Record-Store Performances (Chicago Tribune)
"In-store sounds
What's in store at record shops: Band performances, readings, more going on"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Chicago Tribune
Section: On the Town
Date: July 4, 2008
Record shops give you something that even the most interactive music Web site can't—someone who knows what you like and gives you a pile of great dusty grooves to sort through.
Shops have taste or a certain style, and that's why you're there. Reckless, Jazz Record Mart, the Apple Store all have a feel.
You can think of an in-store performance as a shopping soundtrack or an event. Either way, it's like closing the link between past and future. You're at Reckless, hearing some little post-punk band on your music player, and the band members are in the flesh.
Yet in an age when the biggest music retailer (iTunes) is virtual, Chicagoans are still looking to real time for a place littered with LPs, dusty acoustics and real sound. Area music shops subsist on a hunger for the good-old days and the hope for brand-new sounds. With turntables popping up again bearing USB ports and iPod jacks, vinyl recordings are set for a comeback, as bands put tracks onto 180-gram vinyl and play to select crowds at tune boutiques.
Let's face it: Some pieces of vinyl have seen more parties than you have. So take the time trip with other fans picking over the past for a sense of musical soul to see what you unearth from the crates.
Music shop performances aren't just for record promotions any longer. Now they're but one sign that a local shop is truly committed to its neighborhood. The store gets buzz, and you get to see a cool band for free. This is true even as leaner stores find themselves with less space and fewer acts willing to play for free.
"In-store events are not a guaranteed turnout," says David Hofer, a Chicago-area native and buyer at Reckless Records. And yet "that's what you do when you like bands—you champion them."
With an army of clerks familiar with the local scene, Reckless picks up on tips about bands that might draw a crowd, especially underage fans who can't get into some venues. At a recent Reckless event, Jesael Espinoza brought his two young sons, to hear California-based flamenco/R&B jammers Cryptacize at the chain's Wicker Park store. The kids were able to play with the instruments, and adults who might have caught the band the night before at Schubas could talk to the band after its brief set.
Far from the Wicker Park indie scene, The Old School Records of Forest Park sees itself as an oasis for its West suburban community of customers, musicians and fans. "We are custodians of culture," says co-owner Jodi Gianakopoulos of the shop that specializes in R&B, soul, jazz and reggae.
With a hyper-local focus, Old School also frequently arranges on-site events, with an outdoor sidewalk set-up when possible. At June's annual Forest Park Summerfest, Old School had writer and regular customer Stephanie Kuehnert read from her rock-inspired novel "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" and perform covers of songs by Sleater-Kinney and Social Distortion. In addition, over the event's two days, a dozen up-and-coming area DJs spun everything from Afrobeat to disco and stepping sets.
Gianakopoulos sees her commercial and neighborhood efforts as a unified endeavor. "We work ridiculously hard to survive and we can't without [community] help."
At the other end of the spectrum, the Michigan Avenue Apple Store, with its sleek counters, reflective surfaces and pristine white workstations, is the incarnation of the new music landscape.
Yet like the grungy Reckless and friendly Old School, Apple hosts in-stores as well.
These might be for iTunes cross-promotion, or local DJ nights that showcase performers as well as the Apple music gizmos. Set up at a mobile turntable cart, the first-floor DJ expo draws window shoppers and store browsers to a buzz that is like white noise humming beneath the sound of commerce.
In the halls of Apple, it's a stretch to imagine a shop such as Untitled, where DJs of yesteryear spun vinyl all night long for hyped-up crowds. Sylia Yi, senior buyer at Untitled, has been around since the store opened in 1990 as a hub for DJ culture.
"Our turntables have been a starting point for world-renowned DJs and producers," Yi says.
From its early days, Untitled has been the one-stop place to go for gear, fliers, show tickets and free DJ sets. The rave scene is long gone, but Untitled still hosts DJ sets at three of its four locations every Saturday. Local hip-hopper Anacron Allen spins regularly at the shops because "I have free rein to stretch out and play how I really like."
In Ukrainian Village, Permanent Records' back wall is a tight fit for the Warlocks' brief set before the band heads off to a Logan Square gig. About 50 people file between the music bins, some just looking for a deal, most focused on the Warlocks. The atmospheric reverb echoes against walls plastered with funky posters, and grateful applause heartily lifts to the ceiling and out the door.
With an eclectic selection of new and used stuff plus friendly clerks ready to chew the fat like the guys in "High Fidelity," Permanent feels like a rock happening and bills itself as a community space, having hosted movie screenings and listening parties. Owner Lance Barresi also says the store produces recordings on 180-gram vinyl, because "we personally find vinyl more appealing than CDs."
A short ride from Permanent takes you to 18th Street, where Revolver Records rocks the bells for South Side hip-hoppers, DJs and fans. Marlon Hernandez hails from Wrigleyville but fell in love with the Pilsen community, where his Mexican parents met and where he opened his shop a few years ago. He's just another Chicagoland kid who imagined owning a record store. But he actually did it, and his 650-square-foot shop—decorated with local Latino art and heaps of dusty 45s—regularly hosts music and art shows and parties.
"One of the bigger events I had was when Kafele and JoJo, drummer for Fela Kuti and Africa '70, played live for one hour nonstop," he remembers. Like other shop owners, he's involved in his adopted neighborhood and sees himself as a teacher of forgotten sounds. His store can transfer your records to digital format, but he'd much rather talk about the defunct, portable turntable in his display window.
"Analog is a really good sound," he says. "It's beautiful. It's warmth."
Back at Reckless, Hofer says crowds don't show up sometimes, even for popular groups, such as when The Brian Jonestown Massacre played in front of five people. But he's enthusiastic about the authentic music experience.
"There's not a lot of record stores left in general, so we try and make ours as special as possible."
LINKS:
Apple Store (North Michigan Avenue)
The Old School Records (Forest Park)
Permanent Records (Ukrainian Village)
Reckless Records (multiple locations)
Chicago Performance Poetry (Chicago Tribune)
"Fighting words: Checking in on the sass and spirit of the city's open-mic battlegrounds
Hiss, grunt, snap—become well-versed"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: On the Town
Date: April 4, 2008
Eternal poet laureate of Illinois Carl Sandburg said it from the jump of the 20th Century: My city can kick your city's butt. Just listen to the rusting, hulking lilt of Sandburg's "Chicago Poems" and you can hear a city set to brawl, a pugilist ready to hit the mark and make his name.
Our city still is ready for a tussle. A mix of ancient Greek ritual, Shakespearean bawdy groundling humor and Wild West saloon burlesque, Chicago's open-mic poetry spots appeal to a rowdy audience. Sandburg's boast bears fruit in this poetry scene that has its ups and downs yet keeps its fists up.
April is National Poetry Month, so it's a good time to check out the spirited events. If you go, be prepared for the "feminist hiss" from women in the crowd in reaction to anything sexist or wielded ironically, and the "masculine grunt" from guys getting Frankenstein-esque about lines that are instantly deemed good or bad. And if you hear stomping while delivering your verse, it's time to get better or get gone.
Poets like Carl Sandburg, Nelson Algren and Gwendolyn Brooks long ago articulated the essential myths of Chicago as a big-shoulders modernist, a city whose literary ballads to the working class define our profile every bit as skyscrapers set against Lake Michigan do. Through the first decade of the 21st Century, Chicago still stands tall as a square-jawed bard, with poetry like fighting words.
THE OLD DOGS
Hailed as the great grand-pappy of performance poetry, the Uptown Poetry Slam has been kicking at the Green Mill since 1987, the work of venerable SlamPapi Marc Smith, a construction worker who started the show in reaction to arrogant academic poetry. Bristling at the idea of having to have a degree or published work to be taken seriously as a poet, Smith brayed Sandburg-like with a big, fat "SO WHAT."
And that's how he continues to do the show—every time he says "I'm Marc Smith," the crowd joyously responds, "SO WHAT!" This and other such rituals surround the slam, like the snapping fingers and pounding feet that let a poet know the end is near, or the "feminist hiss" and "masculine grunt" from the audience that evaluate poetry on the spot.
"I always manage to make it new for myself," Smith says of hosting every single week. "I consider myself a servant to my audience." At a recent slam, Smith climbed the bar and scaled tables with signature crowd-busting vocal fanfare, backed by his Rootabaga jazz combo.
" 'Til I die," he says about slamming. "[I'll be] up there in a wheelchair doing the same old shtick." Smith invokes prairies and penthouses, smokestacks and neon skylines, littered in a long, quixotic free-verse line that feels like it could go on forever.
Competing for stage geriatrics and attitude, Weeds Tavern hosts a slam-style poetry harangue that will probably die about as hard as Smith. Weeds' arch-ritualized, bluest of Mondays includes zombielike repetition of the bar address plus the frequent, profanity-ridden refrain of just how much they "don't give a good ***damn."
Smith admits the zany stuff doesn't happen much anymore in Uptown, but Weeds Tavern is just the sort of poetry "Twilight Zone" to keep social disorder set to verse—it's a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood, a pub in search of a people. Like one of its handmade poster-broadsides reads, "Tricky, Turbulent, Tribal."
Bartender Sergio Mayora holds forth at the reading, where he's known to do the same two poems (penned in junior high) every week. Mixing aggressively juvenile anti-white protest with the equally adolescent observation that "we all came out of a hole" when we were born, Mayora declaims rapidly and robotically, usually because the crowd is busy rapping out lines from his greatest hits.
Host and Chicago poetry veteran Gregorio Gomez is a literary chameleon who regularly gets around town for Latino-themed readings at more sedate spots, but at Weeds he's all animal, with off-color jokes, remixed clichés, political punditry and off-the-wall, on-the-fly nonsense rattled out like a repo-lot bulldog howling at his own shadow.
Despite the irreverent performance style, Gomez says: "I stand for hundreds and hundreds of poets who will never be famous. I like to consider this still an underground poetry spot." Open-mic poets also get their few minutes to shine from out of Weeds' funky murk, answering the call of its carny-barking muse.
THE YOUNG TURKS
Gomez and Mayora claim poetry has been going on at Weeds since 1984, which would make it the main contender for longest-running series against the Uptown Slam. Back in the day they were buddies with Smith, even doing a few shows together before their huge personalities went in separate directions.
Like their elders, younger poets have cross-pollinated a few shows that carry the torch, especially with their openness to pure entertainment mixed in with the poetry. The '90s Chicago poetry scene hit a high point with various popular venues, and one of them yielded a slam team to compete against the vibe and verse of the Green Mill: Mental Graffiti.
Ebbing and flowing over the years, Mental Graffiti moved around venues mainly centered in Wicker Park, with a dedicated weekly hipster crowd and more of a hip-hop/urban-DJ atmosphere to match Uptown's jazz. Now in River West, the series has gone monthly, with a trio of organizers who got their chops in the spoken-word trenches around town.
Joel Chmara regularly pushes the envelope with über-ironic meta-commentary on poetry and the scene, and his self-deprecating Midwestern sort of Bob Newhart-style draws in the crowd. Chmara and co-organizer Tim Stafford work the Chicago social scene in general to draw "both cool people and poets" to Mental Graffiti. "New people we don't know show up," says Chmara, "a younger crowd and more of a party atmosphere, including an Arsenio Hall-style Dog Pound cheering section."
The multimedia PolyRhythmic arts collective has been doing an eclectic weekly open-mic in Wrigleyville for almost seven years, with roots in the old Mental Graffiti. The show—Safe Smiles—feels nicely tucked away from sports-bar-land, and yet the DJ sets, hosting and performances have a raucous, crowd-pleasing edge.
Collective member Drew Perfilio says they like to mix up the show with poets, musicians, clowns, comics and avant-garde madness.
MULTICULTURAL MISSION
Itself a monument to Chicago's greatest writers and literary achievements, The Guild Complex fosters the next generation of local poets through various programs, and its multicultural mission reaches out specifically to the Latino community with the monthly Palabra Pura series. Executive director Ellen Placey Wadey notes the need for a venue where Chicagoans who mix Spanish and English can enjoy bilingual poetry, the reason the Guild started the series in February 2006.
With definite community warmth, last month's Palabra Pura in the back-room lounge at the California Clipper featured local and touring poets, in addition to open-mic readings in English and Spanish, sometimes mixing the two. The roving series moves next to the Center on Halsted, with celebrated poets Lorna Dee Cervantes and Rigoberto Gonzalez.
In Rogers Park, poetry gets paced to the elevated train that hugs the Heartland Cafe and shoots sparks in symbolic praise of restless night. With slightly younger, 18-and-up energy, the wide-eyed literati darken the main dining room and share something between a drum circle and speech-and-drama squad experience.
Here at In One Ear may be our next great Chicago voice, struggling to the head of the sign-up list to get heard.
INFO
“In One Ear” open mic
Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m., $3, 18+
Heartland Café, 7000 N. Glenwood, 773-465-8005
Mental Graffiti
Third Mondays, 8 p.m., $5, 21+
Funky Buddha Lounge, 728 W. Grand, 312-666-1695
Palabra Pura reading series
Third Wednesdays, 8 p.m., free
Next event: April 16, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, all ages
PolyRhythmic Presents “Safe Smiles”
Tuesdays, 10:30 p.m., $3, 21+
Trace Lounge (upstairs), 3714 N. Clark, 773-477-3400
Uptown Poetry Slam
Sundays, 7 p.m., $6, 21+
Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 773-878-5552
Weeds Poetry
Mondays, 10 p.m., free, 21+
Weeds, 1555 N. Dayton, 312-943-7815
Alt-Latin Entertainment (Chicago Tribune)
"Latin entertainment offers plenty of options nowadays: Spanish karaoke, indie-rock dance parties, drag shows"
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: On the Town front cover
Date: February 29, 2008
Beyond salsa and regional music, Latino Chicago offers much more than typical sounds and styles associated with the community. Younger Latinos from diverse backgrounds are combining disparate pieces of local culture into sometimes wildly eclectic hybrids and unusual entertainments. Off the map and charting its own path, alternative Latino Chi-Town remixes tradition to fit new beats and fashions.
There's so much out there, if you dig a bit. Explore karaoke in Spanish, dancing to cumbia mixes and sassy drag shows. Here's a taste of Spanglish Second City:
THE DANCE MOVES
At 4, Hector Ivan Garcia led his first mariachi band on vocals. His truck-driving Tex-Mex dad met mom, who is from Monterrey, in Chicago, bringing echoes of rancheras and nortenas along the way.
Though he now fronts Latin rockers Descarga, Garcia is a self-described karaoke freak. Over years of gigging around town and seeing venues come and go on the Latino rock scene, he knows music fans are fiending to take the mic themselves and get their fix for three minutes of celebrity, like a mariachi or a pop dandy or a good old boy, Mexicano-style.
Every Thursday, Garcia hosts Karaoke en Español at Spot 6 in Lakeview. His promotions company, Enchufate, provides more than 1,500 song selections across the spectrum of Latino sounds, from Selena to Celia, salsa to Soda Stereo.
"We don't do English," he warns. No matter. The event draws regulars from around town, including Lakeview's off-the-clock Latino workforce, for a melange of rockers, rancheros, fresas (dandies) and retro New Wavers.
Spot 6 itself is a funky, artsy lounge, with a basement area featuring DJs during karaoke. From punk to bumpkin, Garcia says you'll see Mohawks dueling with cowboy hats.
"I can recommend this show to lots of different people -- my uncle, my friends, even college kids trying to learn Spanish."
For anyone trying to learn Spanish, "Enchufate" means "hook yourself up," as in "get connected with the scene." On First Saturdays at Spot 6, Enchufate presents Indiecent, a Latin alternative electro-indie-rock dance party, featuring DJ sets in English and Spanish, meant to plug people in to a progressive Latino party atmosphere.
At the February party, a packed Spot 6 split between R&B/urban club-goers in the basement and alt-Latino hipsters in the lounge, with a multiracial mix. Hosted by DJ Nando, the show also featured Eduardo Calvillo, from WLUW's popular Rock Sin Anestesia show.
Enchufate partner Sandra Treviño says the parties started in November as an offshoot of CD release events, because "there's so much more music out there than what gets typical airplay." Jumping from Ladytron to Kinky to Babasonicos to The Pinker Tones, February's set had about 300 people grooving, with friends moshing arm-in-arm and salsa-inspired hips hugging bass lines to create new blends of Latin dance.
Fusion and innovative flavors likewise inform the drink and DJ selections at Ñ, an Argentine-style restaurant-lounge on Elston Avenue from the owner of Tango Sur. Well off the beaten path of Latino Chicagoloand, Ñ presents DJ David Chavez on Thursdays with Latintronica, a blend of tango, Afro-Cuban, house, cumbia and alt-Latin remixes.
Born in Logan Square to Salvadoran parents and raised on Chicago house music, Chavez started spinning at parties in the '80s. After a trip to Cuba in the mid-'90s blew his mind with the discovery of son Cubano, Chavez became program director at HotHouse and got a chance to DJ for world-music audiences.
A recent set at Ñ switched from Puerto Rican bugalu to feverishly hot cumbia Colombiana to reggaeton, from classic Fania cuts to new Nacional Records tracks.
Chavez plans to include guest DJs and live musicians soon, to try out new approaches to Latin music. "This is a night for the discerning ear," he says, "for the person who wants to hear fresh, new alternatives to commercial salsa and merengue."
THE ROCK SHOW
On Friday nights near Midway Airport, rocker chicas with spiked hair in leg warmers and studded belts couples-dance to crazy merengue, bachata and cumbia mixes, because at Club Watra the dancing is just one menu item for a mainly Mexican crowd that comes to hear local bands play everything from ska to hip-hop to punk, in Spanish, at a once strictly Polish venue.
In Polish, "Watra" refers to a kind of campfire, though this club offers all the comforts: a sports-bar area, lounge and banquet-style concert hall. Promoter Leonardo Ibarra made inroads here a few years ago with his audio-visual company that rents out equipment. Working with promoters, bands and bars, Ibarra got the idea to put it all together. "Everybody goes to the North Side for entertainment and now we're doing this for the South Side."
Focused on local talent, Ibarra's shows also hook up touring bands from Latin America. A recent Watra show featured hip-hoppers Masakre Skuad, punkers Herencia de Zapata and Spanish ska by Malafacha, on the main stage, while DJ Alex Perez had booties moving to more typical Latin fare, free of charge, in the lounge. The event brought out roughly 300 people across subcultures -- Polish, American and Mexican.
Back on the beaten path, downtown's Excalibur is known for more conventional tastes, but Second Thursdays bring the local Latin rock scene to the Dome Room. Promoter Andres Meneses organizes the shows through his company, Latin Street Dancing.
He says, "It's very difficult to get people out to listen to Latino rock bands, at least local ones, and there's not a lot of opportunities for them."
His February show brought out nearly 100 people for bands 2012, Martires and headliner Damian Rivero -- a funk-flavored, pop singer-songwriter -- hosted by DJ Eduardo Calvillo. Meneses says the menu ranges "from Mexican metal bands to ska, rock and pop, everything but the tropical music."
THE DRAG SHOW
Alternative Latino entertainment seems to sprout wherever it can survive, and El Gato Negro Bar is that kind of survivor. Despite changing neighborhood demographics in west Lakeview and over-the-top urban legendry -- from word-of-mouth gossip to the Internet -- Gato Negro has been around for more than 20 years as Chicago's Latin transgender cantina.
Bar president Geraldine "Lua" Lambert came here from Sao Paolo, Brazil, to study at Loyola, and she has owned various properties around town. In 1986, she named this one The Black Cat in Spanish, because she's an animal lover. "Black cats look like panthers," she says. "They are very sexy and powerful."
So follows the ambience, from a jukebox that spins apropos tunes ("A Walk on the Wild Side," "Hey Big Spender," "Private Dancer" etc.), to the Latin "girls" who try to outdo each other at lip-syncing and vamping, to the raucous house band that bops between burlesque and straight-up jazz.
Despite its rough-around-the-edges look, Gato Negro really gets going near midnight, when all the glitz and glam revert to the regular girls who sign up to show off.
Lua describes the clientele as two distinct groups: young men who dress up as women and older white guys on the down-low who come to see them.
"A lot of the girls have very sad stories," Lua says, "because they're not accepted in their countries and they're discriminated against, but here they feel free and I never judge them."
The bar also throws birthday parties for regulars, with cake and arroz con pollo.
Lua has a no-cover-charge policy, even though an eclectic multicultural band plays Thursdays through Sundays. Events usually start late, but once it gets going, the vibe is like Russ Meyers movies and Spanish telenovelas, with costumes and choreography, to the tune of wild sax trills, Mexican polkas, bossa nova and blues.
Just about every night is a show of sorts, with a sleek black cat as spirit guide and feline green eyes that beckon you to stop by for a drink.
- - -
WHERE TO GO
Indiecent Latin Alternative Dance Party
Spot 6, 3343 N. Clark St.
First Saturdays, doors open 9 p.m.
No cover
http://www.enchufate.com
Karaoke en Español
Spot 6
Thursdays, open sign-up list at 10 p.m.
No cover
http://www.enchufate.com
Latintronica DJ Show
Ñ, 2977 N. Elston Ave.
Thursdays at 10 p.m.
No cover
773-866-9898
Latin Drag Shows and Live Music
El Gato Negro Bar, 1461 W. Irving Park Rd.
Drag queen lip-sync performances on Sundays at midnight, live jazz on Thursdays at 10 p.m., Latin combo Friday-Sunday at 10 p.m.
No cover
773-472-9353
http://www.elgatonegrobar.com
Latin Rock Fridays
Watra Night Club, 4758 S. Pulaski Rd.
Doors open at 9 p.m.
Cover charge varies
773-927-0710
http://www.myspace.com/sonidoninja
Latin Rock Saturdays
La Española Tapas Bar, 6543 W. Cermak Rd., Berwyn
Doors open 10 p.m.
Cover charge varies
708-788-7400
http://www.myspace.com/sonidoninja
Live Latin Rock presented by Latin Street Dancing
The Dome Room @ Excalibur, 632 N. Dearborn St.
Second Thursdays at 10 p.m.
$10 advance, $15 at the door
312-427-2572
http://www.latinstreetdancing.com
"BOMB THE WALLS"
Raza Aztlán turns taggers into muralists
“From one art form to another: bombing with spraycans to painting with brushes”
San Antonio Current, 28 May – 3 June 1998
Smoke from crops burning in Mexico brings the faint taste of pesticides on this steamy and overcast day. Mixing with the stench of a nearby fried chicken stand and the cigarettes five teens are smoking spray-paint laces the chemical fuzz in the air like icing.
Aerosol ball bearings smack together and paint hisses out onto the walls of a factory skeleton — the remains of a building off Military Drive, a husk of labor right down to a rusted time clock card file. The teens are admiring their work. Ranging from 15 to 17 years old, they have names like Kaze, Nome, Shek, and Kaes — tags that sound good to them and look striking on a wall.
“It’s better than the names gangsters come up with, like Snoopy, Payaso, or Sir Loc Dog,” says Nome, who’s touching up a piece and experimenting with his new tag, “Jents.” He specializes in wildstyle — indecipherably wicked, explosive, wraparound typeface that could confound graphic designers. “You make it for other [graffiti] writers to understand, not for the norms,” explains Shek.
Another crew member, Case, arrives to check on his throw-up (a wildstyle tag with bubble letters), but his almost-finished piece has been crossed out with a single scrawling blue line. He’s not happy at all and thinks he knows who did it, while Shek looks at one of his pieces he has dismissed by painting a bulging revolver to the side with action lines that make it look as if it’s shooting out his name.
“It’s blasting my tag,” Shek says, “’cause I thought it was wack after I did it.” Shek’s an artist of principle — he’ll only battle on walls, not with fists. Except for the random drama that happens every now and then in unknown territory. He points at a warning tag: “No wall beef. Physical beef. Toy fucken ediot [sic].” Laughing, Shek says his boy wrote that as a threat of physical revenge against those who crossed him out.
Believe it or not, Shek and these other teens are on their way to doing something less dangerous and more legal, and the beat-up white van that pulls in across a prickly field is here to transport them from one art form to another, from bombing with spraycans to painting with brushes.
ARTS ACTIVISM
Cruz Antonio Ortiz drives the ’69 Chevy, and he looks a lot like a 25-year-old version of the teens in back — paint flecks on his clothes and all. The growling engine and bumpy alignment knock objects around on the dash, including a worn copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This is a major part of what he does for his group, Raza Aztlán: driving around, scouting for taggers he can recruit to work on legal, commissioned, graffiti-incorporating murals. The organization is non-profit, though it has no official 501c3 status yet. It began as a spin-off from the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center (Ortiz is a board member), under which Raza Aztlán applies for grants.
Raza Aztlán is trying to get on its feet as a separate organization focused on mural projects, as well as ’zine-writing, experimental art workshops, and the Coatl program, which helps teens get into college. While Ortiz, his wife Rina Moreno, and their friend Laura Hernandez founded the group, he stresses that they include the youth in all decisions, right down to financial reports, so that they’ll feel like the organization is theirs.
“The thing with graffiti artists,” Ortiz admits when we arrive, “is it’s hard to have a set schedule with them, so it’s like when they come, we’ll have five or six, and the next day we could have 20, 25, all from different gangs who hate each other. But we get them to sit down and tell them, look, we all have something in common: we’re all Mexican-American or Latino, and we all live in a working-class or low-income environment. Let’s start working on these things and express ourselves on walls with murals.”
While the teens go across the street to practice on canvas, Laura Hernandez recounts how the group came together through the three founders. At 29, Hernandez was raised on the northwest side. “I grew up very sheltered,” she recounts, describing her clean, family-oriented neighborhood. “The culture I grew up in was more Americanized.”
After graduating from Incarnate Word High School in 1987, she noticed the neighborhood start to change, with more tags, noise, and police patrolling. “It seemed like our neighborhood was becoming more and more isolated,” Hernandez remembers. She started spending more time on the South Side and worked as a case manager for three years at the Center for Health Care Services. In 1994 she started graduate school in social work at Our Lady of the Lake, where she met Moreno and helped start Raza Aztlán.
“Looking back on my childhood, I think I grew up with a certain perspective that these kids are bad, that these kids are wasting their time and they obviously don’t care about what’s happening to them and they’re destroying their neighborhood. It took me a long time to realize…There’s a lot of good kids trying to change their situation who can’t — they need to find ways to express themselves. It’s just going to take time to reach these kids and build trust.”
Her first try at community work with Moreno came in the fall of 1995. Moreno heard about a truce between West Side gangs, and so they decided to take advantage of the peace to keep gangs from fighting again. Independent of their studies, they got together with Ortiz and met with youth at a basketball court on Trinity Street.
“We had a rough time starting, because we didn’t have any foundation to go from,” says Moreno, “and we even had a little event at that basketball court, and hardly any youth showed up.” They kept trying, which is typical of the group’s determination and specifically Moreno’s driven vision.
Moreno, 25, claims the far West Side and their current home on the East Side as her neighborhoods. Moreno’s single mother worked as a program coordinator at the San Antonio State Hospital, as she has for the past 20 years, and she used to come home frustrated when she thought people acted wrongly at work.
“I felt like it wasn’t fair, what my mom would tell me, and I thought somebody should be accountable,” Moreno says. “I always said I was gonna grow up and basically, I guess in my own little mind, save the world from all these unjust things.”
As an angry young teen at John Jay High School, Moreno dressed differently and drew jokes from teachers. “Youth always feels misunderstood, because nobody’s really willing to listen to you.” She graduated at 16 and went directly to St. Mary’s University, finishing college in 1993 and meeting Ortiz that year when she joined Inner City Development. He was working on a mural project, and Moreno wanted grassroots experience with low-income neighborhoods. “We both had a lot of similar ideas about the community and our people, and I guess that attracted us to each other.”
In August of 1996 they named their work “Raza Aztlán,” and they have worked with teens ever since. The organization has moved wherever they found themselves, including the inner city northwest side. They are on the East Side now, drawn by the inner-city setting and the lack of community centers or mural projects for teens on this side of town. And her grandparents’ house is right across the street, where it has been for 50 years.
“Cruz was doing murals,” Moreno recounts, “and a lot of the youth involved were doing graffiti, and we thought maybe there would be an interest in the art. We figured, let’s do murals with the youth and exercise their interest in art by making it more productive, so they get into less trouble, and then there’s a pride that comes along with the images they’re presenting. It’s also about improving the face of the community, the image that we have. You know, we got boarded up houses, graffiti everywhere, you got streets that look really bad…I think that Raza Aztlán can help make the rest of the community look better.”
Since Raza Aztlán has no budget except for mural commissions and fundraiser money, Moreno works with the San Antonio Police Department Victims Advocacy Section, responding to domestic violence calls with a community-policing officer. “I’m not an artist,” she admits, “I’m a social worker, and that’s my interest in this — taking graffiti artists, and instead of being so hard on them, being punitive, and putting them in juvenile detention centers and taking them down a negative road, let’s take them down a positive road. And at the same time, it brings pride to the community.”
A loud cracking sound from outside interrupts, and Moreno gasps: “We just heard a gunshot…did you hear that? I’m going to call 911.” She gets on the phone as Ortiz walks over to their new studio space.
TAG TALK
Kaze, Nome, Shek, and Kaes are sketching with markers on paper, as they do before they hit up a wall. They claim membership along with 20 or so other taggers in the CDS crew, which stands for as many things as they can conceive: Criminals Down South, Calling Da Shots, Creating Dope Shit. “Caca, Doodoo, Shit,” jokes Shek.
Traveling to Raza Aztlán headquarters from the Palo Alto neighborhood on the South Side, they have been working with the group for only a few months, and so they’re a rowdy bunch compared to the more seasoned teens who worked with Ortiz on the group’s first two murals.
Kaes tells the story of sitting at a Taco Bell after bombing some trains when Ortiz walked up to him because he had paint smears all over. “He asked me if I was a tagger, and I thought he was a cop, but he said he wasn’t and he could hear the cans in my bag. He said he wanted me to work on murals with him and mix spray paint into it.”
While they haven’t used brushes yet, these guys know the difference in paints by eyesight, just like they can immediately distinguish gang tags from graffiti art, which is done for art’s sake as opposed to marking territory. And scratch bombers — they call them scribers — who mark windows with razors are distinct altogether.
When asked if CDS mainly tags or bombs — if they focus on quick name tags as opposed to more elaborate wildstyle bombs that sometimes carry pictures and figures — Shek answers, “a little bit from column A, and a little bit from column B.”
Shek puts together a slap tag, a small piece of graffiti art with his and the crew’s names plus a lanky, stylized figure in baggy clothes and the label “One Cool Dork” that’s been marker-painted onto a sticker, which can be quickly slapped onto a surface. Shek appraises his own work and concludes, “I don’t know, it’s kinda wack.”
They get their spraypaint through legal-aged buyers. A full piece can cost $20-$30 worth of paint and take up to six hours to complete. Nome says he’s working with Raza Aztlán because of the constant threat of getting busted.
“Here, we get to practice, there’s free paint, and we don’t have to worry about the cops harassing us.” But they still plan on tagging, especially downtown. “When you go downtown and meet other writers,” says Nome, “they’re like, ‘oh yeah, I’ve seen your stuff, you get up a lot.’ It makes me feel good.”
As their fame with other writers increases, their infamy in the community and with the police brings them back to the reality that they are wanted as criminals. “It’s a thrill when you know you’re getting chased,” Nome admits. “You get an adrenaline rush. At first it’s scary when you’re running, you’re like, ‘oh shit, what do I do?’ But then afterwards, when you got away, you’re pumped up. It’s a high. That’s if you don’t get busted,” Shek adds.
Finished with the sketches, they practice can control against a wooden canvas, and the air fills with thick Krylon coating. “Sometimes, like especially when it’s really hot outside bombing,” Kaes says between spray bursts, “the sun gets to you an you got the spray paint into you already, you start walking and feel all weak.”
Shek pulls out a plastic baggie with fat and think spraycan tips. “Factory tips are weak — they mess up too much.” They compare tags and talk about different styles that have come and gone, like in 1993 when the fad was to go gangster. “That really messed up tagging,” comments Nome, “and now even gangsters try to use our style and tag like us.” Kaes points out that “gangsters can’t be taggers. Gangsters have guns — our guns are Krylon cans.”
THE FIRE OF HOPE
Ortiz pulls up with the van to take the group on a survey of Raza Aztlán murals, and he talks about the advantages of pushing graffiti into legal formats. “We tell them, look, these are skills, you’re learning painting skills, so you can get a painting job or whatever you want. We also teach them silk-screening, to make T-shirts they can sell. That’s empowerment. Not just cultural or self-esteem building — it’s also about economics. We need to develop something where our artists are gonna get paid.”
After a quick drive, he parks at Zarzamora and Cincinnati so we can see “La Lumbre de Esperanza,” started in 1996 and completed in 1997. Painted on a taxidermy shop, the mural depicts an indigenous woman reaching out to Mexican men and women enclosed by a concrete wall and boxed in by buildings.
The second mural, completed late last year, sits behind a gas station at West Avenue and Olmos. In Aztec motif, it’s titled “Quinto Sol,” with the four elements represented and spraypaint accenting the blues of the water spirit, cloud shading, and the orange-red of Quetzalcoatl.
Ortiz worked with the surrounding businesses and neighbors to approve this mural. Sometimes he has to reign in the taggers: “I tell them, look at that! It’s not a corporate office, it’s a simple business, a mom and pop shop. They’re just barely surviving, and you doing that, you’re disrespecting them. Do you like it when people scratch out your stuff? No. Well, then, let’s have some respect.”
Ortiz walks around to a house behind the gas station and emerges with Roy Carrillo, who started tagging when he was 12 and worked on the “Quinto Sol” mural. At 17, he claims he’s done with tagging, though the gas station management let him put some pieces up on their back wall with the UTM (“Up to Mischief”) crew tag. Carrillo quit tagging a year ago because it’s boring to him now and he got busted too many times.
Given his talent, it’s good he won’t face imprisonment. One of his pieces bears the title “Deceived Since Conceived,” and a squirming, mangled figure with a ripped umbilical cord dramatically carries his tag. “Tagging is getting too old, and everybody’s doing it, like a fad,” he mentions impassively.
“You can lecture kids all you want,” Ortiz adds, “you can make laws, you can make codes, but they’re going to come out and do it again. I’ve seen it. Some of them straight off tagged again after getting out of jail, and of course they got busted and went back. But then we have some who did stop, and now they’re going to San Antonio College, like Roy. That’s our reward.”
As he’s walking away, Ortiz reflects on the hope Raza Aztlán bears: “I know some of them say that ‘I’m always gonna tag,’ and the structure of graffiti art is based on risk. But the thing is, that’s endangering our communities. Raza Aztlán is at the borderline — we’re trying to get the community to understand them, and them to understand the community. We tell them they shouldn’t do it, but you can tell them a million times, and they’ll still do it. We have to keep working with the youth instead of rejecting them like everybody else does.”
Bible Thumping the Gangbangers
"The new blood-soaked theatrics of that old-time religion splatter Benjamin Ortiz."
A young Latin loco, sagging x-large, steps with attitude up to the local rock dealer. Recognizing his customer, the dopeman pulls a sack from his pocket and shakes it like a dinner bell. "My man, Joker," he croons, "look what I saved for you special." Joker strikes a defiant pose as his homeboy creeps up behind with a drawn shotgun. "Your crew blasted my boy the other night," Joker snarls. "It's payback time, punk!" BOO-YA!
The shotgun explodes, dusting the dopeman. The audience breaks out in screams, cheers, killer thrills. Joker runs off, right when Satan and his black-robed minions arrive to haul the fresh soul away. "Help me, Jesus, forgive my sins! Aiiiieeeee!" dopeman howls. "TOO LATE!" someone in the audience roars, and the crowd busts up laughing.
Just another day in the 'hood? More like a taste of "Inner City Madness," a performance staged last Friday night by Victory Outreach ministries, a Humboldt Park Pentecostal group. Passing through a metal detector at the Kelvyn Park High auditorium, I notice that the boyz working security are all ex-bangers and knuckle-heads turned Christian. Homeboy waves me through, and I spot the placazo (tattoo) between thumb and index finger. The crowd of mostly Latino and African-American teens fills the 1,300-seat venue beyond capacity. An R&B combo on stage wails holy hype, and many respond with singing and clapping. After a call for prayer, ministers take the mic and shout out tales of prostitution, drug addiction, gang-banging, broken families, and hopelessness: "I tried everything – PCP, marijuana, heroin, LSD – but I was lost until I found the Lord." Cheers, hands lift to the heavens in praise. A Christian hip-hop set bombs the bass. "God's the original 'G'! Jesus Christ in tha houuuuuuse!" Two youngsters belt out a flow of street knowledge about the saving powers of Christ, and the divine fly-girls rip it up.
Then the play starts: BOOM! opens a cycle of violence and addiction, spiced with real weapons discharging blanks, building to a Tarantino-esque standoff between enemy thugs. When a minister breaks the tension with a Bible thrown between gun barrels, the gangs finally submit to the Gospel. Laura P. Sánchez of Victory Outreach says the play's goal is "to revive hope through Jesus as Savior." But doesn't the spectacle appeal to violent emotions with its depiction of gunplay? "You have to relate to the crowd by going to their level," she answers. The audience whoops as Satan carts away more freshly buckshot ghosts.
I leave with permanent hearing damage. But the voice of one character echoes in my mind: "What do you want, preacher? I can't read or write! All I know is the gun!" And I wonder if anyone else noticed that Jesus never appeared to answer that question.
—by Benjamin Ortiz
NewCity 9 November 1995
The Bicycle Thieves
"Cutting crew: Benjamin Ortiz tracks down a ring of professional bike heisters."
An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art style emperor."
--St. Augustine, "The City of God"
A repetitive techno beat pulses synthetic energy as three little hoodlums cruise a desolate North Side residential stretch at 4am. After a few hours of party-hopping and hitting forty-ouncers, it's time to settle some accounts. Chavo passes a joint to Kief in the backseat when he spots the target he has been looking for all night, and with a quick hand signal he motions to the driver. "What's up?" Smoke asks, pulling the ride into slow motion. And then at once they detect what Chavo's eagle eye picked out from beneath the shadows: a state-of-the-art Gary Fisher 24-speed with suspension shocks and top-line gearshift, locked to a yard fence. As they creep by, Chavo eyeballs the prize and reaches his hand out for the boys to lay five on him. "Hell yeah!" Kief nods his head with smoked-out enthusiasm. "You got infra-red eyes, bro! That shit is just asking for us to take it to the bank!"
I ride my bicycle through a labyrinthine wasteland of Chicago's industrial husk to an address I secured only after calling three voice-mail boxes, finally getting the mumbled directions from Pee-Wee, an "associate" of the boys. At the end of a deserted cul-de-sac, I find the action: a crumbling, stuccoed two-story house pumps with bass, booming through my bike frame from a block away. I roll up, and older teens check me out from a lopsided porch. Some form a smoking ring on the ledge, and a few couples go back to making out. Walking my bike through the rusty, crooked gate and up the sidewalk, I greet a few mad-do stares with "What's up?" Smoke snaps out of his tobacco meditations and stands up from a slouched low-rider lawn chair. "What's up?" he echoes as he plods past the people on the steps. "Where should I put my ride?" I ask. He sizes my bike up with roaming eyes. "Just set it by the fence, dog, ain't nobody here gonna take it." I don't know if I should feel assured or insulted at his bottom-line evaluation, but I secure the bike and he escorts me into he house party.
Smoke and two friends he grew up with, Kief and Chavo, form the core of a veteran bike-thief posse. Many of their pals at the party have gone on runs with them or manage their own theft crews. Smoke and his buddies see nothing wrong with a little friendly competition; through their network of "associates," they are able to farm out merchandise and keep sales flowing. Soon after I approached Smoke with the idea of writing a story on his crew, he called me back and said, "The boys figure you can help us out with PR." And so they invited me to check out their warehouse during peak party time for a conversation about the biz.
Smoke and I walk up to the front door and a solid mountain of a man named Smiley waves us through with an impassive, slight nod. "At $3 a head, we're gonna clear $600 tonight after expenses," Smoke explains with a hint of pride. We walk into a front room decorated with chipped paint, random graffiti tags and strobes, through layers of groove throbbing from the turntables and mixer, as a sweaty crowd shakes their asses to booty-call house music. Smoke hails and slaps five on nearly everyone along the way to the kitchen, where Kief and Chavo are maxing and relaxing. With a lazy grin, Chavo nods toward the back door, where the four of us retreat for some shop talk.
The boys circle back around the block, Smoke all the while scratching his chin and calculating balance sheets in his head: "I'd say approximately $1,200 retail, and I can push it for $600, which comes to $200 each, plus whatever commission I can pull in off the customer." Chavo smells a paycheck. "Let's do this," Kief confirms, pulling a pair of Kmart bolt cutters from under the seat. The techno vibe crescendoes into hard acid chaos as Chavo's sticky fingers flex. He bobs his head with the electric rush he feels for the job at hand.
On the back porch, Kief pins my arms behind my back while Chavo frantically pats me down. "You got a wire? YOU GOT A WIRE?" Kief says, and they bust up laughing. "Just kidding," Chavo adds. "We know you ain't no McGruff Crime Dog, G." At twenty years of age, Chavo is the informal leader of his crew and the first to have gotten into bike theft. He started a year ago when some friends with mutual interests decided they were tired of having raggedy-assed bikes and wanted "the dope rides." Kief, now 18, got into the life when he saw what Chavo was doing and wanted a piece of the action. Together, they've heisted seventy-five bikes in a year without getting caught, spotted or snitched on. "The first job I pulled was at night in the Lincoln Park area," Chavo remembers, "and I didn't even know if bolt cutters would work, but they did the trick sho' 'nuff. The procedure was standard, and I rode away with some piece of shit I thought was fresh. But it was worth only $200 retail, tops."
Chavo laughs at his amateur days of snatching chump change. "It all started out as fun, but it became less a game and more a way to solve financial problems. Snatching bikes helped bail out my family for doctor bills, rent and such when regular work didn't pay jack." Discovering the profit potential, Chavo and Kief educated themselves to increase the return on their labor and risk. "We asked questions at bike stores and read magazines to find out the most expensive frames and components -- it was like research, except not for some bullshit book report," Chavo says. "It's a job I do every now and then for money, but I still do it for fun, for the rush I get out of it." Kief confirms "the rush," a natural adrenaline kick from the dexterity and danger involved.
Smoke, 19, never got into the thrill of snatching, but found his niche as the group's business and sales manager. He still goes on runs with them every now and then to help sniff out high-profit targets. Smoke gives his job title as "middleman, expert in the distribution of new properties." Smoke sometimes posts flyers to sell a bike, telling the customer he has to trade in his favorite one for school money. His usual practice, though, is to find a buyer through word of mouth. He explains how the boys cut the retail price of their wares in half for sale, so if Smoke goes on the run he gets his equal cut plus whatever extra the customer is willing to pay. "You've been skimming off the top!" Chavo breaks in with exaggerated anger, reaching into his coat pocket like he's pulling out a piece. Smoke laughs. "Nah, the mark-up is my commission for the extra sales work I do," he says. "No matter what, though, the customer always gets a good deal."
The car pulls up with its lights off half a block from the merchandise, and Smoke keeps the engine idling. Kief and Chavo close the doors quietly and exit with a firm pace, all the while looking up and down the street for John Does and Five-O's. Nothing's going on here, officer, just two youths in hoodies and baggy gear power-walking with a large set of bolt cutters between them. Chavo plants himself next to a tree just off the sidewalk in front of the yard, blending into the darkness, and Kief moves in on the goal."
Chavo breaks it down: "We usually scope out bikes just before sundown, so we don't waste any time at a rack trying to find the right model. Then we snatch between eleven at night and 1am, or from four to six in the morning. Spotting the bike can take the most time, but the actual job takes two, three minutes tops." With a one-time expense for bolt cutters, the crew prefers the lock-crunching method to freon. "Hydraulic jacks are also good for breaking U-locks, but we never try to pull locked bikes off traffic signs, 'cause then you still have to transport the bike and break the lock anyway," Chavo says. The crew can take on most anti-theft devices except certain U-locks -- like the Kryptonite New York -- and some fiber O-locks. If a lock cannot be broken, the mission is aborted. "Which is cool," Chavo says, smiling, "because sometimes we can take valuable components anyways, mix and match them with good frames we have in stock."
The three say they never would beat down some unsuspecting cyclist and snatch a bike by force. "That's fucked-up man," Chavo says. "And unprofessional," Smoke adds. "My parents wouldn't approve of what I do, even though I do it for them lotsa times," Kief clarifies. "But if they hadn't brought me up with the right morals, I probably would be socking fools in the face and jacking bikes by crude strength -- but that shit's deep and only gets deeper." Chavo shakes his head. "Ruthlessness, what you're talking about."
Kief sets the bolt cutters aside as he glances at the two-story duplex some twenty-five feet away. No lights, no sounds. Then his eyes feast on the chalice. The front wheel is quick-release, of course, and a Kryptonite Sport secures both wheel and frame to the chain-link fence. Kief pulls out a pocket knife and takes thirty seconds to strip rubber away from the bolt-and-key part of the U-lock. Once a bare, vulnerable strip of metal is visible near the lock mechanism, Kief stashes the knife and steadies the jaws of the bolt cutters on the lock. With one of the cutter grips firmly resting against the ground, Kief starts to push with all his weight against the opposite grip, and the lock groans slightly under the pressure. But then a sharp, quick whistle pierces his ears, and he pulls the cutters away. Chavo has just noticed a car turning a corner two blocks south and moving in on the spot, so he and Kief disappear under the tree. Smoke, too, ducks down in the driver's seat. Headlights close in on the getaway ride.
When I ask Chavo if he'd ever buy a stolen bike, he looks at me sideways, unimpressed. "Depends on the price, dog." Kief and Smoke bust up laughing. But how would Chavo feel if someone stole his bike? "Actually, some parts did get taken off my bike once," he says. "Fuck it, there's enough to go around." Kief and Smoke nod in agreement. And then I drop the bomb: What would you say to people who think you're wrong for stealing, for taking what's not yours and what you didn't work for? Chavo and Kief hedge for a while, like they're looking around for an answer to pop up. "I guess I'd say they're right," Chavo finally says in a flat tone. "Basically, it's bad what we're doing," Kief agrees, "but I don't do it for drugs or high-profiling, just for the money, for shit I need." Smoke, silent all the while, shakes his head. "Nah, bro, what we're doing is redistributing wealth, 'cause the way I see it, some fool who has a $1,000 bike isn't hurting for rent and bills like us. Straight up." After Smoke speaks the virtues of converting private property into communal resource, he works another angle. "Put it to you this way, since you're a straight John Doe who pays his taxes and obeys the Constitution and all that bullshit, not like us illegal motherfuckers -- there's people taking you for your livelihood every day and lying to you about it to your face, dog! Highway robbers in suits and government gangsters using your money to kill Gs like me worldwide! And then somebody gonna act like I'm a little maggot for taking what I need to help my moms 'cause she doesn't have a fuckin' gold card? Shiiit..."
The car zooms by without incident, and Smoke sits up to see brake lights in the distance. Chavo crawls back to his post, and Kief wastes no time working at the lock. The cutter jaws crunch it open in no time, and Kief pulls the broken corpse away from his new toy as Chavo strides over, collecting both the shattered lock and the bolt cutters. At once, Kief mounts the Gary Fisher and kicks away from the scene, Chavo walks back to the car and Smoke shifts the engine into "drive." Kief disappears down a side street into an alley. Chavo and Smoke five each other as the car lights come back on, congratulating themselves on a nice, clean job well done. The easy part now is to rendezvous with Kief at the checkpoint, stash the goods and maybe hit a rave. It's OE 800 time.
"Bicyclists' Golden Rule:
Never buy a stolen bike."
--"Bike Cult," David Perry
Bike Thieves' Golden Rule:
Greed will fuck you up.
The party still bumps with diabolical mixing, and it looks like the boys are anxious to get stupid on the dance floor, so I ask to see their warehouse of goods before we break off the interview. "Right this way," Smoke announces, more than happy to showcase the fruits of their labor. He leads me into the kitchen and through a bolted, padlocked door down into a musty, post-apocalyptic basement. Carefully stepping down a splintered wooden stairway, I ask Chavo if he sees a future for himself in bike burglary. "I'll definitely never look at a bike the same way," he answers, as we walk through a boiler room up to another bolted door. Do you think you'll ever graduate to grand theft, like jacking expensive cars?" I ask. "There he goes with that corrupt shit again," Kief breaks in, laughing. Chavo smiles, but then responds seriously. "We're strictly bikes -- nothing more, nothing less. We leave other markets to the experts."
We finally reach a cramped, low-ceilinged crevice which serves as the graveyard of broken locks: Gorillas, Pyramids, ATBs, the Club for Bikes. (Kief evaluates the Club: "What a fuckin' joke!") In the opposite corner rest fifteen bicycles. Specialized Rock Hoppers, Gary Fishers, a Mongoose, GTs, Treks. My guides give me a rundown of the prices and stories attached to each model. "Here's one I got with some serious rookies," Kief snaps. "I pretty much go out with Chavo and others I can trust to do the job right, but I've been out with some wannabes who fuck up a lot." Kief blazes a few tales about "busters who punk out on a job right when it's happening." Some super-rookies specialize in taking bikes from people caught "slipping," like when someone leaves only the quick-release wheel locked but not the frame.
"This one time," Kief recounts, "some shorties I went with spent fifteen minutes playing around on one rack until they got this bike right here, and then they wanted another one from the same rack!" Chavo adds his contempt, "Yeh, that was bullshit right there. Rookies are rookies, meaning they fuck up, but greediness is one thing I do not tolerate when I go out on a run. Aside from leaving evidence behind, getting greedy is the worst mistake you can make." I'm confused. What's the difference between "bringing in bank" and being greedy? "Somebody who gets greedy can pick up two nice bikes in one night want to go for more just 'cause they can make mad money for a new CD player or whatever," Chavo answers. "I mean, there's a lot of bikes out there and a lot of people snatching them, but greed is not called for." Kief agrees: "We do it so we don't have to struggle so much, not for fresh gear and jewelry. The guy who gets greedy keeps thinking, 'Yeah, just one more bike, and I can get cable!' But that one more bike can make you sloppy and get you in trouble." Chavo sums it up: "After you score some valuable merchandise, you just have to relax or it will go to your head. Greed will fuck you up."
Smoke brings the conversation back to biz. "So what you think?" Sounds like a proposition. "I saw the Acapulco Giant you rolled up on, and it looks like you could afford to upgrade, my brother." More laughs, but then Smoke turns to me and flashes a grin. "Nothing wrong with a test ride, eh?"
—by Benjamin Ortiz
NewCity 23 November 1995
Chicago Latin Rock
The boys of Kardoid play music from their ranchera-loving parents' nightmares. Mostly Mexican-American teenagers native to Chicago, these four up-and-coming rockers prefer Slipknot and Molotov -- bands that can sound like planes taking off in their Midway Airport neighborhood -- instead of the rural ballads and bandas of México lindo y querido. But when I telephoned guitarist Ivan Duarte at home, his mom answered excitedly in Spanish that he was busy practicing, as she passed the phone through a wash of feedback and amp distortion. "They really don't like the music we play," Duarte says of his family's more traditional tastes. "But now that we're getting attention, they have a little more respect for what we're trying to do."
In a city bred on blues, where immigrant-descent musicians might make more money playing regional music from the motherland at cotillions and weddings, a rock invasion has been cooking (literally) in Latin kitchens around town since the late-'90s. Balancing underground cred and word-of-mouth publicity with a strong web presence, Chicago Latinos have put together their own tight-knit network of indie radio shows, Mexican-restaurant rock venues, e-'zines (www.tepoch.com), and rockero tiendas vending paraphernalia and spreading news about shows. With a cable-access program in the works, the scene continues to reach beyond neighborhood, musical category, and linguistic frontiers that once kept choices limited to a few touring shows at the same venue every year. Now, Latin rock is in the Loop.
In a desolate area near a "chicken shack" bar at Lake and Halsted, Rooster Blues & Bar-B-Q (www.roosterblues.net) used to bill itself as "the only blues club in the West Loop area." Now, the Rooster can claim fame as the most centrally located professional venue for Latin rock in town. Owner Rufus McCullum built the club in 1999, from a cold-cut factory and print shop where he set up two stages, wooden benches and bar stools, exposed-brick decor, and a kitchen serving barbecue and shrimp. Turns out that the blues did not draw enough throughout the week, so McCullum diversified the calendar, which he is still tweaking with underground hip-hop, house music, Chicago Samba, and blues-rock. When Rooster cook and booking manager Francisco Villa suggested rock-en-español, McCullum was skeptical. "We still want something more like cumbias and salsa, for people to dance to," says McCullum, "but we finally tried the Spanish rock [starting in November], because that's what Francisco likes, and it's working out."
McCullum doesn't like everything he hears on Saturday nights, but the weekly shows have so far drawn a growing crowd for four bands per night that typically mix it up, from industrial-goth to speed metal to garage rock. Promoter Antonio Cordova -- a 21-year-old Ace Hardware worker called "Vampiro" because of his strangely sharp canine teeth -- has been working shows at La Justicia Restaurant and Rooster from the get-go, building on his experience throwing high-school house-parties in his basement at home near Midway. He appreciates McCullum's gamble on Latin rock and loves the venue for its pro sound system and capacity.
Band managers and musicians alike tend to consider Rooster a coup for its setup and location ñ a near-downtown club that takes bands outside of well-worn grooves at such places as La Justicia Restaurant (www.justiciarestaurante.com), a beachhead for local Latin rock at 3901 W. 26th. Though the place is not set up for rock shows, Cordova has managed to squeeze usually four bands and a standing-room-only crowd every Friday night into the first floor area of the eatery, which has a full-service dining area on the second-floor that also caters to Latinos by screening boxing and soccer matches. Meanwhile, downstairs, such local favorites as Zamandoque Tarahum have been known to incite crowd surfing that pushes the capacity of La Justicia beyond your average taqueria. La Justicia has been central to the local scene, for its recognition and location in the community and for allowing all-ages shows.
Similarly, Los Cazos Restaurant started to showcase bands on Saturdays in late 2001, at 5945 W. Fullerton, usually starting at 9:30 p.m. for a $7 cover. More typical club-shows popped up subsequently on Saturdays at Rooster and Club PM (in "The Dirty Worm Room" rock corner) on 2047 N. Milwaukee. Restaurant-style venues continue to be popular, though, with new weekly shows spilling out into the south suburbs: Pepe's in Calumet City (943 River Oaks Dr.) and El Cortez in Blue Island (13414 Western Av.). Instead of mariachis strumming margarita-sipping traditional music, places like La Justicia are forging new connections between casa, cocina, and cultura. "Even white people are showing up at La Justicia these days," says Cordova.
For example, Evergreen Park guitarist/songwriter Larry Kahn couldn't stand the heat, so he went to the kitchen. With a history of collaborating on Christian Spanish rock projects, Kahn says he used to play mostly in English-language venues, but he prefers the respectful reception from such spots as La Justicia. With nods to classic and grunge rock, his band Loner is not particularly Latino (with white, Asian, and black musicians) but enjoys the benefits of assimilation as a spin-off from locals Biblia Negra. On Saturday, February 2nd, Kahn and musicos from as far away as Aurora converged on Rooster for the first major "Expo" of local Latino bands that have been involved in the recently developing scene.
With an egalitarian spirit based on a sense of community, the Expo lineup was the result of a lottery drawing that randomly assigned a 30-minute spot to each band participating. Using Rooster's twin stages advantageously for quick set-up and transitions, the Expo proved to be a shotgun-sampler of the various tastes, languages (Spanish or English, and in some cases both), and styles that mingle within the local scene -- bands that are just as likely to cover The Who as JuanGa. Starting at 4:30 in the afternoon and going on until the wee hours of the morning, the "Expo" drew more than 800 in attendance for $10 entry to see 20 bands and to shop at tables set up with CDs and t-shirts from rock shops located on the South and West Sides and in Rogers Park.
30-year-old manager Sandra Treviño -- who grew up listening to norteño, classical Mexican trios, and Tejano -- summed up her band Descarga and the scene when she said, "There are so many styles that it doesn't even make sense to categorize it all as just Spanish rock." As the show lurched forward with only minor technical problems and set-up tangles, Treviño conducted interviews on video in the Rooster chill-out lounge for a cable-access show she's putting together called "E.N.E. (Errores No Eliminados)," while jewelry-makers hawked wares in the crowd and low-profile bootleggers handed out flyers with CDs available for pirate recording and sale ("La pirateria es buena"). The bands, more than can be recaptured here, included:
Alebrije: Classic '80s-metal instrumental licks dueled with Ronnie James Dio-esque vocal delivery when this band took stage, and though their music made it seem like the last 22 years of hard-rock evolution had disappeared, it was a juicer for the crowd. Typical of young Latin tastes, that '80s sound never went out of style.
Descarga: With a clean, focused effort, this quartet of Chicago-born Mexican-Americans contrasts elements of international pop-flavored vocals against harder-edged rhythms. With a gig at NYC's 2001 Latin Alternative Music Conference under their belt, Descarga capture bits of the Chicago alter-Latino psyche with the savor of Caifanes and Foo Fighters. (www.descargazone.com)
El Guapo: The live backing band for local hip-hoppers Los Marijuanos, El Guapo boast a diverse list of venues and lineups, including a spot with Survivor, .38 Special, and Night Ranger in South Barrington a few years ago. With a straightforward pop/rock-in-Spanish sound, they've found their way onto Mancow and Q101. Guitarist/vocalist Mike Lopez was instrumental in organizing the first Spanish rock showcase at last year's MOBfest -- this year they plan to expand to three.
Kardoid: This rookie band's sound is raw, sometimes sloppy, but spirited, turning Molotov's "Puto" into an even more frenetic experience than the original and pelting out speed-metallish growler-rock with songs titled "Maldito" and "Desmadre." (www.kardoid.com)
Monospit: "Blah blah blah," reads the bio scrawled on construction paper that the band handed to me. Their point: "This is not about us -- it's about the music." Hailing from Aurora, Monospit mixes punk attitude with hard-rock execution for an aggressive, energetic performance. (www.monospit.com)
Norge Glass Company: The drummer's parents showed up to see this trio whip out bass-driven metal licks and high-nasal punk vocals in one of the more aggressively inspired sets on the Expo bill. The older white folks and chicas-in-black alike were treated to Norge's rough channeling of the Jesus Lizard and Big Black.
Planeta De Crystal: Their cover of the classic Who cut, translated as "Mi Generación," comes off as a mini-manifesto for local Latin rock and update of ur-rockeros Los Locos Del Ritmo: "Todo el mundo me quiere pisotear/Porque me gusta desmadrar." With traces of trad-Mexican son, PDC are evocative of '80s power-pop. (www.planetadecrystal.com)
Vendima: Citing influences from Rush to Siouxsie to Sheep On Drugs, Vendima grinds out tunes with melodramatically dark names like "Hasta Morir" and "Oración" that amble along with heavy bass, synth programming, and Exene-like, pedal-distorted vocals from lead "Vixen" Brenda, who wears bilingual goth-influences on her sleeve, whether Mephisto Walz or Santa Sabina.
Zamandoque Tarahum: Having experimented with Afro-Cuban and folkloric Mexican music, los Bros. Amaro put together a rock combo whose name is inspired by the Mexican states of Chihuaha and San Luìs Potosì. Out of the Expo lineup, ZT had the crowd slamming and surfing to some of the more unique sounds and more overtly political lyrics on showcase, mixing New Wave-ish rock and African percussion a la Santana. (www.zamandoquetarahum.com)
Juan "Fito" Salinas, rhythm guitarist for Uno De Mas, speaks for many of his fellow musicians when he says: "All of us, at some point or other, have been outcast -- all of my friends growing up were into rap music, but now the Spanish rock scene is a place for me to get away." From Little Village to the Loop to the far North Side, local Latin rock is becoming less a retreat and more a visible part of the Latino community.
With growing demand and independent ingenuity, local Latino rock continues to transgress boundaries just as its sources come from all over the world to make it here in Chicago.
March 2002, Illinois Entertainer
Ozomatli: Canto y Cambio
"En la vida, dos cosas ciertas/Son la muerte y el cambio," say Ozomatli on "Dos Cosas Ciertas," a mix of Cuban son with drum 'n' bass rap, from their second album Embrace The Chaos (Interscope). The Los Angeles combo of seven musicians (including MC and DJ) seem older than their actual ages (ranging from 25 to 34 years old) and certainly more mature than the band's lifespan (going back to 1995) to be commenting with such sonic eloquence on the certainties of death and change as life's only guarantees. Typical for the group, this observation goes beyond existential weariness; personal change intersects with social upheaval, while physical death can be the culmination of spiritual and moral fatality, unless one takes action to create meaning and seize dignity in life.
Aware that change is both a certainty and opportunity, Ozomatli came together on March 12, 1995, when Wil-Dog Abers helped orchestrate a sit-down strike at the L.A. Conservation Corps' Emergency Response Unit Headquarters. A Jewish kid from Pico-Union in Echo Park, Abers had been employed by the program for public beautification that hired youngsters at minimum wage (without benefits) for such projects as painting over graffiti. He came to consider it a "poverty pimp" organization, especially when an attempt to unionize got him and others summarily fired. It was not the most celebratory situation, but Abers called up a network of friends and turned the strike into a party.
Lucky for L.A. (and the rest of the world), the strike band Somos Marcos became Ozomatli, named after the Aztec god of dance, and began gigging around town at activist events. Wil-Dog was able to convince Chali2na, an underground MC with Jurassic Five whom Abers had known since he was 12, and the J5's DJ Cut Chemist to come by and try a session. Soon enough, a peanut gallery of L.A. multi-culti soul brothers had formed -- including trumpeter Asdru Sierra (a high-school friend of Wil-Dog's from a family of salseros), Choctaw/Creole percussionist Justin "Niño" Porée, guitarist Raul Pacheco (whose tastes include Latin jazz and country/western), clarinetist/saxophonist Ulises Bella (Fishbone fan and student of L.A.'s free-jazz guru Bobby Bradford), and tabla-player Jiro Yamaguchi, a Japanese American homeboy trained in classical Indian music.
As worldly as the City Of Angels, Ozomatli's members grew up inspired by the movements and music of their hometown. Bella describes how every party he went to as a kid had to have Santana's "Oye Como Va" play at least once. Los Ozos knew Santana's sources and contemporaries -- the '70s Chicano/Afro-Latino groove scene made of equal amounts roots and funk that included such groups as War, Tierra, Malo, El Chicano, Azteca, and Mandrill.
By 1998, the demand for Ozomatli as one of L.A.'s most popular live bands resulted in their self-titled debut album (on Herb Alpert's Almo Sounds label). It was a dedication to their ancestors, a slice of hope to their peers growing up under the suspicious watch of police and other gangs, and a mix of joyful noise pointing the way to new social relations. It also took them out of L.A., onto the road, and into new struggles. Over the next few years, Ozomatli tested their music and mission in a variety of challenging contexts. They played the second stage on the 1998 Vans/Warped Tour that featured mostly frenetic skacore acts. Reception was cold at times, but at some shows kids would skank to an Ozo rendition of Dominican merengue under the assumption that it was ska. Bella remembers, "Some people said we were the most punk-rock thing on the tour, just because there was nothing like us." The punk-rock spirit might have gotten them a little carried away, as they ended up on The Offspring's early-1999 tour that had them dealing with boos, catcalls, and suburban kids who considered them "jungle Mexican music."
Still, Ozo bounced back in 1999 with spots on Santana's "Supernatural" tour and, strangely enough, a cameo as the prom band in the Drew Barrymore vehicle Never Been Kissed. Their music also showed up in Ron Howard's EDtv and HBO's "Sex And The City."
Over time, the road started to take its toll, and life changes were drawing some members back to family obligations. "We toured so much for two years on and off," says Porée. "We were trying to learn how to bond, and after a while, we got sick of each other musically and emotionally. We did go through a period there where it was really hard, where we did not know if the band was going to stay together. Physically, financially, and emotionally, we're still trying to help each other out, and it has its rough times." Eventually, their original drummer and alto-saxist left the band, and their Almo label dissolved, while Chali2na and Cut Chemist went back to Jurassic Five to support their first major release with that group. If Ozomatli's first record was a celebration of what brought them together, their second would have to search for a reason to keep on doing it.
"Pa'lante," the first cut on Embrace The Chaos, matches its lyrical message -- to wipe away the tears, move forward, unify, and fight the darkness -- with the musical foot-stomping flair of Mexican son huasteco, featuring the African kora harp, Los Lobos' David Hidalgo on violin, Bella on six-string requinto, and Pacheco strumming the eight-string jarana guitar from Veracruz. It's an instrumentally advanced tune that takes the listener by the hand for a dance with raised fist, without a hint of its hard-earned experiential cost.
Despite its overtones of menace (with the sounds of ghetto birds hovering and impending street scuffles), Ozomatli fearlessly cut pieces from their soul to weave into a blanket to keep the listener warm against the world's chill winds. Reassembling their lineup with a new MC, DJ, and drummer -- respectively, Kanetic Source, Spinobi, and Andrew Mendoza -- Ozo come back with typical blends of trad-Cuban/Mexican son, funk, rap, R&B, experimental jazz, electronica, salsa, banda, and vallenato, but this time with the confidence of accumulated experience. "I think all of us as a band have matured quite a bit musically," Bella notes. "For example, on this record there are certain cuts with [Los Lobos'] Steve Berlin that we did completely live, quick track, direct to tape, and we pulled it off this time around, whereas the first time I don't think we could have done it."
Their musical maturity shows as much as the deeper involvement of collaboration, with a trio of producers that includes Berlin, the Beastie Boys' Mario Caldato Jr., and Bob Power (who has worked with Erykah Badu, the Roots, and others). Wil-Dog also anchors with solid chops from having worked with core Lobos on the Latino super-group Los Super Seven's second album Canto, that brought him into the studio with legends Ruben Ramos, Caetano Veloso, and Susana Baca. As well, Cut Chemist still appears on several tracks, as does Chali2na in sample format on the album's first single, "Vocal Artillery," that features MCs Medusa and Will.I.Am. from Black Eyed Peas. Elsewhere, De La Soul, vocalists from Quetzal, and Chicago's very own Common join in.
In particular, Common's vocals on the record's title track articulate the band's millenial epiphany -- "only through chaos will we ever see change." Still, from uplifting lyrics seemingly inspired by Sly & the Family Stone's "Stand" to the comical cover art, Ozo do it with a sense of joy and humor. They took photos for the record without a permit on an L.A. street corner and acted as if they were shoplifting their instruments while under surveillance and dodging cops. They even included a pawn-shop security guard -- a real timbalero and one of Sierra's friends -- in the shoot as an extra Ozo.
Meanwhile, continuing to tour this past summer in anticipation of the new release, Ozo looked forward to the date that Embrace The Chaos would hit the streets: September 11, 2001.
The release date leads right back to those two sure things, death and change. Kanetic raps a relevant message on "Dos Cosas Ciertas": "It's you they card, it's you they charge, it's you they complain about, strolling the boulevard/You's the one claiming and screaming you're all hard/Are you in control, or is it just a facade?/ If Uncle Sam wants you, it's you that'll need/It's you that'll sacrifice and you that'll bleed." On that dark day, militant rhetoric fell under a new shadow of scrutiny never anticipated by Parental Advisory stickers, and Ozomatli found themselves sitting on their tour bus for three days watching CNN, debating how to analyze the situation. Wil-Dog soon posted a note on an Ozomatli web board:
"I used to work in the mail room in one of the high-rises downtown, and I think about all the office workers, secretaries, janitors, etc. affected by this and it saddens me . . . As much as I'm saddened by this I'm not surprised one bit. 'Cause there's millions of people all over the world that hate the U.S. for doing the exact same thing to them for centuries."
As Porée points out, not everyone in the band necessarily is as strident as Wil-Dog, and Bella says right off the bat that any loss of innocent life is a tragedy. But, he adds, "We have to educate ourselves to the history of events, and bombing the shit out of people is not going to do anything."
Like many committed artists who visited Chicago recently for the World Music Festival, Ozomatli will blend such messages into the fabric of performance, so what they communicate won't turn out a speech, lecture, or scolding. Their music itself will speak with a more powerful militancy, that of unity despite what divides. As they do at every show, they'll begin and end right in the middle of the crowd, with a Brazilian-style batucada drum blowout that takes it to the people. Whoever dreams of a new world already triumphs, they seem to say, so let's just feel together what the drum tells us to do next.
November 2001, Illinois Entertainer
Make the Word Go BANG!
Lights dim, shimmer, fade, and revive - pulsing with breath as if to match the steadily roaring grumble of a capacity crowd at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. Showers of raucous catcalls pour from all walls in rivulets of rage, furor, and nail-biting tension. This 1,324-seater is sold out, and people are looking for blood like sharks who have inhaled fear, thundering like sports fans who taste a touchdown or a piledriver with hands clapping against the backs of chairs and shoes stomping on concrete. The auditorium could almost crack open and swallow itself from stage to balcony.
The crowd spews choice phrases at the slightest show of weakness, and yet they're prone to abject sing-song hypnosis and moments of crushing pathos, especially when their heroes melt under a collective magnifying glass of audience scorn. They're oddly tame when an emcee takes the microphone.
AUDIENCE: DO YOU SOLEMNLY SWEAR TO TRY TO INFLUENCE THE JUDGES' SCORING THROUGH YOUR UNBRIDLED ENTHUSIASM?
"Hell yeah!" the house echoes. But the audience is not worked up over a football game or wrestling match; they're here for a verbose brawl, a battle of wits, metaphorical bloodsport, an endurance contest fought, won, and lost with the travel of words from mind to mouth to mic to the mob.
Believe it or not, they're here for poetry.
The ringmaster has no clothes, so to speak, except for a porkpie hat and scrubby facial growth. He's the zookeeper, word pusher, the Ayatollah of Slam-ola, guardian of the poetry-temple exchange rates. New York City poetry impresario Bob Holman speaks: "Hey hey hey! Everyone wants to know how come when you get these poems up here, these THINGS of beauty, which we have asked the whimsically selected judges to adjudicate for us, that these THINGS of beauty can become their numerological equivalents - doesn't that mean that the life gets kicked out of it? Absolutely! It's a poetry slam!"
JUDGES: DO YOU SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT YOUR SCORES WILL BE BASED SOLELY ON YOUR OBJECTIVE EVALUATION OF THE POETRY AND PERFORMANCE, AND NOT HOW MUCH BEER YOU HAVE BEEN BRIBED WITH?
Jeering whistles clash with hands clapping, but Holman devours all responses: "This is a poem that is dedicated to all of us, all the poets who have come up here, read their poems, and gotten screwed! It's called 'Why Slam Causes Pain and Is a Good Thing':
because slam is unfair
because slam is too much fun
because poetry because rules
because poetry rules
because I could do that
because everybody's voice is heard ..."
AND LASTLY, COMPETING TEAMS: DO YOU REALIZE THAT YOU HAVE GIVEN THE POWER TO DECIDE WHAT IS GOOD POETRY TO FIVE ARBITRARILY CHOSEN PEOPLE WHO WILL GET DRUNKER AND DRUNKER AS THE EVENING PROGRESSES? DO YOU REALIZE THAT THE DECK IS STACKED AGAINST YOU IN AN OBSCENE NUMBER OF WAYS? IF YOU REALIZE ALL OF THIS, WILL YOU PLEASE SHOUT WITH CONVICTION: IT'S A FUCKING SLAM!
Holman continues with inspired froth:
"because Pepsi and Nike have conflicting ideas about slam team uniforms ...
because Patricia Smith has more truth in her little finger than an entire
Boston Globe front page ...
because rap is poetry and hip hop is poetry ...
because local heroes finally have national community...
because best poet always loses!!!"
A tsunami of noise washes over the auditorium with echoes of echoes, as the lights go down and come up on one solitary mic when a disembodied voice commands:
LET'S GET RRRRREADY TO RRRRRRRUMMMMBLE!
"We gonna get it on, because we don't get along!"
- Muhammad Ali to George Foreman
I arrive at Austin's Ruta Maya cafe on Thursday, August 20, for a preliminary bout in the 9th annual National Poetry Slam. It's the biggest such event yet, with 45 teams (of four people each) competing for the grand prize of $2,000, plus 14 additional individual competitors going separately for $500. Poets from across the U.S. and Canada arrive here upon qualifying in local and regional competitions held throughout the year at home-based reading series. For many, the national slam is a pilgrimage that draws repeat contenders, but for others it's a brave, new world, as with the New York City team based out of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which generates new teammates every year.
Arguably, the slam's origins are co-terminous with poetry itself, but the slam as a distinctly U.S. phenomenon goes back to the '70s and '80s when hard-nosed midwestern poets experimented with taking poetry from salons to saloons. Former Chicago construction worker Marc Smith was one of those poets who helped breathe new life into poetry after experiencing stale literary and academic gatherings where the spoken word was treated reverentially, like the word of God. In dada-esque reaction, Smith and others organized events in which poets donned boxing gear and sparred in wrestling rings where they honed the art of verbal one-upmanship. Smith encouraged the crowd to voice consent or dissent with the poet's vision, or to just howl drunkenly if that's what they felt like doing.
By the mid-'80s, Smith had launched a regular weekly slam that eventually found a home at the Green Mill (Al Capone's former speakeasy, by the way). From there, it spread to the coasts, and the Chicago style of performance poetry was cross-pollinated at newly christened slam cafes and bars across the country. It wasn't long before the first national slam competition convened in San Francisco in 1990.
I think about the slam's humble beginnings when I elbow my way into Ruta Maya's packed environs full of young scribes-wanting-to-be-oracles chomping at the bit for a piece of the action. When all of a sudden, I'm asked to be a judge for this bout between San Francisco, Roanoke, and Seattle. Should I remain "objective" or dive in head first? As the constant refrain, mantra, and all-purpose disclaimer goes: it's a fucking slam!
Five judges are chosen randomly from the audience to give an Olympic-style score of 0-10 for each three-minute reading in four rounds, where each team member gets a reading slot. The high and low scores are dropped, and the remaining three judges' scores are added. Poems over three-minutes long are penalized, and group performances are allowed in place of an individual reading. Props, costumes, and music are against the rules. Reading from memory is the norm, but scripts are allowed. The team with the highest cumulative score wins. Sounds simple, right? Before the weekend is over, these basic rules will serve as the nexus of debate, division, and unbridled animosity. Protest is as much the rule as the rules themselves.
The heat is on. Literally. Poems spit forth like steaming asphalt, fast and furious, increasing the Texas humidity with lip friction. Four-time individual slam champion Patricia Smith serves as emcee and introduces the judges: "this might be the only time you'll want to applaud them." I get used to the booing and hissing as if this article has already been released to a room full of poets. "Thanks for attending this bout at the hottest place on earth," Smith jokes (she must not have visited SanAnto before). The bout closes with San Francisco on top (106.5 points), ahead of Roanoke (98.4) and Seattle (96.6).
The standout poem in this round is "Fallen Catholic Fix," by SF's Russell Gonzaga, a 29-year-old Filipino whose excitement at attending his third national slam matches his energy to win this year. We talk after the round and manage to sweat out the heat that will make poets faint throughout this weekend's tournament.
Gonzaga teaches in an after-school program for mostly at-risk youth, a background he himself shares. The slam seems to be both a channel for and target of the rage he has worked through since his gang-banging days. He talks specifically about poetry readings for the slam versus poetry readings in communities of color: "I have slam work, and I have work that I do for the community, people of color, and I keep the two fairly separate. With a slam poem, I don't get too spiritual. If I do, it's interweaved with something that's more mainstreamish, and that's the one thing that's strange about the slam: it's defining a mainstream poetry, which is kind of odd."
Addressing racial issues and other topics of importance to communities of color is a difficult if not self-defeating undertaking at the slam, says Gonzaga. "Subjecting oneself to the scrutiny of the dominant culture is one thing," Gonzaga points out, "and not only that, they're giving you number scores, which is even more problematic." Paul Devlin's excellent movie, Slam Nation: The Sport of the Spoken Word, documents the opinion at the 1996 national slam that poems on race from people of color score low. But then again, conventional wisdom says that the judges always suck, and the argument goes that the best teams are the ones who can win despite and because of this fact.
In fairness, Gonzaga admits that folks of color participate widely in the slam, and that only females won the individual competition up until last year, when Cleveland's Da Boogie Man, a young black male, won the title. But the question remains: why divide oneself between work devoted to home community versus this relatively new community called the national slam? "I'll describe it in terms of experience," says Gonzaga, "my first national slam at Ann Arbor, Michigan, walking into an auditorium filled with like 1,000 people, to see poetry! I had never experienced that in my life." Ultimately, he feels that he must support the slam's popularizing and democratizing effects for poetry.
[Marc Smith, photo by Benjamin Ortiz]
Devlin's film vividly captures the glory of poetry elevated by spectator flash, as the documentary follows Team New York City on its trip to the 1996 nationals in Portland, Oregon. The film's title foregrounds the "sport" aspect of the slam, which makes sense since Devlin is an award-winning sports documentarian. But the film also does a good job of kicking different opinions around; some see the slam as a vehicle to advance literature, others see it as a poetry and performance hybrid art form unto itself, while others thrive on the slam as pure, no-holds-barred competition. Slam Nation also puts Marc Smith on camera, sagely suggesting that the slam works if it creates a community of poets.
But to get to the nationals, a year's worth of local competition is
required, with poets keeping stats on themselves and others like running
backs. Poets sometimes "riff" on each others' works, voicing criticism
often to the point of pissing each other off, and all the while provoking
each other to perform in top form like a race horse pushed to the limit,
requiring some element of strategy and even more stamina. Ultimately, the
slam is a community created by local and regional winners, who further put
the national gathering to the test of what community means and how it can
survive the contentious head butting that competition breeds.
Bob Holman, 1998 Team Manhattan slammaster (slamspeak for local
venue organizer), has been criticized and hated in some circles for
cheapening the slam and appealing to pure spectacle, as well as exploiting
gray areas (loopholes in rules). He helped found Mouth Almighty, the first
and only label devoted to spoken word artists, along with producing The
United States of Poetry for PBS and master-minding last year's Manhattan
slam team, named Team Mouth Almighty, who won the championship. His
promotion of poetry's commercial viability through corporate sponsorship
and merchandising has further been a source of controversy, with arguments
in his favor that this is merely an extension of the slam's mission: to
popularize poetry. Sometimes, his emphasis on glitz and celebrity runs up
against Marc Smith's blue collar character and emphasis on an honor system
in respecting rules.
But where does riffing cross the line between competitive edge, on
the one hand, and violation of a poet's integrity, on the other? Where does
community give way to competition, that which both brings people together
and potentially divides them? Are rules to be taken advantage of, or
respected as law? Should the slam have a singular vision of poetic
integrity, or revel in creative division? When does poetry lose its
literary value and become pure performance? And how much corporate
sponsorship is too much?
These are questions that stem from the slam and fuel its fire,
questions that will never be answered definitively. But each and every
individual's answers constitute a leap of faith in the slam that keeps them
coming back and contributing their diversity to the national community.
Community within community
Through light sprinkles of rain and ominous lightening, I travel
after the Ruta Maya bout with friends to Resistencia Bookstore, a haven of
progressive literary events proverbially situated "east of the freeway," as
in the poetry collection of the same name by raulrsalinas. At 64, Salinas
is one of few remaining elder statesmen of Chicano poetry who has traveled
extensively to create networks of solidarity between African-American,
pan-Latino, and Native-American activists.
Part of his unofficial training in political and literary struggles
comes from Puerto Rican independentistas he met while imprisoned in the
U.S. federal prison system. Given the early passing of such poets as Jose
Antonio Burciaga, Ricardo Sanchez, and San Antonio's own Jose Montalvo, the
reading for tonight will be an historic draw for Latinos from Austin and
SanAnto - Miguel Algarin, one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe,
will headline a reading with the New York City slam team - all in "occupied
Mexico," as Algarin calls it.
Straight out of Manhattan's Lower East Side, the Nuyorican Poets
Cafe began in 1974 in Algarin's apartment, where poets of the Puerto Rican
diaspora gave voice to a new urban identity captured by the term
"Nuyorican" taken up by now-legendary poets Miguel Piñero and Lucky
Cienfuegos. The Cafe sat closed for most of the '80s but was jump-started
in 1989 after the death of Piñero, one of its co-founders. In partnership
with Algarin, Holman instituted the
cafe's weekly slam and brought new life to the venue. Ed Morales, a Village
Voice writer who has worked with Holman, charts how the cafe became popular
to the point of super trendiness under Holman's direction, and how it was
criticized for losing the Puerto Rican community base that was once the
founding principle of its existence.
"Algarin willingly allowed Holman to turn the cafe into a circus on
Friday nights when he ran the slam," says Morales. Algarin's taxing battle
with HIV and the demands of his professorship at Rutgers eventually took
his attention away from the cafe, where Holman was left to take credit for
its newfound notoriety. This was when relations between Holman and Algarin
became strained; Holman's style began to supplant recognition of Algarin,
which made for a contentious relationship. Finally, a mutual schism over
Holman's leave of absence to work on other projects got him booted in 1996
from the cafe's board of directors. Morales admits that Holman helped make
the cafe a success in the '90s, and that its original aesthetic has
subsequently evolved into the hip-hop ethos drawing the city's young black
poets.
But tonight, at Resistencia, Algarin seems charged by the energy he
shares with the next generation of Nuyorican poets on the 1998 team. With
his left arm in a cast - reportedly from a street scuffle where he
interceded on behalf of a woman being harassed - Algarin takes the stage
with a jazz combo of saxophone and coronet to interpret poems by Salinas.
"Street corner dude makes jaaazzzzz Latino sounds," Algarin intones with a
horn-trilled accent, as he simulates the cadence of congas, one-upping
Salinas's Beat-jazz sensibilities with Afro-Latino rhythms and sensual
playfulness.
"I dare Raul to come up and read these poems better," he says, in a
joking spirit of competition that forebodes the slam semi-finals coming up
tomorrow. Raul doesn't take up the challenge, but instead he shares a few
poems before urging people to buy Algarin's books and talk to him while
he's still around, before they "catch the bus" with poets who have retired
from the struggle.
An open-mic reading begins, led by New York City slammaster Keith
Roach, who introduces the Nuyorican team and a host of other slam poets who
share in the evening's festivity. A Nuyorican expatriate now on Team Los
Angeles, Gerrie B. Quickley arrives and hugs Keith Roach. Poets from
Montreal, Toronto, and Austin read until almost one in the morning despite
intermittent drizzle, sharing the calm of this community within the greater
slam community. It's the calm before the storm.
Cold comfort community
I start Friday with breakfast at El Sol y la Luna next to the
Austin Motel, where poets are dragging themselves out of bed for a feast of
events in addition to the semi-finals bouts. Team Boston's Gary Hicks, a
Christian Marxist who has a distinctive salt-and-pepper beard, joins in the
bouts today that will weed four finalists from the 18 teams who have made
the cut. "I'm in a state of existential shock," says Hicks between coffee
refills. Today's events include a head-to-head haiku slam, gay/lesbian
readings, and a "Chocolate City" showcase of African-American poets, among
many other open-mics and mini-slams. And then there's the yearly softball
game, where poets prove they're not true athletes.
But I head off to Book People bookstore to hear a reading with
Patricia Smith, emcee from the bout last night. I walk into Book People
just as the reading has started, and I notice that Smith is reciting her
"Note of Apology" that was printed in the Boston Globe following her
resignation as a metro columnist in June. Aside from being widely
recognized at the national slam as a pillar of this community and a slam
poet par excellence, she has also become known nationwide as the Pulitzer
Prize-finalist who admitted to fabricating characters and quotes in four
columns. In the note - her farewell column - the 43-year-old journalist
suggests that the ambition to achieve motivated her decision to "slam home
a salient point" from time to time with fabrication. "Finally, I'd like to
apologize to the memory of my father, Otis Douglas Smith," she reads,
continuing with slight defiance, "and that's his real name - you can check
it."
Enthusiastic cheers issue from the crowd in obvious compensation
for the sense of loss Smith expresses. She mentions the support she has
received from the poetry community: "in the end, that was really the only
community that mattered." Continuing to read poems laying bare what's been
on her mind in the wake of the Globe incident, she admits to thoughts and
fears of the worst in moments of heartbreaking vulnerability: "My penance
is that I will keep living to see myself keep dying. I can see the
headline: disgraced, ousted, sinful ex-columnist just doesn't get it. I
hide the gun on a bookshelf behind one painfully alphabetized row of poetry
volumes."
Smith takes some time to switch papers, shaken somewhat. "Perhaps
you don't understand. I am the face of American journalism slapping
journalism's American face ... I have been nationally declared a liar,
which means that this must be a lie and that me telling you that this must
be a lie must be a lie also." Light, sympathetic laughter urges Smith to
keep reading with strength, but tears form at the corners of her eyes, as
her pained voice reads on: "These are words that I can still use: fluent,
funky, anemone, android, penis, shogun, sonnet, chisel, shield .... These
are words that I can still use: petal, candle, murmur, apple, tongue,
refrain."
Now choking back tears, she forces the words to come out in a
litany, a catalogue of language she reclaims as her own: "scat, lullaby,
hands, adultery, vibrate, history." She struggles to keep the string of
words coming, and then in thick staccato: "Man did not give me this gift -
man cannot take it away," repeating this refrain to the point of
gut-wrenching emphasis, throwing her script to the ground, and finally
breaking out in tears that are met with open sobs from the audience. The
reading ends with a standing ovation and extended cheers.
Team Santa Cruz members Kelly McNally and Meliza Bañales openly
break down and cry with Smith. Afterwards, they say she's a scapegoat in a
profession where journalists misquote and make far worse mistakes all the
time. Says Bañales, "She admitted she was wrong, and it takes a very human
person to admit mistakes. It's also easy to demonize people for mistakes
because they're in a public position." From their reactions to her reading,
I wonder if they're personal friends, but McNally points out that they just
met her: "She's very open and giving, and she's given us a lot of
encouragement since we're only one of two all-female teams, and we're going
into the semis."
After the event, I head to Mojo's cafe for a caffeine refill and to
see what's happening next. I end up recounting Smith's reading to a few
poets and an east coast slammaster. The slammaster voices a different
opinion on Smith's appearance at this year's slam: "She's milking poets for
sympathy, because poets are dumb-asses. They don't read the newspapers. I
mean, what she did wasn't a mistake - it was blatant, calculated
fabrication." Pointing out that there's no need to fabricate material for a
metro column, he also clues me in to claims from the Boston Globe's editor
that 20 more columns by Smith appear to have been fabricated. What's clear
is that Smith's career turn has become something of a rallying point in the
slam community.
Jivin' with the pre-bout jitters
After the caffeine jolt, I wander over to Fringeware, a bookstore
next to Mojo's, and run into Bob Holman chewing the fat with an old friend
of mine, Reggie Gibson. The 1996 film Love Jones was based loosely on
Chicago's black poetry scene and featured poems by Gibson, whose
rhythmystical lyricism was a main source of inspiration for director
Theodore Witcher. Reggie has a bout this evening as part of Team Bellwood
(a Chicago satellite) and in the individual semi-finals, so we talk about
his strategy until a semi-finals update is posted in the windows of
Fringeware.
Very bad news: a computation error in scores has completely
rearranged the semi-finals bouts. Two teams, Santa Cruz and the Ozarks
(Arkansas), have been cut from the semis given the corrected scores, while
Manhattan and San Francisco's Mission District team have joined the semis
bouts - all only a matter of hours before the bouts begin. I notice Russell
Gonzaga looking at the update. "This is bad - this is so very bad," he
mutters exhaustedly. His San Francisco team will now go against Cleveland
and SF-Mission District, whose slammaster is one of his teammates.
Gonzaga mentions the possible conflict of interest his teammate,
Tarin Towers, has between her SF team and the Mission District slam, which
she organized to produce their team. He also claims that Team Mission
District formed when individuals didn't make the San Francisco team, and
suggests that their representation of the Mission District (a once
predominantly Latino neighborhood newly gentrified) has negative racial
overtones. Team Mission District member Daphne Gottlieb tells me later that
the team formed legally under slam law, which 1998 National Poetry Slam
co-director Phil West confirms. According to West, the local Mission slams
did happen after the San Francisco slams, but Towers had contacted West
prior to the San Francisco qualifiers and approved the formation of a
Mission Disrict Team.
"It was known that both teams would be appearing at the nationals
for at least a month," says Gottlieb, "[and] the Mission team thought that
any conflicts had been ironed out prior to departing for Texas." But
Gonzaga maintains: "There remains doubt as to the truth of their claims of
having an open slam. Some sources in SF have told me that there were no
qualifying open slams for these spots, and that they never intended for
there to be any ... I, and others, are convinced that there were no open,
advertised, public slams to qualify the three other spots on the team
[aside from the fourth spot slammed by Lauren Wheeler]. I voiced my dismay
with my team and the slam master [who] told us that the team was registered
and we could not protest the team unless we were directly affected by them,
in particular ... I was content with this, being fairly sure that we
wouldn't have to compete against them."
He moans, "I don't want to do this round," but his teammate Omolara
consoles him and says "we knew this bout could happen, and it's no big
deal." Gonzaga doesn't seem convinced.
Back at Mojo's, an impromptu reading has started as poets from the
Chocolate City showcase spill out of the cafe. Reggie Gibson, Cleveland's
Da Boogie Man (who is sitting out this year's competition), Kent Foreman
from Team Bellwood, and others are sharing a circle of poetry like family
reunited, and the call-and-response style of some poets creates an
evangelistic revival atmosphere. Which reminds me: poets just can't get
enough of poetry. This goes on for a few hours, through the mugginess and
threatening storm clouds, until Gibson announces, "Oh shit! It's time for
semis!"
Smash-mouth poetry comin' at ya!
The math error now pits Albuquerque against Manhattan against
Bellwood, a bout that should prove to make poetic sparks fly with the
talent lined up, and so I'm at Blondies, a skate store, where Albuquerque's
Kenn Rodriguez is flexing for the match. He doesn't seem visibly worried
about the re-match with Manhattan, who beat Albuquerque last year. "If you
want to win the national championships, you got to beat the nation," he
says matter-of-factly. He mentions the corporate taint to the Manhattan
team, since they were sponsored by Mouth Almighty Records while other teams
had to hold fundraisers to scrape up money for nationals. And then there's
the infamous incident last year when a Team Mouth Almighty member simulated
a penis by using a belt buckle suggestively, which tested the prop rules
but drew no penalty.
"We're a pretty poor team, so if anybody should hate them, it's
us," says Rodriguez, "because we're from one of the poorest states in the
nation. But you can't go at it that way. Last year, we were built up with
hate, because a lot of people wanted us to beat them, but it didn't help us
at all - in fact, it hurt us." He sums up by saying that Albuquerque will
feel good about the bout if they perform well with integrity.
Team Bellwood's Chuck Perkins, on the other hand, is in a state of
agitation. "I'm an ex-football player," he grumbles with playful, mock
menace, and he looks the part with his shaved head and Fridge-Man frame.
"There's terminology we use as ball players, like smash-mouth football. So
I'm out to let that transpire to poetry. I want, like, smash-mouth poetry -
I take no prisoners. I don't play, and that's why I dropped out of grammar
school: I didn't like recess." He busts up laughing and breaks from his
act, still talking about how a poet can step up to the mic with venom and
leave the stage sizzling. He's here for the pure sport of it - that, and
the wine, women, song, and such that the national slam entails.
But it's time for Perkins to show us the money. The teams draw for
order, and the emcee skips through the spiel repeated prior to every bout:
"A perfect score of 10 would be an earth-shattering text performed
perfectly, and a zero would be the worst poem you could possibly imagine
performed by someone who should not quit his or her day job."
Manhattan's Beau Sia takes the mic first and works himself into a
frenzy with a piece he read in 1996 finals: "When I get the money, I'm
gonna have iced monkey brain in Madagascar with Uma Thurman and Spock, and
me and Tarantino are gonna buy the bones of Bruce Lee and put them in a
movie called THE BONES OF BRUCE LEE ARE ALIVE ... and I'm gonna be the
Asian male hustler on the Real World [on] Mars, and I'm gonna do sold-out
haiku poetry jams in Vegas! ... when I get the money, I'm gonna own MTV,
and sure, money can't buy you love, but love can't buy you shit!" Manhattan
partisans whoop it up, urging him into more and more of a rabid recitation.
Different sides of the room ring with applause when the teams
rotate and poets step up, while coaches mark time with stop watches and
hold up color-coded cards to let the emcees know who's on next. Albuquerque
takes the stage with a group poem: "From where I'm sitting, I haven't seen
any poem that can make me feel safe at night ... I haven't seen any poem
that could feed, bathe, or clothe a homeless man." Syncopated voices switch
off between the four team members lined up: "I haven't seen any poem that
could stop police dogs from ripping chunks of flesh off a ten-year-old
boy." Neck veins and pressured eyes bulge, as they comment on their
situation as poets, with dangerously close judgment of their own craft:
"when are we going to stop talking assertively and start acting
assertively? ... when are we going to stop posturing behind staticky
microphones and finally start getting our pristine hands dirty? ... I've
never seen any poem that could stop oppression ... but I am ready and
waiting with an open heart and open mind."
Manhattan comes back with a team piece pairing Amanda Nazario and
Beau Sia. In the performance, Nazario tries to convince Sia that he's gay,
while Sia adamantly professes his heterosexual love for her - until she
asks, with the microphone demonstratively used for emphasis, "would you
love me if I had a dick? ... If I was a man, and I had a dick, you'd touch
my dick?" Sia follows through the logic and breaks down, with Amanda
congratulating him on his admission.
[Amanda Nazario and Beau Sia from Team Manhattan, in Austin 1998, photo by Benjamin Ortiz]
The round stops, as the emcee announces a protest lodged by someone
in the audience: possible violation of the prop rule. Someone from the
audience utters, "sometimes a microphone is just a microphone." The emcee
adds that Nazario's performance slot was mostly taken up by Sia, and that
the authorship of the poem is in question which makes for another protest
by Albuquerque; Manhattan might have violated the authorship rule.
While the protests are being discussed, Bellwood's Dan Ferri takes
the mic with a touching, meditative piece inspired by his work as a
sixth-grade teacher, speaking to the precariousness of young minds and
energy: "a room full of boys is a box full of mouse traps with a ping-pong
ball set on each spring aching for release ... girls circle, gathering,
dancing new molecules, negotiating solar systems - they are a tag team of
young Venuses, I am a weakening sun." After his reading, a friend of Team
Bellwood whispers to me that he should have read "The Bald Guy," a
crowd-pleasing take on Ferri's hairlessness. The judges score the piece,
which hovers around 8.7. Ferri walks out of Blondies with heavy emotion on
his face, recognizing that Bellwood won't come back from this blow.
The emcee gives a protest update, mentioning that Sia's
participation in the duet is legal if Nazario is the primary author of the
poem. On the prop protest, he reads from rulebook: "Generally, poets are
allowed to use their given environment and the accouterments it offers -
microphones, mic stands, the stage itself." Interestingly, he doesn't read
the part stating that the rule's "intent is to keep the focus on the words
rather than objects."
The bout continues with round four and another group poem from
Manhattan. "This is the great first line which sets the tone of the poem,
grabs your attention," they announce while tag-teaming on lines in
self-referential commentary, "And this next funny line doesn't let you down
- no, no, it's funnier than that first line! ... You see, the gist of the
poem is we're writing a generalized poem because, because who can be
specific about a topic like 'blah blah blah'?" They seem to respond to
Albuquerque's impassioned plea for politics: "when suddenly the poem got
political," they exclaim, while droning "POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS"
repeatedly, adding "Knock-knock, who's there? Emotional manipulation,
snappy one-liners ... leaving no button un-pushed - family: I hate my
father, I love my mother, I miss my sister!" With playful mocking of other
poems, they close: "This is the end line that makes you cream your pants
... throw your panties on stage, and: fuck me after the show!" Howls,
jeers, and semaphore of hand-gesturing incredulity burst from the crowd,
but the scores are in: Manhattan with 110.3, Albuquerque with 109.3, and
Bellwood with 106.8.
[Chuck Perkins from Team Bellwood, photo by Benjamin Ortiz]
An exodus of poets meets a crowd waiting for the next semis bout,
and as I make my way outside I notice Marc Smith surrounded by a gaggle of
poets evaluating the prior match. "It's not about the writing anymore,"
says Smith, "it's about how many different ways can you say 'suck my
dick.'" I walk away with Dan Ferri and Reggie Gibson, who console each
other. Ferri is visibly upset, but enthusiastic: "We did what we did with
integrity." Gibson answers, "I was so glad you dropped that piece! You
nailed that motherfucker!" Ferri agrees, "I wouldn't have been able to
forgive myself if I had read 'The Bald Guy.'" Ferri is talking about
nailing points versus staying true to the word. This is the double-edged
sword of combining poetry with performance, iambs with slams, writing with
shucking & jiving. A fan comes up and says, "your writing blew away
anything around you - you guys should have won," and the Bellwood boys seem
consoled.
It ain't over 'til it's over
I'm at the Electric Lounge, the home of Austin's local slam, for
the individual competition semi-finals. The place is packed, and few chairs
are available to the mostly standing audience. Organizers have brought up
an interlude of mariachis for "local flavor," and I have to excuse their
ignorance to the truly Tejano sounds of conjunto because the mariachis are
doing a cookin' version of "Jailhouse Rock." Chuck Perkins grabs my tape
recorder so he can mock-interview some ladies, and so I head out to the
parking lot where poets are mulling over the semi-finals wreckage.
I marvel at the variety of backgrounds, persuasions, identities,
political viewpoints, and professions from around these states represented,
as folks sit on concrete abutments and talk shop. Congratulating Keith
Roach on New York's triumph in their last bout, Albuquerque's Danny Solis
also seems to comment on Team Manhattan when he says, "I'm so tired of this
soulless pop culture bullshit Real World MTV crap." A few minutes later,
Bob Holman walks by Keith Roach, and they shake hands like old buddies. As
I walk back into the lounge, Tarin Towers rushes the door, citing a
"security problem."
I squeeze my way back just in time to see scorekeepers tabulating
maniacally as people from the crowd jump to correct math errors. Reggie
Gibson takes the stage next, as he dedicates the following poem to James
Marshal Hendrix: "Burn it down, burn it down, burn it all the way down,
Jimi, make us burn in the flame that became your sound, Jimi, grabbing ol'
Legba by his neck forcing him to show you respect, hoochie man coochie man,
strangle him coochie hoodoo man, wrangle him voodoo child ... and the
purple haaaaze ran through your brain and drained into the veins of
trippers, daytrippers turned acid angels by the gift of little wings from
you ... and the musing brews of your sadomasochistic blues would ooze
through pores and LSD doors ... one more time before it's your last time,
brother ... TO DIE YOUNG, TO DIE HIGH, TO DIE STONED, TO DIE FREEEEEEEE."
He repeats this last refrain and wails into an air-jammed guitar
simulation, as the crowd jumps from their seats to affirm Gibson's ultimate
number-one standing going into finals.
Back in the parking lot, poets sit in circles with backpacks like
cashed-out ravers, while New York and Albuquerque team members discuss the
protests against Manhattan. New York City's Stephen Colman mentions to
Danny Solis that he once saw Beau Sia perform the duet from the semis bout
as a solo piece, which would bolster Albuquerque's protest that Sia broke
the rules by being primary author of two poems performed. The discussion
gets heated when Colman says he doesn't want to get involved in the
protest. Solis yells "fuck you," as teammates restrain him and try to cool
down the argument. Kenn Rodriguez later tells me that "it's not about us
getting into the finals. I think the Albuquerque team would gladly sit it
out if that's what the slam community wants, because for us it's about the
integrity of the slam and its rules."
[Danny Solis from Team Albuquerque in Austin 1998, photo by Benjamin Ortiz]
On another front, Russell Gonzaga shows up with worry written all
over his face. It turns out that his match with the Mission District and
Cleveland turned into a score-settling blowout, after an attempt at a
formal protest against the Mission District failed. Deciding to read a poem
titled "Goodbye Kiss to the So-Called Western Civilization" especially for
that round, Gonzaga started off by saying "fuck the points - this is
personal: so-called 'Mission District team,' your deceit has broken my
heart," and ended the poem with "I will make you wish you were never born."
The poem went way over time, which destroyed San Francisco's chances to win
- though Gonzaga had learned that numerically the two teams had little
chance of making it into finals anyway - and some of his own teammates
cried as he read the poem, which was perceived by Mission District female
teammates as a real threat of rape and physical harm.
The Mission District's Eitan Kadosh argues that the poem itself was
a violation, commenting that "During the course of his meandering piece,
describing how much he 'hated the Mission Team,' he explained, in explicit
detail, how he would come into our homes and tie us to our beds, while
carrying out assorted acts of violence."
Others, including Kelly McNally of Santa Cruz, suggest that Gonzaga didn't
mean his poem as a real threat. "What I witnessed that night was not a
'threat to rape and cause physical harm,'" says McNally. "What I saw was
the performance of a horrifyingly well-written poem that was designed to
elicit a response of emotional pain, which it did entirely too well, using
graphic images of metaphoric violence."
Regardless, Gonzaga has gotten himself barred from walking into the
Electric Lounge tonight