Graffiti

Tag Graffiti

Tag graffiti originated in New York City and (to a lesser extent) Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Teenagers began writing their nicknames (“tags”) on walls, often followed by their street number or other forms of geographic identification. For example, TAKI 183, a notorious early New York graffiti writer often cited as the inventor of this type of graffiti, lived on 183rd Street. Signatures grew more elaborate and stylized as youths competed for peer status in both audacious placement of their tags and in style and technique. Writers employed ink markers and spray paint, modifying the spray paint cans to produce a wider spray and thus larger tags.

Tag graffiti might have remained a fad in a few low-income neighborhoods but for the fact that a few graffiti writers began spray-painting subway trains. Suddenly, their tags were seen by people all over the city, not just by those who passed a particular wall. Teenagers began an ever more intense competition in the placement and stylization of their signatures. Graffiti “pieces” became more elaborate, eventually becoming large enough to cover the entire side of a subway car with a multicolored cartoon-like signature requiring several hours of clandestine spray-painting. From the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, nearly every subway car in New York City was covered, inside and out, with the calligraphy of teenage writers. This occurred against the backdrop of a city on the verge of bankruptcy, with municipal services, including policing, cut back drastically.

A graffiti-based subculture evolved, with its own vocabulary: “Bombing” (writing graffiti), “throw-ups” (quickly executed pieces involving only a background color and a contrasting outline), “racking” (shoplifting spray paint from hardware store paint racks), “burner” (an especially good piece), and “toy” (poorly executed graffiti) are some terms that have survived as the graffiti subculture spread. Ironically, one force that fostered a citywide subculture of graffiti in New York City was a crackdown on graffiti by the transit police and the courts. [Page 795]Graffiti writers were sentenced to clean up graffiti in subway yards. There they met other writers from other areas whom they might not otherwise have encountered. Citywide alliances and rivalries were the result. As the popularity of subway graffiti increased, enforcement efforts also increased, with arrests and increased security at subway yards, eventually including razor-wire fences and attack dogs. Sales of spray paint and large ink markers to those under eighteen years of age were banned in New York City and many surrounding areas. The omnipresence of graffiti was seen as a sign of urban decay, of “vandals in control” (to borrow the name of a graffiti crew of the time).

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