Videotape

This week­end ruled.

After almost a year of search­ing (off-and-on) for the Wash­ing­ton Pack­ing Co. build­ing, I finally found it! And just in time! Also known as TIE’s Ware­house, in honor of slain graf­fiti artist TIE ONE, this build­ing once housed a tuna can­ning fac­tory, until a cou­ple of cases of bot­u­lism shut it down in the early 1960’s. After its ini­tial shut­down, another fish com­pany oper­ated busi­ness out of the ware­house until the mid-1970’s, as well as var­i­ous other ten­ants using the space through the 1980’s. After the 1989 quake, the build­ing was deemed “unsafe” and it was shut down for good. Over the last 20 years, graf­fiti artists have reclaimed this space fill­ing every piece of blank con­crete with col­or­ful pieces. I was sur­prised to find out that there are even pieces in there that have been run­ning since the 1990’s! Still intact! I’m glad I was able to finally see this place in per­son; Cal­Trans has recently announced that they will demol­ish this build­ing come mid-September, destroy­ing a huge chunk of time­less works. So sad.

Check it out…

When we first arrived, we had trou­ble locat­ing exactly HOW to get in. Even­tu­ally we found a hole in a fence, a trail, a driftwood-bridge, and another hole in the metal grate…and came into this:

We then stum­bled into the next por­tion of the build­ing through another hole in the wall…

The first room was fairly dark (and eerie as fuck), and I wor­ried that the rest of the ware­house would be the same (and I didn’t bring a flash­light — some explorer I am!). But soon enough, after turn­ing a cou­ple cor­ners, the nat­ural light crept in. It was breath-taking. Pieces EVERYWHERE.

Ever won­der what 20 years worth of spray paint cans looked like? I got an idea.

I will never for­get the over­whelm­ing surge of emo­tion I got walk­ing up the stairs and onto the sec­ond floor. To leave the dark­ness and enter a room full of light and color…this photo hardly does it justice:

AWE2:

A Rime piece from 2007:

BEGR:

Girafa:

And onto the rooftop to peep that VOMIT roller! Huge!

I hope I can make it back before it’s gone. There is so much more that needs to be photographed!

Oh, and speak­ing of destroy­ing pieces of graf­fiti his­tory — I just read that the SABER LA RIVER piece (which hap­pened to be the biggest piece in the world — it even made it into the Guin­ness Book of World Records) has now been buffed by the city of Los Ange­les. FUCK. I am glad I got to see it one last time, while I was in LA for the day, last month.