Spray it, don't say it

The police and county are cracking down on graffiti. But can they catch Fizix?

By Andrew Kiraly

Fizix knows about suffering for one's art.

There was that time he was spray-painting a wall near the Rancho Drive exit on U.S. 95 south and he was tackled by a "hero"--slang for a citizen do-gooder.

Or the time he was putting a piece on the wall of a dead Strip hotel and two security guards cornered him.

Or the times he's been surrounded by members of rival graffiti crews bearing spray cans and fists. Or the times he's dodged the blinding spotlight of police helicopters or sprinted from the clutches of railroad guards.

In every case, Fizix--wily prince of the Vegas graffiti underground--has lived to spray another day. "To sneak up and get a nice wall you think is gonna stay up for a while, and you hit it and it stays up without being dissed," he says. "That's the satisfaction I get out of it. That's what it's all about."

It's an illicit satisfaction, one that county cleanup guys and cops can't stand. And they especially can't stand Fizix. Because Fizix--who styles his name any way you can imagine, FZX, Phisix, Fyzix, Fzex--has the rare distinction in the local graffiti underground of never having been caught. Chalk it up to highly developed urban radar--and a bag of secret getaway tricks.

"Every time I go bombing [graffiti-painting], I take Fizix," says Konk, a member of Fizix's "crew" and longtime graffiti artist. "He has a sixth sense or something like that. He'll notice a butterfly landing on a can and it means something. He's ill with it. It's crazy. He's always my side man."

Maybe you've seen his name. Fizix has thrown up pieces along the snarl of overpasses near the railroad at Spring Mountain and Industrial Road, bombed drainage ditches on the west side, muraled the flood channels near Caesars Palace and decorated the backs of abandoned buildings and businesses alike--jagged swaths of stylized letters that rarely get "dissed"--or written over--by rival writers or taggers. Of the 300 or so pieces he's thrown up over his career, countless have been buffed by county paint rollers, but many persist, respected for their technical prowess by others in the scene.

"His stuff's ingenious," says Presto One, a local DJ and self-described graffiti aficionado. "It's just his method of simplicity. A lot of kids like to get on complex shit when they first start out; they're interested in the fancy stuff. That's why a lot of stuff out there looks like fucking garbage. But really, it's about keeping yourself clean. The fact that Fizix has been at it for so long is an honor in itself. He's a nasty guy, really dope, super fresh."

Call him an elder sprayman of the Las Vegas scrawl scene, an old-school graff artist who has a few new-school sensibilities. Over the years, Fizix has watched as "writers" have gone thuggish, cops have wised up and graffiti has splashed across the pop culturescape like a leaky can of Krylon.

A conversation with Fizix is a primer on the spray can underbelly that thrives in places in Vegas bearing nicknames like Bum City and The Tracks. A world where as many as 30 graff crews--made up of everyone from thugs to druggies to the suburban kids next door--take to the alleys at night to spray names like Keg, Rank, Hilo, Disr and Swol. In this world, they change aliases like clothes--and grow eyes on the backs of their heads.

Spy vs. spy

Usually when they bring the helicopter out on you, you're done. But if you can get to a hotel or a titty bar, anywhere there's a lot of people and they can't really pick you out of the crowd, you can usually get away. But if you're out in an open area, on a rooftop, you're done. That's usually how a lot of writers get caught. They send the ground patrol in, and as they're down there waiting to bust you, they send a helicopter to flush you out. Bam.--Fizix

Members of Metro's graffiti squad admit they're familiar with Fizix's work, but they won't say much beyond that--lest they tip their hand too much.

"It isn't rocket science catching these guys," says an officer with Metro's gang unit who wishes to remain anonymous. Of the 70 detectives in the gang unit, six of them focus on graffiti, which is considered a gang crime. "It's all about old-fashioned police work. Taggers are like any other criminal. You catch one and they'll tell on 10 of their friends."

Or maybe there is some rocket science. Over the years, police have engineered some imaginative traps in hopes of collaring writers, who sport different "job descriptions," such as taggers and piecers, depending on how ambitious their work is. A 1996 sting involved setting up a fake production studio and advertising that they were looking for graffiti artists to appear in a movie. Scores of graff writers heeded the siren call of fame and showed up.

"We actually advertised we were going to film an underground movie," the officer says. "We got them into the place, we talked to them, they [painted] our stuff, and about halfway through our producer would jump up and go, 'You've got skills! You're our star! Why don't you go with our production guy here and show us where you've been [tagging].' Every one of them went out and said, 'This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.' They did themselves in." Twenty-eight gullible graffers took the bait, garnering a windfall of charges ranging from misdemeanors to felonies.

More seasoned writers such as Fizix, though, smelled trouble. He saw the fliers, but stayed far away. "I don't trust nothing unless I go and talk to the owner myself and set it up myself and get written permission," Fizix says.

It's a healthy paranoia that can easily play into the hands of the police. "Some of these guys are so paranoid, so out there, they'll wear tin foil on their heads because they think we've got satellites following them around," the officer says. Elements of psychological warfare, perhaps? "Not necessarily," the cop says with a smile. "But there could be."

Police do admit that part of the campaign of netting writers involves playing mind games, keeping them constantly on edge. It's not uncommon, writers say, for police to show up at completely legit arts events and snap photos of the work to add to their graffiti database.

They even showed up at the funeral of one local writer--just to rile the minds of the graff underground. The writer, Efrain Dimas, who went by the writing name Lone, tried robbing a fireworks stand at gunpoint July 1; the off-duty police officer who was manning the stand shot Dimas to death. (Interestingly, several tribute pieces of graffiti depict Dimas being shot in the back.) Either way, the fact that Dimas was both armed robber and graffiti writer and his cohorts' memorials proves to both police and the county that graffiti is a gateway crime--and in the end, writers are just thugs with spray cans.

Thug life

I was hittin' El Rancho when it was shut down forever. I was in the back doing a piece. Me and a friend were hitting a wall. I was boxed in and had my back to the open area behind me. I heard security and turned around and there was two of them. And they tried boxing me in, 'cause I was cornered. I ended up throwing some old-school Walter Payton moves on 'em and breaking through. I ran right through to the parking lot of Wet 'n Wild.--Fizix

Fizix, who admits to "knuckling up" when physically confronted by other crews, finds himself nodding along with the police: Graffiti has turned gangster.

"It used to be you dropped a piece, you didn't get dissed," he says. "And if you did, it usually was the guy dropping something next to you, doing something better than you and writing a little comment. There was no beef like it is now. Graffiti turned gangster after '93, it seems. If you sliced someone's name, you could expect them to damn near kill you or shoot you instead of them calling you out and going, 'Let's go hit this wall and battle and see who has better art.'"

Which is partly why the Metro detective in this story doesn't want his identity revealed; he tells stories of threats to himself and his family from hardcore taggers whom he characterizes as nothing less than psychologically addicted to graffiti.

"They've threatened my life, my family's life, my kids' lives," the officer says. "Their whole thing is it's got to be illegal, in your face and it's to wreck your property. We're not just dealing with screaming artists, we're dealing with people who want to destroy your property just to get props. When I've busted 13- and 14-year-olds and I've asked them why they did this, with the most evil look on their face, they say, 'To wreck your property. To destroy this town.'"

Fizix concurs: "In the early '90s, all the gang-banging started, then all of a sudden hip hop flared up again, and the writing came into play, the crews, and it all kinda clashed."

Add to that the Internet as a new venue for displaying graff and the mainstreaming of hip hop, and the result has been an explosion in urban scrawl, whether it's tags (quickly scribbled, stylized names), throw-ups (multicolor names) or pieces (full-blown works involving letters and characters). According to Darryl Kresser, graffiti abatement specialist with Clark County, graffiti is an $8 million-a-year problem in Southern Nevada. In 1993, the county's anti-graffiti crew did 893 abatements; last year, it did 5,270. "There used to be rules they had among themselves," says Kresser. "They wouldn't do certain areas, didn't do churches. Now that's out the window. They'll tag anything."

But the county and police are regrouping against what seems to be a rising tide of paint. Metro's gang unit is encouraging private businesses to become more involved with the Southern Nevada Graffiti Task Force, which has historically been handled largely by bureaucrats, while the county anti-graffiti cadre is hard at work crafting an ordinance that would require businesses to remove graffiti (the county only handles the marring of public property and residences). Their final weapon against a burgeoning graff culture: an educational video for school kids.

"It's a matter of education," Kresser says. "If I went into your subdivision or apartment complex and stole $10,000 from each person every night, that'd make the evening news. Well, that's what's happening in those neighborhoods. They're stealing $10,000 to $20,000 in property values when they tag up the place."

Kresser and the police balk at the notion that graff artists are just that--artists. "It's not a little kid's game anymore," Kresser says. "When they're out tagging, they're doing other things. They're looking to see what's on the other side of the fence. The thinking is, 'Well, if it's okay for me to do that, then it's okay to rob an old lady."

And even if graff wasn't the start of a rap sheet--if they were only guerilla sprayers and not armed robbers like Efrain Dimas--the writer's moral authority is as empty as a freshly buffed wall, they say. The police and public works guys repeat it like a mantra: The only difference between art and vandalism is permission.

So what if they did get permission?

Can control

I was on hitting a wall on the freeway by the Rancho exit. A hero, this older guy about fortysomething years old, jumped over the wall and tackled me down into the ditch and started beating on me. We rolled down into the ditch into the water, he's calling me a motherfucker, saying he was sick of me writing on his walls. He was trying to beat my ass, telling me he was gonna hold me for the cops. I just turned the tables on him and started whooping up on him, had him in the water, and I just beat his ass.--Fizix

Graffiti is legal in many places in the world, in government-sanctioned zones called "free walls." From Sacramento to Toronto to London, municipalities have experimented with setting up legal walls in the hopes they'll act as a sort of graffiti sponge. Some cities have even offered a sort of graffiti license. Whether such legitimization is the co-opting of an urban art form, a bureaucratic Band-Aid or a savvy civic maneuver is open to endless debate.

"Free walls don't work," says Kresser. "Your average tagger isn't interested in that because the thrill is not there. I know 10 different places that have tried free walls, and they tag on the way in and tag on the way out. We tried it at Desert Breeze Park [in the skating bowl] when it opened, and graffiti in the area went up 400 percent."

Graff artists tend to agree. Saber One is a renowned L.A. graff writer who makes a living doing commercial graffiti work. If you want to gauge how much hip hop culture--particularly graffiti--has soaked into the mainstream, take a look at Saber One's resumé: He's done work for commercial titans such as Toyota and Harley-Davidson. His most recent jaunt took him to Japan to do live painting for an MTV special. Now he's hoping to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest piece--a 250-by-55-foot leviathan he painted on the cement banks of the L.A. River--illegally.

"The fire of [illegal] graffiti will never leave," he says. "It doesn't matter if you're shot on sight or you do 20 years. You'll scribe with your handcuffs, with your teeth if you have to. Having [legal] places to paint would reduce a lot of tension, but it will never completely stop vandalism." And, stubborn as paint itself, the belief persists in the underground that doing legal work is selling out.

Even local arts groups that specialize in urban-style art--the legal, gallery variety--don't exactly warm the hearts of anti-graffiti forces. Local arts collective 5ive Finger Miscount might be said to straddle both sides of the graff world, bringing urban murals to a gallery setting and hosting renowned graffiti artists from across the country.

"We're not concerned with taggers," says Iceberg Slick, the group's frontman. "They're gonna do what they want to do. We're concerned with art--and graffiti is art. So we're going to find buildings where the owner is okay with murals being painted and we're going to put graffiti artists on it."

But Clark County's Kresser says even gallery-sponsored graff has a spillover effect. He charges that 5ive Finger's gallery shows have proved to be a magnet for taggers. "The very first time they did a show off Sahara and Highland, and just down the street, every trailer of an RV dealer got hit [with graffiti]."

Slick counters: "That's the same thing as saying, 'What if someone watches an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and he suddenly thinks it's okay to go out and shoot people?' He knew it was wrong. That's the choice of the individual."

Not unlike the choice that Fizix continues to make--to bomb the city's blank, alluring walls; sure, he flirts with legal work, but his sixth sense often steers him otherwise. But who knows? Maybe one day you'll see his work gracing a glossy ad in a music mag or TV spot for an SUV. But you'll most definitely see it greeting you from the train tracks as you zip along I-15 or cruise along Industrial Road.

"The love of it is going and finding the perfect wall that's gonna stay up, that no one really cares about, and rockin' your name the best you can with some fresh colors and doing some really good artwork," he says. "And hoping it doesn't get buffed. And hoping you don't get caught."