Art of War

Hip-hop fashion mogul Marc Ecko has enraged Denver's political establishment, drop-kicked the beehive of ornery neighborhood groups, and flipped the bird to Denver Partners Against Graffiti.

But Denver City Council president Rosemary Rodriquez and her gaggle of property owners -- who hoisted pickets reading things like "No tagging, no graffiti, no 'artwork'" at a recent press conference -- are not the only ones concerned about Ecko's plans. Members of the local hip-hop and graffiti communities have been strangely silent on the issue because Ecko hasn't bothered to involve or even give so much as a 'sup to anyone in the Mile High City -- other than his high-profile attorney, David Lane.

Ecko is working hard to re-create the constitutional scrum he encountered last year when New York City officials rescinded his permits for a "graffiti block party" he organized to promote his new graffiti-centric video game, Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. Federal court ruled in Ecko's favor, and the event went forward successfully, with artists creating large graffiti pieces on plywood facades made to look like subway cars. Now the mega-designer plans to hold a similar happening in Denver. But before he applies for permits, Ecko wants the city to drop the section of its anti-graffiti ordinance that makes it illegal for anyone under eighteen to possess a can of spray paint. That, his attorney argues, is a violation of Ecko's First Amendment rights, as the event is to be open to underage artists. And if the city doesn't toss the law pronto, he'll sue.

Ecko set a deadline of April 17 for the legal volley to begin, but the date came and went. In fact, two days later, Lane sent an e-mail to City Attorney Cole Finegan stating that if the city could ensure that juveniles would not be ticketed for possessing spray paint or broad-tipped markers during the event, then Ecko would hold his art festival on June 18, 2006, in Skyline Park.

So far, city officials aren't budging on changing the anti-graffiti ordinance, but they've also never told Ecko he can't hold the event. And without any local support from Denver's myriad street-level advocacy groups, Ecko is beginning to look less like a liberator of youth culture than a deep-pocketed outsider using the city as a platform to pump up publicity for his brands.

"We don't know exactly what [Ecko] is trying to do," says Edward Foreal, a representative of Guerilla Garden, a coalition of the city's more well-known crews that was formed a year ago as a way for serious graffiti artists to distinguish themselves from the hordes of tagger gangs. Some of Foreal's complex, multi-colored pieces can be found legally painted on the north-facing wall of the handball court at South High School. "I would like to think that Ecko actually is sincere in trying to raise awareness and trying to earn legitimization for this style of art. But I think there is distrust, because nobody in Denver has really spoken with him. And especially the way he's going about getting his event to take place with the lawsuit. It could turn out to be more dangerous for us in the end."

Part of this concern stems from the fact that Ecko is viewed by some as the Donald Trump of the hip-hop world, out to milk money from the culture with, as one local commentator put it, "shitty rap, stupid magazines and T.J. Maxx clothing."

(Ecko failed to return several phone messages and e-mails from Westword.)

Jeff Campbell, director of the Colorado Hip-Hop Coalition, has reached out to Ecko's people but says that discussion has been very limited. Ecko reminds him of another hip-hop entrepreneur: Russell Simmons. In 2004, the mogul announced plans for Denver's Hip-Hop Festival and Summit, then bailed, leaving behind a shockingly embarrassing event that was shunned by even local hip-hoppers ("Hip-Hop Hype," February 17, 2005). "People got all excited because our city's name dropped out of some celeb's mouth, without a truly organized and mobilized community," Campbell says. "We go unnoticed, and they wind up dealing with city officials that do not have a clue."

Jay, a graffiti artist and teacher in Denver, would love to see Ecko's festival come to Denver, but he worries about the long-term costs once the smoke clears: "We want to make sure that if [Ecko] is here to do something with the graffiti community, that he just doesn't up and leave and leave us with more than we're dealing with already. Because this could generate a lot of hate toward us. It already is. I would like to see Marc Ecko work with the city council."

"This is our lives, our livelihoods, our jobs," adds Foreal. "If we have a city that's hating what we do for a living, how are we going to survive? But it's art. It's time that the city embraces it. It's time the city views it as more than vandalism."