360 pages Edited by Roger Gastman Text(s) by Shawna Kenney 27.9 x 21.6 cm Language: English Hardback Publisher: Beyond the Streets First edition of 500 copies 2026
A skinny kid from the Valley who went all-city in Los Angeles several times over, GKAE — also SKREW — got down with MSK in the summer of 1992, back when the crew was still an offshoot of AWR. What followed is one of the most relentless bombing careers the West Coast has produced, and one of the most heavily punished: in 1997 a Highway Patrol graffiti task force tied him to an older tag, tracked him to Seattle, and had him extradited back to California — the first time a writer was moved interstate to face graffiti charges. He pleaded to felony vandalism, did time, and gave interviews from a maximum-security prison while writers across the country were still finding his name on freeway signs.
His first book covers the 1990s: over 750 photographs, an essay, and a section of drawings, letters and prison ephemera that gives the story its texture. What comes through isn't romance about hardship — GKAE was always blunt that he came from a decent family and simply chose this, because it was what made him feel like himself. That's a rarer position than it sounds, and it's what makes the book more than a flick collection.
