Sabo's story: Guerrilla street artist opens up in career-spanning 'Unsavory Agents'

Michelle Obama as a Manson girl. Celeb pro-choicer Miley Cyrus eating a fetus. Joe Biden suiting up as "The Diddler."

If you've followed Sabo's work over the last decade, you know he pulls no punches when it comes to lampooning the darlings of the liberal elite.

'Unsavory Agents' is the rare coffee table book that visitors to your home might actually open — and possibly toss across the room in disgust.

What you might not know is that he applies that same merciless gaze to himself.

Sabo entertains two Secret Service agents at his home studio, 2014. Unsavoryagents.com

Lost on La Brea

In "Unsavory Agents," a handsomely produced, 300-page retrospective of his work, America's fastest-censored street artist shares a dark night of the soul from early in his career.

It's 3 a.m. on La Brea Boulevard in Los Angeles, and our hero has been altering posters for the upcoming "Smurf" movie. Exhausted and covered in paint and glue, he sits on a curb and reflects on how a grown man, a Marine Corps veteran and professionally trained artist, came to be here, risking arrest to paint a hijab on Smurfette.

There really is no good way to say it and I simply couldn't escape the thought: I had to be a complete loser to do what I was doing ...

By now all the friends I'd grown up with were all living responsible lives with respectable careers, wives, mortgages, reliable vehicles. ... Hell — some of them even had children on their way to high school. I could barely afford to support myself, much less a child or even a dog for that matter. And here I was in my mid-30s riding a bicycle with a backpack full of paint trying to make a point ... but was anyone even listening?

The moment of doubt passes, as Sabo reminds himself there are worse fates than obscurity: squandering his talent in yet another soulless startup gig.

"I decided I'd rather be broke, hungry, and alone than living that life for one more day. ... Congratulations, I got what I wanted. Having nothing to lose meant I could find the nerve to become the impossible: an artist."

Taking it to the streets

A decade and a half later, it's looking like he pulled it off. His provocative protest pieces regularly make the news, no matter how quickly the powers that be tear them down. He's more or less single-handedly brought punk's take-no-prisoners anger and crass, in-your-face humor to the right.

Along with the success, Sabo has had plenty of struggle. PayPal deplatformed him (leaving some $20,000 of his money in limbo), and Facebook gave him the boot.

He's been cited and fined by Denver police and questioned by the Secret Service. He's been jerked around by corporate collaborators and harassed by screwdriver-wielding libs. He's made himself unemployable by "respectable" agencies while weathering the deaths of his mother, father, and stepfather.

And at 57, he's had to face the same harsh truth Danny Glover does in "Lethal Weapon": He's getting too old for this s**t.

"The last few creative hits that took me from home were so incredibly stressful that I wasn't sure if I was going to die of a heart attack or an aneurysm," he writes.

Unsavoryagents.com

Cracks in the pavement

Sabo's lavishly produced, self-published labor of love is meant to encourage the next generation of artists to follow in his footsteps "I hope this book lays a few seeds, sprouts a few ideas that break through the mental pavement that has stagnated art."

The beautiful reproductions of the work itself — from the image of Ted Cruz as tattooed "gangsta" that first broke him nationally to his surgical strikes at "Pedowood" and Gavin Newsom's COVID hypocrisy — provide plenty of inspiration.

And would-be successors would certainly benefit from this glimpse into Sabo's methodology:

The best samurai didn't just cut you down; they would master the art of ending the fight with as few swings of their sword as possible. I try to follow the same principle when taking over a billboard or creating a poster. Be clear and concise, don't write a book, use as few elements as possible.

A wild ride

The reviews are in! Unsavoryagents.com

Sabo's writing proves to be as bracingly unpretentious and effective as his artwork. In a series of entertaining anecdotes, he offers tips on how to monetize visits from the feds and hang art high enough that it takes some effort to remove.

He also presents vivid accounts of finally meeting his old absentee Los Angeles landlord Valdas ("imagine if Sigmund Freud and Charles Bukowski ... had a baby together") and of "graduating" himself from the prestigious Art Center College of Design.

"Unsavory Agents" is the rare coffee table book that visitors to your home might actually open — and possibly toss across the room in disgust. At the very least, it may prompt some honest conversation. And honest conversation is in short supply these days.

It's also a fascinating record of the last topsy-turvy decade, proof that all of the craziness actually happened. Your great-grandkids might think you're making it all up.

Finally, it's a great way to support a true dissident artist, a man humbly employing his God-given talents to afflict the powerful and inspire the underdog. As Sabo himself says in closing: "Be yourself, give them hell, and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!"

"Unsavory Agents" is available for purchase here.