FucknFilthy Talks To Kevin Heldman.

“This isn’t an article about graffiti. If you want to read the definitive piece of journalism on throwing up (and I’m not talking about a Karen Carpenter profile), go to your local library and hunt down on microfilm an article from Rolling Stone called “Mean Streaks” dated February 9, 1995. In it, Kevin Heldman, a real journalist, trails a couple of spraypainters around New York (following them into subway tunnels to stand breathless by their side as the trains barrel past; clambering up the Manhattan Bridge to observe them hanging from their knees to bomb or tag the mammoth structure) and generally lays out the whole historical and sociological context of urban graffiti.”

That is How Vice described Kevin Heldmans story on JA , which is possibly one of the most well known graffiti articles ever written.
Kevin Heldman has written & had stories published in Rolling Stone, The New York Times , Esquire & many more publications.
He is best known for a fantastic article (The one being talked about in vice above) he wrote for Rolling Stone which received gigantic international acclaim.
This article was on the most infamous , most up & most well known graffiti writer that ever lived , JA.
if your not familiar with JA or NY graffiti it is probably best to read The story he wrote to get a bit of background information before you read the interview.
It can be read here
For everyone else enjoy the interview.

When I met JA I didn’t know or realize he was that famous or infamous initially. I wasn’t heavy into the graffiti scene, I hadn’t been a Writer. I knew about SANE and SMITH and the mystery, legends, the regard that they’re held in the community,
SANE’s death.
I came at it initially with that in mind. I somehow was able to get word to SMITH, eventually he decided to come to my apartment in Queens to check out who I was, where I was coming from – we talked for a while and connected. SMITH hooked me up with some guy named JA, who now is the patron saint of the throw up on five continents..
You don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say incredulously ” you know JA?” and are shocked that he let me hang out with him as a reporter.
KET was also involved in the article – we did some stuff with GHOST out on Long Island I believe, didn’t even make it into the piece, wasn’t enough room.
KET is a tremendously good stand up guy.
It’s really ironic – these last few weeks I was actually spending a lot of time on graff message boards reading five hour threads about JA, the forum people complaining “you’re bumping the JA profile again!” & “aren’t there enough threads about the guy?”,
but then they settle down and people start coming in an uploading photos and then they all start agreeing – “damn JA, damn whatever you want to say about JA!”…. And they trail off in respect.
The father shit comes up a lot – which I think is ridiculous, not allowing a man to be who he is because of his relatives, or what class they come from.
It’s actually a form of prejudice in a lot of ways – judge him on his actions and how he handles himself, not on anything else that he has no control over.

So the fame thing , after all these years the insane level of his fame and the regard that he’s held in hit me. There are people out there who regard him as almost a mythical person, the graffiti ideal, pure graffiti ,maybe he is…unstoppable, unafraid, impervious to all life’s problems if he’s throwing up consistently and he’s captured city king crowns.
He made himself a legend but the community also participated in making him a legend. If he breaks, cracks, loses a step or 20, gets beat down, is perceived
as snitching, if something goes wrong , he’s human, people are not perfect machines. If something goes wrong there will be 100s of thousands of 13-year
old boys around the entire world who will be crestfallen.
JA might say and I think he did say when we spent time together that he was doing it for himself, doing life for itself. But he’s got to, imagine,
feel that burden , to constantly have to live up to being an urban Batman. To live up to a legend, to live up to his past. I don’t want to speak for him, but he
acknowledges the graff community, that world is his life and it’s got to be tough to always be the fastest gunslinger. Somebody will always be looking to make a name taking you down.

A Photo of set doing a throwup taken from the original rolling stone article.

Q2.Anything interesting happen during the interview that stuck in your head?

Most times when you parachute into a world, there’s a bunch of people against you, you’re an outsider. And you’re vulnerable, I need access to JA and his world otherwise I have nothing to write about.
Most people play that and fuck with you because they could and because I guess bullying gets some people off.
JA never , Treated me with respect. SMITH, same, low key respect, no game playing, no toying with the reporter for sport (though I did read on a myspace
page a few years ago JD cracking wise about “yeah we dragged Heldman into tunnels an up on sketchy bridges at night, with his little REBEL tattoo, he tried to play it cool but we knew he was scared shitless.”)
A lot of guys would’ve given me a lot of grief, those boys didn’t. Though they did throw the photographer off his one night shoot when he was being arrogant.

Some throwups by JA

Q3. What do you personally think of graffiti?

I’d rather lived on a block that’s tagged up than in Scarsdale. I’ve got a soft spot for grimy, gritty. It wouldn’t have worked out if someone assigned me a piece on the muralists, the Hall of Famers, the guys who do pieces. I can’t draw, can barely write legibly. Unfortunately I don’t have a deep connection with art.
With JA, the 12 ounces were almost incidental. He was about conquering, conquering fear, sketchy neighborhoods at 4 am, urging a dusted driver to step
on it, go faster and faster down the FDR while he’s in the back seat (he’s got me in the front, thanks J) and he’s definitely going to crash, if not this time, than the other five hundred times it happens. But it didn’t. And it hasn’t. I don’t know how it didn’t.
Conquering climbing up to and across impossible places. Conquering expectations. Nobody can tag all across America for 25 years and also be in Amsterdam and tagging up some truck a 14 year old kid sees in Iowa. He did it and it’s not supposed to be possible.
You have to respect that kind of drive.

JA in action.

Q4.I would say you have ended up in some sticky places & talking to some
intimidating people in your time ,
you must have a lot of crazy stories.
Is there a particular one that comes to mind?

Afghanistan, trapped in the mountains, in crazy dangerous Soviet tunnel, no visibility, roads are crap, we’re always about to slip over a cliff, land mines all over the country. Very very dicey 7 day road trip I went on over there.
I went undercover in a psychiatric hospital for a story. Also very rough.
They had too much control over me – you’re locked in this head game place with some very sick, twisted, scarred, dangerous, hurting people.
You’re treated like damaged trash by the staff.. I also had to be constantly on guard and worried that they would do a Google search or something and find me out and then the story is over and I face criminal trespass changes.

Street kids Kevin photographed in Afghanistan.

Q5. Out of all the interviews you have done & stories you have written what one
would you say had the most lasting impression on you?

My wife got sick 8 days after 9/11 (we were living in NYC). Bad sick – terminal cancer. 3 years I watched that girl get, no exaggeration, tortured by that disease. Tortured like horror movie exaggeration. At the end she made me promise not to put her in a hospital or a hospice, that I would take care of her at home.
Of course, she was my real partner, do anything for her.
But I’m telling you shoot a person up thousands of times with morphine,
carry them on you back to the toilet, change their diapers and worst worst she would cry and say to me, I don’t want to die, I’m too young to die. And I would say there is no way in hell you are dying, it’s not gonna happen, I’ll protect you, don’t cry.
I couldn’t do shit. She had brain operations, it spread to her bones. I laid down on the floor next to her all night when she would non stop scream and cry.
Hallucinations, feeding her like an animal with an eyedropper, body covered in Fentanyl patches.
The Carter Center, President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, I owe them some debt, they awarded me a 10,000 dollar Fellowship, gave me some purpose,
they looked out for Sumi very kindly when I took her to Atlanta to meet them.I’m still in touch.
It was a reporting Fellowship to write about Sumi’s sickness and eventually her death. She died in my arms, I half ass trying to resuscitate her, trying to pry her locked jaw open. She died, I undressed the bad clothes she had on, the ugly medical gowns, took off her diapers — dressed her proper in a beautiful dress
and put her into a body bag.
In tunnels with JA, knives pulled on me in a homeless shelter, times I’ve been mugged or jumped, Afghanistan, going into a 1% bijer clubhouse.
They’re a joke after Sumi. RIP Sumiko.
So I wrote about it all and relived, went through it a second time on the page. Now it’s part of my life’s body of work — JournalismWorksProject.

Sumiko.

Q6. What is your favorite piece you have written?

The Rolling Stone piece on graffiti is mind blowing to me. You don’t know how many people I’ve run into in all walks of life, and randomly it comes up and they say holy shit you wrote that and I’m thinking holy shit you read that.
How could it be so popular, doesn’t seem real, I’d go into libraries to photocopy it to send out to editors, I’m leafing through the magazine and when I get to
it, it’s gone, torn out and stolen.
People talk about holding on to the magazine for years and reading it and rereading it, as if it’s a bible. It’s called over and over again classic.
When I put the article up on my site recently my hits started going crazy,
for some reason it’s the only version laid out like a mag and it has the photos, the only one on he entire web, all the other sites are different,
lousy long black block of text.
It’s unvelieably flattering to go into forums and read year old threads praising your work. Makes all the sacrifices and the drama you go through worth it, you did something good.You can pass on something worthwhile to people.
The most enjoyable piece to write, because I had the most freedom was a piece I did on gambling.
Sam Sifton of the NY Press, now of the NY Times was my editor and he was so respectful of what you did as a writer, didn’t try to dumb it down,
squash originality which a lot of editors do.
I did a piece on the US military overseas, in Korea that is famous /notorious and I think it was one of the only articles that got into what life was actually life for an 18 year old in the army overseas. I lived that life when I was 18 so I felt like I could really bring something real to the piece.

JA & Kez

Q7. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Ten years got to be writing. I wrote all my life and it was the only thing that mattered, but then something happened and I lost the desire to do it.
I taught for a couple of years in a juvenille detention center in the Bronx. I drove an ambulance responding to 911 calls. I went out and got certified to be a wild land firefighter.
Sumi’s death shook me , took me five years to get straight about it.
But now I love writing again, thank god. It’s lonely not having a passion.

Q8. What do you like to do in your spare time?

Hang with my partner Mina and my buddy Jose and talk scholarship with my Harvard Physics (much smarter than me) Itay and play the corner,
half ass slap box with Wei Chen, a woman from Tawain that I’m close to.
Sports, reading, watch The Wire, playing handball, used to go out drinking, clubs talking to pretty women and appreciating them laugh and dance. But I’m getting old. Now I’m watching the counter to see how many hits my website gets; joking

Kevin.

Q9. Whats on your ipod at the moment?

I like Eminem, Dylan, Neil Young, this is how we do it, gin and juice, music that makes you pound your chest and feel passionate, Cat Stevens when he gets balladic and is belting out emotions with all he’s got.
I’m kind of an extremist in a lot of ways , good they hooked me up with JA . So I like music that’s powerful and puts you in another world where you’re capable of walking in front of a gun if you thought it was righteous and be completely unafraid.

Q10. Any last words or shout outs?

The most important thing in my life is my ability to be a journalist, a writer. This one man took me under his wing, my professor from Columbia University ,
he was there for me when Sumi was sick – he was the one who passed the graffiti proposal to an editor at Rolling Stone.
I wouldn’t have been able to get that kind of access to an editor. He’s gotten me jobs, given me recommendations , he acted like the father I never had. Shout out to a teacher who went way further than required. Michael Shapiro, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, professor.
His latest book is Bottom of the Ninth. Buy it , how can I ever pay the man back for my career.
Shout out to Adrian Nicole Leblanc the best writer in the United States. I wish I had her e-mail so I could tell her that.
Shout out to Miki Obata, the kindest girl in the world. Eiko, the best sister and her Furuyama family. Miku, Sora and Funo, genki deska frim New York, Okasan
and Otosan. I love you guys (that’s Sumi’s family in Japan).
Thank you for this, it’s been an unexpected pleasure, don’t cut it up, please.
And of course thank you to JA, SMITH, KET, JD, SET – they gave me the opportunity to live in their world which is a privilege and they were stand up about it.
I hope they’re all okay and remain okay. Stay safe and sound.
My website is

www.JournalismWorksProject.org