OAKLAND GRAFFITI KING BLAZE

**Ingram paperback and hardcover:**

BEFORE OAKLAND GRAFFITI HAD A HISTORY

In 1983, after seeing Style Wars on PBS, Steven Johnson began writing BLAZE across Oakland and the East Bay. What followed was a teenage education in letter structure, spray-can control, black books, BART lines, crews, and yards.

BLAZE: The Birth of Oakland Graffiti is a first-person memoir built from surviving photographs, black-book pages, and memory. From the rough first pieces and the 23rd Yard years to later Berkeley work, it records what one early writer saw, painted, learned, and remembers.

Steven Johnson later became an attorney and returned to the 23rd Yard decades later.

**Lulu hardcover:**

BEFORE THE WALLS CHANGED

Oakland, 1983. Steven Johnson begins writing graffiti as BLAZE. The first graffiti writer in Oakland. Decades later, his photographs, black-book drawings and firsthand memories preserve a personal record of the early East Bay scene.

From the 23rd Yards to Berkeley racquetball courts, this illustrated memoir follows the letters, friendships, crews and experiments that shaped one writer's youth.

Historical images & blackbook drawings are distinguished from a separate, labeled section of AI-assisted interpretations. .