Oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 11, 2023 with BAN2 (a.k.a. DELI 167) OTB, a true pioneering writer and artist. BAN2 speaks about his family background back and his mother's family migration from Marshall, Texas to New York City in the the late 1940s to the early 1950s. BAN2 recounts taking local trips with his grandmother fishing on the local rail lines, such as the "Hudson Rail Lines" and especially the now gone Third Ave El. BAN2 recalls when he was a child and his downstairs neighbors' fire spread to his families apartment forcing them to move into a temporary hotel ("The Regent") funded by the Red Cross. BAN2 speaks of seeing a lot of gang activity in his Bronx neighborhood although he never saw the need to join a gang especially his his large family of brothers (6 brothers & 2 sisters) and extended family. BAN2 discusses the development of his tag BAN2 and other graffiti aliases such as DELI 167. He also speaks of beginning his writing career motion-tagging and his experiences trying to tag unnoticed inside a train car with passengers, in motion. He also recounts a story of being chased out of a train yard near Gun Hill Road by four policemen and jumping 25 feet to safety to the sidewalk below.
The interviewers are Butch 2, a pioneering graffiti writer and community historian for the The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project (BAADP) and Pastor Crespo, Jr., research librarian and archivist for The Bronx County Historical Society. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This oral history is brought to you through the support of The New York City Council Cultural Immigrant Initiative.
14 май 2023
