The host of this short video is Richard Johnson. He's a weird cat. Self described Fame-Ass Arteest, indie gallery owner/leader, and long time taxi driver. In 2005, when I was driving a taxi, he approached me with an offer. He asked if I wanted to drive his taxi on the weekends, and live in his indie art gallery, AAA Electra 99, the rest of the week. I said, "Yes." A few days later, I was literally living in an indie art gallery, surrounded by creations by dozens of different people. This gallery is where my Sharpie Scribble Style of drawing was born.
I first met Richard Johnson, veteran Orange County taxi driver, sometime in 2000. At some point, while driving my taxi, I ran into him, and we talked a bit. I can't remember exactly when.
I had a hernia I couldn't get fixed in 1999, and I had to quit my "Hollywood" lighting tech job. I was basically a roadie that never went on the road, cleaning, prepping, and fixing tv/movie industry lights, for all kinds of productions. I would pack them up to go out on gigs, with about ten other guys, in a warehouse in North Hollywood. It was a fun job, I was making $14 an hour, and getting frequent overtime, making the most money I'd ever made consistently. But I couldn't do the heavy lifting needed on the job anymore, my hernia was getting out of control. I took the summer off in 1999, lived off my savings, and planned to get hernia surgery, heal up, and go back to the same company, just working freelance. I could make more money per day just working on the gigs. My rent was $350 a month, so two or three good days of work would pay that. I had been driving from Huntington Beach to North Hollywood every day, a 50 mile hell commute, right through downtown Los Angeles, to work in the warehouse of the lighting company. That summer, after leaving my job, I kept having problems with my COBRA insurance, and never even got to see a doctor. Everything kept getting postponed. By August, it realized it just wasn't going to happen, so I looked around for some other job near Huntington Beach.
I was living in a cool apartment on 15th street in downtown H.B., three blocks form the beach. One of the neighbors told me about a taxi driver who said he made $300 a day. I liked driving, I didn't mind working long shifts, and I thought I could set my own hours. So I applied to a taxi company, and wound up driving a cab at the Orange County airport a few days later. At the time, 1999, we still looked in the newspaper want ads to find local jobs. There were two jobs that were always hiring, and both had ads that started with "Cash Paid Daily." Those jobs were driving a taxi and being a stripper.
It turned out that, yes, it was technically possible to "make $300 a day" driving a taxi. The part I didn't realize was that was on a really good Friday or Saturday night, working a 15-to 18 hour shift. Out of that $300 gross income, I had to pay the taxi company $115 taxi lease for the day, and also put about $35 in gas in the cab for the day. So that $300 on a really good day turned into $150, and only for two days a week, at most. And that was a really good weekend day, as a street driver, who really knew their way around the county.
Since I didn't know the business, the company suggested I start working at the airport, where rides were guarranteed. As an airport driver, I had to dress like a waiter, black slacks, white dress shirt, and a tie, and work seven days a week, about 17 hours every day. Doing that, I could make about $300 or $350 a week in cash. I spent most of my time sitting in a parking lot near the Orange County airport, listening to the Arab, Persian, Chinese, and other foreign guys bitch about everything in various languages. Taxi drivers gossip like old women at the hairdresser. Since I was hardly ever home, I ate out every meal, and spent half of what I earned on food and large iced teas. After two months, I couldn't afford my apartment anymore. I moved my stuff into storage, and began living in my taxi, and taking showers at a gym.
I began to blow off the airport on Friday and Saturday nights, and just sit near Main Street in downtown Huntington Beach. H.B. was much less busy back then, there were about five or six bars dowtown, and none of the current hotels existed. In the fall of 1999, there were no taxis hanging out downtown Huntington Beach. I just sat on the corner, under Hurricanes a second floor bar, and gave rides to anyone who walked by and needed one. After about a month of doing that, I quit driving at the airport, and became a "street driver." I struggled, but I made enough money in Huntington Beach on the weekends to pay my lease and gas, and scrape by, as I learned the business. Taxi drivers didn't get hourly pay or salary. Technically, it was a small business, and we were independent contractors. Once I earned enough money, I paid about $600 a week for taxi lease, put about $300 to $350 in gas in the cab every week, and the car was mine for 7 days. All fares and tips went together. After I paid those $900 a week in expeneses, anything left over was mine. I focused on finding which bars and clubs were best for business each night of the week, and I'd hang out and take calls off the radio during the day. By spring time, I would make $180 to $250 a week.
Then I heard of another company, California Yellow Cab. They had good bar business, and I could rent a cab for just Thursday through Sunday afternoon, three days. By late Spring of 2000, I could make $300 to $350 a week working three days. I rented a room in inland H.B., and things began to improve. Then, right before Christmas, 2000, my driver's license got suspended. I didn't know why. It turned out to be a clerical error at the DMV, but it took me a couple of years of struggling, and homelessness, to get it worked out and get back in a cab again.
I started back on Labor Day weekend in 2003, and it took about two months to figure out where the night business was every night. At the same time, the company switched from the old C.B. radios to a dispatching computer. That killed the industry. We all had to rent the cabs weekly, so there were more drivers on the road, and most of our bar business stopped calling our company, because now they had to give a full address. Before, bartenders could call real quick and say, "Need a cab at Sharkies," or Need a cab at Gallagher's." With the new system, bartenders had to wait on hold, talk to a dispatcher in a St. George , Utah call center (I'm not kidding), and give the full street address, because it was GPS based. Bartenders are busy, they didn't have time for that shit. So most of the company's business disappeared, literally overnight. Over $7,000 worth of taxi busniess disappeared, just in Huntington Beach, every week. We still had to pay $600 a week, but we only got a few fares from dispatch per day. It sucked.
I struggled to scrape by, since I was living in my cab again. I was able to get by, and with some business from the new hotels in H.B., I made $250 or so a week, with an occasional $600 week now and then. From late 2003 to mid August 2005, I worked 14-18 hours nearly every day. I would get a motel room one night a week, to catch up no sleep, watch a little TV, and eat a cheap pizza. But I still worked 8 hours that day, and 11-12 the next day. I took about 5 full days off in two years.
During that time, I saw a flyer at the taxi office one day, "Taxi driver art show." The woman at the window said, "Yeah, Richard Johnson, one of our drivers, owns a little art gallery." It was near the Orange County Airport, and I went to check it out one day. I'd met Richard, but didn't talk to him much. I liked the gallery, and made a homemade taxi driving board game for the art show. It was like the game of Life, but with taxi driving stuff on each square. The only one I remember said, "Party at Dennis Rodman's house- Lose Turn." It was pretty stupid. But the crazy little gallery was cool, and I rented a 4 foot by 8 foot section of wall, and put up a bunch of my poems. Yeah... really... poetry. I would stop by for a little while early on Friday or Saturday nights, before things got busy. Over the course of the next couple of years, I got to know Richard better and better, and would cover some of his personal customers if he took a few days off, now and then.
In late August 2005, he rolled up to my cab, in the taxi line at the Huntington Beach Hyatt hotel, and said he had an offer for me. I had gained about 150 pounds two years, I was fat, in poor health, and really bitter and burned out on driving. But my taxi was my house, my transportation, and my income, so I kept driving. Richard owned his own cab, within the company. That meant he paid them much less money a week, but he had to cover maintenance on his cab. He asked if I wanted to start driving his taxi on the weekends, my best driving time, from Friday afternoon to early Monday morning. Then I could live in his art gallery Monday through Friday, AAA Electra 99, which had moved to an industrial building in Anaheim.
Richard and his girlfriend were going on a trip to New Orleans for the weekend, so he let me takeover his cab on August 23, 2005, and they headed off on their trip. On the drive to the gallery, which I hadn't been to in a long time, he asked, "Oh, by the way, do you like cats?" I said, "Yeah, sure. Do you have a cat?" Richard said, "Yeah... there's a gallery cat. Well, technically, eight cats." He explained that there was a gallery cat named Pita. Then a new female cat showed up, which they called P.A., for "Pita's Assistant." P.A. just had six kittens a couple weeks earlier. So it's a good thing I wasn't allergic to cats.
I dropped my stuff at the gallery, and I think I gave Richard and his girlfriend a ride ot the airport. I headed back to the gallery to get settled in. I remember it was August 23, 2005 only because Richard called the next day, their plane got stopped in Chicago... because Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, their intended destination. So they spent a weekend in Chicago, and I settled in at the gallery.
I had been totally focused on nothing but earning money in the taxi for two years, and had nothing but excess weight and burnout to show for it. Suddenly I could chill and relax, alone, but with 7 cats (P.A. had run off Pita), in an indie art gallery. I had not done anything creative for at least two or three years. On my second night there, surrounded by all kinds of indie art, I drew a little picture on a Post-it note while taking a dump. It felt good to draw. I went out and got a roll of banner paper, and a generic pack of markers. I had been doing some Sharpie drawings/collages back in 2002, and I started messing around again, just trying different ideas for fun.
Once Richard and his girlfriend came back, I was off driving the taxi most of the time the gallery was open, on the weekends. During the week, except for Wednesday evenings, when it opened for a few hours. I began to recuperate, mellow out, and draw every day, that fall of 2005. I started walking a little bit, and my health improved some, and my attitude improved a lot. I made about $250 a weekend, on average, after paying Richard taxi lease. I paid him another $50 a week rent to live in the gallery. There was a bathroom, and a shower in a little loft area. Cheap living, paid for by 2 1/2 days of work a week, with lots of sleep, and plenty of time to be creative.
Years earlier, when I saw the movie Quicksilver with Kevin Bacon I loved the big loft space he and his girlfriend lived in, in that movie. The movie also featured BMX freestylers Martin Aparijo and Woody Itson, two guys I knew from my BMX days. Going back even further, I had always wanted to live in a warehouse, since watching Dan Tanna in Vega$, in the 1970's. Something about being able to drive his car into his living room seemed really cool when I was a kid. So in 2005, I got my chance to live in a warehouse space. But not just a dingy warehouse, one filled with paintings and other art by a couple dozen different people. My creativity was reborn that fall and winter in 2005-2006, while living in AAA Electra 99 Gallery. And that's how I came to live in an indie at gallery. The gallery closed down in 2012, after hundreds of artists, and over 1,000 bands played at its three locations over 12-13 years.
There's probably something in this video to offend just about everyone, I haven't watched it in over 15 years.
I lived there, in the location in the top video, but chronologically, between these two videos. The gallery was always changing, and individuals and groups of people, would come and go over time.
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