LES ONE TSDISM

Les – found embroidered tag on a mechanic’s shirt

The name “LES”

In graffiti writing, it is customary for most graffiti writers to cycle through several names before landing on the one that remains with them forever. The first name I ever wrote was STARK, then DICE, then PIER, then SORE, and finally, after several other short-lived ones, I decided on LES.

I recall the day like it was yesterday: 1990. It was during Spanish class in my sophomore year of high school. That whole year, my tagging friends and I had dedicated each lunch hour to tagging the nearby buses that stopped close to the school around the time we were let out for lunch. As soon as the bell rang, we would run to the bus stops, trying to meet the arriving buses in time to leave our marks on the moving canvases. I remember packs of us running from one bus stop to the next, crossing eight lanes of traffic to reach the other side, getting as many buses as we could within that short window of time before they departed.

I was itching for a new name. The one I had before was four letters long, and each letter increased the chance of being caught. The longer I was writing with my back turned to the world, the greater the risk of being busted, so I needed a shorter name. As I sat there staring blankly at my Spanish textbook, I daydreamed about the upcoming lunch, meeting with my fellow baggy-clothed friends, the movement of our arms and colors, and leaving our marks to travel across the city, announcing to other Los Angeles writers that we had been there. And we rocked it.

Then I saw it, in the Spanish text: “les,” an indirect object pronoun. “Les di el libro.” I gave them the book. Les. Three letters. I could fashion the lower line of the capital L into the lower case E with a simple loop, and from there, make a swift motion into the S. To me, the letter S in graffiti carried a lot of style—it had flavor. The way you wrote the S could immediately signify to other writers whether you had style or not. The E also carried its own flavor; whether capitalized or lowercase, it had as much style as the S. The L, while not as flavorful to me, was an easy alley-oop for the other two.

There it was—my new name, just in time for the tagging session as soon as the lunch bell rang. I used that name repeatedly that year, and it stuck with me. After I left school and moved away from the area, I met new friends, and when the topic of my graffiti days came up, I told them I used to write “LES,” and the name stuck even then. Although I no longer write, some of my friends still call me Les.

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