SDK History Pt. 9

Welcome back to Part 9 of the #SDK history. After the release of our first DVD "Die Slow" we went crazy with the YouTube videos. If I wasn't filming I was editing, my whole life was consumed by graffiti. On January 1, 2009 we got started early with a classic video "SDK #53 I Get Paid" featuring Lesen & Keep6 with music from Caspian. It felt like we couldn't be stopped now after surviving what we had been through these past years. The video was released the day after we filmed it. I was on a roll and I was happier than ever before.

The paintings started to get much bigger and riskier, SDK #60 on YouTube is a good example of how serious it got. THE STOMPDOWN KILLAZ was popping up all over our area, sometimes hundreds of feet long. I remember a few giant walls we did that blew me away when I saw it in the day light. It was so amazing to just completely change the appearance of a neighborhood. I didn't think we could keep out doing ourselves but in July 2009 we started to paint entire train cars known as "Wholecars". The first time I had ever seen a Wholecar was several years earlier and I thought aliens must have done it, how could anyone paint something so huge and time consuming without getting caught?! I didn't know what KEEP6 was going to paint that day but it didn't matter, I was down for anything. As I watched him climb up and down the latter hundreds of times over the next few hours I constantly thought we would be arrested at any moment. At one point a helicopter start flying very low and I was freaked out, I thought it was the cops.

I couldn't believe we got away with painting an entire side of a train. The drive home felt surreal, adrenaline was making me shake like I was freezing cold. It seemed like an impossible task that we pulled it off and hopefully we would never do that again, wow was I in for a surprise! Not only did it happen again, it became all we did for a while. Keep6 & Big Miles went into a wholecar painting frenzy!

It became a very serious friendly competition that I was stuck in the middle of. If I thought it was scary filming graffiti videos before, I had no idea the type of fear you get while standing in one position for hours and hours while an artist turned an old rusty train car into a work of art. I would scan from left to right the entire time, constantly expecting to see police. The back pain I would get still haunts me to this day.

Sometimes it was freezing cold and I didn't dress warm enough and other times I was roasting in the hot sun with no shade at all. As I write this and think about how many wholecars we painted I can't believe we got away with it for so long. But all good things come to an end and soon I found out what it feels like to be standing there scanning left to right, seeing nothing and then seeing my worst nightmare, my friends face down on the ground at gun point.

The day it all went sour I was with Big Miles and Lesen who was doing his very first attempt at a wholecar. We arrived at the spot where we had good luck finding trains and on this particular day it was a gold mine, long lines stretching as far as we could see. We went deep into the train yard and found a perfect spot to get started. Big Miles really does live up to his name, and today he was going bigger than ever before. 3 wholecars in a row!! While Lesen got started on his first wholecar, Miles went crazy and started to outline 3 trains side by side. I was super nervous to see this because it was going to be a long day.

We had painted here a lot lately and there was still a Keep6 wholecar sitting there from a few days earlier. It was a very hot day but we had the shade from the large train line and we even had a bunch of beers with us. It was always nice to have a few drinks to take the edge off.

My body was aching and I needed to walk, so after a few hours of standing in the same spot I couldn't stay still any longer. Filming train graffiti on the other cars in the line was a good way to get some extra footage for my videos and to loosen up my back. So I let the guys know what I was up to and headed down the train line with my camera. I stayed on the same side of the trains so that I could keep checking back on Miles & Lesen. I would look back towards them every 30 seconds to make sure they were all good. All of a sudden they were gone! I could see the train and the ladders but nothing else, my heart dropped. I started running towards the trains they had been painting and thats when I saw the strangest scariest thing I had ever seen. They were both laying face down, I thought they were dead! That's when the cop emerged from the forest behind them and pointed a gun at my face. He was just as shocked to see me as I was to see him.

This cop was doing routine patrols when he stumbled upon us painting. He could see us before we even knew he was watching and because I had walked down the train line he thought there was only 2 people. He waited until a passing train created enough noise for him to sneak through the forest and arrest them. At gun point he yelled at them to lie face down. The train noise was so loud I didn't hear any of this and as I ran back to see where they were with my camera in hand I scared the crap out of the cop and he almost shot me. It didn't seem real, but it got real fast and I joined them face down in handcuffs. I hate handcuffs and even worse I had to take a piss bad. My anxiety was through the roof and the train cop kept us on the ground for 2 hours while he waited for the RCMP (police) to arrive. By now the sun had come over top of the train and we were baking to death. I was not doing well.

I managed to convince the cop to handcuff me in front of my body so that I could attempt to take a piss. After 5 minutes of struggling with my zipper and belt I realized that I can't do it while this guy watched me and panic was running through my whole body. It just wouldn't work, I started to get mad and began yelling at myself hoping that would help, this cop thought I was a lunatic and so did Big Miles & Lesen. FINALLY I managed to relieve myself and went back to sitting on the rocks in the sun. A young cocky officer arrived and started making fun of us, he thought we were complete losers and seemed to find it funny. He kept asking me how it felt to ruin my life for this childish bullshit, he really seemed like he stopped a murder or something. We were finally released with a promise to appear for a court date.

Thankfully its almost impossible to do jail time for graffiti where we live and when our court date arrived the case was thrown out. No criminal record! It was a great relief but it had me stressed to the max for the whole time. We didn't stop painting wholecars but it slowed us down and made me feel paranoid now that our names were attached to the videos. What was actually very funny about that whole day was when the cops were looking at our ID's, one cop looked at Miles and then looked at 3 entire train cars with "MILES' painted on them and said "Let me guess, you're Miles? :) ! -Q