TABLE TOP PRODUCTIONS. Rancho Cucamonga.
Taggers turned entrepreneurs Ray Tucker, Gabe Gomez, Rene Arellano Jr. and Eric Strenger.

Graffiti ‘addicts’ can kick habit
Many finding the thrill is gone
By Jeff Cohan. Daily Bulletin. Sunday, February 6, 1994.

Fred Hiltenbrandt struck a menacing pose for the camera, his can of Krylon pointed at the lens, his finger poised on the nozzle. The letters on his cap spelled “YGW,” the initials of one of the Inland Valley’s most destructive tagging crews. He boasted to a reporter of his addiction to graffiti. But today, a year later, Hiltenbrandt has kicked the habit. Like many of the taggers who were tormenting the region a year ago, he says he has hung up his spray cans. “I just got tired, grew out of it,” said Hiltenbrandt, a 17-year-old Ontario resident. “It was just a phase. I guess everybody has to go through it.”

While tougher laws and intensive eradication programs have undoubtedly discourages some vandals, many retired taggers say they simply lost interest.“I just got bored of it,” said Rancho Cucamonga resident Gabe Gomez, 17. “It wasn’t really fun anymore.” “I saw it as a childish thing because I was getting older,” said Rene Arellano, 18 another former Rancho Cucamonga tagger. “I realized it would be a waste of my time and a waste of my ability to be tagging.” Such comments seem to bear out predictions that tagging will fade like any other fad. Like yesterday’s fashions, graffiti could be going out of style, regardless of any police crackdowns or city ordinances.

“It wasn’t the law at all,” Hiltenbrandt said, attempting to explain the decline in graffiti. “I don’t think it’s the government or police.”“Like any other fad, it’s just passing by,” Arellano said. Arellano, however admits other factors entered into his decision to quit tagging. “Especially around here in Alta Loma, the police were getting real tough,” he said. Gomez, similarly, cited tougher punishments. “It’s not worth the risk being caught,” he said. Whatever their reasons for quitting, these teenagers offer themselves as examples to hard-core taggers.

Arellano and Gomez have become leaders of Table Top Productions, a fledgling business that offers custom airbrushing and silkscreening services. And Hiltenbrandt, an unemployed dropout a year ago, said he has re-entered school and found a part-time job. “I don’t want to waste my time doing (graffiti),” Hiltenbrandt said. “I would rather be doing something that could help me out, my family.” “I want to tell the youngsters to stay in school,” he added. “That’s where it’s at.”

But while Hiltenbrandt, Gomez and Arellano have discovered more productive pursuits, they all sounded ominous notes about the future of tagging. If graffiti really is a fad, it might go the way of platform shoes and double-breasted suits - and make a comeback. “Fads always come around twice it seems like,” Gomez said. “I think (graffiti) will probably come back twice as hard,” said Arellano. “History repeats itself.” Hiltenbrandt has discerned an even more disturbing trend: A new generation armed not with spray cans, but with guns. “The youngsters, they’re just looking up to the gangsters now,” he said. “I would rather have the youngsters go out tagging than look up to gangsters. “At least no one would get hurt.”

The irony of it all did not escape Rene Arellano. The 18-year-old Rancho Cucamonga man spent much of his youth marring the inland Valley with his graffiti. But last fall, Arellano and a few former taggers found themselves airbrushing a banner for Adopt-A-Wall project symbolized his transformation from outlaw to aspiring artist, an evolution made possible by Table Top Productions, one of a handful of programs designed to lure hard-core taggers away from graffiti.

“Finally,’ said Arellano, “I found somewhere I can put my art to good use.” Rancho Cucamonga residents Michael and Debbie Rodriguez created Table Top last May, putting former taggers to work providing custom airbrushing and silk-screening services. Similarly, in Pomona, Family and Community Educational Services members have set up a T-shirt company called Booyaa to give graffiti vandals a place to express themselves legally. Since the company started last year, about eight taggers have taken part, and four are currently on the payroll, organizer Wally Pearsall said. So far, Booyaa has sold more than 4000 T-shirts through companies like Hot Topic and Burlington Coats, according to Peasall.

Table Top has found a few customers too. The outfit has designed a mural for the American West Funding Group office in Ontario and T-shirts for Plaza Funding employees in Rancho Cucamonga, not to mention the banner for Adopt-A-Wall.

In addition, Table Top ran a popular booth at the Grape Harvest Festival last October, selling custom designer airbrushed T-shirts. The group ordinarily operates out of Rodriguezes’ garage, where about half a dozen youths between the ages of 14 and 19 meet weekly to design T-shirts, banners, signs and murals.

“Hopefully, it’s going to change (the taggers) in the right direction,” Michael Rodriguez said. A Table Top T-shirt hangs in the office of San Bernardino County Probation Officer Michelle Scray, who is looking to plug some of the taggers in her caseload onto the Rodriguezes’ program. “I think it’s geared toward the hard-core taggers,” Scray said about Table Top. “The only way you’re going to get those kids to quit tagging is ... if you put something in it’s place. “I think it’s got a lot of potential.” The Rodriguezes have high hopes for Table Top. They envision moving the group out of their garage and into a larger space, expanding the program to include more taggers, and offering wages and college scholarships to dedicated participants.

For Arellano, Table Top has helped him realize his goal of becoming a professional artist. “I didn’t know where to go, what to do, It was just a dream,” Arellano said. “Before this, I’ve never been in a business situation.”

Booyaa has a success story of its own in former tagger Fred Castaneda, now a local artist with a growing number of freelance contracts. “Freddy is really a top-notch guy now,” Pearsall said. Castaneda, 20, recently painted a mural for the Pomona restaurant La Cabana, combining stylized pictures of plants with the business’s name to catch the attention of Holt Avenue motorists. “I’m making pretty good money off it,” he said. Castaneda studies graphic design at Platt College in Ontario. He supports himself through creating T-shirt designs for Booyaa and taking design contracts from the Pomona Economic Development Corporation.

Castaneda said he committed most of his graffiti crimes during junior high school. “We thought, ‘Why not?” He said. “It’s like cool, you know.” His attitude changed over the years. “As I developed, I started thinking there’s something else I can do with my skills,” Castaneda said.