut, but I heard different versions of rape apologies. I was five years old and my best friend’s uncle raped me in their house and my mom’s answer to that was, “Well you used to love going to that house. You must have liked it.” To me that was the same old rendition that other rape survivors get, “Oh you were wearing tight jeans, you must have been asking for it. You were wearing a skirt, you were revealing your breasts.” It’s all a way to make an excuse for something that is really horrible. I was really angry because I didn’t get any support from my family. I knew that a lot of the PTSD studies were initially done on vets. But for women PTSD most commonly occurs because of sexual trauma. When it’s childhood sexual trauma that does something to your psyche. Your personality is affected, your ability to connect with people, your eating patterns, sleeping patterns, depression, all of that is affected by childhood sexual trauma. So, I was really angry and I wanted a way to connect with other people. I wasn’t trying to be the chief organizer, but that ended up happening so maybe the universe saw that I needed this and allowed me to become an organizer for this. The first six weeks were tough. However, it was amazing how many women were opening up to me about their sexual trauma. I was talking to people on the bus, on BART. After they heard what it meant, they opened up. It was like, “You know, I was raped and nobody gave a shit.” Or, “I was raped going home from school.”, “ I was raped by my pimp.” It was this common thread amongst all of these different women who probably would never acknowledge each other on the street. They had all experienced sexual trauma and they had all heard that same bullshit of “It must have been your fault,” either from family members or from the authorities themselves. That’s how that started. I learned a lot about organizing and the inner politics of San Francisco activism which seems beautiful in theory, but that shit is gnarly sometimes. There’s a lot of groups who aren’t very supportive of each other and when you don’t know anything about [organizing] you come in a fresh face and everybody thinks you’re dumb. Eventually you start seeing things for how they really are and you realize that [sexual violence] is a really complicated discussion. Then I got into policy and economic analysis. Then I did a couple of focus group films with ethnographic material on gender violence. It’s been really a gift. I didn’t want to invest that much time to it, and I ended up giving three years of my life to it.
Have you ever made to feel ashamed for your sexual agency?
Dorian: Always. I am a survivor of sexual abuse too, so I can’t even remember a time before someone else wasn’t imposing some pretty opressive stuff on me. I’m trans, so I grew up being read as a straight girl for a really long time and not really being in my body at all. I was sexually active from a very early age. I had a lot of encounters that weren’t exactly consensual. I was made to feel like shit for enjoying what I did. That was the worst part. The fact that i actually loved sex really freaked people out especially when I was young. Then, I came out as a lesbian but I slept with men so I was being policed from both sides. Then, I came out as trans and it was this whole other thing. So becoming a slut and being read as a gay man has had a whole different set of implications and whole different levels of risks. It’s been a learning curve and there’s been a lot of opposition every step of the way. Ultimately, I’ve had a lot of practice with tuning that out. It’s been sort of a privilege to move through these different identities and decide for myself each time what I was hanging on to and what I was ready to leave.
Evelin: I started developing really young, and dealing with early childhood trauma my sexuality was imposed upon me, especially when you’re big chested and pubescent and start attracting attention from men, from people, sometimes it was from women too, who should know better. This child has big breasts, but she’s still a child. There were all of these different misunderstandings of who I was. People would pay attention to my body, but I was also in honor classes. I really liked to crochet and I liked to cook and I’m more of a tomboy. I never felt feminine and because I had a big chest, people were imposing a gender stereotype upon me, “She should wear this. This is how she should look. She knows she has a big chest, why is she taunting that guy. Men are men and they are going to react to the sexual advances of a young girl.” Now, I am 32, I am divorced and I don’t have sex with anybody. I really like that freedom because a lot of women don’t have that. A lot of women feel like they belong to a man or that their sexuality belongs to some man. My sexuality is mine, and it was taken from me for a long period of time and I was haunted by it. I felt like it was abused not just by the rapist but society in general. Now that in my 30’s I finally feel like it’s my body and I am going to dress it how I want. And if I don’t want anybody touching it, then no one is going to touch it. I feel really empowered at this point in my life.
Was there tolerance for slut where you grew up in?
Dorian: I don’t know if there is tolerance anywhere. I remember getting that from my mom, both of my parents actually. I was a kid and as sneaky as I thought I was being, I wasn’t all that sneaky when I look back. I remember getting warnings from members of my family and from a few teachers who overstepped their bounds and decided to let me know implications and that boys were going to think things and it was my job to make sure people didn’t get the wrong impression. Looking back, it makes sense that most of my friends were guys and mostly gay guys. At the time, there was something about that, that really seemed to threaten people. I remember from a very early age people telling me, “You’re not one of those girls. Don’t let them think that you’re one of those girls.” Everyone seemed to know who those girls were and looking back I was sluttier than all of them! I learned to keep that really secret, and there’s a dissonance that comes up when you have to sneak around and hide what you’re doing and feel like you have to apologize for behaviors that are based on what you want or who you are.
Evelin: I just always heard the urban legend of the girl who had a gangbang. I’m from Southern California, and there was always a legend of some girl who had a gang bang. Nobody knew her personally, they just knew of her. I always thought to myself, that poor girl, she must have these low fucking standards because theses guys are all turdy. These were guys who spoke of this girl and called those types of girls bitches, “Oh those bitches like that.” Maybe they didn’t throw the word slut around, but it was definitely girls who were sexually promiscuous or allowed boys to touch them when parents weren’t around. There was always that rumor. There was definitely no acceptance. By the time I was 16, I was severly depressed and into a gothic stage. I was wearing tons of makeup and just black all the time, so nobody called me a slut then.
What is rape culture?
Evelin: What I think it means, and it’s not textbook, because I have a different definition of it is the artifacts, the technology, the knowledge that’s created by our society. Media promotes women’s bodies to be accessible. To a certain extent the women who are portraying themselves in the media that way have agency. The fact that a lot of them make so much money after they make their bodies accessible, I think that’s evidence of rape culture. The fact that the only reason we know who Kim Kardashian is because of a sex tape, or the fact that Pamela Anderson has had so much longevity because of a sex tape, to me that’s a symptom of rape culture. Rape culture isn’t tangible, but you can see it in symptoms. It’s all the messages you see reinforcing this idea that women’s bodies are here to please sexually or in other forms of exploitation whether it be to clean your house or be your servant. It’s not just women, now that I think about it. It’s that you don’t need consent to have access to a person’s body. There’s rape culture in everyday interactions. Like being really aggressive and how for some people it’s okay to be really aggressive. People think that without asking consent, you are more in charge. I think that rape culture has little tentacles. It’s not just specific to sex. It’s that certain people’s bodies are accessible to other people who have more power. That’s what rape is about.
Dorian: I’m thinking about spaces that are set up that way. I’m thinking about ladies’ nights at bars. Sometimes it’s really insidious because feminism has gained traction and these discussions are now out there. We want to believe that we are beyond it, but now it operates in these really insidious ways where women get in and they drink for free. But the draw for men that are showing up for ladies’ night is that they’re going to be surrounded by a lot of women that are intoxicated. A lot of it is coming from establishments and institutions that are set up that way to inherently unbalance dynamics. You come in early and you get in for free. There’s no cover because you are already drunk by the time that men start showing up at the bar. There is something really unbalanced about that, but it’s presented as a perk for women because they’re drinking for free and they don’t have to pay to get in. No one wants to actually look at what the cost of that is. Rape culture is being able to ask in the courtroom, “What was she wearing at the time of the assault?” The fact that’s even permitted in cases is evidence that it’s really embedded in our laws and institutions. I feel like unless we are really conscious as individuals, it’s really hard not to be a participant in rape culture. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t want to talk about it because we’ve all played our part in one way or another. As much as I can talk now about how I was bullied for being a slut, I called other girls slut when I was growing up, and I probably made some of them really miserable. I don’t know how to acknowledge the pervasiveness of rape culture if we don’t acknowledge the ways that we’re perpetuating it, even if we are claiming to be victims of it a lot of the time. That’s where it gets really messy and where a lot of people shut down because they don’t want to start investigating the ways that they help move this machine along.
Evelin: Lately I’ve witnessed a lot of rape culturish behavior among older men feeling like they have access to the bodies of younger men in lower ranking employment positions. I saw a man slam an 18-year-old kid into some lockers by his collar and then grab his scrotum. The fact that there were four other men there laughing, that was rape culture.
How can people engage in discussion and action against rape culture and slut shaming?
Dorian: I think a lot of my dealings now are with cisgendered men and usually older. There’s a huge gap in experience and awareness. I see a lot in gay culture of what you’re [Evelin] talking about, where there’s an age difference, a financial difference, and where people know their places. A lot of them do feel like they have access to anyone else’s bodies and will really impose that. That’s kind of glorified in gay culture. I’m at a point now where because they read me as male, I can speak to them and sometimes they hear me. Not always, and not always the way that I’m trying to come across. I can definitely tell that when I speak in a room now, people hear me in a way they did not when they read me as a woman. I know when you [Evelin] were doing your focus group there was this issue about men watching their friends do some pretty shady stuff when it came to picking up women and how they didn’t feel like they needed to intervene. This mentality is out there right now. People who want to enact some change and recognize that they have a degree of power really need to use that and speak up where they can because a lot of the time people being assaulted or being oppressed aren’t able to necessarily make a stand for themselves because they have too much to lose or too much to fear by coming forward that way. For men who are trying to make a difference and interrupt some of these patterns they need to be talking to other men. They need to be checking their friends and checking strangers and stepping into situations even when it’s awkward. There’s a lof guilt around privilege and, “Oh this isn’t my battle.” But if people are going to listen to you, you need to be speaking. There’s a lot that can be done on a daily basis, just recognizing whose voices are absent or missing from discussions and making sure you are not just looking away.
Evelin: You don’t have to go to a march to be an ally. If you see something, then say something. Take precaution, but at the same time don’t encourage your friend to take that drunk girl home. When you’re hating on someone or trying to belittle them, check your insult. Why are you saying that? What does that imply? Why do you have to make somebody else feel less than you? One of the reasons I stopped organizing is because I felt I wasn’t living those truths. I was telling people to take agency in their lives, but I was in an abusive relationship. A lot of the activism starts in your own everyday life. Are you accountable for your actions every day? Are you stepping on people? Do you like to push people? Are you taking advantage of another person? Even though it feels amazing to have four hundred people shouting with you, every single day is a battle. Be more accountable, pay more attention to how much privilege you have and I think that’s a really good start.
A Toronto police officer once gave a group of high school students the following advice: “I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.” To some, this statement may have been another reminder of the sexism and misogyny entrenched in our society. Others may have seen nothing out of the ordinary or offensive in the officer’s comment. But to yet another group of people, the officer’s comment was a breaking point in the passive acceptance of a rape culture that victimizes and blames people who undergo sexual harassment, sexual trauma, or sexual assault. These furious people unrolled a series of rallies called SlutWalks which soon after sprouted across cities nationwide inspiring supporters to reappropriate the word slut for themselves.
The bottom line at SlutWalk is that people– in particular womyn who have historically been denied agency (especially sexual agency)–are free to dress their bodies as they please as well as to engage in sexual relationships with whomever, however, and as much (or as little) as they want without being abused. The demonization of womyn owning their bodies and having sexual agency perpetuates a rape culture where women are blamed for rape if they wear “inappropriate” clothing, are sexually active, or fail to take precaution; rather than paying attention to the unstable person who has no self control and rapes, we focus on the person receiving assault as if the blame is theirs. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 1 of 6 women in the United States has survived an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime; this is true for 1 of 33 men. 60 percent of rapes are not reported to the police and 97 percent of rapists will never spend a day in jail.
SlutWalk was intended as a space where women could feel empowered and safe to take back control of their bodies. Still, not all womyn feel this space is welcoming of them and SlutWalk has been challenged in the past for overlooking race in the discussion of assault of women’s bodies. RAINN show rape in relation to race: Native women were the group who survived the highest percentage of rapes (34.1 percent), followed by women of mixed races (24.4 percent), than black women ( 18.8 percent), white women (17.7 percent) and Asian Pacific Islander women (6.8 percent). SlutWalk has nonetheless been regarded as a bold and empowering opportunity for people to heal from collective sexual trauma. While the war on womyn isn’t going away anytime soon, people continue to build creative ways to fight against the invasion of all bodies and spaces.
“If being happy, free, and dressing how I want is being a slut, them I am a slut.”
Oscar Gutierrez in his room in the Ocean View district, San Francisco, Calif., Sunday, March 23, 2014. He was cleaning his room.
Oscar Gutierrez is a 20-year-old straight edge/sober punk based from Huntington Park in Los Angeles. Being introduced into the punk music scene in his early youth, he also made a conscious decision to stay sober within and out of punk spaces. Aside from working in the Richard Oakes Multicultural Center (ROMC) in the Cesar Chavez Student Center at SFSU, he reviews bands for the punk zine Maximumrocknroll (MRR). Oscar is finishing his second year at San Francisco State University where he studies journalism. In this interview, I ask him about his experience navigating college, an underground punk scene, and other places as a straight edge/sober punk.
Does the decision to remain sober bring an identity with it?
At first I didn’t associate it with anything. I started listening to punk when I was really young, and so all the bands that I used to listen to were straight edge bands, so like super sober bands. They were mostly white bands, and they were mostly emerging from the D.C. hardcore punk scene. I identified being straight edge with punk. I never saw them as separate. I say straight edge every now and then. I say sober interchangeably. Straight edge has more of the punk edge. They’re basically the same. My sister was straight edge for a bit, and then she started drinking a lot. She started drinking and doing drugs, but I just never got into it. I think it goes hand-in-hand with my “punk identity”, if you can quote that. I think that’s the identity it comes with. I think it’s a big part of me too, though. I think every year that goes by that I don’t drink or do drugs, it’s a huge step.
Does being sober alienate you from friends who drink and take other drugs?
My roommates drink a lot, and they smoke or whatever. So do my friends in the punk scene and outside of that. They drink and do drugs, a lot. Sober friends, I can probably count on my fingers. I can say it alienates me a little bit, but for the most part, I feel I can party with people regardless. The only part that I hate is when I end up babysitting. When it turns into that I’m just out. I’m like, “I’m not doing this.” But for the most part, I party with people, so the alienating piece is very rare. But it happens, and it feels kind of dumb. I was telling my roommate Jessica how I feel that if I drank and did drugs it would be a lot easier for me to make friends. Growing up in Southeast L.A., a lot of hangouts were “Oh let’s go and drink a 40oz.” So I couldn’t really do that. What was I going to say, “Let’s go out and drink some soda”? No. It just never worked that way. So I told Jessica, I feel like I would have had many more friends, especially in punk if I drank 40s, but I don’t.
So you’re sober, what don’t you consume?
Basically, I don’t drink any alcohol. I don’t do any drugs. That includes marijuana. I also don’t smoke cigarettes.
Do you consider as drugs other addictive substances like soda and coffee, and do you reject them as well?
No. And the reason why is because I associate drugs with parts of my life that have affected me. Usually, it’s a bad piece of my life. Something that I don’t want to relive. I think a lot of the reasons I decided to not drink or do drugs is because a lot of my friends and family members had either been part of the system, the injustice system, or have died because of alcohol or drugs. In a bad way, it’s a motivator to just not ever touch that. I associate substances that I can’t do with things that have negative impacts. To me, coffee doesn’t have a negative impact. Soda does. I used to drink a lot of soda, and then I quit. No more soda. I haven’t had soda in months. Coffee, that needs to happen.
What are the reasons that led you to commit to being straight edge/sober?
I think the reasons have changed a lot throughout my life. I was telling my mom that I’ve never had the drunk uncle. It was mostly cousins who couldn’t do things without drinking. They weren’t always drunk, but they just always had to have a drink. A really close friend of mine started drinking very heavily after he got out of the army. He’s from L.A. and he moved out to New Jersey for his base. He actually drove drunk and ended up killing two people while driving drunk. Now he’s in prison for about 14 years. It was a really big turning point for me. I was sober the whole time. I’ve been sober since day one, but I think that was the point where I noticed it: I’m sober and it’s super real. I was about 16. That’s when I noticed it’s really real for a lot of our families, families of color where those types of things happen. Even with folks that are serving in the military or things like that. That is a real issue and I don’t think a lot of people consider it that. I think they consider it “Oh he’s just a fucked up drunk.” They don’t consider the effects of being in war for such a long time and then coming back and trying to be okay. That was a big turning point for me. But there’s also little things that happen where I’ve had to take care of this person and I never want to do that.
Do you find it hard to be in college and around people who drink, smoke and do other drugs while you don’t?
I think it depends in the space that I’m in. If you feel like grabbing a couple of beers, drinking, or smoking, I’m whatever about it. When I was younger, yeah. When I first started going to punk shows, yeah. I tell people one of the main reasons that I didn’t start drinking is because it smelled like shit. It smelled awful, and I didn’t want it in my body. I just think it’s really scary to not have control of your own body sometimes, and I saw that a lot. When I’m in a space with people, it doesn’t really matter to me. However, when people start getting really drunk, it bothers me a lot. By drunk, I mean you don’t know how to handle your alcohol and you are falling all over the place, and you are making a huge scene. Especially if I’m associated with you. If I’m the homie that brought you, it’s just like “Damn, that is not cool.” It annoys me especially at punk shows. A lot of the time it’s not because they’re “making a scene”, it’s because I’m concerned with their safety. Alcohol poisoning is real. Overdose is real. It’s a real concern for the person’s health and not for how they look. I’ve had a bunch of homies overdose on drugs or get mad alcohol poisoning and that’s not just something I would want.
How do you have fun without alcohol and drugs?
I eat a bunch of snacks. So let me tell you something about straight edge hardcore punk scene: I don’t fucking like it. I’m not about it. It’s super macho. It’s super heteronormative. I’m not about it. I’d rather be in a room full of people that drink. They start getting violent. It’s a very white-dominated scene, which is why I never got into hardcore punk that was super straight edge. For one, people need it [alcohol] to have fun, but also people need it ceremonially. That’s one part that people often put on the backburner. There’s an aspect where folks have been using marijuana traditionally. Folks have been drinking alcohol traditionally. That’s one of the things that people don’t talk about, but I hope it’s a concept that people understand. Alcohol and marijuana, or any other plant, have been used ceremonially and will continue to be used ceremonially because traditions don’t have straight edge rules. For me, having fun, I don’t know, I have fun! I dance, I wiggle, I get my groove on. I’m conscious of the fact that yeah, people are smoking and drinking and doing drugs, but I’m also not the one to be like “you’re ruining my fun” because it’s not about me. But shit, if your ass is drunk and you’re dancing all over the place, let me dance with you. I’m not going to separate myself and be like “I’m the shit because I don’t do any of that.” That’s a choice, and if somebody doesn’t want to do it, then cool. Shit is not going to stop because of me, but if you want to party, I’m going to party with you. Just know that. I’ll act as crazy without the substance.
Are you ever tempted into trying alcohol, tobacco or other drugs?
Alcohol, never. It still smells gross and it still looks gross. Not that one. Drugs, yeah. I’m not going to lie about that one. I’ve looked a lot into marijuana, and the reason why is because I suffer from a lot of pains. I have a skin condition and that was one of my options, marijuana. So I really looked into it, but I’m not doing it. I think it’s mostly because I’ve found other alternatives, and probably because I’m a wimp. I can’t smoke. I’d probably choke and die.
What other alternatives?
Plants that I can apply directly. Marijuana can be applied directly too. I haven’t done it yet.
What do you think about the reality that people drink or do other drugs as coping strategies?
I always tell people I hope they never drink when they’re sad or mad. Obviously I don’t like it, but it’s been one of the most accessible things to our communities. I’m not going to go off on someone because they’re doing that. I understand the fact that it’s there and you forget a lot of shit when you’re doing that. We often don’t talk about the cultural aspect of it [alcohol], the areas in which we live in, and why it’s so accessible. Where I come from, there’s a liquor store in every corner, but in my community there is also a lot of financial disparity, there’s a lot of people dying from gangs and a lot of different things. That makes me think there’s a bunch of liquor stores in my community for reasons. It sells really fast, it sells really well, but I grew up knowing alcohol is that too. A way to make you forget, “Oh, I’ve had a tough day.” I don’t agree with it, but I understand why it’s so accessible, and why people often turn to it. I would wish they didn’t, but we also can’t address those things unless we don’t have the access to resources. There’s way more liquor stores than there is mental health clinics. And it’s for a reason. People know our communities have a lot of traumas and they have a lot of things to work on, but they’re not going to put mental health clinics in our communities, they’re going to put alcohol because it’s attached to a shitload of money. It’s not something I expect our communities to know, but I feel we need to tackle that problem first, addressing the idea that we don’t have resources to get better. It’s very hard to find those resources and most of the time you have to go out and look for them, and that’s not very easy to do. Sometimes it’s easier to got to a liquor store, unfortunately.
Is it lonely being sober, or are there other people choosing to live independently of drugs and alcohol?
Back in L.A. it’s little to none. I’m trying to think and I don’t know. It’s usually in the punk scene. It’s so rare. I can seriously think of two people right now. They’re usually vegan and straight edge like me. They’re there. They’re brown boys of the Brown Boy Club.
What is a brown boy?
A brown boy is somebody who is just brown. Latinos. Chicanos. We share a lot of the experiences as well. We all come from these communities that don’t have the best resources. It’s also not like I go out to shows, and I’m like “Who’s sober here?” Sometimes I don’t find out, but there are those people that will post it on Facebook, “I’m finally going on my tenth year, my twelfth year, my fortieth year.” People are very proud of that. I’m very proud of it. I came from years of it not mattering to me, and it didn’t matter to me because I didn’t want to be like one of those self-righteous straight edge boys. It’s very annoying and I never wanted to flaunt my straight edge-nes or my soberness. I don’t flaunt it, but I’m very proud that I’ve lived my life this way and I never had to do drugs. It also comes with a lot of responsibility. You can not drink and do drugs but that’s not everything. It’s about recognizing stuff and not being an asshole. Oh my god, the amount of straight edge people that I have met that have been assholes is immense. People that are slapping beers and joints off your hand. People like that are really invasive. That’s not what I’m about. I love my people and I understand reasons why they may drink. And people don’t always drink because they’re having problems. People like the taste sometimes. There’s a lot of different reasons. We don’t always have to associate drinking with “Oh my god, that pobre ninya.” Sometimes people drink because they like to drink. We have decided not to drink because A) We didn’t want to drink or B) because there’s reasons. Everyone has their own reasons.
What is straight edge? My first encounter with the word was in the tenth grade when I went hiking with one of the best looking boys at my high school. In a crowded school where everyone knew one another either directly or by association, he and his circle of friends had a super cool image. It might have been their non-conformist attitude and their harcore punk band patches which covered holes on their clothes. Why buy new pants when you could sew them up? That appealed to the punk in me who came from working-class parents where new clothes were a privilege. Back then I kind of thought I was “a punk” (even though I never went to punk shows, or drank 40s, or wore a lot of black). It was at this intersection of cultures of drinking and punk music that I encountered the term straight edge when I took my friend to go hiking in Hollywood Hills area.
Do you drink?
No.
Do you smoke?
Cigarrettes? I’ve tried them.
And weed?
No.
Straight edge grew in the 1980s within the hardcore punk community. At the core culture of straight edge is a refusal to drink, smoke tobacco, and consume other drugs. Sometimes this rejection extends to abstinence from sex, meat, and caffeine.The hardcore punk band Minor Threat gave the lifestyle a name with their “Straight Edge” song, but can’t be accredited to for the whole movement.The movement has has been criticized for being a hyper masculine and violent culture dominated by “tough guys”. In some instances, police trace violent gangs to groups of straight edge people in such places like Reno and Salt Lake City. The scene has also been recognized as a safe space where young people can associate being sober with punk to avoid being teased for choosing to be sober. Some of the more open-minded straight edge punks view straight edge as an individual choice while other less tolerant straight edge people see their lifestyle as a political practice that extends to others around them. The symbol of the straight edge lifestyle is marked by Xs. This is a reference to underage youth whose hands are marked because they can’t buy alcohol.
Yep, I was pretty clean. I had friends who drank and did other drugs, and my family members drank extensively too. However, my super strict dad never really let his daughters out, so I was never exposed to alcohol or other drugs at a younger age. I bet that if I had been allowed to go out to local ska and punk shows with my friends, I would have been acquainted with that culture.
My friend jokingly asked if I was straight edge, or what? I found that assumption funny because I was only 15 and the fact that I didn’t drink or smoke wasn’t so much a conscious choice than a limited choice. That’s not to say that it would have been good if I were given the freedom to start drinking and smoking early on, but I didn’t want to be labeled as straight edge. Even the way my friend said the term seemed like he thought straight edge people were arrogant.
Now in college, I find that a lot of people are sober or straight edge and that often times that lifestyle is not respected. Growing up, in a community where alcohol and drugs are easily accessible, I thought everyone drank or did drugs. I just thought that was normal. However, now, that perception is interrupted by the presence of friends who stay sober.
almendra 