By 1982, graffiti had become known as one of hip-hop’s four elements. But it was also a standalone culture that preceded b-boying, MCing and DJ scratching. The community mural movement dated back to 1967 Chicago and aligned with the Black Arts Movement. Murals were already part of the cultural expression of El Movimiento, a.k.a. the Chicano Movement, a push for ethnic identity and empowerment. The modern graffiti movement originated in Philadelphia in the late ’60s before spreading to New York. And gang-affiliated tags had long permeated SF’s Mission and Excelsior districts.
These cultural precedents were integral to graffiti’s evolution. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, New York’s aerosol kings conquered the subways of the five boroughs. Even though the Metropolitan Transit Authority combatted their wild styles with “the buff,” word spread around the country with films like 1983’s Wild Style, along with the documentary Style Wars, which aired nationally on PBS the same year. Its broadcast on KQED catalyzed the Bay Area graffiti scene. “There was this gravitational pull toward what was happening coming out of these films,” Spie recalls.
One wall to rule them all
By the mid-’80s, a series of walls in an unsecured downtown parking lot near Van Ness Avenue and Market Street became an unlikely ground zero for aspiring aerosol aficionados. A wall painted by Doug “Dug-1” Cunningham in 1986 entitled “Psycho City” became so iconic, the quasi-legal graffiti spot was soon named in its honor.
“When Dug hit it, it was a full-on burner,” Spie recalls, referring to a particularly impressive stylistic production that metaphorically burned competition. “It was like it was framed. It was very solidly panoramic, rectangular. It had characters.”
Afterwards, “[graffiti] just started to expand to all the neighboring walls, to the point where [Psycho City] became the place to go to paint,” Spie adds.
Graffiti artists from all over the Bay Area, and even other states and countries, found their way to Psycho City. Over time, the scene became more competitive as wall space became more limited. A piece painted one night might be painted over the next. Needless to say, the competition fueled innovation, as productions became bolder, bigger and more ambitious.
Spie recalls Psycho City remaining active up until November 1992, when a street festival featuring barbeque, DJs, and breakdancing by NYC’s Rock Steady Crew attracted police attention. In the ensuing confrontation, police vehicles were vandalized. The cops returned in greater numbers and began ticketing people. Soon after, “No Loitering” signs were put up, which allowed police to cite anyone in the area, effectively ending Psycho City’s reign. The irony, Spie says, is that instead of graffiti being contained within one centralized location, the police action “ended up pushing it to other parts of town.”
Pieces of a Dream
By 1987, Spie had earned a reputation as an up-and-coming artist with a versatile array of lettering styles. That reputation would only grow over time — and with the help of a legendary collaborator.
Over in Oakland, a Filipino American artist named Mike “Dream” Francisco had established himself as the king of the 23rd Yard, a popular graffiti destination. At the time, “I didn’t know Dream, but he was my hero,” Spie says.
In July 1987, Dream painted a massive mural at the 23rd Yard entitled “Best of Both Worlds.” The painting — which has since become the center spread of 2011’s The History of American Graffiti — consisted of two elaborately detailed letterforms, one in the computer-esque “New Wave” style and the other in the abstract “Funk” style. In mastering both styles, Dream was sending a not-so-subtle message to fellow artists of unity instead of division.
Spie and some artist pals journeyed to Oakland to see the wall. “Everyone was talking about it,” he says. He and Dream became friends that day, although it would be another two years before they would begin collaborating in earnest.
Soon after, Phase 2’s widely respected magazine International Graffiti Times put out a call for artist submissions. “Dream won that one and it got really popularized. And then everybody knew that the Bay Area had a scene going on… Dream put the Bay Area on the map as far as graff,” Spie says.
Bay Area graffiti was growing exponentially, “but it was frowned upon,” says Susan Cervantes of Mission-based arts non-profit Precita Eyes. “If you had a marker you were considered a criminal. Youth were taking a lot of risk trying to do it.”
Still, the subculture continued to thrive. In August 1987, Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff’s book Spraycan Art showcased local artists Crayone TWS, Del Phresh, Whisky and Daube alongside national and international talent.
“We were in love with [Spraycan Art],” Spie says. He notes Prigoff, then a local resident, would sometimes invite Bay Area artists over to his house to view photographs of graffiti from other regions.
Cervantes, a community muralist since the ’70s, recognized that a new artistic movement was underway. Precita Eyes hosted a book release party for Spraycan Art, and Cervantes curated a graffiti art competition at Mission Cultural Center, which brought her into contact with 16-year-old Spie, who knew some of the artists in the competition. After the event, Spie stayed in touch with Cervantes and the organization as they started to integrate graffiti’s aesthetic into their youth programming. They’ve been connected ever since.
In 1996, Spie and Dream participated in a panel during Precita Eyes’ first Urban Youth Arts Festival. “They discussed their experiences in the graffiti movement with all the young people who came to participate,” Cervantes says. “They were really good about the history of the graff movement and how important it was to show respect for each others’ work.” Their engagement with young people set a tone that Precita Eyes has followed for 27 years, with the annual festival as a linchpin of its programmatic activities.
“[Spie] is a really special person,” Cervantes says. “I think he’s very articulate not only in his visual expression, but also in activism around the issues that are important to him.”
Fighting the power
Spie has always viewed activism as a generational legacy. He tells a story of how, during the height of the anti-apartheid movement, Berkeley hosted a “Spirit of Soweto” street festival on Telegraph Avenue. Revolution Books provided canvases for artists to paint politically-themed works. Coincidentally, Spie and Dream both brought sketches of Steve Biko, a martyred South African activist.
Clearly, the two artists were aligned in their politics and artistic sensibilities, and Spie and Dream began working together shortly after. By that point, Spie had become a master of letterforms, characters and backgrounds. In archival photographs of their many collaborations, the pair appear evenly matched; a 1992 co-production at Psycho City literally rises above lesser tags with blazingly vibrant colors and impeccable aerosol calligraphy.
Spie joined Dream’s crew TDK, influencing the collective’s aesthetic artistically and ideologically. The acronym originally stood for “Those Damn Kids,” but soon morphed into alternate meanings, among them “Teach Dem Knowledge.”
Francisco “Amend” Sanchez was still in high school when he met Dream, who was working at the Built to Last tattoo parlor, where aspiring young artists would often “hover” to watch the master at work. At the time, Sanchez had a different tag, but he switched to writing Amend after Dream told him, “Your name should represent. You should have some value to who you are.”
TDK, Amend says, isn’t just about the style of graffiti. “It’s also about just the culture within, an urban community that you want to represent and speak up for.”
According to Amend, Spie plays a unique role within the crew. “He doesn’t get enough credit on how influential he’s been in the Bay Area for multiple generations. As far as TDK goes, I think he’s the main guy who would push Mike Dream, to push the crew to go into that whole social justice point of view, speaking up for … people in the community.”
“This was the ‘Fight the Power’ era,” Spie recalls — a time when hip-hop often felt like a political movement, and rappers like Public Enemy and KRS-One pushed the envelope of sociopolitical commentary in pop culture. For Spie, it was a no-brainer to contribute visually, and inspire others to do the same. There were many causes to join: reproductive rights, opposing anti-immigration laws, protesting LAPD’s beating of Rodney King, pushing back against the Gulf War and resisting the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ “discovery” of America in 1992.
“It was a great time of awareness,” Spie says. “I was very much in a learning mode of being aware of the Native struggle and needing to [let people] know that we are occupying Native peoples’ territories.”
No justice, just us
As political graffiti proliferated in the Bay Area, a January 1993 exhibition at Oakland’s Pro Arts gallery titled No Justice No Peace became the first local gallery show to feature the artform. Eastside Arts Alliance co-founder Greg Morozumi organized it during the Rodney King protests, which raised profound questions about police accountability. The exhibition, Spie says, was a “proverbial middle finger” against the system.
To enter the gallery, attendees had to walk over an American flag. “That was the welcome mat,” Spie says. Inside, viewers were greeted by paintings by Spie, Dream, Krash, Dug-1 and Refa One — most of which questioned the authority of law enforcement while reinforcing community resilience. Spie and Dream’s “No Justice” paid tribute to Jesse “Plan-B” Hall, an emerging rapper who was murdered in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Oakland’s Sobrante Park. Juxtaposed with a Krash painting of a porcine-faced police officer pointing a gun, the piece addressed the emotional toll of inner-city violence.
In 1994, Dream and Spie painted an on-stage backdrop for KMEL’s annual Summer Jam concert. The show, headlined by Patti LaBelle, also featured locals E-40, Rappin’ 4-Tay, Tony! Toni! Toné! and A Lighter Shade of Brown, along with Public Enemy, OutKast and Queen Latifah. The backdrop proved that the duo weren’t always incendiary, with colorful letters spelling out “Respect” along with the message “peace follows.”
In 1995, Spie and Dream collaborated on one of their most unflinching murals: “Tax Dollars Kill.” The names of the artists appeared in typical graffiti wildstyle fashion; above them was a depiction of lightning striking the U.S. Capitol building. The symbolism was inescapable, especially because the mural’s title was rendered boldly above the signatures in white lettering, like a masthead.
Throughout their association, Spie and Dream would “always try to bring some kind of message … something poetic to be a part of what people were reading, as far as the painting goes. And that just kind of kept manifesting.”
In addition to political influence, artist Cece Carpio, who calls Spie a mentor, maintains that he helped establish a Bay Area-identified lettering style. In the pre-internet days, she explains, graffiti was less ubiquitous and regions were often associated with specific styles. “Back then, the Bay Area letters got kind of curvy, just stylized lettering. I actually believe that’s something that the Bay Area started, and Spie was one of the pioneers who did that.”
A controversial mural with a message
While enrolled as an undergrad at San Francisco State University in 1996, Spie painted his first work with acrylic paint and brushes: a portrait of Malcolm X to commemorate the 1968 Third World Liberation Front student strike, which resulted in the creation of one of the country’s first ethnic studies departments. Working in the mode of a traditional painter caused some apprehension and soul-searching for Spie.
“It was always just this back-and-forth around, ‘Are you staying true to this art form? Are you trying to do that other established thing that other people already consider art?’” he recalls. “That was something that I struggled with a lot of those years. But I think the Malcolm X piece really helped me to open up my own personal arts avenues much wider.”
Although the mural’s unveiling was a success (Spie got to meet Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz, who came out for the event), the project had a long and controversial backstory.
An earlier version of the mural, painted by Oakland artist Refa One, included a border with dollar bills, a burning American flag, and a Star of David. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the university, whose spokesperson called the piece “hateful” in The New York Times.