This is Rumbel Strip, today a special guest show from producer Bianca Gaver. Welcome.

I mean I certainly admire people with jobs. You know, I don't know how you get a job. I don't mean to sound completely dysfunctional, but to me it sounds like trying to become an astronaut.

Did you ever have a moment of panic about money?

Was there ever a moment when I didn't.

It would be an easier question.

That's Steve Grody, my friend's uncle.

Steve is 67 years old,

and other than a short stint in a record store he's never had a day job.

He's dedicated his life to a few great passions.

He's an accomplished swing dance teacher and self-defense instructor, but this conversation is about the decades

he spent wandering the alleyways of Los Angeles, documenting the graffiti scene before

it disappears. Over the past 28 years he estimates he's taken

between 40 and 100,000 photos of graffiti. While he's out taking pictures he

never tries to fit in.

He wears wrap-around sunglasses, zip-off pants, and a big floppy bucket hat.

He's been doing this for so long now that he can look at a railing or a dumpster or even

a train rolling through Iowa and see tags made by people

he knows. Steve gave me a tour of one of his favorite graffiti yards.

Afterward I went to interview him in his apartment and an old warehouse in LA.

As a kid I did a lot of wandering.

I grew up in San Fernando Valley and so I would wander up into the hills.

There was a time when Mulholland Drive was a dirt road.

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