"I said, “This woman’s not a cop.” So I sold her some weed."

Selling marijuana and graffiti. One night I was out I was drinking and I don't know, I was writing on stuff, spray paint and basically police came up and yelled, “Freeze!”  I started running. I’m running down the street, in a trench coat. So I was running, running, running, running. Eventually they got me but anyway I'm on probation. 

CHI 3. Just writing, writing on everything. Just walking around, see your name up you know. You know the whole culture of it. You know the writers. You hang out with them. It’s a whole community. Like a graffiti community. It’s something fun. To kill off time. It’s addictive. Writing on stuff. I don’t know. You get caught up in it.

I got setup. This woman came up to me and asked me if I knew where to get weed at. At first I was like no no I don't know where to get weed at. So then I was looking at here, “Is this woman a cop?” I got not the best vibe from her. Something about her face . She looked a little beat up. I looked at her sneakers. I said, “This woman’s not a cop.” So I sold her some weed. She was an informant. Some kind of like paid informant. So there was a whole bunch of detectives. I got swarmed by them. The story of my life. Arrests.

John

"They claim our carvings, our sculptures is not art."

My name is Turtle from Union Square Park on 14th. Street. I do carve, carve sculptures out of minerals. We’ve been under attack. My crystal stand has been there for eight years and in the past two years I’ve been attacked six times, over four, five, six times to getting locked up because they claim our carvings, our sculptures is not art. Cutting and carving crystals is just as good as producing gravel. So they say you know you have to have a vendors license. What we do, I believe is one the most traditional forms of sculpting. We cut crystals for hours. It’s our form of art. They’re say it’s jewelry and I feel like it’s an infringement upon our rights as expression and the first amendment of art. I feel like we help a lot of people connecting to nature because of these minerals and it’s very important for us city people because we are some of the people furthest from nature. They clear our chakras. These are wheels of energy that help our blood move, help our chi, our energy move around in our body so we can keep healthy, regulation and sometimes stress, trauma, anger, negativity just make things blocked up. The bigger part of it in this case is that they’re attacking us saying, “Is this art, to cut and carve a stone is that sculpture?”

Turtle