There’s a lot of ways the fast-talking Tony Spanos describes himself:
“A little man with a lot of heart.”
Videos by VICE
“A 5’3” Greek guy that could talk your ear off.”
“Not an activist. Not a graffiti artist. Not a raver. Just this wild guy with a bit of money that doesn’t want to see any kids get into trouble.”
“A cat napper. A live-er, day and night. A man with a lot of stamina, a lot of energy.”
And:
“A sugar daddy.”
The last one is obviously a joke. A more accurate way of putting it, he says, would be “bankroller”. And Tony, the son of a millionaire, has put funds behind plenty of things.
In the early 90s, Spanos used his wealth to create a community hub, immortalised in Sydney rave history, as “The Graffiti Hall Of Fame”: A two-story car park next to a family owned meatworks in Sydney’s Alexandria. For over a decade, the space acted as a hub for grassroots youth and indigenous organisations to fund raise, gather and intermittently, throw parties.
The City of Sydney council may have looked at his venture as bordering on unofficial (and illegal), but to the kids of the surrounding communities it sat as a safe space for artistic merit and freedom. The Hall was a sanctuary for young graffiti artists, DJs and people looking to appreciate the early shuffle of electronic music onto the Sydney scene.
And Tony paid for it all – in more ways than one. Though the Hall was an inarguable success amongst the young, for Tony himself, it accumulated in multiple court cases that left his wealth hanging by a thread.
“I was the grown-up trying to help the kids have a good time,” Tony told VICE on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the back alley of an artist space in St. Peters in Sydney.
Around us, semi-retired ravers from the 90s scuttle amongst the muck, printing t-shirts, building structures for speakers and sewing. A slightly ominous sculpture made from old, forgotten toys sits at the entrance, as well as two taxidermy deers, mounting each other.
Weaving in-between lively retellings of the early 90’s, much of our conversation circles around the community he aimed to build and the kids that came to him for refuge.
“I was the rich guy that had money and was trying to give them an honest upbringing. I’d take them, and pay them, and steer them away from crime – the corruption out there – that lead them to do drugs,” he said.
There’s a striking humanity and empathy sitting behind Tony’s eyes as he animatedly jumps up from his seat every few seconds to reenact scenes from the era when the Graffiti hall of fame was born.
But before Tony launched the Hall in 1990, adopting the title of “unofficial social worker”, he was an employee at his family owned meatworks, run by his father, William Spanos.
“The best name in the Greek Community in Australia for over 50 years,” Tony says.
His sister had just married a guy that he wasn’t particularly fond of and, at 33 years-old, he decided to chase his childhood dream: NASCAR.
In America, Spanos arrived at the Winston Cup where he says he drove, with no practice, over 200 miles per hour, scaring the professionals witless and surviving. He claims that the movie Days of Thunder, starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, was based on him and his girlfriend’s life.
“I was the sort of guy that would always jump off the highest rock, do something crazy, I’d show off. I knew about being naughty,” he said.
“But the moral of the story is I lived my dream and stayed alive.”
When he arrived back in Australia, a changed man, it was on the commute to and from “the rich area” of Vaucluse – where he was raised aside multi-millionaires like James Packer, the Murdochs and the Fairfaxes – and Alexandria, where the Meatworks was located, that he saw the comparative disadvantage between the communities.
“So I said, ‘today onwards, I don’t want to go back to working at the meatworks. I’ll just turn the car park into the Graffiti Hall of Fame and sponsor all the kids to live their dreams. Whatever they want that to be’.”
It was around the same time that parties at the Hordern Pavillion were in full swing and acid house, brought in by UK ex-pats, began to diversify the rave scene. Tony would invite young artists, paying them in the process, to spray the two-levelled carpark. Sometimes members of rival crews, which in the political world of graffiti was unheard of and somewhat risky.
“I was taking the crime out of graffiti and turning these boys’ minds around. Taking their graffiti and putting it on the walls, rather than them doing train stuff and thinking they’re tough and ending up in jail.”
If a kid had talent, Tony would get them to paint the wall. He’d pay them wages, buy them paint and they’d end up with a portfolio, business cards and a photo album. They also wouldn’t be arrested for it.
When Tony was charged in court for being “a businessman sponsoring illegal activity” the prosecutors asked for the official memberships of the community hub – he’d point to an exhaust pipe in the car park where all the graffers had painted their names; “There they are.”
“They started interrogating me and I was subpoenaed to give the kids up in front of the police,” says Tony.
“But if I gave them the names and addresses of the kids, they wouldn’t ask me for help.”
As the Graffiti Hall of Fame grew, so did the parties. He’d teach some of the kids in the community how to draw up posters like the ravers did, get them to bring friends, some graffers, create a set-list of DJs, set up a basketball hoop and grab some decorations from a storage unit that housed equipment for the Sydney Opera House.
“Every party I’d hire St Johns Ambulance for $250, they’d be volunteers and just be there to talk to them about drugs or anything going wrong,” says Tony.
In the morning, he’d open up a little takeaway shop next door to the Meatworks and have a rolling bill where kids in the area could grab food for free. He’d also hire the kids during and after the party to keep the floors clean and make sure there was no broken glass. He cites handing out at least a dozen Volks Wagon Kombis to various kids over the decade.
“The ravers, I liked them, they were healthy. They would just dance on their own. They’d dance in their own space and groove. The guy with pimples would end up with the model cause he’s moving right and being shy and he’s being nice. And she sees his inner soul. It wasn’t greasy.”
Kids would turn up in their oversized t-shirts and baggy pants: the uniform of the 90’s. Tony says that sometimes it would be hard to tell if they were male or female.
“They needed someone with money. The government didn’t help. The only other people that would help are criminals. They’ve got money to spend on kids and take them down the wrong path.”
“It gave them life.”
Pete Strong, a member of the 90’s DJ collective Vibe Tribe, watches on as I chat to Tony. He listens quietly as we chat, or more accurately, as Spanos talks my ear off – interjecting every now and then to share a funny quip about Tony’s life.
As the conversation moves onto the police and parties getting shut down, he laughs.
“At the Graffiti Hall of Fame, they’d have to draw straws,” Pete says.
“Tony would be in their face and it would be too much for them. So apparently one of the cops told Tony they’d draw straws and see who’d have to go down and talk to him.”
In one story, Pete was setting up a rave in Redfern when the cops turned up at about 8p.m. “We just waited and they were gone. And we were like ‘why?’ Well, maybe Spanos had a word with them. Maybe they were the cops that he’d won over at the Graffiti Hall of Fame.”
Tony had an interesting relationship with the police. There were ones he called the “good cops” and ones he called the “bad cops”. The former were the ones that turned a blind eye to the operation, the latter did the opposite.
Growing up, Tony says his well-connected dad would send the various police stations generous amounts of meat, which garnered Spanos a bit of protection. As the old officers cycled out, that protection waned.
“They used to get the cops from other suburbs to come down because the locals knew what I was doing was positive,” he said.
“The bad police would close it down and then put all these kids on the street… and buses wouldn’t run ‘til 6a.m.”
“I’d be like ‘What do you want me to do guys?’ How about I just go home and I’ll leave you with this mess? Or you can go back to the station and if anything goes wrong you know who I am.”
After a while, the kids Tony watched over learned to talk like him. I joke that he’d created a small army of Tonys.
“I’d giggle watching them. The police would see so much innocence in them that they’d let them go – but if they talked to me they’d be mean to me.”
One night, Tony recalls one of the younger crowd confronting the cops, only to realise his mum happened to be dating one of them.
“It was such a winner, because I didn’t know either,” he chuckles. “They had some of their own kids there. They were just Sydney kids, not terrorists.”
Tony ended up in court in 1994 for breaching noise abatement orders, as well as using the hall contrary to the development application for the site. He won his first case, but was in and out of court until the hall’s demise in 2004.
“They’re still trying to bankrupt me to this day,” he says.
“They achieved what they set out to do. They got the factory. They got the Graffiti Hall of Fame. They bankrupted me out of everything I did. They tried to take everything that I own.”
But Tony doesn’t seem as concerned about being bankrupt as he does about the space he created for the kids: a drop-in centre that, he claims, contributed to decreasing suicide rates and criminal activity.
As a self-described social worker, the people who surrounded Spanos were soft-souls that, really, just never had the opportunity, or the space, to figure out where they were going or what they could do. Consistently, he refers to them all as “champions”. Some of his kids, according to Tony, have gone on to become professional sports stars, lawyers, and doctors.
“They’re all grown up now. They’ve got their own kids. Some of them have grandchildren.”
He shows me a photo of a group of men in basketball jerseys, pointing to three in particular, “See, they’re champions.”
Though Tony no longer lives in Sydney, instead opting for Queensland’s tropical Gold Coast where he teaches kids with disabilities how to surf, he reminisces on the heyday of Sydney’s nightlife, rave scene and finally, The Graffiti Hall of Fame.
“Back then, they just needed to fall in love. They needed to play their music, they needed to feel euphoria. They needed to have a good time and to get whatever it was in their system, out.”
“This was that for them.”
Follow Julie Fenwick on Twitter and Instagram.
Read more from VICE Australia and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, This Week Online.
