Graffiti Generations of the 19th Century

Graffiti Generations of the 20th Century

CREDITS The History of American Graffiti, 2010 Author: Roger Gastman & Caleb Neelon Published by Harper Design New York Subway Graffiti, 2009 Author: Tod Lange Published by Schiffer Publishing Graffiti New York, 2008 Authors: Eric ‘DEAL CIA’ Felisbret, Luke ‘SPAR ONE’ Felisbret, James Prigoff Published by Abrams Publishing House

Colophon Designer: Sarah G Rodriguez-Bonilla under the advisement of Lian Ng at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA Front cover: Imagewrap includes digital artwork from graphic designer stated above Publisher: BLURB, premium matte 8’x10’ standard portrait Typography: Grotesque, designed by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1926 & DIN 1451, designed by the DIN institute in 1931

Graffiti Generations of the 20th Century

CONTENTS

01 02 03 04

Introduction

Gangs & Crews Terminology Diagram

7

The 1970’s

TAKI 183

BLADE & THE CRAZY FIVE

IZ THE WIZ

21

The 1980’s

LADY PINK & CAP

Graffiti Hall of Fame VULCAN

35

The 1990’s

The Freight Train Boom

SANE & SMITH

MARE 139

51

Chapter One: INTRO Clearly we did not invent graffiti but in the late 1960’s, New York City youth coopted up the form in such a way that would soon reverberate in cities throughout the rest of the world. What started as simple names tags evolved into an art form very different from any that had preceded it.

G R A F F I T I G E N E R AT I O N S • 1 0

It is part of who we are.

As soon as humans figured out how to make marks on things, we did it. Graffiti—in its original definition as a scratched or written public marking—is considered to be the first example of human art. Fast-forward a few dozen millennia to the 20 th century. The GIs of World War II and the Korean War wrote the phrase “KILROY WAS HERE”; hobos and railroad workers added their grease-penciled monikers to boxcars that rumbled sea to sea; cholos and pachucos in California and the gangs of Chicago left territorial placas and roll calls; the toughs of New Orleans’ 9 th Ward wrote their names and favorite weapons. Like school kids everywhere, the Italian boys in Boston’s North End wrote their names on street corners and playground walls, while political radicals everywhere proclaimed their causes, lovers

their love, prophets their Lord, and mischief makers just made us laugh with one liners or raunchy drawings.

A pair of recently developed products—disposable magic markers and aerosol spray paint—began to hit shelves of stores in neighborhoods around the United States and, like photography or any new technology, in creative hands was turned into art.

Totally unaware of graffiti elsewhere, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a generation of young New Yorkers began to write their street names—names like TAKI 183, LSD OM, DINO NOD, STAY HIGH 149, PHASE 2, SNAKE, PHIL T GREEK, JUNIOR 161, and SUPER KOOL 223—anywhere and everywhere.

HENCE on a freight train

C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

“Yet it was in New York City where color crossed and line met color.�

SP-ONE

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C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

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gangs v

America was in turmoil and NYC was in crisis: the sub-urbanization and white flight had stripped its economic base. It was almost near bankruptcy. But this generation of young people like graffiti writer Upper West Sider LSD OM realized that they could speak to the entire city by painting the one thing that crossed every boundary of class, borough, race, and neighborhood: the New York City subway system.

The race was on to get one’s name up in as many places as possible. Quantity was the challenge; few worried about calligraphy. Subway cars quickly became the canvas of choice since writers could send their names from the Bronx all the to Far Rockaway, a place they had only heard of but never been.

Writers became members of crews with actual formal structures. These were the “fraternities of the streets,” with crews united in “getting up“ and creating art. The difference between gangs and crews is important.

Gangs, with territorial marking and sometimes violence and crime at their core, contrasted with crews united in “getting up” and creating art. Graffiti actually saved lives. It became such an obsession that writers left gangs and would later report that many of their former friends were RIP.

C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

s crews

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3 Line, 1987

To start our voyage through the next few decades, we are going to go over terms of the movement.

Writers are those who are practitioners of the art of graffiti writing.

There were types of graffiti that describe different styles, as well as purposes. The most common was tagging, which included a writer’s name/signature. Some writers liked to bomb things (to write prolifically; measured in terms of the quantity rather than quality) and sometimes kill (bomb excessively). Others like to throw-up, a very quickly executed piece consisting of an outline with or without a thin layer of spray paint for fill-in.

Skilled writers liked to use blockbusters (large, wide block letters), fade (graduation of colors), and roller letters (names rendered with bucket paint and rollers) to make a burner (technically, stylistically well-executed wild style piece that was generally done in bright colors). There is also hand-style (handwriting or tagging style) and outline (the skeleton or framework of a piece). Writers could take a long time for a piece creating a production (large-scale mural with detailed writing and illustrations) or a short time with motion tagging (writing on a subway car while in service).

However, not all art pieces were respected, even within the graffiti crews.

A hit (a tag, a throw-up, or a piece) could be used for backgrounding (writing over another writer’s name, the ultimate disrespect). This bite (plagiarizing) included crossing out, which is scribbling or writing on top of an existing tag. The police would buff (remove writing or artwork) of wallpapers (dense repetition of a tag with enough coverage so that a pattern develops). They weren’t aware of racing (contest of volume and domination of a geographic area via tags or throw-ups), they just wanted all the graffiti gone.

C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

b ac kgrounding B OMB BI T E bloc k buster BUF F BUR NER CAPS C R OS SING OU T FA DE F ILL-IN H A ND S T Y LE HI T K ILL MO T ION TAGGING ou t line pa nel piece P iece P roduction R oller letters Tag throw- up wa llpa per w riter

SUDE and SURE, 1988

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25

3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation), and the IND (Independent Subway System) which were the letter lines: A, B, D, J, M, R, and so on. Immediately the IRT lines were preferred targets because their routes were longer and a greater portion of the routes had easily visible elevated tracks, especially the 2 and 5 train. The 1, 3, 4, and 6 lines had some appeal but they each only covered two out of the three boroughs, and the 7 line ran elevated but only from Queens to Manhattan.

The MBT and IND lines had fewer elevated portion and horizontal ridges running along the painting service, which made work frustrating and unrewarding chore. Still the BMT had its own stars: the J and M, which ran elevated down Broadway in Bushwick; the A, which was the longest single train line in the subway system; the B & D train, which ran from the Bronx to Coney Island; and the R train, which ran elevated in some parts of Queens. The most ambitious writers painted them all.

C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

NYC’s subways are a baffling maze to many, but graffiti writers knew the systems like the cab drivers knew the streets. When it came to graffiti, each individual train line had its own character, audience, advantages, and disadvantages.

Certain lines had highest visibility, which made them more prestigious, while others were less visible, and, as in real estate, the golden rule of graffiti is, of course, location.

There were three distinct systems: the IRD (Interborough Rapid Transit Company) which included the 1, 2,

ANATOMY OF A SPRAY CAN NOZZLE

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HOOD

HANDLE

Some nozzles create a bigger spray area than others. The closer to the surface, the more control of the paint. The farther it is creates the feather effect seen in most pieces.

Combines the nozzle with the spray can.

Holds the sealer and dip tube in place.

Contains manufacturer’s information, color choice, and volume. Some of the favorite spray paint cans used in the graffiti movement included GROWCO, UTILAC, DOPHISPRAY, PLASTI-KOTE, GLIDDEN, DERUSIO, AMAZON, VYTRON, SPRAYON, EPOXY, KRYLON, CARROL, MURRAY, TRU-TEST, FAST DRY, WIZARD, BONBON, SAPOLIN, RUST-OLEUM, DUTCHBOY, KITKOTE, SPARVAR, DEVOE, RED DEVIL, FIXALL, MAGIC TOUCH, DEM-KOTE, EASYWAY, FABSPRAY, ILLBRONZE, JET EZE, MARTIN PAINTS, ERCO, BROMA, AND REPUBLIC.

BASE

Stabilizes the spray can, sometimes even used to create patterns for pieces.

C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

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C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

Chapter Two: 1970’s The 1970's was the arrival of graffiti into New York City. Many famous graffiti writers tagged their names to be remembered and continued expanding both artistically and geographically.

Others took it as an outlet and left when they felt their footprint was grounded. Either way, they made history that still impacts us until today.

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TAKI 183 A greek kid named Demetrius, nicknamed Taki, lived on 183 rd and Audubon, up in Washington Heights, a neighborhood then popular with Greek families but with growing Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican populations. The social unrest of the times had hit home a few years earlier, when Malcolm X was killed at the Audubon Ballroom, only blocks away, in 1965. Demetrius hung around with his Greek buddies from the neighborhood: Greg and a pair of guys both named Phil who knew each other from the local Greek Orthodox Church.

In that summer of 1969, Demetrius, Phil, Phil, and Greg saw that a kid from Inwood was writing his name and street number with markers on walls, doorways, and light pools: JULIO 204. TAKI explains their progression like this: “JULIO was writing, mostly in Inwood. PHIL lives in Inwood so he gets a marker and starts writing up in the Heights. GREG and I see him and borrow his marker and get up too. All of this happens in a snap.”

TAKI 183 and Worship God

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“It’s like your friend gets his hands on his first pack of cigarettes; you all try one.

You’re walking around, have nothing to do—

what to do when you’re sixteen? You were just hanging around, unless you were an altar boy, and we weren’t altar boys.”

That year, the insides and outsides of subway trains looked quite markedly different. They looked somewhat like guestbooks, signed with names and street numbers: MIKE 127, SJK 171, TAN 144, EEL 159, STITCH 1, SNAKE 1, FRANK 207, TREE 127, and JUNIOR 161. On the trains, the names sometimes would be small, written near the exit door and written in haste with a marker by someone coming in or going out.

As much as the trains themselves, the stations were often the canvas of choice. JAG remembers, “We started going to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and we wouldn't see any. We would put our names up there and come back six months later, and you would see a hundred different names up there. Go to the Writers' Corner— corner of 188th and Audubon— and you'd see the biggest gather spot at that time. Everybody was there.”

C H A P T E R 2 : 1 9 7 0 ’s

TAKI 183 would write his name just about everywhere, not only in his neighborhood. In 1971, the New York Times article “TAKI 183 spawns pen pel” marked graffiti’s arrival and feeling simultaneously that his flag had been planted and his cover blown, it prompted TAKI 183 to quit.

He made his place in history and then made a prompt exit; he wasn’t interested in being an artist or a leader, he was ready to move ahead in life and be an adult.

G R A F F I T I G E N E R AT I O N S • 3 4

C H A P T E R 1: I N T R O

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“The rule was simple: You had to write EX-VANDALS before you wrote your name.

We didn’t care if you didn’t get time to write your name,

it wasn’t about you,

it was about the group.

If you had time, fine, but if you didn’t,

get VANDALS up!”

- WICKED GARY from the EX-VANDALS

“All of us were pretty well known in our neighborhoods for writing our names. But DINO NOD came up with this idea that while that was great and all that we all had our individual popularity, can you imagine how much greater it would be if we all wrote the same thing, and how much further around it would be?”

Many young Brooklynites wanted in, even from a world away. The Brooklyn Style had more flourish and pizzazz for a tagging style than any of the other boroughs, other than maybe Philadelphia. This Brooklyn neighborhood writing at the same time as Washington Heights and the Bronx, rocketed in popularity as writing leaped onto subway trains, where then they would boomerang back with new names from the opposite end of town.

C H A P T E R 2 : 1 9 7 0 ’s

Graffiti had been unleashed and by 1971, a strong group of writers was emerging at Erasmus High in Flatbush. DINO NOD and WICKED GARY were dominating Brooklyn’s walls, and formed a writing crew called the EX-VANDALS.

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BLADE THE CRAZY

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FIVE

Blade’s old Bronx neighborhood was Parkside Projects, a block of housing on White Plains Road where the 2 and 5 train lines ran elevated and where Bronx’s graffiti would blossom. These projects were ever-changing, people were constantly moving up and moving out to the suburbs. As BLADE’s family was moving up, VAMM and CRACHEE stayed, while TULL 13 and DEATH lived in the residential area immediately around them.

VAMM and CRACHEE knew that they could paint but needed a way to access the trains without taking their bags of paint into the train station and hopping down onto the tracks. DEATH was not only the most artistic of the bunch, but he was the most athletic, and he quickly figured out how to shimmy up the poles that held up the elevated tracks. Access was no longer a problem and boom, DEATH gave the bunch a name: THE CRAZY FIVE.

(Opposite page) An early BLADE piece

Mike Martin was a homeless teenager from Queens with one of the greatest noms de plume in history: IZ THE WIZ. After living with various foster parents and settling with a family, he got bit by the graffiti bug as a fourteen year old in 1972.

He left home to dedicate himself to the graffiti movement.

IZ THE WIZ was ready to make any sacrifices to paint as much as he could. And by 1967, he was up enough that one of his pieces appeared on a subway that was photographed for the MTA’s corporate annual report that year.

What would truly set IZ THE WIZ apart was his longevity; while many writers dove into graffiti and made their impact over a handful of years as teenagers, IZ was active on the trains for nearly fifteen years. Many people consider him to be the person who put more paint onto the MTA trains than any other graffiti writer in history.

(Opposite page) IZ THE WIZ

C H A P T E R 2 : 1 9 7 0 ’s

“I was living as a homeless person at such a young age.

I was literally homeless, I don’t think people understand what that entails: sleeping in an abandoned vehicle [...] I was willing to sacrifice all that to write graffiti hardcore.”

Chapter Three: 1980’s ANd it read “Graffiti: The Plague Years” on October 19, 1980 New York Times article about the movement. The Village Voice followed the Times with “In Praise of Graffiti: The Fire Down Below,” by Richard Goldstein, accompanied by six full-color images of subway wholecars by DONDE, LEE, KEL 1ST, BLADE, FUTURE, and SEEN. The two articles—one of paternalism, one of praise—exemplified the tone of the early 1980’s attempt to make sense of graffiti, which clearly by this time, was no passing fad. Whether an urban plague or an artistic cri de coeur, graffiti set to spread throughout the world.

G R A F F I T I G E N E R AT I O N S • 4 4

“Practically every graffiti writer in the world [...] knows every image in the book and every line in the movie.”

During this time graffiti exploded throughout the media, all homage to Subway Art and Style Wars, a book and film that, while not intended to be more than a look inside the culture, formed nothing short of gospel to this generation of writers. Practically every graffiti writer in the world over who started writing between 1984 and late 1990’s knows every image in the book and every line in the movie. RAVEN, a graffiti writer, had a typical encounter with the two: “Like a lot of scenes, one of the biggest influence was Subway Art, but this was before the time when it was easy to just walk into a bookstore and find one. It was through a friend of a friend of a friend that you might find some dog-eared copy. A kid brought one to school in 7 th grade and I had to write down the publisher’s info, write to them, wait for an order form, then fill that out, mail it, and wait again. Or someone would have a copy of Style Wars that had been taped off of TV and dubbed a zillion times.”

Left to Right: Subway Art, Style Wars, FAB FIVE FREDDY, LADY PINK C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

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It needed a girl Lacking those, it was a simple story of unified kids against The Man. Wild Style found the girl in LEE’s then real-life girlfriend Sandra Fabara, who was known as Lady PInk; the child of a middleclass Ecuadorian family in Queens, attended the High School of Art and Design. LADY PINK was perfect for the role: an articulate, broadsmiling cutie-pie who would slap you with a bat and was at ease in front of the cameras. And she painted real graffiti.

“ I was in yards with kids of my own, my own size, which means little. You run into bigger groups of bigger writers and it’s basically lawless in the yards. I was afraid of being not just arrested, but having my paint and my sneakers vicked [stolen]. I was a girl and my homeboys weren’t all that big to protect me. So I did what I had to do... had to dress like a boy, walk like a boy, talk like a boy. I was 5'2" and barely a hundred pounds.”

Many of the boys had a little trouble believing that she was doing her own graffiti. “Girls always have to prove themselves twice as hard in any field to be treated as an equal.

I had to go out and paint with writers all over New York: white boys from Brooklyn and black boys from the Bronx— all sorts of different kids—so they could see me actually painting my own stuff, climbing my own walls, carrying my own paint, to show them that I wasn’t sleeping with some writer to get my name up.”

Central casting found the perfect villain in CAP, a beery tough guy with three-letter throwup, a sawed off double-barreled shotgun, a monosyllabic vocabulary, and none of the artistry that his peers like SKEME, DONDI, and SEEN had in such abundance. Hailing from the Italian neighborhood of Morris Park in the Bronx, his claim to fame was doing throwups over dozens of other writers’ pieces and wholecars.

In contrast to the incredible artistry of wholecars and pieces, CAP and the internecine graffiti wars he helped spur on were graffiti’s lowest common denominators and he dared other writers to do something about it. “Me and my people had guns, we didn’t worry about niggas.” In his own flawed way, CAP was perfect for Style Wars, and inspired other characters such as SPIT in Beat Street. Wild Style appeared in theaters across America in December of 1983 and Style Wars aired on national public broadcasting (PBS) in January of 1984.

C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

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a VILLAIN

SACHSOON by SACH, 1989

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THE WAR In 1982, an extensive cross-out war erupted between the Morris Park Crew and virtually every other major crew on the IRT subway division.

During the conflict, CAP MPC defaced many of this era’s most creative paintings. The biggest challenges came, however, with the increase in the anti-graffiti budget of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Yards and lay-ups were better maintained. New and more sophisticated fences were erected and were quickly repaired when damaged, making favorite areas became practically inaccessible.

Graffiti removal was swifter and more consistent than ever, cutting the life span of many pieces to months, if not days. Writers had to explore the alternative of writing on walls or quit writing altogether.

But not all writers were as easily discouraged. These writers took the new circumstances as a challenge.

It reinforced their commitment and determination not to be defeated by the MTA. Due to the decrease of opportunities, writers became extremely territorial and aggressive, claiming ownership to train yards and layups. Staking territory wasn’t a new concept in writing, but the difference now was that threats were acted upon. Writers who went into lay-ups or yards unarmed or small numbers risked being assaulted and robbed.

At that point, physical strength and the unity of street gangs became a major part of the writing experience.

(Opposite Page) Hagar the Horrible hits Wall Street to grab the dough and go, 1980’s

C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

BEGINS

Clean Car G R A F F I T I G E N E R AT I O N S • 5 2

Program 1984

the MTA stepped up the anti-graffiti efforts with the launch of its Clean Car Program, a five-year plan to eliminate graffiti on subway cars. The key aspect of the program’s strategy was that subway cars could not be put back into service until all graffiti has been removed. This would prevent then writers from seeing their work run, therefore reducing in theory, their motivation to write.

The MTA’s plan was to eliminate graffiti one subway line at a time. As security and graffiti removal increased on a given line, writers moved onto the other lines.

They were slowly being pushed out as the MTA began to reclaim control of the subway system, but the MTA’s aggressive tactics were countered by the efforts of a passionate breed of writers who were unwilling to stop.

1986

many subway lines were graffiti-free.

The MTA had made substantial progress with the Clean Car Program. The IRT lines 2 and 5 saw a final surge of creativity from crews like Damage Inc, Subway Vandals, FLY ID, and Children of Destruction.

Other writers began tagging the exterior of subway cars with markers. Few tags reflected the great artistic standards of prior generations. It began to appear that graffiti might have run in course.

The B,D,L,J, and M lines were the last lines with writing.

MAGOO, DOC TC5, DONDI, TRAK, DOME, DC, and CHINO BYI continued painting. Security was high and the MTA Police’s new vandal squad was in full force.

C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

M Train pulling into Fresh Pond Station

Acid bath for car no. 8262

“ When BLADE COMET G R A F F I T I G E N E R AT I O N S • 5 6

LEE &

DONDI

stopped painting

trains, it

KILLED it for me.”

-VULCAN

C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

LEE’s wholecars depicted apocalyptic scenes and the fear of war. When he was pushed on to Lower East Side walls and handball courts, the scale changed but the message was often the same.

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“Why do a quick two-hour piece [...]

Don’t you want to know what you can do beyond two hours?”

Graffiti’s Hall of Fame (LEFT) and the FREEDOM Tunnel (RIGHT)

“Some writers treated the walls the same as they did the trains. Early on, I realized that trains are one thing, walls are another. It takes a long time to paint trains, and it would take a while to learn how to do these big, wild pieces on the walls. It even alienated people. I would get questions like, ‘Why are you taking up all the space on the wall? Why are you using all that paint just on a wall? I looked at them as born of the same mother, but as two different disciplines. I still can’t get over why people would go to a wall and do quick two-hour pieces when they don’t have to be out in two hours. Don’t you want to know what you can do beyond two hours?”

Scenes at 106 th and Park soon became a tourist attraction for all sorts of people, though it was not the safest place to have a camera. Quickly, other scenes developed, such as the cavernous FREEDOM tunnel along Manhattan’s West Side, named after the graffiti writer who had made it popular, and a bridge far uptown that spanned the Bronx River at 238 th Street, just south of the 2 yard. “238 th had always been there as a spot for you when you wanted to paint during the day. It was great for a long time,” recalls WANE, who painted there for years.

C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

Seeking new canvasses, many writers sought the innumerable city walls around them, whether in playgrounds, on handball courts, along train lines, or even at street corners. Sometimes, these walls could be painted with permission— nowhere was this more gloriously on display than the school yard at 106 th and Park Ave (Manhattan’s East Harlem), which became known as the Graffiti Hall of Fame. The yard had been a local piece spot for writers and in the early 1980’s the school’s counselor—nicknamed “Stingray” by writers—organized it as an occasionally legal place to paint. By the mid-1980’s, there was no one who took advantage of the Hall of Fame like VULCAN, who was one of the first writers to do elaborate pieces on a larger scale.

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C H A P T E R 3 : 1 9 8 0 ’s

Graffiti’s Hall of Fame

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Chapter Four: 1990’s graffiti writers had gravitated toward their own determined canvases. The 1990’s ushered in an age of further specialization within the New York graffiti committee —whether it was street bombing, clean train painting, or productions on permission walls—and there were new niche specialties to come.

The media explosion of this era allowed graffiti pieces to be published, which many traded among friends and sent to relatives outside New York...

G R A F F I T I G E N E R AT I O N S • 6 4

and just like that came the

FREIGHT

BOOM!

(Lef to Right) SMASH, GOULS, RUMOR, HUGE, HYBRID, LEWIS, VIZIE, 21RAK, EYE, HENCE, JET, AEST, OIL, KAPER, ICH, FAVES, STAK

C H A P T E R 4 : 1 9 9 0 ’s

Rural writers were figuring out that you did not have to live in the big cities to be a major player in freight train painting. Freight trains were beginning to allow writers from small cities, exurbs, and even rural areas to rise to prominence on a level playing field.

“Small-town kids like myself, who have no real scene, would be nobodies in the graffiti network without trains or magazine exposure,” says WORMS of Austin, TX. By the late 1990’s, many writers worked exclusively on freight trains, tailoring their letterforms to fit the freight cars’ bump, ridges, and irregularities. Few writers have taken general-public legibility to heart more than northeast writer ICHABOD, or ICH for short. He found an easy ‘ticktock’ style that worked, painting more than two thousand freight trains and making himself one of the few freight writers known to the public as well to graffiti writers.

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(Left) SANE SMITH wall piece, (Right) Brooklyn Bridge tag

Manhattan brother writers Roger and David Smith were teenagers when bitten by the graffiti bug. The two worked as a team, with the stylish David as SANE and the quietly intense Roger as SMITH. They picked a tough time to enter their new vocation. The trains were becoming a less appealing option. Many lines were becoming permanently clean, and writers at the layups and yards were at times violently territorial. From those conditions arose a need to paint in new ways.

The Smith Brothers looked to both the future and the past, and in doing so helped graffiti walk off the trains and begin its second incarnation. They painted in the hidden corners of the city, since most of the writers were still pretty much focused on getting their name up.

Not to say they didn’t have their share of extravagant booming sports, like the infamous Brooklyn Bridge job that made the newspapers. To SMITH, the “Brooklyn Bridge was just another out-of-the-way spot to paint.

In no way did we think more than a handful of people would see it, it just happened to be during our prime.

They had to make an example of us before we went too far and painted something really important.”

Ask former New York mayor Ed Koch and former New York City Transit Authority chief David Gunn which graffiti writers really pissed them off and they’ll give you the same answer: SANE SMITH. Sadly, SANE’s mark on the city would last longer than he would; his body was found in the waters of New York in the early 1990’s. SMITH continued to write in the forgotten corners of New York. He kept a camera in his back pocket in hopes of capturing a forgotten LSD OM or BARBARA or EVA tag. He married the most famous woman in graffiti, LADY PINK, and has worked alongside her on elaborate mural projects.

C H A P T E R 4 : 1 9 9 0 ’s

“A very difficult place to put it and to get to [...]

I could have committed mayhem—a polite word for murder.”

SANE by SMITH

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C H A P T E R 4 : 1 9 9 0 ’s

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“Yo, nobody cares.

If somebody did a handball court, that was the prettiest s#!t in the park because the city had no money!

It was broken windows and needles everywhere.”

-KEO

“This was a very ugly time in the city’s history,” describes CHINO. “You couldn’t get arrested if you wanted to. You’d get caught red-handed punching some dude in the mouth and cops would be like, ‘You get up and go that way, and you go that way, I don’t want to see you again.’

As long as you didn’t have a gun, it was cool. Even if you got caught in the middle of doing a tag, they didn’t even want to know what you were doing so much as tell you to get the hell out of there and take the bag of paint with you.”

In the city, handball courts, a longtime favorite canvas, became more important than ever.

Many property owners were coming around to the same opinion, granting permission to the increasing numbers of writers, and graffiti murals became ever more complex and detailed as pressures of time and illegality were removed. As WANE recalls, “WEN and I went out to do a piece at 241st and White Plains Road with no permission, but we had ladders and everything. We rolled up and when cops came, we told them we had permission. It worked, and we just kept going.”

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“There was a master-apprentice relationship, you know where somebody older had to school you,” explains KEO, “and that chain got broken somewhere [...] Guns and drugs and quick money came into play it just got lost.” When traditions and meeting points were no more, writers scattered throughout the city to reinvent what they loved, learning as they could.

WOLF truck collaboration with TEAM

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TEAM lived in lower Manhattan for years. By the mid-1970’s, he became king of the prestigious Broadway line (no. 1 IRT local), establishing his reputation not only by volume, but also because of his elegant tags, original lettering, and vibrant color palettes. In the 1990’s TEAM came back on the scene and partnered up with WOLF, a newer generation writer.

“Much of the current-day graf looks very generic and similar.

Retaining some uniqueness and blending in some of the old-school lettering styles in my art and getting it to stand up and maybe shine next to the technical products of the new school, that inspires me. When I achieve this, I am truly inspired to keep going.”

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“WOLF helped get me back into writing (although I never stopped working on outlines and tagging in black books).

He met me and convinced me to bust out some TEAM pieces around the town with him, and despite him being much younger than me, we became good friends.”

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All new mediums & locations Carlos Rodriguez, aka MARE 139, began painting subways in 1977.

He painted with highly regarded crews, such as CIA and the ROC STARS. He is well-known for his innovative wild-style lettering. In the late 1980’s he translated the wild-style aesthetics into various mediums, including paper and metal. Since the 1990’s, his work has been exhibited internationally, including the Nancy Victor Gallery in London and Bridgton University in East Sussex.

Others resorted to a place of paradise to fully express themselves, Queens being the place of choice. A large number to tags and throwup began appearing in residential areas traditionally immune to graffiti.

Queens became the world’s largest outdoor display of graffiti art: a legal venue where writers from New York and around the world came just to paint. The Phun Phactory was founded by Pat Dilillo and IZ THE WIZ. At the end of the 20 th century, it was renamed 5 Pointz: The Institute for Higher Burnin’ and has been maintained by MERES ONE.

(Opposite page) FREESTYLE ARCHITYPER by MARE 139, polished stainless steel

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“We wanted to show that these people were not vandals, because the public always thought of graffiti as this dangerous thing—

but on the contrary, it’s serious aethetics; the artists work extremely hard, there’s a lot of thinking behind the work.”

Kotik was very interested in the collection because graffiti was such a New York phenomenon, an American phenomenon. LADY PINK was pleased, “To hear the curator of a major museum in NYC champion our cause was amazing. This is the birthplace of graffiti, but it’s also where there has been the most fear of graffiti, the biggest stigma. It started here, but it’s been accepted other places around the world much faster and easier than it has been in New York City itself.” CRASH thought otherwise, “It was weird, because it was such an important show, but it was also sort of a backhanded compliment. What I mean is that the most important exhibitions go up doing the art season, but this exhibition went up on July Fourth weekend, where half the city was going to be out of town.”

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At the turn of the new century, the Brooklyn Museum put on what has been the most significant exhibition of graffiti art by a major New York museum. “Graffiti” featured about twenty large-scale spray paintings on canvases including works by A ONE, BEAR 167, KOOR, CRASH, KEL FIRST, LADY PINK, NOC 167, TOXIC, DAZE, AND TRACY 168.

Curated by Charlotta Kotik, chair of the museum’s contemporary art department. The exhibition drew largely upon a gift from the Sidney Janis Estate, a long time admirer of graffiti art.

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STRIDER

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And our story lives on.

Although the canvas had changed, New York’s writers had never been more linked with the rest of the world, with the TFP and COD crews leading the international charge. SENTO, who had emerged to lead the TFP crew after CASE 2, began to travel throughout Europe to paint trains, such as the wholecar he painted in Munich with German writers SCUM and NEON. Also Bronx-based, writer WANE’s COD crew was on a parallel path, with New York writers like WEN, WIPS, REAS; Europeans SAVE, GOAL, BATES, and ZEBSTER; and Los Angeles writer RELM. Through it all, WANE’s nonstop painting was an inspiration.

(Opposite page) STIM ONE 3YB, RIP Brooklyn’s most honored writer

Whether it was writers in their prime like WANE and SENTO keeping the traditions alive, hungry younger generations of bombers making a name for themselves, or older writers like T-KID 170, SEEN, IZ THE WIZ, or PART making seamless transitions to wall painting, New York graffiti was not close to dying, even though its subways would never again look like they did in the 1970’s; with all the rifts between throw-up writers like IN and wholecar painters like LEE. Many of us thought the end of graffiti era had come but it continued to live on past the prime years, regardless of the war lost with the MTA. As you ride the LIRR or a subway through NYC, you may catch a glimpse of history that once saturated all the boroughs.

And you will continue to see it for years to come.

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ANATOMY OF A SPRAY CAN NOZZLE HOOD

HANDLE

Some nozzles create a bigger spray area than others. The closer to the surface, the more control of the paint. The farther it is creates the feather effect seen in most pieces.

Combines the nozzle with the spray can.

Holds the sealer and dip tube in place.

Contains manufacturer’s information, color choice, and volume. Some of the favorite spray paint cans used in the graffiti movement included GROWCO, UTILAC, DOPHISPRAY, PLASTI-KOTE, GLIDDEN, DERUSIO, AMAZON, VYTRON, SPRAYON, EPOXY, KRYLON, CARROL, MURRAY, TRU-TEST, FAST DRY, WIZARD, BONBON, SAPOLIN, RUST-OLEUM, DUTCHBOY, KITKOTE, SPARVAR, DEVOE, RED DEVIL, FIXALL, MAGIC TOUCH, DEM-KOTE, EASYWAY, FABSPRAY, ILLBRONZE, JET EZE, MARTIN PAINTS, ERCO, BROMA, AND REPUBLIC.

BASE

Stabilizes the spray can, sometimes even used to create patterns for pieces.