50mm Los Angeles

Wheat Pasting with Robbie Conal

On May 27th 2004 in Los Angeles a mob of heads performed their civic duty and took part in an Anti-Bush wheat paste campaign lead by LA's Robbie Conal. Conal has been posting political bills for decades and if you are an LA native as I am, you grew up seeing the gnarled wrinkly faces of politicians and world leaders adorning electrical boxes everywhere. I always wondered how he managed to put in all that work seemingly overnight... well I found out a couple things. There are plenty of volunteers who are more than willing to help spread meaningful messages, and if you are a seasoned graffiti artist, you quickly realize that wheat pasting is like taking a stroll through the park compared to the risks of bombing with spray paint. In other words if you are a graf artist and become a wheat paste artist, you should be twice as up as obey giant cuz that shit is easy as fuck.

The night started off with an event at the Avalon for which I just didn't have $20 to shell out and witness, sorry motherfuckers I was out gettin my drink on at the Burgundy room... but around 1AM I took off to the meeting place to see what I could do to help. Robbie turned out to be an older unconspicous gentleman and a nice guy. He bought us (about 50 people!) some food and gave instructions as to the ins and outs of wheat pasting. Then he revealed the new designs to the crowd. One was "Read My Apocalips" by Conal, another "Let's Play Armagedon" by Mear ONE and finally a poster by Sheppard Fairey.

After dinner we gathered supplies given to us by the Conal team and paired up. I found a couple cuteez to talk to and ran into another buddy and picked up a journalist to document our run. Our group was WELL organized with walkie talkies to communicate with the driver. We must have put up about 50 posters in the span of two hours. We hit mostly electric boxes including some prominent locations on Hollywood Blvd. Easy as fuckin pie and FUN too. Basically you have the driver, the glue guy (or girl) and the poster guy (or girl) and you roll the fuck out and do political damage. It was real cool to run into spots that others had already hit that night and the drive the next day was awesome. Get on Robbie's list at www.robbieconal.com and get the word out. The public deserves a voice in the sea of corporate advertising... This is a strong grass roots method and it works. I've already seen fools try to hate on a couple of the posters by covering them up with newspaper clippings etc. But that's the beauty of free speech. FUCK BUSH.

story and photography by Unit

Posted 06.16.04 by Unit

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