David Choe Loves San Jose

Photos by Andrew Paynter

San José is to artist David Choe what Tahiti was to Gauguin. No, not a place to contract syphilis, but his muse, his antagonist, his inspiration, and more importantly, the place he currently calls home.

For a few months in 2004, however, David called a jail cell in Tokyo his home. What was a routine trip for a group art show ended up being a three month nightmare for Choe, most of it spent in solitary confinement for assaulting an undercover police officer. While in jail, David did have a few revelations.

In his own words, “I found God, but I will never forget where the fuck I’ve been.”

Theme: Where do you live?
David Choe: Where I lay my head. Currently I’m on tour, so Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Spain, Italy, France, then around the U.S. again. I live, piss and shit all over the earth. But when I get back, I’m in San José [California].

There’s a mad concert pianist that lives next door. He fucking plays day and night. His place is a giant grand piano and a bed—that’s it. It’s pretty amazing.

I’ve lived with people my whole life. Brothers, family, roommates, inmates. The first time I ever had a place of my own was when I was in solitary confinement in Tokyo. Now I’m out and got a little money for breathing room so I just want to be alone.

I’ve had this place for five months, and I’ve spent maybe two weeks here. I spend most of my time at home sleeping. Decompressing. When I get home, my friends and family want to hang and go out, but all I want to do is sleep for days. I have the best couch, it’s a huge, creamy, off-white vinyl classic that I bought from two gay lovers. I just lay on it and sleep and then sit up and watch some TV, and then crawl onto my fifteen-foot trampoline, do a few back-flips, crawl downstairs and go into a half-hour drum solo and then go back upstairs and fall asleep on the couch.

I don’t have any pets because they would all die. But I’ve fallen in love with this dog Wally. Last name is Marty. He’s like, three different colors. He has no tail, and looks like he’s been to hell and back. He lives behind the Wal-Mart here in a little marsh area and he hates humans. He won’t come near me. He’s harder to win over than any woman I’ve ever met. I drop by a few times a week and leave some chili dogs near his house. I love that crazy fucker.

I’m on the second floor.When I get home I dump all my rotten bread, stale chips and tortilla shells out the window and I start a feeding frenzy with the seagulls. I’m not even joking—you ever see that movie The Birds? Thousands of seagulls from all over fly and start fighting over the loaves. I guess I just like feeding animals. I guess I could feed the homeless too, but who needs another asshole on this planet?…Actually that’s fucked up.

How would you describe where you live?
It’s a 1,500-square-foot loft in downtown San José, by the train tracks. I watched a guy take a shit on the tracks and wipe his ass with his shirt, from my window. I have a couch made out ofcardboard, my vinyl couch that I never leave, and removable seats from my minivan littered throughout the house. I have three drum sets in different corners of the house, a Sonor, a Tama, and a Roland.

I have paintings depicting every scene in the Bible painted by Joseph, my fifteen-year-old autistic student, all over the place. I have giant stuffed animals left over from the [toy designers] Friendswithyou show. I have mannequins of all shapes and sizes all over the place. My kitchen area looks a giant version of what my room looked like in jail, sparse and uncluttered. I’m one block from the taco trucks, Too Com Chai (the best Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant in San Jose), Jalisco (where you can get goat stew). The best Vietnamese sandwiches and three different types of fries are all ten minutes away.

It’s nice and cozy. The pace of life here is really slow. People talk, drive, and move really slow. It’s annoying at first but then you get used to it. It’s dope here. [Pro skater] Steve Caballero has a bunch of people over his house on Mondays for Art Night. There’re a shitload of drummers, skaters, and goths here. [Musician] Mike Park and [pro skater] Jerry Hsu live down the street, all the Fingerbangerz [DJ crew] are up in this bitch, Gallery A.D. is right around the corner.

This crazy guy Michael Boyd lives one block over and helps me out with making movies and music on my computer. Sometimes we have BB-gun wars with “Spongebob” playing in the background at the local multiplex because Luis, Manny, and Adrian work there. Michael Boyd has this projector and every videogame ever made on his laptop, so we’ll go to the roof of the parking garage and play “Street Fighter” on all the tallest buildings in downtown, throwing fireballs ten feet wide. It’s cool.

It’s like there ain’t shit going on, so you make up your own shit to do. Everyone here is from here, which gives it a small-town feel even though it’s gigantic. It’s not like L.A. or New York where everyone’s from somewhere else coming over to try and “make it,” and act like cartoons of themselves.

People always ask me why I live here, and I always give them one guess.Why else? It had to be the girl.

Radioactive Whale

[I’ve been living in San José for] three years now, and [I’m not sure how long I’ll live here.] I travel so much I hardly think about moving or owning property. I think my next purchase will be an amphibious motor home. I saw it on the news and it got me hard. I’ve conquered planes, trains, and automobiles, but I don’t know shit about the ocean or navigating the seas. But I want to. I love getting-lost-at-sea stories and crazy pirate stories.

Not just the physical structure of my house, but the entire city of San José is like a cave. I go out into the world and collect relics and bring them back to my cave and try to make sense of it all. Years ago if you wanted to make it as an artist you had to go to New York, or France, or some shit. I did that anyways, but now with this double-yoo double-yoo double-yoo and FedEx you can live anywhere and add your local flavor. One of the best artists in the world, Aaron Horkey, was living in the middle of nowhere on a farm in Minnesota.

How do you separate your work from your home?
I don’t. I shower crouching in the same sink that has my dirty paintbrushes.

What do you hate about the place you live?
It’s got all the culture of Orange County or Barstow, with New York-priced housing.

What do you love about the place you live?
The girl, the people, and the Vietnamese food.

Where do you feel most comfortable?
On the road.

What is your earliest memory of “home?”
Watching Mary Poppins over and over again, thinking it was really possible to fly with an umbrella—so I jumped off my roof when I was seven. Sprained my ankle but was too scared to tell my parents so I just sucked it up for two weeks.

But this feeling of “home” doesn’t exist anymore. My family’s been uprooted so many times [due to] robberies, earthquakes, and riots. The house where my parents live is not where I grew up, so I don’t get those warm memories when I visit. The city of Los Angeles will always feel like home, but I don’t ever want to live there again. The Bay Area is one of the best places you can live in the entire world.

What personal possessions do you have to have in your home?
When I got out of jail, I didn’t want to be tied to material possessions, so I gave everything to my friends and started over.

That was over a year ago, and now I have tons of new, bullshit material possessions to tie me down, and I’m backtracking to all the people I gave shit to, trying to get it back. In the end it’s all shit. You have to do these cleansings once in awhile, throw out all the porn, the old books, toys, whatever. If you don’t use it a year after you get it, you never will. It’s all just stuff, junk. It’s the personal relationships and interactions you have with people that you cherish. But I guess if there was a fire I’d run out with my paintings, photos, and writings.

Whose home do you admire, and why?
Not to brag or anything, but I like mine just fine—actually it’s better than fine, it’s fucking awesome. I modeled it after Tom Hanks’ place from the major motion picture Big. I also like [artists] Tim Biskup and Seonna Hong’s place in Pasadena, it’s stretched out over a river and there’s a crazy swing in the backyard. [Comic legend] Jim Lee’s houses are rad because they’re all over the world. Tury and Mel of Friendswithyou’s place in Miami is fucking dope. That’s how I would design my house if I had the time, energy, and patience, but I think my place is the best. I can’t get fuckers to leave.

Tell us something few people know.
God visits here frequently.