Graffiti Writing Numbers

[Melissa Alvarado]

Thistime it was a crashing wave of color rather than scattered splotches, as the underpass, lit up by the flashlights we were carrying, erupted in the colors of years of spray paint, with no inch of wall left untouched besides the precipices of the underpass, kept safe from the majority of writers frequenting the spot due to the simple fact that the average person cannot actually reach much higher than a couple feet above their heads.

Here was a city of Troy of urban art, each level of city being built on top of the ruins of its predecessor. It was a constantly developing location changing in character in between subsequent visits, shifted in sustenance and color each time by those who had visited in my absence. I had come for photographs, but left with a passion, a reignited interest for the art form which covers our city; and with the Coronavirus crashing into our city, state, and country, this time around I found plenty of time to develop it.

Graffiti from an outside perspective is, frankly, a mess, figuratively as well as literally. Plenty of it is often unreadable to the average person as artists push stylistic and structural limits to their breaking points, but even in the form of simple block letters it remains illegal, damaging, and disruptive.

Whereas in an art museum or gallery you are presented with a piece of art, the name that goes along with it, and means to contact and communicate with those who created it, you are not awarded such privileges with graffiti. Identification of authorship exists, as graffiti quite literally consists of names, but the means of contacting a specific artist often end there. This leads to a vast community of people who may have never met, but express and communicate through the paint in their can and the pen names they go by.

Written pieces also require consistency and alignment, just as any other comparable form of calligraphy. This seems simple enough with basic writing, as all of us do on a daily basis, but when pushing the limits of written letters and seeking to find originality and creativity in a rather rigid alphabet, it can be easy for individuals to lose track of the original letter they are seeking to represent and consequently have the quality of their work deteriorate.

With a concrete understanding of letter structure, writers are then able to lift off from it, adding unique style and expression into their work and gaining both recognition and reputation on the streets they write on. This leads to the expressive and elaborate pieces that can be found all over the city; complex in design but ultimately compliant in structure.

Graffiti forces itself upon the passerby, never being wanted yet nonetheless appearing, covering the varied surfaces of public spaces with letters, numbers, and all sorts of doodles. It is painted over, buffed out, logged, and persecuted, but the art form continues to not only exist but flourish in urban areas, thriving off of the anonymity and vastness that a cities provide, being presented with more empty nooks, crannies, postboxes, and poles than will ever be filled, and an audience of passersby forever present as long as the city stands.

I do not condone the damages done by the art form nor do I encourage its proliferation, but I have learned to appreciate it, as it appears alongside us in New York City, as it has been here before us and will continue to exist long after us.

At that time the young Italian writer painted a few trains with his crew, but he never liked it very much. His favorite thing was to paint silver pieces along the line. There was a large train station in his small city, after 2000 many writers came there especially to paint trains. In 1997/98, 108 was going to graffiti conventions with his writer friends to collect spray cans. During that time they discovered many abandoned factories in the northwest of Italy, the most industrialized area in the country. All those lost places were perfect to meet, paint and party. End of the 90s, 108 started to use rollers, stickers, and other medias, being bored about bombings and night actions.

Like everyone who started to paint graffiti in Italy in the 90s, many writers were influenced by American graffiti and especially by the style of New Yorker Phase 2 in the beginnings. In Milan the local writer RAE (or RAX E) had a strong impact with his wild style and dynamic letters, and one of the greatest graffiti writer in Italy in the eyes of 108 was DAFNE. Being female in the trainwriting scene in the mid 90s, she was extraordinary, and her style seemed 50 years ahead of time in his eyes. Other European writers impressed 108 as well, like the Swiss writers DARE, DREAM and the TWS, as well as some punk styles from Paris or some Scandinavian styles. 108 always liked avant-garde styles even in graffiti and in 1997/1998, he was totally into experimental styles. At that time, he lived in Milan to study design at the Polytechnic University of Milan, at the Faculty of Architecture. He was bored by those technical studies but had some great professors in visual design, communication and colors theory, like the artist and color theorist Jorrit Tornquist. 108 was introduced to history of modern art, impressed by the works of futurists, by Malevich, Kandinsky, Itten, Castellani or by Russolo. This knowledge and awareness completely changed his mind and his view on art. During his studies he met a lot of interesting people of the contemporary art scene of Milan, and artists of the present avant-garde as well.

Graffiti began appearing around New York City with the words "Bird Lives"[1] but after that, it took about a decade and a half for graffiti to become noticeable in NYC. So, around 1970 or 1971, TAKI 183 and Tracy 168 started to gain notoriety for their frequent vandalism.[2] Using a naming convention in which they would add their street number to their nickname, they "bombed" a train with their work, letting the subway take it throughout the city.[2][3] Bubble lettering was popular among perpetrators from the Bronx, but was replaced with a new "wildstyle", a term coined by Tracy 168 and a legendary original Graffiti crew with over 500 members including Blade, Cope 2, T Kid 170, Cap, Juice 177, and Dan Plasma.[4][5] Graffiti tags started to grow in style and size.[3] Notable names from that time include DONDI, Lady Pink, Zephyr, Julio 204, Stay High 149, PHASE 2.[3][4]

Graffiti was growing competitive and artists desired to see their names across the city.[3] Around 1974 suspects like Tracy 168, CLIFF 159 and BLADE ONE started to create works with more than just their names: they added illustrations, full of scenery and cartoon characters, to their tags, laying the groundwork for the mural-car.[3] The standards from the early 1970s continue to evolve, and the late 1970s and early 1980s saw new styles and ideas. As graffiti spread beyond Washington Heights and the Bronx, a graffiti crime wave was born. Fab 5 Freddy (Friendly Freddie, Fred Brathwaite) was one of the most notorious graffiti figures of that era. He notes how differences in spray technique and letters between Upper Manhattan and Brooklyn began to merge in the late 1970s: "out of that came 'Wild Style'."[6] Fab 5 Freddy is often credited with helping to spread the influence of graffiti and rap music beyond its early foundations in the Bronx, and making links in the mostly white downtown art and music scenes. It was around this time that the established art world started becoming receptive to the graffiti culture for the first time since Hugo Martinez's Razor Gallery in the early 1970s.

The growth of graffiti in New York City was enabled by its subway system, whose accessibility and interconnectedness emboldened the movement, who now often operated through coordinated efforts.[3][7] It was further left unchecked due to the budgetary restraints on New York City, which limited its ability to remove graffiti and perform transit maintenance.[3] Mayor John Lindsay declared the first war on graffiti in 1972, but it would be a while before the city was able and willing to dedicate enough resources to that problem to start impacting the growing subculture.[2][3]

The Abraham Beame Administration established a police squad of about 10 police officers to work in anti graffiti capacity. The squad attended informal meetings and socialized with minor suspects to gather information to help them apprehend leaders. Although the squad gathered information on thousands of graffiti vandals, inadequate manpower prevented them from following through with arrests.[8]

As graffiti became associated with crime, many demanded that the government take a more serious stance towards it, particularly after the popularization of broken windows theory.[2][9][10] By the 1980s, increased police surveillance and implementation of increased security measures (razor wire, guard dogs) combined with continuous efforts to clean it up led to the weakening of New York's graffiti subculture.[7] As a result of subways being harder to paint, more writers went into the streets, which is now, along with commuter trains and box cars, the most prevalent form of writing. But the streets became more dangerous due to the burgeoning crack epidemic, legislation was underway to make penalties for graffiti artists more severe, and restrictions on paint sale and display made obtaining materials difficult.[3]

Many graffiti artists, however, chose to see the new problems as a challenge rather than a reason to quit.[3] A downside to these challenges was that the artists became very territorial of good writing spots, and strength and unity in numbers (gangs) became increasingly important.[3] This was stated to be the end for the casual subway graffiti artists.

In 1984, the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) began a five-year program to eradicate graffiti. The years between 1985 and 1989 became known as the "diehard" era.[3] A last shot for the graffiti artists of this time was in the form of subway cars destined for the scrap yard.[3] With the increased security, the culture had taken a step back. The previous elaborate "burners" on the outside of cars were now marred with simplistic marker tags which often soaked through the paint.

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