The Gangsta Photo

So, I never would have thought my greatest personal contribution to the Intarweb is this picture.

Five years ago, when I was on my way to New Zealand, I stopped in Los Angeles and took a photo of one of my buddies from high school. We wanted something to show other folks what he was up to, and we decided that dressing him up as a gang banger would be suitably funny (in real life he’s a kick ass character artist and illustrator — check out http://mercilessdesign.com/).

Well, the photo got around. A lot. It was #1 for ‘gangsta’ searches on Google Images for a few years, and Comedy Central used it in one of their commercials (although it was pulled pretty quick). Now it’s all over MySpace, Flickr, forums, and personal photo galleries. Rumor has that there’s a pretty sweet graffiti stencil based on it …

Anyhow. I thought I’d haul it out again in (belated) honor of the 5th anniversary of the fake gangsta photo extravaganza.