Prototype Issue
The Emancipation of Cholo Style in LA
By Kamren Curiel
(page 1 of 2)Entry into the sequestered space below LA’s 6th Street bridge, where master body artist Mister Cartoon, 38, and street life snapper Estevan Oriol, 40, conduct business is a serious privilege. Getting inked up by Cartoon is a rite of passage for many hard-core tattoo aficionados. There are rumors of a six-month waiting list—which confirms the star status of the man guiding the needle.
Oriol’s framed photos of hip-hop artists, sultry lips, everyday street thugs and Hollywood actors dominate the waiting room walls, where a flat-screen TV distracts you and java from the fully stocked coffee bar keeps you awake. Voyeurs are mesmerized as they watch the artist at work in his glass-walled tat chamber.
In the far corner of the room a case ceremoniously houses the prototype of 1,313 limited edition Lost Angel action figures designed by Cartoon and his Soul Assassins hip-hop collective for Super Rad Toys. The angelic cholo, armed with wings and tattoos, is the main character in a graphic novel Cartoon is working on that’s due to be released this summer.
“Writing is a beast,” muses Cartoon, standing in his crowded warehouse that houses another kind of beast: a 1956 souped-up Chevy Impala lowrider. “The Time Warner deal came and I was like, ‘Oh shit! I have to write all of this?’”
Cartoon’s novel is based on a kid in Japan who’s infatuated with LA street culture and tells himself he’ll never be real until he pays homage to Compton, Watts, South Central and East LA. When he finally touches down on West Coast soil he assumes the identity of one of his Japanese lowriding heroes, whose bad street rep gets the kid caught up in violence. The Lost Angel comes to his rescue, much like Cartoon’s own angel did when he started down the wrong path as a youngster in San Pedro.
Cartoon, a nickname his homeboys gave him (his birth name is Mark Mercado), was originally invited to Japan in 1992 by master lowrider Oishi, the founder of famed House of Lowriders, now Universal Air Suspension Co., in San Bernardino. In the Land of the Rising Sun Cartoon tripped out on how much young people tried to emulate the cholo culture from back home. “It’s this big phenomenon. They want to be Chicanos out there. They comb their hair back, wear locs and hairnets,” he says before busting out a sentence in a perfect Japanese accent. It’s evident that Cartoon’s been bouncing back and forth between Japan and LA for the past 15 years.
Just then a handsome young Japanese guy sporting pressed khakis and a crisp white tee interrupts to take an order for a liquor store run. Cartoon, who’s going on 10 years sober, reaches into his pocket and hands over some money for a Red Bull and a strawberry Swisher.
“I had to ask myself, ‘Do I want to be the drunk guy at the club picking up on broads or am I going to be the man who has a family, spreads the faith and art to youngsters and helps the movement?’” Cartoon chose the latter.
The action figure and novel are among a long list of projects that have allowed Cartoon’s signature cholo style to reap corporate benefits. Listed on his tattoo resume are hip-hop artists Eminem, Xzibit, Dr. Dre, Busta Rhymes, 50 Cent, Mobb Deep, Kanye West, Cypress Hill, Method Man and Fat Joe and Beyonce. He’s designed album covers and advertising materials for Snoop Dogg, Easy E, Stussy, Shady Records and Oriol’s Joker Brand Clothing and has built custom cars for Oscar de la Hoya, Larry Flynt, Fabolous and Scion. And at 5 foot 5 on a good day, Cartoon confesses he’s no NBA draft pick, but he has designed six pairs of shoes for Nike.
“This is lowdown, dirty, lowrider, dope fiend, prison cell, gangster art,” Cartoon says. “It grew up on prison envelopes and was carved into thermos and tumbler cups. Now it’s on 50 Cent and Pharrell.” Locally, his artwork has transcended culturally. “Black and Asian kids look at it and say, ‘That’s LA right there.’ It’s that common bond that speaks to everybody,” he says.
Cartoon and business partner, Oriol, who is CEO of Joker Brand Clothing and has directed music videos for Cypress Hill, D12, Linkin Park and Blink 182, are working on a feature documentary called Ink, which traces the tattoo lifestyle. The two met back in 1991, a time when the hip-hop scene wasn’t so ethnically mixed. A mutual friend named D.C. introduced them at a record release party for Easy E and DJ Quick’s group, Penthouse Players Clique. “He said ‘Hey, there’s another Mexican. Why don’t you go talk to him?’” Oriol says. They’ve been collaborating on their art at exhibits and in music videos for the past 15 years, while also educating the masses on street culture. The garage at the arts district workspace serves as a car show for many who stop by for the first time. On this particular day, neighbor and Buffalo 66 actor Vincent Gallo dropped by to admire the old-schools and take a tour. Cartoon doesn’t hesitate to tell the story behind his two 1956 Chevy Impalas, 1939 Chevy Martel Deluxe and a 1947 Chevy Fleetline—all of which proudly display the Lifestyle Car Club emblem—and a chopper-style bicycle. He even demonstrates some straight LA-style hydraulics to a soundtrack of oldies that creeps out of his office. “There’s a whole story behind this truck,” Cartoon says, pointing to an airbrushed 1963 vintage milk-turned-ice cream truck. “I was painting it for this big drug dealer from South Central and ended up living next to it at one point. I had a sleeping bag, an ashtray and some rolling papers.” Eventually the dealer got busted. The feds came in, and people started telling on each other. The truck disappeared for six years before someone ended up selling it back to Cartoon so he could finish the piece. At that point he had stopped smoking weed and drinking, so the outcome of the ice cream truck is a perfect balance of fantasy and sophistication. It’s also a good outreach tool for attracting young people to the art, he says, since many real-life stories are revealed in the detailed designs he paints of local Mexican restaurants, fallen homies, villains, sexy heinas (ladies) and Catholic symbolism.
A third-generation Chicano, Cartoon says he is blessed to come from a good family and have goals early on. “Clarity is one of the biggest struggles for youth today. It’s not the ghetto, it’s not drugs; it’s knowing what you want to be. That’s what saved my life.” Having a strong Mexican mother who instilled in him the belief that he could be whoever he wanted to, and have a father who ran a printing press when he was younger helped too. His parents are celebrating 39 years of marriage this year.
“My dad didn’t kick my ass or put cigarettes out on me. I just liked to kick it with the knuckleheads. I liked to drink when I was a kid. But there was a turning spot. I had something to live for. I had direction. The rest of my friends had nothing,” Cartoon says.
‘This is lowdown, dirty, lowrider, dope fiend, prison cell, gangster art. …Black and Asian kids look at it and say, “That’s LA right there.” It’s that common bond that speaks to everybody.’ —Mister Cartoon
At 12 he began helping out with the family business, designing business cards and posters. It was his parents’ good sense of business, he says, that helped make his successful. “Seeing Pops’ victories and struggles, seeing him bust his ass all night,” Cartoon reminisces, “I didn’t even know I was watching it. I would just draw.”
But the struggle to fit in with the esés and be an artist wasn’t easy when Cartoon was young. “There wasn’t no homeboys in the park saying, ‘Hey, holmes, you should go to art school.’ Nobody had heard of that shit,” Cartoon says. The conscious decision to pursue his craft came when a neighbor who pinstriped cars told him about sign painting. “I wanted to learn how to do gold leaf lettering, pinstriping and do the front of a barbershop window. That seemed like a man’s job.”
Cartoon eventually enrolled in LA Trade Tech after graduating from high school. “The teacher told me, ‘Look, you’re talented, a good artist. You’re a good kid, but you don’t take direction. You don’t follow through on projects, so you got to go.’ He gave me the boot. I was like, ‘What? I can outdraw all of these motherfuckers,’” Cartoon says of his short stint in trade school. “That’s when I started to realize that it’s not always the man with the skill, it’s the man with the will.” From that point on, he started airbrushing T-shirts at car shows and tattooing, before linking up with Oriol, who was a tour manager for Cypress Hill and House of Pain.
At 6 foot 2, Oriol, who’s father is Mexican and mother is Italian, is reminiscent of Tony Soprano. He speaks openly about the struggle to be successful in the industry without compromising who he is as a person. “In this business you got to be a great photographer, a good businessman and you got to be a schmoozer—the type that goes to the Chateau Marmont for parties, the red carpet and shit,” he says. The way he captures street life—through shots that have depth, rawness and soul—is often overlooked by an industry indifferent to this gritty reality.
“Everybody that was around me said after the Blink 182 video comes out on MTV I was going to be huge, but that shit never happened,” Oriol says. “I haven’t blown up yet. Blowing up to me as a photographer is coming out of the house for 70 G’s a day. I’m not comfortable at all. I’m in debt. I owe money and I don’t have any work coming in. This is real talk, LA,” says the photographer, who has shot Eminem, 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake. He has two coffee table books coming out this year and will be directing his first film with Brian Grazer in 2008.
But what is success to two homeboys who value their culture, kids and wives more than anything else? Earning respect from both Hollywood and the streets, maybe. Back in the day, you couldn’t get any love from mainstream media dressed like a cholo and speaking in slang. Racism is the root cause for many second- and third-generation Mexican Americans in LA today who have never learned to speak Spanish as a consequence of their parents’ forced assimilation.
“You look back far enough, it was segregation here, you know. Mexicans had to use a different bathroom and couldn’t speak Spanish in schools. But you don’t hear Latinos really complain about that shit. We’re such doers,” Cartoon says. It’s his ability to separate himself from the illusions fame brings that keeps the spiritualist sane in this business.
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