ESPO RANDOM:

Steve "ESPO" Powers and I met in approximately 1984-85, brought together by a shared love of graffiti. Although we were from very different social scenes and neighborhoods, what we did have in common was similar family stories of dysfunction, as well as a passion for writing on walls. At the time, Steve was getting really dedicated with his "writing" and had already popped up in the local Philadelphia Press. We both had seen each other’s graffiti, so by the time we met, we had some common ground. He was a lot more serious about making a name for himself but our passion for graffiti was the same. Over the next few years, we crossed paths, hung out once in a while, and talked about the state of our community. This laid the ground for Steve and I to join forces to take his graffiti newsletter into a full-fledged magazine in the not too distant future.

I don't feel I need to go into a whole chapter on our collaborations over the decades, but suffice it to say, whatever creative endeavors we pursue individually, we always help each other out. We’re still plotting and dreaming like we did as teenagers. The dreams that built "ON THE GO MAGAZINE" into a cult niche' publication were spawned by the same energy we put into projects today. Of course, now these farfetched but "realistic" dreams have two decades of experience to keep everything from being just a shot in the dark like before… I think.

On a more personal note, Steve has been very influential in my life and continues to be to this day. His wife and son are like family to me, and I can't imagine what my life would have been like without a great friend like him to keep things in perspective. With my family not being around, he became family for me. Whenever my path of progress got blurry, or I began to be confused by the advice of others to be more “realistic” with my goals, Espo was there to talk the sense back into me with some sharp one liner and some damn sort of Espoism. I am confident in saying that I have returned the favor more than a few times. All of the above, plus the relentless back and forth of “your mama” jokes, kept me sharp in life!

This folder is full of random ESPO bits & pieces that I keep on my desktop, is a mixture of pictures I took, pictures pulled off the Internet, and some from friends. It comes in handy when some Steve Powers content is needed for a project we are collaborating on, a job that has come up, or a random request for examples of his stuff. As I said, these pics and jpegs come from a variety of sources, so THANK YOU to everyone who snapped them!