Southbound and Down

I'm starting a gang

2010-05-27T14:06:00.001-04:00

2010-05-05T22:27:00.001-04:00

2010-04-23T12:57:00.000-04:00

past few weeks

2010-04-16T12:37:00.003-04:00

photo dump. no point.

<--my godfather has a 6 foot tall version of this poster in a creepy stairwell landing of his house. when i was a kid i was terrified of it. i couldn't even walk past it. now it's the background on my phone
fin

2010-04-15T17:13:00.001-04:00

2010-04-13T16:33:00.001-04:00

Which ones are real lol

PRA*Y

2010-04-05T18:36:00.002-04:00

by Zephyr

“New York City is a land of lost souls. I remember before “political correctness” when we referred to some homeless woman as a ’shopping bag lady’. Such women (barely) survived in the shadows of our (suppsedly) cosmopolitan city. PRAY was one such individual. She is, in my opinion, the most prolific graffiti writer ever.

Over the course of 4 or 5 decades, PRAY has painstakingly scratched small, somewhat obscure inscriptions reading “Obey God“, “Go to church“, and often “PRAY” into glass, plastic, and metal surfaces throughout the city.

To simply call her “prolific” would be an insult to her productivity, an enormous understatement. In New York City her scrathiti was everywhere. In the 1970’s, at the height of her productivity, New York probably had more PRAY tags than residents.

Ironically, there is a strong chance you’ve never noticed her handiwork. That is because her messages are often subliminal. They exist below the surface, literally and figuratively, but if you look in the right places you will find them… And when you do you will realize just how ubiquitous they are. PRAY’s trademark is commonly found scratched into the lower coin box section of public payphones. She often hit the vertical edge-runners of storefront roll down gates. The pillars of subway stations were also fair game to her.

I first became aware of her work in the early 1970’s. Her consistency was impressive, her volume mind-boggling. I discovered that many of my peers were aware of PRAY too. (Of note is Craig Castleman’s 1982 book ‘Getting Up‘ in which the artist Bama speaks at length about PRAY)

In 1978 I had my first encounter with PRAY. I was hanging out on the counter of West 86th St. with a few of my RTW homies. Across the avenue I saw an elderly woman slowly dip into a doorway on the east side of the avenue. For reasons I cannot explain, I immediately knew that it was PRAY. I ran across the street and as I approached her I saw that she had a rolled up newspaper in her left hand. She used it to cover the activity she was doing with her right hand. Her right hand was busy and her hands were gnarled from years of etching her graffiti into hard surfaces.

The top joint of her right index finger was wrapped in tape and her scratching tool was simply a dry-wall screw, also wrapped in tape. Her hands were black from the silt of NYC. She was disheveled, greasy looking, and appeared to have been clearly living on the streets for a long time. She was an elderly woman but possibly younger than she appeared. She was the living definition of ”a hard life”.

I came up behind her, I was awe-struck and I said “Oh wow! You’re PRAY?!”. Not a bright move. I startled her and she scurried away.

I looked where she had stood , and sure enough, she had left her imprint. Since I had startled her she had only left her P-R and first stroke of her A. I felt terrible. I had panicked the queen in “mid-etch” mode and caused her to leave her work unfinished.

In 1982 I was doing cel animation at an office in Times Square. Times Square was really sleazy back then: an ongoing parade of hustlers, hookers, addicts, and eccentric characters. It was great!

I saw PRAY in Times Square a few times during this period. On a couple occasions I actually followed her for a while. No one ever noticed or paid attention to her. She was dirty and forgotten: invisible. She moved at the pace of a sloth. She’d pick through garbage cans as she passed, but I never saw her actually take anything after them. I would follow at a safe distance, not wanting to repeat my mistake from a few years earlier. Sure enough, I’d get to see her do her thing. She moved slow but her scratchiti was very fast. PRAY is without question the all-time queen of graffiti. No one did as much. No one ever will.

Four years later, April 1986, I was sitting in Washington Square Park with a photographer friend. Lo and behold there was PRAY sitting directly across from us, perusing the newspaper. My friend was able to snap a photo of her. At that moment, history was made when the mysterious figure of PRAY was captured on film.

Over the years, I’ve discussed PRAY with countless people. People who were both familiar with her work and those who were not. I have written this out of my unique respect for this odd woman. She seemed singularly fixated on scratching PRAY everywhere she went. How or why she became so obsessed with this practice we will never know. Currently, no concrete facts about her personal life are known.

Among people familiar with her work, rumors abound. One common rumor was that she had a son with whom she collaborated. My research has found nothing to support this. It is also commonly assumed that a large group of people were responsible for these markings. I reject this premise outright. Let’s give credit where it is due. PRAY worked alone. Of course we can assume PRAY produced some copy-cats, but I fully believe these obscure marking still found on the streets of New York City were done by one individual. PRAY. The queen of graffiti."

day in the life of Darryl Nau

2010-03-31T13:04:00.002-04:00

i never rode bikes, i always skated. i don't anymore except for the occasional mini ramp sesh, but skateboard culture has become seriously wack. the bmx world is pretty sweet. if i was 14 now i would definitely want to emulate people like darryl nau more than some weirdo like p-rod..(vids stolen from props bmx)

girl you crazy

2010-03-25T18:49:00.000-04:00

wrong coast

2010-03-22T14:19:00.002-04:00

took a few fotos on the swamp thing/dry spell cali tour last week

SOMEBODY HELP ME

2010-03-12T11:15:00.002-05:00

leaving for sunny CA tomorrow

2010-03-02T15:25:00.000-05:00

SET THE ALARM

2010-02-25T00:57:00.002-05:00

gimme danger/summer

seasonal depression

2010-02-19T02:06:00.004-05:00

thinking about chix a lot lately. i go through phases

Baby I'm bad news

2010-02-09T11:41:00.004-05:00

best new record

been feeling pretty blasé. wanting to get out of richmond, sick of seeing the same people.

fuck winter

GET IT

2010-01-19T19:31:00.005-05:00

been listening to this record a lot lately:

i also think i'm gonna quit my job.

not his like claim to fame but i just finished this book and it was sweet

chilean

life scrapes me along

peace

2010-01-14T17:57:00.008-05:00

I miss summer

Right now, more of the same...last week before school starts

i stick and poked myself last night:

whenever i'm done with school and/or just finally get completely sick of richmond i think i wanna move to about 30 minutes outside new orleans. i would be stoked to own a little land there and just a house. just chill, write music, own lots of dogs. i've never been to NOLA but it seems awesome and i love the rural south/gulf coast. we'll see i guess...here's some tropicana's i benched the other day

paint faster homie

2010-01-12T14:52:00.004-05:00

2010-01-07T02:03:00.001-05:00

Alright so I figured out how to update this using an 'app' so I guess I'll keep doing it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Shit

2009-12-08T14:42:00.000-05:00

I got a new phone so I haven't been updating. Although no one reads
this and I just kept it for myself so if I don't want to what's the
point?

Sent from my iPhone

2009-11-10T04:10:00.001-05:00

school blows cant believe how

2009-10-27T18:44:00.001-04:00

school blows
cant believe how burnt out i am this semester....going on tour in a month and a half. holding out hard

2009-10-18T14:28:00.001-04:00

what a bargain

2009-10-10T16:33:00.001-04:00

i'm blogging a lot

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2009-10-10T15:58:00.001-04:00

2009-10-10T01:17:00.001-04:00

oh my god hahahahaha

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2009-10-09T15:59:00.001-04:00

a good one

2009-10-05T17:33:00.001-04:00

2009-08-29T14:22:00.000-04:00

what?

2009-08-22T01:28:00.001-04:00

insert caption

2009-08-21T23:26:00.001-04:00

2009-08-17T20:52:00.000-04:00

in richmond. sick.

2009-08-12T17:55:00.001-04:00

puppy love

2009-08-06T01:16:00.001-04:00

sneakin pics

2009-08-04T22:05:00.001-04:00

2009-08-04T16:19:00.001-04:00

$160 poorer

2009-07-25T15:22:00.001-04:00

lyfe

2009-07-25T00:03:00.001-04:00

2009-07-09T20:23:00.002-04:00

hancock

2009-07-04T01:43:00.001-04:00

truck-couch

2009-07-03T23:20:00.001-04:00

bromance

2009-07-03T21:09:00.002-04:00

lol

2009-06-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

2009-06-15T15:09:00.000-04:00

2009-06-11T00:03:00.001-04:00

2009-06-07T02:50:00.001-04:00

FEMALE UNDERWEAR, EW

2009-06-05T21:13:00.000-04:00

2009-06-04T17:58:00.001-04:00

kingz dominion

2009-05-29T15:35:00.001-04:00

coppolas has a straw problem

2009-05-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

so we're at sonic, and this guy comes up and insists on showing us his pit bull pups. we made it pretty clear that we dont want to buy any dogs, but he says 'no, i just wanna show them to you.." so we were like whatever. anyway, cute puppies. what a weirdo

2009-05-28T21:25:00.001-04:00

the toots. fuck.

2009-05-24T04:45:00.001-04:00

fuck

2009-05-24T00:25:00.001-04:00

bunjee cymbal

2009-05-23T17:31:00.000-04:00

2009-05-21T19:58:00.000-04:00

i won the video fan trivia this week 8-)

2009-05-14T19:02:00.001-04:00

dry spell '09

2009-05-12T20:26:00.000-04:00

2 people, 36 wings

2009-05-11T15:05:00.001-04:00

i seriously just killed a bee the size of a fucking vienna sausage

2009-05-09T04:44:00.000-04:00

2009-05-07T19:35:00.000-04:00

this is what i get for chewing off my calluses

2009-05-06T23:54:00.000-04:00

2009-05-03T04:59:00.002-04:00

peace :(

2009-05-02T21:06:00.000-04:00

eric benson is stupid

2009-04-30T22:46:00.000-04:00

currently watching dinosaur jr

2009-04-28T23:19:00.000-04:00

i like that the packaging-opening products are in hard to open packaging

2009-04-27T17:26:00.001-04:00

ate this ramen last night and it was disgusting/made me sort of sick, so i peeped the exp. date. how do freeze dried noodles expire???

2009-04-26T18:13:00.000-04:00

movie theater?

2009-04-26T05:59:00.002-04:00

recording a 7"

2009-04-26T05:02:00.002-04:00

recording a 7"

2009-04-26T00:23:00.001-04:00

recording a 7"

2009-04-26T00:22:00.002-04:00

recording a 7"

2009-04-23T20:59:00.000-04:00

md cow nipple

2009-04-23T15:12:00.001-04:00

2009-04-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

car wash party

2009-04-21T14:53:00.001-04:00

skillz

2009-04-18T13:10:00.001-04:00

kings dominion is so tight

2009-04-17T23:22:00.000-04:00

cool party

2009-04-17T20:18:00.001-04:00

2009-04-14T21:30:00.001-04:00

i'm listening to 7 songs on repeat while i finish my rough draft:
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - Ugetsu
The Stranglers - Golden Brown
Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life
Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy
Sixpence None the Richer - Kiss Me
Goo Goo Dolls - Slide
The Cranberries - Linger

still not sick of it, in a really awesome mood

i watched the departed on

2009-04-12T20:52:00.001-04:00

i watched the departed on fx and did 10 pushups every commercial break....that was actually a pretty crazy workout

2009-04-07T16:59:00.001-04:00

got into my car and saw this. WHAT DOES IT MEAN

2009-04-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

chilling in the commons before class. not writing a research paper...oops

2009-04-06T03:26:00.001-04:00

this weekend:
+played some music
+saw some bands
+left town
-saw some really gay bands
-drove a lot

fuck school

2009-04-03T15:35:00.001-04:00

dick-pipe

2009-04-01T18:15:00.000-04:00

Ever have a test coming up that instead of studying for, you just grit your teeth and wait to go bomb it? Yea

The Cro-Mags this weekend were absolutely unreal. Like 2 of my friends separately said, 'a religious experience.'

JJ signed a copy of his book for me, I get happy whenever I look at it

2009-03-23T21:51:00.001-04:00

i decided the other day that i would probably let a dude blow me for 300 dollars. i think that's my price for (receiving) homosexual acts. alex k said he wouldn't go lower than 1000. that's retarded.

i don't like posting entries without pictures so here is a guy in a DTN shirt passed out next to a toilet full of puke with bandages on his ears that look like they're from sewing up his gauge holes

2009-03-16T19:30:00.000-04:00

back at school/work this weeeek

san diego was cool last week

i got a sparrow tattooed behind my ear

2009-02-25T22:05:00.000-05:00

Trying to get into the habit of semi-documenting my life through this

my new band No Excuse played a show the other night

life is fairly slow

waiting for warm weather/vcu kids to go home

NO EXCUSE DEMO 7'' coming soon. probably split between Headcount and my new label REAL DEAL

2008-12-15T17:00:00.000-05:00

I shaved my head.

Then I cut the shit out of it.

I'm going to NYC tonight at 1 AM.

2008-12-15T06:07:00.000-05:00

some kid got caught jerking off right in front of me in the library. nice going.

note the janitor in the background cleaning up the ejaculate

Southbound and Down

I'm starting a gang

past few weeks

P*R*A*Y

day in the life of Darryl Nau

girl you crazy

wrong coast

SOMEBODY HELP ME

SET THE ALARM

seasonal depression

Baby I'm bad news

GET IT

Shit

school blows cant believe how

i watched the departed on

PRA*Y