Graffiti Days

[Neil Feldman]

Graffiti era was a bad time, and was a time that told you the city was in desperation of money! Yes, at night was a terrible time for riding the subway, and even during the day, you couldn't trust things!

[Dan05979]

Graffiti era was a bad time, and was a time that told you the city was in desperation of money! Yes, at night was a terrible time for riding the subway, and even during the day, you couldn't trust things!

 

I was too young but you can tell the subways were scary at night...ooooo:eek:

[M Central]

in my youth, it was mere scrawls of legible names or messages,but still it was vandalism. the spray paint era is most disgusting. some of it is just vandalism the rest "artistic vandalism". it is vandalism at it's worst.

[Grand Concourse]

If the MTA is strapped for cash, why not let corporations and advertisers pay to paint the insides and outsides of subway cars? They have done something similar to the Times Square/Grand Central , but if they need money, why not do that to all the cars.

 

I think it's more like a shrink wrap than painted on.

[engineerboy6561]

in my youth, it was mere scrawls of legible names or messages,but still it was vandalism. the spray paint era is most disgusting. some of it is just vandalism the rest "artistic vandalism". it is vandalism at it's worst.

 

I respectfully disagree with you; I personally believe that it depends on the graffiti in question. I find that some of the graffitied rolling stock looked rather aesthetically pleasing like that despite the abuse they took, while others came out of that era looking like they were in an accident on a paintball range. My thing is that both transit agencies and communities need to learn to differentiate between art and vandalism and grafitti can be either or both depending on the circumstances under which it occurs.

The 1980s in New York led to a proliferation of vandalism that in a much more muted form continues to this day. Back then, large numbers of kids were tagging trains and walls in everything from spray paint to Sharpies and even crayons simply to see their name in the system. The result was a visual cacophony of markings in clashing colors and styles that left our trains looking like a bunch of nursery school kids had gone to town with crayons. Even today, while widespread use of stainless steel cars has largely put an end to the bombing of the old days, practically all OTTs and a respectable number of NTTs have scratchitti issues because people still enjoy seeing their names riding around the system.

However, out of that morass came great artists and groups such as Tat's Cru, that today paints legitimate murals for serious money. Others, while they stayed in the subway rather than transitioning into aboveground work, left us with great works such as the "Diaries" series on the 7 Av line.

Thus, I feel that graffiti should neither be blindly cracked down on nor simply ignored. Instead, I would argue for an "Adopt-A-Car" or "Adopt-A-Tunnel" program in which people could get permits to paint for a per-car or per-square-yard fee (no more than $200-$400 per car and $5-$10 per square yard of tunnel. At the same time, step up enforcement of graffiti laws. This approach should work because the fees, while not prohibitive, would separate serious muralists from fools with spray cans and Sharpies because only a serious artist would be willing to shell out for that space. Second, after having paid real money for space, the serious artists will resent young troublemakers more than they will take offense at the police and therefore provide community support for anti-graffiti laws and operations. Finally, I could see making a pretty penny off this program while at he same time providing straphangers with quality art.