Philadelphia Weekly

The artist who goes by Frost still remembers the first time he almost got caught.

It was sometime in 2003, right when he first started putting stickers of his El Toro character in conspicuous places throughout the city. He says he wasn't paying attention on the night in question when he slapped a sticker on a piece of public property. Suddenly he had a cop right behind him.

The police officer took him to a side street, and Frost got away with just a warning.

"He had this confused look," Frost says. "Like, 'What the hell is this kid doing?'"

Back then Frost wasn't even sure what he was doing. Now 22, the Filipino immigrant began doing sticker art as a way of separating himself from the graffiti scene, which he says was too cluttered and included too many talented people to allow him to stand out on his own.

"I got involved without knowing what it was in the beginning," Frost says. "The term 'street art' never came to mind. I just wanted to put up as many stickers as possible."

His sticker obsession eventually grew into a community, and a friendship with fellow sticker artist Bob Will Reign, also from Philadelphia, who began putting his "Bob" character on city signs and newspaper boxes around the same time Frost did.

"I did the regular graffiti-type stuff at first," Bob, also 22, says. "And then I noticed it was kind of hard to get recognized, and that stickering was a little more fun. Nobody really did the street art kind of thing with stickers in Philadelphia."

Bob and Frost have similar styles of stickering the city. Both began on South Broad Street and initially went on "missions" at night with around 100 stickers.

Now they put their stickers on whatever public space they can appropriate, but primarily newspaper boxes and the backs of street signs. Both get their stickers for free, usually from the post office or UPS, which hand out stickers for mailing.

The two are at the forefront of a burgeoning Philadelphia street art scene, with new characters popping up on light posts seemingly every day.

Despite the stickering community's success at evading the long arm of the law, the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN) is not impressed. PAGN deputy managing director Thomas Conway says his organization is complaint-driven, meaning the city will take down stickers-and posters advertising get-rich-quick schemes or a weekend concert-based on residents' phone calls.

"It's artsy to them," Conway says, "but it's vandalism to all the people. If they're putting it on their own property, it's fine. But when you put it on public property, you're infringing on other people's rights."

Still, Frost and Bob say they're not looking to hurt anyone.

"I don't want to ruin signs, like cover a 'NO PARKING FROM 5 TO 6' sign, and get someone towed," Frost says. "I'll put my sticker on the back of signs, which is dead space.

"When I go walking around I put [unpeeled] stickers next to parking tickets, to give them something even though they got a ticket."

The two aren't sure what the future holds. Both began stickering as a hobby, and it's since become a large part of their lives. Frost is now on hiatus from stickering, and is stepping back from the scene for a bit. Bob says he just wants to keep getting his image out there.

"I like to see my stuff over and over because it's like people seeing a part of me every day," Bob says. "If something were to happen to me, parts of me would still be there after I was gone. I feel the need to leave a presence."

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