Sanza Hanza means “King Surfer” and it’s the name South African kids give to a train surfer who outdoes everyone else. I went down to meet them all with my friends Matt Salacuse and Nadia Hallgren to take pictures for Street Carnage’s first book, a photozine called Sanza Hanza that features three of the top train surfers down there: Tupac, Batista, and Seven. They are members of a train surfing gang called V.I.R.U.S. (Very Intelligent Riders Usually Survive).
I also produced a mini-doc on them for Polite Company with Street Carnage Films. For the next three days we’re going to feature one of each of the surfers with a video clip from the movie. Today is Tupac.
TUPAC
The biggest daredevil of the group is also probably the biggest liar. He spoke non-stop, danced constantly, and claimed to have invented every train surfing trick there was. This made for a slightly annoying interview but he was a great subject for the action shots.
Oh yeah, he refuses to believe Tupac is dead and even got mad at me for suggesting it. I didn’t like him at first but towards the end of the shoot, he talked about living in Soweto and how horrible it is and I really started to like the guy. When he’s honest he’s great.
Wearing his school uniform on the way to school and practicing moves. They change into plainclothes on the way home.
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Tupac waiting for security to pass. After they went through, he went straight back out again.
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Here’s some Tupac footage from the movie…
The full movie (starring all three) will be gracing festivals shortly and the photozines are available at:
MANHATTAN: St Marks Bookshop, 31 Third Ave.
BROOKLYN: Spoonbill and Sugartown, 218 Bedford Ave.
PARIS: Collette, 213 rue Saint-Honoré. La Photo Librairie? 49 Avenue Villiers. The Lazy Dog, 2 Passage Thiéré. OFR 20 Rue Dupetit Thouars. Yvon Lambert?, Rue Vieille du Temple.
LONDON: No one, 1 Kingsland Road.Magma, 117-119 Clerkenwell Road (and all other locations).
BERLIN: Departmentstore, Quartier 206 Friedrichstrasse 71. König Taschen - im Museum für Fotografie Jebenstraße 2 ·
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cool, congrats on the first book. me want.
09.24.08 at 1:41 pm
Looks awesome. Congratulations.
09.24.08 at 2:15 pm
someone post a photo of the real tupac shakur right now
09.24.08 at 3:22 pm
Hey Gavin,
Every time I post “bring back Gavin” on the lame “Do’s & Don’ts” on that other magazine’s site, it completely dumps my post… Nothing. I eventually had to type “BRING BACK G-A-V-I-N” and it worked.
WHAT FAGS, THEY’RE STILL ON YOUR DICK.
Love,
Fresh Rigavich
09.24.08 at 6:44 pm
urgh ive been into these train surfing guys since i heard about em in the eighties. they used to do it in australia too. lot of kids died in this fantastic sport.
in your article when you bag out your subject and say you dont like him it kind of fucks it up. dont mean to be a dick but could you just be a little little bit more professional, thanks
B.
09.24.08 at 7:00 pm
we still do it in Australia cept now the trains go real fast, and its hard to get outside them. So really you can only ride on the very back ledge and the guards are all up on the shit like straight away.
09.24.08 at 8:17 pm
This looks awesome, can;t wait to see the movie. Where, when?
09.24.08 at 10:22 pm
piece of shit
09.25.08 at 4:23 am
I’m from Cape Town, and down south we call it ‘Stuff Riding’ it’s been going on since the early ’80’s. and that Dickumentarian should have done his fuckin homework.
09.25.08 at 9:20 am
[...] African trainsurfers? Streetcarnage have done a photozine and movie about them. Read more about it here. It looks really good, but this is really just an excuse to post more videos about people doing [...]
09.25.08 at 12:33 pm