It’s road rules with more style and without the silly girls. We meet in person for the first time, hop in the rent-a-vans and get right down to business: the 111 Minna wall. Persue comes up with a collage idea where we will all overlap letters, fragments of pieces, characters, tags and every other element of graffiti. It’s organized chaos, but it proves to be a lot of fun. We paint into the night, reach a good stopping point and paint small panels to display at the show the following day. The 111 Minna gallery is a hip bar that is known for packing people in for edgy art. The crowd ranges from 16 year old black book worms and random artsy type folk to established names ranging from Augor to Mark Bode. It is a success.

The next day we finish the wall in full summer block party fashion. Funk and Disco music spun by none other than Exchange member Serch TM7 fills the air while onlookers stop by to check us out. The wall is a lot to look at but we take time balancing style elements, color and composition. More than anything the process of sharing space and working together was a good learning experience and a nice ice breaker to begin the trip. Afterwards we split up, Ewok, Kacao, Bates, Sever, and Aroe go to another part of town and paint through the night at a wall with Steel MSK, the rest of us go out.
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When we arrive in LA, we get some greasy Mexican food and scout out wall possibilities for the next day. We settle on a big wall at 2nd and Gary street. Everyone is excited because we are going to stack pieces, a nice contrast to the overlapping free for all in San Fran. We wake up, set up scaffolding and get busy. Two days later, the scaffolding moving, paint carrying, and eating too much Subway pay off. The pieces show the signature elements of everyone’s individual style. Kacao ties it all to together with the Exchange Logo and we run to our show at the Ghetto Gloss gallery.

Boards are already set up and the European contingent of the trip (Bates, Kacao and Serch) get busy for a waiting crowd. This was the largest crowd of the tour, as many members are from the area. We drink, hit books and talk to girls until the sun comes up.

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and the finished production.

We get to Phoenix in the middle of the night and go to bed. It’s 95 degrees. We wake up and it’s 110 degrees. We roll through the empty, construction riddled Phoenix streets to meet Dose, a local writer that Jero ICR hooked us up with. We paint a short wall on a main strip. No buffing, ladder, scaffold or much background work is required. This is key as the heat has made what we love feel like work. After we wrap up, we go to a keg party at “Forever In Control”, Dose’s graffiti store.

The next day, some of us go back to Dose’s crib to paint a roof that we can get on through his backyard. Afterward, we get burgers and head to the art show.

The show is at a place called the Blunt Club where, when we get there, there is already a lot going on. Outside there was a sectioned off parking lot where paper was set up for tagging, vendors set up for selling and wooden boards set up for some of us to paint. Kacao, Yes and Snow collaborate and do one of those Kacao train walls. Fresh! Inside there was rapping, dancing, airbrushing and 10 other kiosks doing different things. Some good rest was required to recuperate from the day’s heat and partying. When we wake up it’s time for Vegas.
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Besides some quick highway spots and some NTEL(AIDS) etch tags, the ride into Vegas did not show us too much graffiti. This would make sense as the mayor there is a lot more concerned with graffiti than little girls selling themselves in casinos. The night and next day are free so we explore, trying to see if Vegas lives up to the hype.

The following day we do an installation at the Old Vegas Gallery where we will be showing the following night. For the most part, I think the best work of the trip was done here. The day of rest and the fact that we were on our last stop, made everyone produce what I thought was the best individual work from most everyone. Some highlights include Persue and Aroe collabo, Sever painted the “Raaid!” bugs and Snow did some no limit album cover bling fill that was particularly ill. Later that night, Casinos and bartenders take more of our money.

In the morning we split into two teams. Yes,Snow, Kacao and Bates paint the front wall of the gallery in the flashy spirit of Vegas. Fresh! The rest of us head nearby to a fenced up yard where we tackle the many different sized walls. The trip comes to an end. We celebrate and evaluate the trip at one of those sushi, fried chicken and pizza kind of buffets and everyone flies out in the morning feeling bloated, tired and satisfied.

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