A slightly different approach to the usual Clinkin’ Drinks this time round.
Zire was for a very long time the Graffiti bomber from Stoke-on-Trent. A complicated personality at times, but well-read and insanely loyal to a chosen few. Before the pandemic we discussed a series of meetups whereby I’d record a series of open chats, letting the conversation meander where it needed to. Below is a brief, and heavily edited transcript of the first and sadly only, time spent discussing life with Z, his past and the history of a humble, working-class city’s introduction to Graffiti and Hip Hop culture.
Enjoy.
Stoke’s Graffiti scene. How best to describe it?
Somewhat, of an oddity? Infantile? In transition?
It’s crucial to be honest here, Stoke has always been a passing place for Graffiti. It’s only in the past decade become any form of destination for a select few, if at all, for this sport. The names that appeared pre-2007 I’d say were only present as a pitstop. And despite some of the names being prolific to me and my time in Graffiti, in the grand scheme, collectively they didn’t make a dent. One thing for sure though is that unlike many other cities across the UK, natively, no two styles are the same here. I’m no hater and I won’t pass too much comment on the quality of a lot of the writers present currently, but, something I’ve observed is that, for sure, no two styles are the same.
Image: Inner City Life – The former roundabouts heading into Stoke town were a series of large Bristol-style Bear Pits. The many underpasses were full of pieces and dubs.
I’m in no way wearing this as a badge of honour, but to me, being from Stoke makes me proud. Styles stand out immediately and biting is obvious when it occurs, and it does occur.
I remember back in the late 90s noticing a distinct lack of… well anything. Then in the early 2000s, things began to heat up. Names such as F, M and S appeared. Painting spicier things than just the canal. It stood out.
There were, however, consistently more homegrown figures, that would appear across the city for as long as I remember.
Zire was one of them, if not, the main one.
Taking into consideration that my research had all come from real ‘boots on the ground’ snooping. It all predated the internet and so any research I’d done about Z, was all to learn as much as I could about them, with a view to linking up.
Zire was a bombing enigma, however. I’d been following his work for as long as I could remember. All I knew, was that Zire was a first-generation writer. He and a handful of writers started the scene in Stoke. Their legacy inspired me and a few like-minded folks too. They were unavoidable.
As the internet expanded, so did my searches. And with them, I found new writers with new insight. Anyone reading this that came from a similar era, will remember the chase of trying to track someone down you looked up to.
I remember W, telling me that he’d been chatting to someone who claimed they did community service with Zire. It came with a warning. To ‘avoid him at all costs’. He was a hardened criminal, who would, ‘without hesitation rob and hurt you’ unprompted.
Not to glorify violence in any way, but I never questioned it. Growing up in Stoke, in the 80s and 90s like many industrial cities similar to it, and knowing many a ‘Stoke bloke’ myself – It seemed normal to have more than enough grit, and then to be linked with graffiti too, well, it seemed to make sense to me.
Years passed and despite seeing sporadic bombing across the six towns, we managed to evade one another. Until 2015.
By this point, NTRPRNRS/51-53 Store were fully up and running as a physical entity in the city centre. To boot we had a few staff that worked for us, some of which were young writers themselves. All of whom I guarantee, I had no doubt bored with stories of Zire and his importance to the Stoke scene. I don’t say this lightly when I say, that without seeing early works by Zire, S & S (to highlight a few others) when I was a kid, I would have never gotten into Graffiti. In turn, never met with other writers, importantly old crew mates and former business partners that would have gone on to grow what we had with the Store, HoF and all other orbiting projects I’m still honoured to be involved with to this day.
Like many first-generation writers, Zire was a football casual at heart. Someone who had tussled between subcultures. From Hip Hop, breaking and graffiti through to football and dance music.
By chance, it was his love for football casual clothing that meant we became introduced. 51-53 Store was several doors up from both Terraces and Pockets. Both were local haunts of Zires. He’d visit most months and at one point happened to stumble upon us after seeing the words spray paint on the a-board outside. B would be the first to greet him during my day off. After a brief encounter, he left behind a few handies on some till feed which I recall was forwarded to me, via WhatsApp. As a total fan-boy at the time, I remember freaking the fuck out.
Some time had passed and whilst we had F exhibiting in the Upstairs Gallery he randomly stumbled in whilst I was working.
I had no idea as to what he looked like, just a relatively vague description presented to me from his previous store visit. I’ve no idea how I knew, but as soon as he walked in, I read him like a book. Perhaps, it’s the way some writers carry themselves? I’ve no idea, but it was him.
He came straight up to me behind the till and started to what I can only describe as ‘Gatling gun’ sound off. Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I can chat, but, this guy, this guy was something else in comparison.
Within 10 minutes of us talking he’d openly described himself as an addict and a thief. He didn’t shy away from this at all and began to regale stories from his past. Elaborating on his time from the late 80s into the early 90s when both football hooliganism, drugs and the rave scene seemed to have merged and become one united way of life. It’s how the media and history depict this era. One thing seemed certain, despite Z’s chaotic delivery at times, it was all genuine and delivered with sincerity.
Over the next couple of years, we touched base as often as we could. He’d sprinkle nuggets from his past and how things appeared to him and we’d get together at the store for an hour or at the annual Stoke HoF jams we hosted. Occasionally I’d wake up to a series of rambling voice notes or passages of text that seemed copied and pasted to whoever he was engaging with at the time. This was fine and was simply chalked up as that’s just how he was occasionally.
In no time, local writers began to meet him and chat with him too. I would never shed too much specific information on anyone. but it was clear from what he told us all around that time, that he had his demons and that due to various indulgences throughout the 90s and onwards, he’d battle to keep them at bay. I think it’s important not to avoid the fact, that he would go onto ruffle feathers with people, even myself. As the saying goes, he was ‘the horse we rode in on’ and everyone knew from the off the reputation he had and how Z would handle himself.
What was certain was that in his mind he was funny, charismatic alongside being fiercely loyal to friends and family (particularly his brother) and often hyperfocused on specific things. When we’d meet, he listened patiently with a childlike curiosity as I spoke. He was often unassuming and collected, and other times, erratic, overzealous and a touch manic. You never quite knew which Z you were going to meet each time you saw him, but that never put me off seeing him wandering around the city donning a varied mix of Stone Island, headphones and AirMax 90s.
The pandemic had got in the way of our meeting and me doing any more than the first recording. Time seemed to stand still for almost two years and in Dec ‘22, I had gone solo to pursue a much healthier way of approaching work. It went in a flash.
December 2023.
I noticed I hadn’t seen anything new on Z’s IG in what was weeks. This was incredibly unusual for him as he’d go on to utilise IG, but more so YouTube, as a way of channelling energy and communicating with people. He’d worked consistently to form online friendships with a range of NYC writers he’d met via these channels.
After a quick snoop, a comment by one such NY artist on IG, made me stop in my tracks.
It appears that Zire had passed away at the end of October 2023.
From my knowledge, this is the only documented interview with him that exists. With no children left behind, no black books, notebooks or photographs, he’d taken with him four decades of knowledge, stories and history of our culture. Something that is a huge tragedy particularly when, at first glance, cities such as Stoke don’t appear to have much alternate culture.
Listening to the most recent F24 Podcast, had me thinking about how much of a resource figures such as Zire are. Nightlife, missions, conversations, clashes, trends, transitions, fashion, music, travel and partying – Formative moments in the real world. The type of details that brands and companies attempt to emulate to sell our culture in 2024.
Real people, doing real things.
RF: Watchu write?
Z: Zire. ABK SAS TPR
RF: Tell us a bit about yourself, and your background.
Z: See when I first started, I called myself Desire.
Someone I knew from Birmingham came down and their tag was Desire (Dez TWC) and I knew he’d been around a lot longer. He was a proper writer as opposed to just a start-up like we were at that time, but I’d done a lot of work on it.
:: Zire Pulls out a pen and begins to catch tags ::
Image: DEZ, TWC Birmingham
Let’s see If I can do that like I used to do it. I found a load of odds and sods recently from a good while ago and the tags have got no style at all. I can’t draw, I’m terrible. I’ve got no skill at drawing but it’s just a case of forcing yourself to get up and out.
I’m gonna write a bigger ABK… that was a mad fucking time…
RF: What are the acronyms? ABK…Anybody Killer?
Z: Yeah! If I bumped into anybody that was painting, I’d take their cans from them. That’s maybe where that thing came from…
RF: About people getting robbed?
Z: Yes! because I would, I would. I’d see people and I’d say “Get the fuck off now and leave your shit there!” … and they’d go (and leave everything). The thing that surprises me is the amount of times that people who wanted to fight, that weren’t graffiti artists, do you ever get that?
RF: Nah, no heroes. ABK, was it an American prison term?
Z: No, no, it’s some gangster thing. West side, LA thing. Anybody killer. I think I could have got it from Ice Cube…of all people. Somebody that’s the least fucking ABK person you’ve ever met haha. This time for me was probably the best time we ever had for graffiti. That was a good time for Stoke because we had a load of new people that came along with us like T and them.
RF: I went to XX and there’s a bridge that’s laced with SAS tags that’s still faded into all the bridges. I’m very confident it’s your hand style
Z: Shit, Yes! I tell you what, I used to work up there and at the time I was a fucking maniac, I didn’t have a meth script. And I used to do overtime, I used to be able to go into the place. Get a bus up there on a Saturday, and I used to be able to nick cans up there. But, the job, I didn’t have to do anything! I could sit down for six hours, and get paid time and a half. So it was worth doing. I remember I came out one day and just tagged the fucking sign at the front. I used to go mental, I did go fucking mental. I didn’t give a fuck who was about, It was probably the worst time and area where, if you got caught tagging somebody would definitely call the police on you.
SAS…Stoke Art squad? Please remember it was 1980 fucking 5 for fuck’s sake. We’d gone from me and Smurf doing little bits together, then we got better. I remember we got to like 100 pieces. I remember being at our 75th piece and we were dead happy, in a short time.
Image: Evil by MONO, Speke, Liverpool 
Image: TPR by MONO, Speke, Liverpool
Then we met the scousers just because we used to be able to go to Holts Paint and get free paints if we took this letter we had. We met two guys and that’s what they wrote. They were TPR, The Piece Rebels, which I hated the name. But the ‘piece’ is connected to graffiti. I hated the name, I really did. They came down to Stoke, we went out to them. They lived in, Speke, where the airport is now. It was just an airfield there. One of them used to be able to piece in broad daylight, Dust & Mono. Mono was a good graffiti artist. Dust was a special needs kid. He was crazy. He was bizarrely mad.
Image: MONO, Speke, Liverpool
[Zire reaches for his phone and gestures to the Facebook app. He’d recently made contact with a long-standing figure from his early days. Someone that he’d thought had previously died in the 90s from substance abuse]
RF: The last time we spoke, you told me that he went through a messy patch from what you told me…
Z: Who? Him? or me? or both of us?
RF: Well, Smurf, for the basis of this conversation…you weren’t sure if he was still kicking it.
Z: I didn’t know because he was so fucking gone back then. But what turns out this is where it all comes from… The day I bought that Stone Island coat [points towards a jacket hanging up] The traffic was shit getting into town. I couldn’t get a taxi, it was mental. I didn’t know why. And the reason, I went on to find out why, is a fucking girlfriend of mine, a young woman. She nearly got killed by a lorry smashing into her. She walked out of it, fucking hell. She was lucky, you know what I’m saying? As a result, I Facebooked her, her best friend then added me on Facebook and by chance her mum’s seen this and her mums someone I used to go out with years ago. And so she said, have you seen Smurf recently? I said, no, I haven’t I don’t really use Facebook.
And she says, I found someone called ** ( because she works in the council and she says she’s got good at finding people). She says she found someone called ** and he looks at it and you think this looks like him. So I take a look and the avatar is a fucking masked man. I think that looks and sounds too much like him. Even the name wasn’t 100% his name. But what are the chances?
And so I just sent him a Facebook message. Nothing, so I sent it to him again and sent it to him again. I must have sent it to him about three times. I just got back in touch again and said, listen, if it isn’t you, then I’ll leave you alone, just send me a text. If it is you, and you don’t want to be fucking about with me, then just say, don’t worry about it. You know, I thought maybe you don’t want to be found?
RF: Do you reckon your message went into his hidden requests because, if you’re not friends with somebody, Facebook would hide it and they have to go actively into requests?
Z: Could have done! Two years later when he popped up and said “Aup it’s me” I was like fucking hell, where’ve you come from? That’s what happened, you know. So yeah, so he got in touch. I haven’t even spoken to him about graffiti I’ll be honest with you. I don’t even think he’d have any interest in it whatsoever. But he’s everything I expected that he would be, I dislike, being honest with you.
RF: In what respect then?
Z: Well, I remember ages ago, I was in a load of shit and then I was going to prison and he says you want come live with me ?
RF: What year was this?
Z: Oh, about 90 92 93… He says, come live with me. I live in a place in Bristol, haven’t I told you this before? It’s basically a crusty fucking place, he said we get trees, we pull them down, we make roofs out of them, we get palettes and we make beds out of them. And I said, listen, brother, I’d rather be in fucking jail than that shit. [chuckles to himself] I would haha.
He always had these tendencies to be, you know… he was a raver for a long time but he had this thing where he would do something dead heavily. And then just think I’m not doing that anymore. On any random day, that guy would be like, I don’t like Hip Hop anymore. I don’t like Graffiti anymore. I don’t like this anymore. And then just move on to something else. So you never know what he’s gonna do. And then when he got in touch with me and he’s exactly what I thought he would be, he’s fucking like Antifa basically.
[Several years before this recording, Z had expressed to me just how good Smurf was creatively. He mentioned that he had gone through a phase of creating what I can only describe from Zire’s description as figurines. He’d said that it came from nowhere and he excelled at it. He’d stay in and not paint graffiti due to this)
RF: So, you’ve spoken to him on the phone then?
Z: Yeah, a lot.
RF: After how long it’s been, how was that? How are you feeling about it? When was the last time you spoke to him prior to all this?
Z: Twenty years ago? If not more…
RF: Oh, how did you guys meet in the first instance?
Z: [Distracted by S’s Facebook profile] He lived around the corner from me and he, he come and moved in…his parents…[Excitedly, proving his point] Look straight away, you see that anarchy sign…
RF: How did you both know that you were into Graff or did you know…
Z: We were friends before that we were friends before Graff. He probably got me into it all. He got into the break scene, you know, he took me up there. So I got into breaking and then from that we were into graffiti because all the cultures were sort of focused together then at the time.
Image: Character by Smurf, Stoke – Image courtesy of DK
RF: So, who was doing the best breakdancing back then?
Z: But then we did different things. He was a body popper, and I was a breaker
RF: Were you any good?
Z: I was alright. I was alright. I know I wasn’t fucking great. We were sort of with Fresh Tecs a little bit like Fresh Tecs Juniors, you know what I’m saying? There were two crews in the city. There was the Elite Team which was top side of the city and then there was Fresh Tecs which tended to be more Hanley and we were part of them, but the Elite Team… thingy came out of that… Amazingly enough people like, Danny and Calvin. Do you know who I’m talking about? … Danny, you know, Danny Spencer, the DJ guys who’ve done the Wonk night and before that, they’ve done loads of music.
Image: Fresh Tecs, 1987
RF: Oh yeah, Danny Mekanik?
Z: Yeah, that’s where I first met Danny.
RF: So, he was a breakdancer?
Z: Yeah, Danny was, Calvin was really just on the outside of it but Danny, when I first met him, he was a Bboy.
RF: Have you ever thought about writing any of this down?
Z: Ummm, I have, but I don’t know who’d be that interested. Because it’s one of the smaller scenes.
Image: Ronnie Case – Fresh Tecs
RF: But this is the thing. No one knows that these subcultures have ever really existed in the city. And this is the thing that keeps me…
:Z interjects::
Z: I know that you’re massively interested in it
RF: Yeah, There’s a lot of people who write graff here now. There was a point about two years ago and it was about 50 to 60 people just getting into the scene, which is the most we’ve ever seen.
Z: And they don’t know their history?
RF: We were having writers’ benches in the shop, we put the likes of Style Wars on and then we’d discuss the local scene and I’d obviously at the time, me and you’d not met, and I’d talk about everybody from Smurf, Zire to Cab and all that I’ve grown up with. A lot of these guys because of their ages were surprised and were like, what? Stoke had, some form of legacy? I showed them the pictures of your stuff that I’ve got from LC, and they were baffled that there was stuff going on in the late eighties, and early nineties. People do give a fuck about subcultures. Whether it was Hip Hop culture or breaking culture, whatever. People are just generally intrigued but no one’s ever spoken about it. Everyone’s quick to write Stoke off.
Anyway, the myth was that you were some gangster…
Z: Yeah, a big, tall guy who was a criminal haha. The tall bit wasn’t right but the rest was…
RF: I know it sounds really morbid. But once you pass in the years to come…
Z: [Interupts] Oh yeah…nobody wants to talk about it…
RF: Well no one will ever know who to speak with.
Z: I mean there are people that are still about if I can find him. I’ve said before, that I found Big C.
RF: Is that BTK?
Z: No, no, no. This is another guy. BTK, there were two guys.
RF: Ah, they were Big Time Kings?
Z: Yes. And what was it? [He looks across the room in contemplation, trying to recall their names]. The thing is they were posh kids, especially X’s dad was a surgeon. So they were buying shit. We had to fucking nick everything we could get our hands on or go somewhere where we could find to get it for free.
Big Time Kings, made me laugh because there was nothing big time about them, in fact, there was nothing big time about any of us :: Laughs ::
RF: Where were you nicking it from?
Z: Anywhere we could, anywhere we could. I’d say the maddest thing that ever happened is on the corner by the old bus station was an old store, and we walked past there and looked and there was a load of Buntlack in there. For 50 pence a pop. I was like “What the fuck?” But of course, cos we’ve only got a little bit of money on it. We bought only two or three and last we went back, turns out X had bought the fucking lot. So for six months, he’s tagging in Buntlack everywhere and we were like “What the fuck?!”
RF: There’s literally only two BTK tags left in the city
Z: Where, where are they?
RF: Ones in Newcastle. The other is in Bentilee.
Z: Yes, shit! You’ve shown me! That’s the last place I can imagine them to be because in their day… they were, I mean, the thing about them is we used to go to the bigger cities to look at the pieces. They always got fucking robbed. Where we’d go and we come out perfectly fine They always come back without a fucking camera because they were posh kids. In them days, it’s not like America. But if you went up into Bentilee and you’re just walking around, you’d expect to get some shit if you’re on your own. Or if you went through Blurton, or if you went up to Stoke it’d be the same.
They did stupid shit, they did. They did stuff that really got them in trouble and really made the police hate us graffiti artists. They would break into the hospital. It’s all been knocked down, that used to be up here (gestures towards the old part of Royal Stoke Hospital). It used to be old blocks and, it was a prefab, as we came out of World War Two. I’ve been in a jail that was similar to it, you’ve got little corridors everywhere that are almost outdoors, like sheds. Basically that goes from one place to another.
They used to break in there, and do pieces because they wouldn’t get caught over the weekend. And so they go in there and they’d cause a massive mess. It’s a fucking hospital for fuck sake. So the old bill hated them and us for it.
Image: Smurf & Zire, 1989 – Stoke – Courtesy of LC
I got nicked once and didn’t get charged because I had nothing on me. It was when the railway piece that you got a pic of with a Chrome Angel character in the middle. We did that at about half past two…three at night, there’s no fences in them days, just go straight in. So of course we did it and there was a bit of scene at the time and it got around.. So of course these stupid kids, like Hartshill kids, went up on a Sunday morning, just thought ah we’ll do this too… do do do {whistles} So of course the fucking train drivers go past them, call it in and they all got nicked. So as a result these little kids were sitting in a fucking police cell dead scared with mummy and daddy waiting for them outside.
I’ve told you a story before when I got pulled the British Transport Police pulled me. The mad thing was they didn’t even pull me in my house. I was, at the top of Smurfs Road, where we had our little hall of fame and they just walked up to me and asked me who I was. I thought well, you’ve got no evidence of anything, there’s no spray paint in the house, no sketches but things were different then you know, the police didn’t really know a lot. But, these were people that had learned off the Birmingham police and the Manchester police and they knew a little bit more than normal old Bill, and nicked me and they showed me the hospital photos at the station. This is when I realized that is how bad they’d done it. They’d broken the window to get in and gone down the entire corridors and fucking hammered it.
Image: Risk – Stoke track & canalside – Courtesy of LC
RF: So they’d just bombed it?
Z: Just bombed it to fuck, dubs, some small pieces… I told you, they went to that small fucking Stafford and Birmingham thing, little tiny little panel pieces that had like loads of intricate, little fucking, you know tiny lines that they thought was cool as fuck.
Image: Smurf, Stoke town – Courtesy of LC
So at this point anyway, is when I saw loads of pictures, loads of Smurfs obviously but for some reason they never took the pictures of our Hall of Fame. They didn’t give a fuck about that little spot. The whole thing, yeah, we lived there. Basically, we went from doing it at three o’clock in the morning, to the daytime there because no one gave a fuck. And people liked it.
Image: Task & Zire – Courtesy of LC
Image: Stoke – Courtesy of LC
RF: Were people stopping and talking to you?
Z: Yeah the neighbours all knew us and they didn’t really give a fuck, you know. Half the work was to get his mom into it, that was the thing, she was able to help us to do it. But then eventually she stopped caring. Before we knew it, it was on the side of his house. It was down there (points). It was quite big, well it wasn’t big compared to other spots but for us. So it was like, you know, 1,2,3,4,5 or 6…7 pieces on one side and then 1,2,3,4 on the other one that we extended it to.
We could have extended it further, but no one came down. I think maybe people thought if they went down to paint then we would have been shitty about it. But we…we would’ve been in all fairness. Looking back. Yeah, we would have been dicks about it and all, you know, you’re kids aren’t ya, you’re aggressive anyway…
RF: How old were you then?
Z: Umm, I got into the rave scene at about 17, right? And that’s really what stopped graffiti in the city because everybody just jumped on that instead.
Image: Shelleys Nightclub, Longton – Graffiti by Spot
RF: So everyone just started getting on it, going out and getting fucked up and enjoying the party life?
Z: Yeah, yeah and so, because when I first started going to the Hacienda, I used to take spray cans with me. I used to take a duffle bag with me, you know, and they used to have spray cans in as we used to go a party afterwards, we’d just put it in the cloakroom. And then when we came out some of us would go to Hulme, which was near to the club and would just tag on the way there. What I’m saying is that graffiti culture did bleed into the club culture with some of us for a little while. But then, we got into it properly and then we realized there’s money we can make out of how to DJ and shit because I was into music… I hadn’t even thought about this before I suppose it’s just come to me that a lot of ravers were Hip Hop heads, and a lot of breakers were too, do you know what I’m saying?
I think what’s happened since I would say the early nineties is we haven’t… the youth… the youth tribes, they’re all so split. Nothing becomes dominant. Nothing emerged and helped to merge
Image: Shelleys Nightclub, Longton – Graffiti by Spot
RF: It’s interesting how all the cultures became almost the same and unified back then. Now, it could be more segregated. And I think in many ways, your allegiance to your musical genre is your click, the Grime kids and the Rock kids and the House kids, they would never interact and intertwine socially. Well it’s always seemed this way, the Punks would never just go and just chill with a load of House heads.
Z: No, we had the last vestiges of Punks in the Hip Hop scene. We would hang around in Fountain Square and there used to be the breakers and the Punks but of course, there was friction between them because they were racists a lot of the old Punks were. However, it would always start amicably and there’d be love there.
RF: When I look back at the stuff that you guys would do, or at least the remnants of what was left throughout the late 90s and the pics I’ve been fortunate enough to collect. For me, it was really important to know that there were people actively out there doing these things. I could only think about it because I was 8 years old. Since I’ve been able to, in my head, I have aligned myself with the people who have influenced me as much as possible.
Z: That’s the thing about Hip Hop really, we’re going to do this for ourselves. We aren’t doing it for money…
JUSTIN ‘ZIRE’ CARR
ABK SAS TPR
Forever Rest In Peace.
