Interview with Petar Santiago
by John Farris
Petar Santiago Podzemaljac Timotic is a fine artist, illustrator, and pedicab entrepreneur. This interview was conducted on October 18, 2005.
P: Hello.
JF: We came here by pedicab, your own pedicab. You're a great artist, how'd you get into pedicabs?
P: (unintelligible) Otherwise your big ass wouldn't have gotten here. You'd have to stay on your stoop. Life is so evil. It's environment friendly, it's semi-tropical, it's a sexy way to go, it keeps me in good shape, in small doses. And I pick up a few bucks, so I can afford to get a cup of coffee. So -
JF: So it's an environmental thing.
P: It's very environmental.
JF: And it's a romantic thing.
P: It's very romantic. It's a mobile institution, I'll say. It includes so many of the major aspects of life, segments, exercises of all kinds, keeps your fit for a mental and physical constitution.
JF: So how did you get to the pedicab? You came from the old Yugoslavia?
P: Yeah, I came from Los Angeles, actually from New Orleans.
JF: To New York?
P: To New York City, yeah.
JF: But how did you get there?
P: I was selling, my main thing was selling art, street hustle, selling my pieces. Making them and selling them on the street, out of recycled dumpster material.
JF: Where is your home, where are you from?
P: I'm from Yugoslavia, a place that doesn't exist anymore.
JF: And you left there when?
P: I left there in 1995?
JF: You left?
P: Yeah, in 1995 I left. Yugoslavia was in the middle of one in a series of civil wars, international wars. It overwhelmed me, the very political, very aggressive, shithead situation, I'm in my own basic home environment, I decided to hit the road, fucking man, for Casablanca. On the way to Casablanca, I was on the island of Crete in Greece, met beautiful, gorgeous American Beverly Hills girl. Fell in love instantly, did a little adventure trip through Europe, and ended up in Los Angeles where I ended up being myself. So I've become pretty much my thing is (unintelligible).
JF: When did you start making art?
P: That was in Yugoslavia, in my formative years. I was a high school dropout, I enlisted in a school of drama, a school in Belgrade for some acting. It didn't work out, I wasn't happy with that, so I switched to puppeteering, and in puppeteering, I started painting, drawing, schemas, you know, conspiracy in an artistic way. I guess during that process I left
JF: So when you got to Los Angeles, what did you do?
P: I became a butcher in a Superior sweathouse supermarket on the corner of 102nd and Avalon Boulevard in South Central, Compton, for like six months. And I did lots of painting, and I started getting into a movie job, building props for the movies, building Godzillas, huge puppets in movie productions. And with a few paying gigs, I started making super-8 movies. It was cool, hanging with the downtown LA crowd. Beck, Julie -
JF: Julie?
P: Julie Fantal.
JF: So how long were you there?
P: Like two and a half years, I came over there and it was funky and I was in shock. I happened to be in a very trippy environment, and I didn't get, and I still don't get Los Angeles' fucking environment.
JF: Too smoggy for you?
P: Too smoggy and too opposite in my thinking, you see I'm into the Three Wheels of Life - environment friendly - and over there you can't get a cup of coffee without hopping into a car and using gasoline. And dealing with the traffic and the rules of civilization. I'm very very very like, opposite, I'm opposed to parking rules and regulations. Full-time, part-time, rules and regulations.
JF: Los Angeles is the ultimate in urban sprawl, to say the least.
P: Rules and regulations gonna kill me one day.
JF: You know, it's a desert, and all the foliage is transplanted.
P: It's prehistoric, you know, the swamp with the bubbling tar. The attack of the fifty-foot bubble.
JF: And a few dinosaurs. So how'd you get to New Orleans?
P: Originally, after a hear and a half, I was there bumbling around, and learning the fine art of butchering and carving meat, I became disappointed with my American idols like Jarmusch, Martin Scorcese and ect. I'm at the corner of Vine and Alvarado checking out a bunch of fucking Mexicans spinning pizza around, and it didn't taste like a pizza at all. That's all I know and I came to New York City. We decided to go back to Europe, to Yugoslavia, and that didn't work out. My wife totally couldn't deal with it.
JF: When did you get married?
P: We got married about six months after I met her.We had all these green card deadlines and applications, so we did it in six months in Las Vegas. With little tropical flowers by an Elvis Presley priest, the whole thing you know. Three day Las Vegas convertible trip. Kind of funky things to do. There was nothing much to do, I don't gamble, really. I wish I did, it would have made my in-laws happy.
JF: So you went back to Yugoslavia?
P: And she'd literally freeze in downtown Belgrade, she'd freeze in the street. End up in an ambulance, the whole thing, couldn't step out of the house the whole time. Dealing with extreme cold temperatures, she got very sick.
JF: So it wasn't the political situation.
P: Well, during the political turmoil, there demonstrations, some of the wars were going on, we were in the middle of all that. I was proud of her, an American stepping out in the middle of all that. Even the embassy was shut down, they were only dealing with emergency cases, they weren't dealing with the public. So it was kind of a scary situation. But we gave it a shot and it didn't work out. And we made a little adjustment in Paris and flew back to LA. She can't be in Belgrade, Serbia, I don't speak French, I just learned English. And there is still New York, where I never was, so I said "We'll give it a shot." So we hit the road, from LA to New York. And on the way we got stuck in New Orleans where we went through this whole turmoil thing, love breaking down. I started kicking big time, voodoo, drama, chicken bones, gumbos, shrimp and lots of sneaky little shrimps. And some Slovenian bitches, lots of beer. A swamp. Fucking like hurricane, you know, shit like Katrina and tropical storm Heidi. And that's the one that fucked it up, Heidi. And her being your friend, what can you do? She was blonde, she was original and semi-tropical and I was weak at the moment.
JF: You made art down there?
P: I made Heidi, most of the time. I fuck women like I did Heidi.
JF: So you were a gigolo?
P: I indulged the fine art of carving the meat.
JF: So you made a living out of it?
P: No, I didn't make a living out of it. In New Orleans, I didn't make no living, I was very fucking poor. But the good thing about the town, I make a living by hustling chess. I play chess for the money, I'm pretty good. I beat everybody and couldn't get a gig over there anymore. I stayed there long enough to do one season, one Mardi Gras, one fucking jazz fest, and then hit the road for New York.
JF: The smorgasbord.
P: But without my wife. Kind of like, this whole wife thing, this love, this friend, the whatever thing, left me heartbroken.
JF: So you left the wife?
P: I got kicked out, honestly. She was like, "get the fuck out, you son of a bitch.." I decided to leave after she said insisted I "get the fuck out, you son of a bitch."
JF: What made you decide on New York?
P: Pretty much was the furthest I could get away from my wife and still stay in the United States. And New York City was kind of like, where Andy Warhol got shot, and where Tom Waits and Jarmusch, and that whole crowd of lounge lizards were lounging and doing their thing so I decided, "heyyy, how about that?"
JF: So here's the obvious question: how did you end up at NUBLU?
P: I was there during the beginnings of my dark times. Those were the dark times.
JF: Dark?
P: Very dark times. Semi-madness, complete darkness.
JF: The first time I ever saw you was about two years ago, you walked in with Carla.
P: Yeah.
JF: Was that the very first time you had come to NUBLU?
P: No, I was actually introduced to the place by a sneaky little shrimp called Marla. I met Marla in Williamsburg. I was doing my art over there, being part of this crowd there, a multi-media thing in Brooklyn. I did movies, fucking around, doing lots of puppet shows, going to Burning Man, running around. And I met Marla at this place. But I knew Carla, she was one of my first friends in New York City. She was my second friend. I met her after I met this guy Peter, who introduced me to rickshas. I met him on the streets of Soho when I was selling my art in the streets and he passed by. His best friend was Carla. Carla Cubit.
JF: So when you met Marla -
P: And she told me to come to NUBLU. She mentioned to me about NUBLU, but I bumped into it looking for something else. I was hanging there with Carla, I met Marla, and then I did my tra-la-la thing. Tra-la-la, doodling alot. I was drawing people's shoes in the wintertime. I would go to bars and draw people's shoes and sell those drawings.
JF: So what projects are you working on now?
P: Right now we're doing movies. Making short, independent, suspense,drama. I'm making a revolutionary con man with my friends Yusuf and Malik. And doing some puppet things. It's a big project that we're trying to accomplish by New Year's. Besides that, I do my paintings, keeping busy. I'm illustrating for John Farris, the genius', six haiku.
JF: Good luck with all that.
