FLOW: The WOLF in the mirror. What can be said about this humble mook, quietly doing what he pleases, inadvertently & unintentionally becoming responsible for more in the Montreal graffiti scene then he will ever take credit for? A fuckload, to be honest. The unseen other half of Under Pressure Magazine and its namesake festival (Yes, people, there is more than one person who spearheaded that whole movement and some will hate, I understand, but in this World Of Shit some people have a need to be the “frontman” and seek notoriety above and beyond writing their names on walls & trains), today we will be profiling an unsung hero from the nebulous world of paint-sprayers and spot-raiders.
With that said, I have no real plan to breakdown this mook’s long career of trains and changing the Canadian criminal code. Instead, I plan to shed light on the knowlbeams from what a storied life in the illegal arts can introduce you to, hopefully finer things like cycling, kicks, film photography, travel and documenting your surroundings.
You have an extensive collection of shoes. I’d say it’s obvious you’re into Adidas but maybe you can break down your shoe game.
FLOW: I started in hiphop as a lil’ one, in 1982. It took me a year to get my first pair of suede Puma Clydes, grey stripe on red. I had to buy them with my own money. Since that time, it’s always been about Puma and Adidas. That was it. Those were the brands you had to wear: The Battle of the Dassler brothers. For me, Adolf (Adi) won in the end. Adi Dassler… Adidas. I’ve amassed a small collection of shoes, but no show-pieces though. If you buy shoes and leave them in a box, you’re a fool. Wear them.
Can you tell me the story behind this book? How you acquired it and what is it?
FLOW: I have a collection of railroad paraphernalia that I’ve procured from various rail structures and vehicles. The binders are from a dumpster outside a CN police station where they also trained new recruits. There was a series of them… It’s the training manual. I also found some memos talking about how there was suspected increased amounts of graffiti activity in certain rail yards or as we called it, “heated-out yards”.
You have always told me about your train list, can you explain that to these mooks?
FLOW: Back before everything was a terroristic threat, the different rail companies had automated phone services that you could call and track railcars. It was for customers to track whatever they were shipping. You’d call, enter the car number, like CR 361097, then it’d tell you that the car arrived for classification in Allentown, Pennsylvania on March 26th at 6:42 am, via Selkirk NY. So, I had a book with the phone numbers of the different major Canadian and American railways. I wrote the reporting marks (numbers) of the cars that I painted and would keep track of the progression of the cars. The furthest I tracked a car to was San Diego, some cars would end up nowhere but eventually you’d learn which cars would get the most travel. That and a phone call, letter in the mail or trading pics with people around North America was the only way to know that your piece had made it elsewhere.
You have a large collection of classic indie mags on tagging in NYC, sports and cycling magazines almost 100 years old, to some of hiphop’s now-forgotten magazines. Not to mention a Montreal memorabila collection that includes items from the Expos and the Als, formerly know as the Concordes.
FLOW: My graffiti magazine collecting started in 1994 after picking up Skillz mag (put out by SP.One, out of Boston) at Soho Zat AKA Soho Down & Under, now known as Scrap Yard on West Broadway, off Canal St. I would subsequently pick up more magazines every time I hit up NYC. This of course was before the ‘net, when you had to travel and dig to find the good shit. I have the hiphop magazines because they were actual hiphop magazines… Ego Trip, On The Go and Stress. Magazines used to be the shit. Coming back with the last three copies of Stress was great. It’s really sad that the magazine game is dead. I understand it’s evolution but I’m old and bitter, so I’ll still shit on the net.
The sports magazines are for old-school cycling, real old school. From 1890 to the second World War, cycling was one of the most popular sports. In 1899, American track cyclist Major Taylor was the first black person to win a sports world title. I’m also trying to acquire any articles, postcards or pictures with Albert Richter in them. He was a German champion track cyclist from the ’30s who hated Hitler and the Nazis. He refused to throw up the salute or wear a swastika while winning all these championships, which pissed off the Nazis. They killed him at the end of 1939 for helping a Jewish friend get his money out of the country. He was from Cologne and they have a velodrome named after him.
The Montreal memorabilia is just because I’m interested in the history of the city: The streetcars, railways, prohibition era and the great Jazz acts that used to perform here. My grandfather once told me a story about getting hit on by a hot black chick at Rockhead’s Paradise. He was a way-back mack but he was married, so he had to pass.
How did you fixation with cycling start?
FLOW: I’ve been biking my whole life. I got one of the first mass commercially-available mountain bikes in Canada at Canadian Tire. In 2006, I was in Japan and saw some stylin’ fixed gear bikes, so that piqued my interest again. Now I like to hit up Europe once in a while to check some of the major cycling races.
You’ve have always made pilgrimages to NYC, what are some of the things you saw back in the days in graff that you felt you brought back?
FLOW: I don’t want to say that I was the first to do some things in Montreal but let’s just say that when I started doing stickers and scratchiti, I hadn’t seen anybody else doing it here. I was definitely the first person to sell caps in Montreal. Fat caps, outlines… Before that, it was just stock tips or caps you’d take off of cleaning agent cans: Mr.Clean, table wax, etc.
You work in the tattoo world. You have alot of tatts, was that something that grew out of doing graffiti?
FLOW: It seems like everybody who does graffiti wants to get into tattooing nowadays but I grew up in a tattoo shop so no, it definitely didn’t grow out of graffiti. It’s a family business.
Anti-graff Rap song?
FLOW: That’s more EXCLUSIVE than any DJ Clue shit. It was a 45 that was distributed to Canadian Pacific rail employees, “Music and lyrics from CP Rail’s 1983 National Communications Program and the voices of CP Rail employees across Canada”. The English side is called Steel Wheel and the French side is called Grands Horizons. I also have a Spiderman/Canadian Pacific comic book about drugs and rail safety.
Since I have known you, you have always been into photography. How long have you been shooting and what do you shoot with?
FLOW: My father got a Canon AE-1 in the late 1970s, when I needed to take pics of my graffiti, I’d boost his camera. Eventually, I started taking more and more non-graffiti shots (trains, abandoned buildings, etc), so I got myself an AE-1 body from a pawn shop because I had already bought lenses and a flash for his camera. It got to a point where I just had to get my own and I stuck with what I was familiar with. I stayed with film until around 2005. Going through various digital cameras these past years, I now shoot with a Canon 7D with EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM & EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS II USM lenses. I also have a Canon G1X for when a more portable option is needed.
3-D camera, this some super-HD tecnology or what?
FLOW: When I was a kid, you used to get little 3-D hologramatic wild animal cards in Cracker Jack boxes. This camera is a similar technology. It takes multiple angles in one shot on normal film. The problem is that nobody is developing the film any more.
Here is FLOW’s Flickr page of his non graffiti photography. He doesn’t have any of his personal graffiti photos online yet but after a Google search I found archived posts with some of his work.
The next set of photos are courtesy of the legendary DYSKE TA.
(c) MOOK-LIFE – Read entire story here.