There he and three friends unloaded a few dozen spray cans and some forty-ounce bottles of beer. Then they went to work on the side of the bridge.
It was midnight, pitch black, and every so often they had to flick on the car headlights to see what they were doing. At any minute they expected to get busted.
After five hours, they stood back in the weeds and admired their work: four street names, painted eight feet high in jagged graffiti script.
Beside his tag, Jher wrote the date--May 3, 1993. Beside that he left a declaration: "Consider this an introduction to last."
In 1997 Denver spent $1.25 million removing graffiti from public and private property. Work crews painted over 850,000 square feet of scribble. Police filed 10,000 reports of graffiti vandalism. Detectives compiled a list of 800 known taggers. This month Mayor Wellington Webb declared war on graffiti. Taggers belong in jail, he says.
It's a Sunday, around 11 a.m. Jher kneels between the potholes of an alley off Ogden Street and 13th Avenue, rattling a can of Krylon.
"This is my name here," he says, tracing the letters on the brick wall. "You kind of have to know what you're looking for. If you're not used to it, it's kind of hard to see."
He outlines the "J" in bright blue, and the letter pops out from the back wall of the Penn Garage.
"You just go with the flow," he says. "Freestyle."
Jher is one of Denver's most notorious graffiti writers. His murals and cartoon characters have appeared on dozens of walls, from Federal Boulevard to the 16th Street Mall. His work has been featured in graffiti magazines. His tags have traveled coast to coast on the side of freight trains.
His crew, RTD, has attained legendary status in both the underground world of hip-hop and the second-floor office of the Denver Police Department's property-crimes unit.
"I'm an artist," Jher says. "I just want to paint."
On this morning, Jher's lanky frame is drapped in the usual baggy jeans, baggy T-shirt, basketball sneakers and backward baseball cap. He has a temporary tattoo of a Mickey's beer logo on his forearm, a pack of Kamels in his pocket and a thin black beard outlining his thin face.
He's an easygoing if intense kid who considers himself something of a philosopher. He thinks a lot about graffiti. He even lectured about it at the Denver Youth Summit.
What's happening today is getting out of hand, he says. The more penalties that are passed, the more taggers rebel. Pretty soon some thirteen-year-old is going to get shot and killed over a spray can.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
"All it takes," he says, "is an open mind."
And an open wall.
Jher grew up in Vista, a suburb of San Diego. Unlike the New York City teens who popularized graffiti in the Seventies, he wasn't poor, disadvantaged or alienated. He attended good schools, had friends, got much of what he wanted. His home life wasn't perfect, but he didn't have it as hard as the kids in the Bronx.
When he visited Los Angeles with his friends, he became intrigued by the graffiti along the freeways and drainage ditches. It was like a mysterious language, an entrance to another world. He wanted to belong.
When he moved to Denver six years ago at age fifteen, Jher was already skateboarding and had the ragged hairstyle, oversized jeans and counterculture attitude that went along with it.
"I'd be out there just trying to have a good time, and people would look down on me and give me tickets and stuff," Jher says. "Adults would get so childish about something so stupid as skateboarding. That's when my ideas about things started to change."
Jher entered the local graffiti subculture like most kids do: as a tagger, a toy, scribbling without style or conviction, marking traffic signs, trains, dumpsters, billboards, whatever. Back then, that's all that mattered: writing as often as possible, getting noticed by friends.
When he was tagging, he felt as though he were on a secret mission. He walked in shadows, dressed in dark clothes. Being part of the crew was like being in a gang. It had that sense of belonging, that feeling of family.
His dad said, "No. Don't do that." But it only made him want to tag more. After a while, it became who he was.
Graffiti had its own vocabulary, like "toss-ups," "fill-ins" and "fat caps"; its own ethics, like not writing over work that's better than yours; its own Internet sites and national magazines. There were special places, like the abandoned sewage plant off 50th Avenue and Washington Street, where taggers gathered to practice, check out the competition and battle for respect.
Graffiti even had its own hierarchy. At the bottom were taggers. Next came bombers, then writers and, finally, kings, who'd mastered all styles of writing. Kings spent most of their time crafting masterpieces, which showcased everything a writer could have: intricate lettering, outlandish cartoon characters, realistic portraits.
Jher studied other writers, mixed colors, developed a style. The more he painted, the more he saw graffiti as something beyond just a way to belong.
It's like Picasso, he says. When Picasso developed abstract art, people thought he was weird. They didn't understand. They thought it was ugly. Now everyone is doing abstract painting, and it's become mainstream.
Graffiti is like that. It's different. Radical. An abstraction of words.
People ask why he doesn't paint on a canvas. That makes Jher laugh. Graffiti is supposed to be part of the inner-city landscape. It's supposed to be confrontational. It's supposed to make a statement about modern culture. It's all part of an urban renaissance, Jher says.
But most people aren't ready to accept that, he says. If he painted a giant Broncos logo on the side of a building, a giant John Elway, everyone would call him a hero. Now he's a criminal.
Jher has been handcuffed, slammed on car hoods by cops, issued tickets, investigated by the district attorney's office, sentenced to community service.
He's seen spray cans locked behind shop counters, murals painted over by city crews, friends tossed in jail.
He's still writing.
"It's what I do," he says.
In Denver, penalties for underage taggers range from fines of up to $999 and/or as many as forty hours of community service. For adults, it's fines of up to $999 and up to one year in jail.
Now Webb wants to raise the stakes: immediate jail time for juveniles, bills for graffiti removal sent to parents, more money for investigation and prosecution, and a graffiti task force of business owners, judges, attorneys, police and neighbors.
Jher's heard about the mayor's campaign and shrugs it off.
He understands why people are mad. Someone defaced their property. They're trying to protect what's theirs. But he wants them to know something: Not all graffiti writers scribble on anything they can. For example, he and his crew won't paint on small businesses, homes, churches or cars. They prefer abandoned warehouses, alleys, dilapidated buildings, places that have already been tagged. That might not make it right, but at least they're not deliberately trying to piss people off.
"If you really look at the stuff that's painted on, you'll see old, decrepit stuff no one cares much about," he says. "How can you get mad at me for painting a rusty train? The city is so drab. There's so much stress and negative energy. If kids went around and painted with bright colors, it might make things look better."
Jher knows aesthetics are a matter of opinion. He understands that property owners don't want graffiti jammed down their throats. All he wants is a chance for graffiti to evolve beyond a street crime and for adults to recognize its potential.
"Graffiti has every element of art," he says. "Line, color theory, composition. Anyone who can't see that doesn't know what they're talking about."
If the city would set aside places for graffiti writers to work, such as concrete drainage ditches, they'd spend more time crafting murals and less time scribbling.
"If there were more pieces around, the kids out tagging would see that and try to elevate themselves to that level," he says. "They'd be attracted to graffiti as an art form instead of just a rush. I mean, what's the point of doing a tag when you can do a piece? What Denver is doing now isn't working. They should at least try it."
Some cities already have.
In San Francisco, the arts commission hosts graffiti shows and sets aside supervised walls. Philadelphia and Los Angeles have programs for muralists to work alongside reformed taggers.
Even Pueblo has taken a chance. In 1979 the city opened the three-mile-long Arkansas River levee to graffiti writers. Officials provide the blank concrete walls, free recycled paint and advice on transforming scribble into art.
"It's worked fine," says Cynthia Ramu, the project supervisor. "I don't see as much tagging as I did a few years ago. All these kids need is direction."
Ramu, a muralist who has worked with taggers in Pueblo and Denver for ten years, says punishment alone won't stop the vandalism. It might be the easiest political response, but it could backfire.
"I'm not for kids defacing property," she says. "But by having a [graffiti] war, you're going to get a war. All these kids are looking for is a reason to rebel, and all you're doing is handing them an opportunity. Kids can go against the system or they can learn to play within the system. If they're not motivated, they're going to tag. There have to be other opportunities."
A few months ago Dave Demmer's Penn Garage was a chronic target. Every other week, taggers hit his building; every other week, he painted it over.
Then Jher and his crew stopped by. They introduced themselves, showed Demmer photos of their paintings and made a proposal: Let them paint murals along the alley to keep taggers away.
It's part of the ethic, they said. If taggers scribble over a mural, it's a major sign of disrespect. If they write over a masterpiece, they lose what they want most: attention from their peers.
"Just do as nice a job as you can," Demmer told them. "And we'll see what happens."
Jher and his crew spent the next few Sundays in the alley painting multi-colored murals, a cartoon character wearing a gas mask, a memorial to a friend shot and paralyzed at a party. Then Jher left his trademark moniker, mixing calligraphy styles, a rainbow of colors, even a little politics: "Substituting my rights in modern Rome."
"So far, so good," Demmer says. "We have a lot of youth programs, but we don't seem to be touching on what these kids need. I say, if this lets them develop their talents and grow, go for it. Some might end up in art school. This is sure better than sending them someplace where they're going to tote guns or do drugs. I'd rather have them doing this than scribbling and running off."
Neighbors have complained, but the 62-year-old businessman has told them that Jher's work stays.
"I've been here forty years," Demmer says. "Neighbors say it's offensive, but I say, which is more offensive? Getting your window busted out? Getting your car tire flattened? Getting the antenna broken off your car? I say, let's give them a chance and let's see what they can do."
A month has passed since Jher and his crew began work. Taggers have stayed away.
"It's growing on me," Demmer says. "Kids have different talents than when I was young. But this is what they want to do, this is their mark, so I say okay. If we don't understand it, let them explain. I don't understand it, but look at how some of our established artists got started. And it's completely shut down that tagging. I'm sure of it. I wish these kids had more places to go."
Jher flicks a cigarette butt into a pothole of muddy rainwater.
He's 21 now. He has an eight-month-old baby girl. He's trying hard to translate his considerable talent with paintbrushes, spray cans and computers into money in his wallet. He gets jobs painting signs now and then, but the work is slow. At the moment, he's working full-time entering data at GTE.
He can't afford to go to jail over graffiti. So these days he'd just as soon spend his spare time painting elaborate street murals for property owners. If only someone would let him.
Jher gives his Krylon can a hard shake. On the back wall of Demmer's garage, he lays down another line.
Contact Harrison Fletcher at his online address, [email protected], or by phone at 303-293-3553.
