ED ZIPCO WROTE A BOOK – SO WE INTERVIEWED HIM

We love Ed Zipco’s photos of crazy kids being crazy. He did the boob-flashing fashion shoot in our February issue that cheesed off misguided feminists so much—and which, by the way, was inspired by silly stoner games that Ed and his pals used to play in their high-school parking lot where they’d run around hiding behind big vans giggling and flashing each other. How terribly offensive. Anyway, in addition to being an awesome photographer with one of the sunniest dispositions that we’ve ever worked with, he also wrote a book. A book with words! It’s called The Adventures of Darius & Downey (published by Thames & Hudson and coming out at the end of May) and it’s about two funny graffiti kids and, duh, their adventures. Here, Ed will tell you more about it.

Vice: Hi Ed! So‚Ķ how did this book “happen”?
Ed Zipco: It “happened” a few years ago when I was bumming around Spain and the UK with a few buddies of mine named Brad Downey, Leon Reid, and Quenell Jones. I had known them since college and they had recently moved across the pond. One of them shot me an email that they were gonna go run with the bulls and they dared me to show up.

Really run with the bulls? Or is that some new slang you kids use these days?
Really run with the bulls. Like, in Pamplona. I showed up and we all almost got killed. I saw a bunch of people get gored. It was fucked up.

You really did it? Wow.
Well, I just didn’t wanna be the guy who wouldn’t do it. It was total dumb, self-inflicted peer pressure stuff. But I dont regret it at all. It was amazing

So while you were running for your life, you thought, “If I don’t get speared by a bull horn today, I should write a book about my friends!”
It was kind of like, you know how there are some people who whenever you’re with them you get into trouble? Like the fun kind of trouble? It’s like that. We get into more weird shit with our powers combined, like Voltron. So we tried coming up with as many excuses to keep hanging out as we could. Eventually we went back to the UK and I kept hanging out as they did all their artwork. I guess it was really a way for me to validate spending so much time watching these guys be productive.

Tell me who Darius and Downey are.
It’s Brad Downey and Leon Reid, both of whom I went to Pratt with. They make street art pretty much nonstop. They’re brilliant. I hate saying it, because, you know, that will mess with somebody’s ego. But yeah, really smart, super-creative guys.

I like the mailbox with the big hole in it. Was that real? They really stood on the street and blowtorched a giant hunk out of a city mailbox?
Oh yeah, everything in the book is real. They just go out and do that shit.

Isn’t that a federal offense?
Ummmmmmm. Maybe?

They cut a huge hole in a mailbox!
Haha, yeah, for a while Brad got pretty obsessed with holes.

How the hell did they get away with the “Colored Only” and “White Only” telephone-booth signs they put up in front of Radio City Music Hall?
Well, that only stayed up for 12 hours. Brad and Leon were dressed as city workers, so people didn’t really look too close at what was going on. People are trained to ignore the men in vests. Oh, and that’s actually two sides of the same sign, so I guess it’s really for bi-racial people only. In the scheme of things, the piece didn’t last long, but it was up for a little bit. Did you ever see the “Honk If You Love Graffiti” piece while it was up? I loved that one. It was HUUUUGE.

Yeah, that one is funny. Was it on the Williamsburg Bridge?
It was right after the bridge on the BQE.

Awesome. So this is your first book, right? Had you ever written before? I thought you were a photographer by trade.
Yeah, totally, first book! I’m still really excited about it. I mean, I went to school for writing, but no one, including me, ever thought a book was going to come out of it. It was a happy accident that it happened at all. We were just sitting around in London’s equivalent of Jamaica, Queens, too broke to buy a six pack between the three of us and I said, “You know, we should write a book.” But it’s so much more work than taking pictures. It might be a while till I try this again. Photos are so much more fun.

Pff, yeah, tell me about it.
At times it felt like a giant homework assignment. “Write about your summer vacation,” you know? But sometimes you just need an excuse for all that drinking.

What’s your favorite story or shenanigan in the book?
Hmmmmmm.

Or the craziest, or funniest?
I like when they get busted, to be honest. It’s funny how that shit happens to them on small, petty stuff and they get away for the big stuff scot-free. There’s a story in the book about how, one day, this kid with Down syndrome kept following Brad around as he put up a ton of wheat-paste posters in the LES. Brad is putting them up block after block and the kid is trailing him, taking tons of Polaroids of Brad and the posters and everything. Brad thinks he has a sweet-natured groupie and starts posing, you know? But it turns out that the kid keeps biking away to payphones and calling the cops every 15 minutes with updates on where Brad is. So eventually, Brad is putting a poster up on the glass door of the Village Voice building and the cops bust him. As he’s talking his way out of it and the cops are finally chilling out, the kid rolls up all out of breath with a stack of evidence that put Brad in the back of the cop car pretty quick.

Yikes! He was an undercover cop faking Down Syndrome?
Hahaha. I think he was just a concerned citizen.

Now that this book “outs” them, can they not do their guerilla art anymore?
Nah, they keep doing what they do. The book even makes it so they can do bigger stuff now, on the city’s dime. Brad has been doing city-commissioned work all over Europe and Leon is doing a bunch of stuff in America. I’m pretty sure Leon doesn’t do illegal things anymore, but I really never know what Brad’s up to until it’s up. Oh, you know what? You might have seen Brad’s last thing he did when he was in town.

Yeah?
Did you see that super-tall bench in the middle of East Houston Street? The one that the city didn’t know what to do with? It had like eight-foot-high legs?

Haha, no.
Here’s a link to it.

That’s awesome. Are you really into graffiti, or was it just because these guys were your buddies?
It was cause these guys were my buddies, I mean, I love graffiti and street art, but I’m no expert. I just think it’s another way for people to do whatever the hell they want and make something and that’s great. Fuck the law‚Ķ Sorry, I just like saying that. Kind of harsh. But I’m really psyched that you like the book.

MEG SNEED

The Adventures of Darius & Downey (published by Thames & Hudson) comes out at the end of May.