Weeks, age 44, has been painting in the street for more than two decades, most actively as a member of Washington, D.C.'s Urban Muralists Association. When he moved to Miami twelve years ago, he noted evidence of a street-painting tradition in the city's black neighborhoods, especially a few remaining signs by a character named Johnny Cool, who, legend has it, rode around in a red Cadillac and painted most of the signs in Overtown and Liberty City in the Fifties. More recently, Oscar Thomas, who died last year at age 41, covered the walls of Liberty City with powerful photorealist murals of historical black figures in an effort to boost community morale. We as black folk don't take much time to go to galleries and museums. If this is not supposed to be the place for art, then I really need to be here.
Stores have to advertise, paint is cheap, and so is the labor.
Now he has four children to support. Daniel has also used his creative talent in his own business, a snow-cone cart mounted on the back of his small pickup truck. Every day after work at the supermarket Daniel sells snow cones in the street, shaving the ice with a lead ice shaver he bought on a trip to Haiti. They don't really want to be here, but there's more opportunity. They don't want to forget their culture.