I had many journeys, which influenced my life.  My father who was from Gary, Indiana was half Russian and half German.  On the East coast, by Miller Avenue in New York is where my mother was born.  She was a city gal living in an area surrounded by all the

I was always an adventurous kid.  When I saw those tags and shit on the phone booths, and on the train, I said to myself “This is going to be a part of me, the Vincent now!  I lived right across from all the trains that I saw (at 205^th Street) when I had first gotten here.  There were thousands of them, and Tracy Towers wasn’t even built yet.  A few blocks down was another yard… the D, E, F, J, KK, Q, B, N, RR, train yard…aaaahh I was bugging.    I had to start politicking, cause we had no money, no father, no dog, and my grandmother was too tight to give us money.  So, I went over to Marty’s doughnut shop, the most famous graffiti place.  I told the guy “Hey I’m broke, I got no paper ( money ) what can I do to get some money?”  He gave me a job and I started off counting pennies all day from eight in the morning till eight at night.  Later, I got promoted to nickels, dimes and then quarters. When I brought brownies and doughnuts home, my mom and grandmother questioned me. “Don’t

 worry about it, I’m taking care of you”, I remember telling them.  I knew it wasn’t the best career to have, so I told the guy at Marty’s doughnut shop, “I can’t make the pizzas nor can I see over the counter” and that I really appreciated his help, but it was time for me to move on. That’s when I started riding the trains every day, for 30 days and went to Kingsbridge, Bedford Park, Fordham Road, 183^rd Street, Burnside, 170^th Street, 176^th Street, 149^th Street and 3^rd Avenue to 149^th and Grand Concourse.  Then I took the train back, climbing up the seat in the front of the train and I was fascinated!  I had the fever.  Then… it just started! 

As I rode the train, I looked up and saw the names, like tags and shit like that and I was like “Yo this shit is on the inside of the train and other shit is on the outside of the train”.  This is writing!  It said LIBRA ONE was here, MOE 146 was dead.  I said to myself, this  is intriguing.  I figured…these guys; they

I started hitting all the mailboxes and train stations, writing my names in the inside of the trains.  For such a little kid, at 8 years old, I was getting my name around.  I developed a strategy to get my name around by riding the D or 4 train to the very last stop where I walked through all the cars and wrote in every single one (as I walked through them).  Over that year I did that consecutively, and my mom thought I was going to school at P.S. 95.By 1972, graffiti writing became noticeable.  You could go to different places and see a big tag and see what it says.  I saw all these names like PHASE 2, STAY HIGH 149 and CAT 87 and wondered…wow; they’re drawing their names so elegantly.  That’s when I thought to myself, that my name TOP didn’t have a ring to it after all.  But, it was my name, so I stuck with it.  Since I lived right across the street from the 4-yard I was always scared my mom would see me.  The D yard, on the other hand, was like a ghost town, where nobody was able to see what I was doing. 

 Every time I went there, more tags appeared on the trains, especially by the entrance of the yard.  Each time I went there, I would follow the tags that lead into the yard, saying “Yo…. I’m almost here”!  But, I thought to myself I don’t want to be a god on the BMT’S and IND’s, I wanted to see what was happening on the IRT’s.  So, I started investigating the writing scene there.  I started walking around the 4 yard, checking it out for ways to get in there. DeWitt Clinton High School was where all the famous IRT writers went; like STAYHIGH 149, PHASE 2, HONDO, BONANZA (the guy who wrote the swastika next to his name).  Even if a writer didn’t attend the school, they went there to bomb the school walls.  I remember sitting across the street from the school wall, when I saw about 30 black guys walk right by me.  They looked at me wondering, what the hell this little blonde headed boy was doing there.  Even though Mosholu Parkway  was a white neighborhood, there weren’t any white kids that went to DeWitt Clinton High School.   

So, you had a thousand black guys going to DeWitt Clinton High and chilling in this neighborhood.  As I was sitting there, I was afraid, because they were giving me dirty looks.  I remember thinking, “Oh my God!  These guys might fuckin kill me!”  At first, I thought

 at me, I said, “Hey mister, what are you doing?”  STAFF 161, the ultimate God of Graffiti said to me, “Who are you little white boy?  Go back home, you’re going to get killed on the third rail!”  No, no, you don’t understand mister; I want to do what you guys do.  I’m hereto write, I want to be a writer.  So they all looked at me and laughed, “Ha Ha little bastard, you can’t even reach the train”.  STAFF looked down at me and asked me for my name, I told him it was Vincent, but I’ve been writing POPEYE.  As he chuckled, he said it sounded corny.  Since I had this big, blonde, push back, D.A. haircut, and looked like one of the actors from the 1960’s beach movies, STAFF looked at me and said, “I think Fuzzy, would be a good name for you”.  I thought, and asked, “How about FUZZ?” He looked at me and said “Hey that’s a good name! FUZZ”.  That’s how I got my name. So he said, you have to have a number at the end of your name.  I told him I want to be “The One”; I want to be FUZZ ONE!  The original ONE!  “All right then!” he said.  He pulled over a garbage can; I jumped on top of it and caught my first tag.  It was this big uneven tag of letters, with a little one at the end of it.  From that point, I followed them all around carrying their paint.  “Wow I’m in with them.  I have nothing to worry

 about, they got my back”.  Most of the guys liked me, but there were some who didn’t.  I don’t think it was because I was white, I just think some just didn’t like me ‘cause the way I carried myself and my body language.  Most people either loved me or hated me!  PHASE 2 was one of the dudes who hated me.  I don’t think it was because I was white, I think it was because he thought I should’ve been in school and was a pest.

The first time I saw my name on a train... I was in a barbershop (with my mother) getting my first D.A. haircut.  I looked out the window and “BANG!”… I ran outside with the Barber’s bib on, hair all wet, and said “FUZZONE, that’s me!  I’m FUZZ now!”   Back then, there were so many names, and the biggest graffiti artists were STAFF 161, PHASE 2, RIFF 170 and STICK 1 (who only had 5 pieces running on the trains).  Back in those days, writers only did 7 to 8 pieces.  If you ever heard otherwise, it’s bullshit. Everybody in my neighborhood was prejudice, so I knew being white I had to work extra hard to prove myself.

 As the days, and weeks went by I started bringing Hispanic and black dudes by my house, and by Marty’s Pizza Shop.  I was the only white writer at that time, however TRACY 168 wrote Graffiti on the other side of the Bronx.  TRACY 168 wasn’t living in Kingsbridge in the early 1970’s; he was living on 167^th Street by Yankee Stadium (the other side of the Bronx), and later moved to Kingsbridge.  STAFF 161 was the president of a gang, THE EBONY DUKES whose members were mainly outlawed black guys from my area and Brooklyn.  The gang had a clubhouse on Kingston Avenue, in Brooklyn, which was the key spot for the EBONY DUKES where they would fly their colors (wear their gang jackets that read EBONY DUKES on the back).  I was never into that gang life, I was a pretty mellow tone kid who only wanted to write Graffiti and nothing else.  STAFF 161 was like a father figure to me.  I was never a big writer at that time; basically I was like a butler to them who ran errands for them.  There were guys that called themselves Gods back then, because they lived across from the yards and hung around with big writers.  However, what makes one a God in Graffiti, is the influence the writer has on others, also one who bombs everywhere (the inside, outside, ceiling and every single groove of the trains and walls ALL CITY).  STAFF 161 is a guy that got around the five boroughs to steal paint.  He was like a train map,

 initiation.  Some are still walking around in the subways in a daze from their trauma.  I knew I couldn’t do that shit, and somehow I got out of getting the beating.  STAFF 161 put me in the group just to run out and steal for them.  Eventually the EBONY DUKE relationship faded away as members got locked up or hooked on drugs.  As they faded out, I started spending more time around Meshula Parkway, in the Bronx where I began breaking into hardware stores for paint and markers.  One day I went into a Chinese restaurant, where I ran into a big black guy who had to be about ten feet tall. 

He stopped me and asked where I was going; he ( I later found out he was KINDO 1, ) was kind of nice with a humorous grin.  From STAFF 161’s mascot I turned into KINDO’s new mascot; I supposed it was quite a promotion for me.  KINDO 1 took me all over the city to steal in mostly white neighborhoods, which in his theory, the other neighborhoods did not have anything to steal.  KINDO 1 was  sort of a crazy guy who fought with the bus drivers and owners of stores (when he was caught stealing). He would put them in the

 famous chokehold, which he called “KINDO YOKE”!  KINDO was able to jump from one platform to the other, due to his height and long legs.  He mostly hung out on the 6-line, with all his boys who were all black.  They were called, the 6-YARD BOYS.   KINDO 1 was intrigued by hanging-out with me, cause I was a little blond headed white kid. There were many rumors about THE FANTASTIC PARTNERS (TFP).  Rumor had it that the original group was supposed to be a group of deejay’s from Webster Avenue, which was bullshit.  I remember the first time the group was brought up.  It was a day when KINDO 1 and I were stealing Chinese food.  He had decided a name should be made for Graffiti writers who hung out with each other, unlike street gangs who just robbed pocketbooks.  KINDO 1 asked me what I thought about the name TFP, which stood for THE FANTASTIC PARTNERS……… “Wow that’s great,

that might become something big”, I said.  From that point, he started writing KINDO 1-TFP and I started writing FUZZ ONE-TFP.  I didn’t hang out with KINDO everyday, cause I hung out on 183^rd Street which had a lot of famous writers, but none of them were kingpins that went out there and did whole cars and top to bottoms.  The most famous dude that came form 183^rd Street was SOLID ONE.  The first time I met SOLID ONE, was when he was flying pigeon's on 183^rd Street.  He was a really nice

 black guy who was intrigued by the stories I told him about KINDO 1, who liked ordering food and running off without paying for it and the fights he would get into.  That was when SOLID ONE started hanging out with us.  We were just three guys writing our names, stealing paint, shoplifting and all that kind of shit. 

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