In the early life of graffiti, Graffiti Writers would have never thought that this movement would become what it is today. Over the past two decades graffiti has become in immeasurable trend that will probably never die away. Over the years newer and talented individuals seek to express and show off their extraordinary talents in the graffiti world. For those who may not know much about graffiti, it was a gateway for many sorts of things such as political expression, emotional expression or just straight up savagery behavior. Nonetheless, in the early stages was just a way to become known. To have your name be spread throughout the city was a way to earn Street Credit.
In the book Graffiti Lives: Beyond the Tag in New York’s Urban Underground by Gregory J Snyder, the author says, “graffiti is a vehicle of expression” I think that this statement is something many Graffiti Writers would not disagree with since many writers do partake in street art because they want to express certain things whether it be there styles, moods or even skills. In the book the author interviewed a graffiti writer named Cornbread, yes is individual what some of his reasons were for doing graffiti and marking up the streets of the city and he gave one story that was remarkable, Cornbread said he had once tagged up a bus route just 2 pursuer females, meaning all throughout that bus route he would create graffiti pieces just to impress a female. Unfortunately, he said it didn’t work. But that is a clear example as to why some Graffiti writers do what they do, to embrace positive affection from their talents and to sometimes attain certain things. Afridi had originated in Philadelphia from an individual called Bobby Beck. After influencing the graffiti culture in Philly, it soon arrived in New York City in the 60s. A guy from Washington Heights known as Taki 183 was the one who started it all, tagging his name on train stations, trains and on walls created the movement that all the young cats wanted to part take in. There was an article I read called Cyber Bench: Documenting New York City graffiti, it gave an immense amount of information on how graffiti came to be most of what it is today in New York City. In this article it mentions that between the years of 1966 and 1971 graffiti was used for political reasons and for Street gangs to mark their territory. Like I had said previously Taki 183 was the one who started the movement in New York City, writers who wanted to follow in his footsteps immediately we’re Julio 204, Frank 207, and Joe 136. The reason why these individuals chose these tags was because these were their actual names and the numbers where the streets they lived on. During these years of graffiti not many bright ideas were blooming Graffiti Writers, before writers figured out that they had easy access to the train yards all they would tag up work walls, inside train cars, and outside of active trains. During the mid-70s graffiti had evolved from names with numbers to be coming bubble letters with color then words with a perplexing style that was called “wild style”. There are three different types of graffiti, tagging, throw ups and wild style. Tagging is the simple form of graffiti and how it originated, tagging is a writer’s signature, throw ups are quick painted names with an outline, lastly wild style the most hardest of them all. Wild style consists of complicated interlocking letters surrounded by arrows and all different sorts of connections, wild style was known as pieces in the graffiti world (the Mon Lisa of graffiti).
Most of where graffiti was taking place during the seventies where on the trains. Trains were the canvases for all writers, every train the head pass by or left the train yard had a brand-new graffiti piece. During the years of 1975 through 1977 New York City was broke so the transit was poorly maintained given the reason why these street artists we’re constantly putting up new pieces. These years were the heaviest for graffiti because writers were going nonstop every single day trying to get their name out and trying to see their work all around the city. It had become a lifestyle and an addiction, years after from 78 to 81 more styles and ideas started to bloom. With new Styles, new colorways and all types of different creative techniques graffiti had developed into something bigger then it was 10 years before. Street art had given writers a public voice and even Fame, with expressing their feelings and thoughts with art towards the treatment they were given from the government had really opened the eyes of many political people and the citizens of the New York City, these graffiti artist were not only vandalizing for the fun of it, but they were also speaking up for the people who lived in the poor areas of New York. As time went New York graffiti had become a common disruption in the streets and was covering all the walls and train cars of the city. Law enforcement and political efforts tried to catch a hold of it by using the Broken Window Theory. The Broken Window Theory was created by James Q Wilson and George Kelly, they’re theory states that the signs of disorder will lead to more disorder and by controlling the small crimes will prevent the criminals from committing more larger crimes. This Theory however worked, law enforcement could apprehend many Graffiti Writers. The years of 1980s graffiti was coming to its endpoint in the MTA and somewhat controlled throughout some of the city. During the years of the 80s the city had built fences and added a lot more security to train yards, with the increase in security tagging on cars and painting murals on train cars was no longer in full effect. This discouraged a lot of Graffiti Writers, it also had a lot of them leave the world of graffiti but at the same time this opened doors to a lot of writers who wanted to make a living off creating art. And what I mean by this is that since their train car canvases were being taken away they moved on to actual paper canvases and put their graffiti pieces in art studios and sometimes made money off them. The 80s was a tense time with stores locking up their paint and no longer selling spray paint to minors and the city making graffiti punishments more severe. On May 12th of 1989 the MTA declared victory over graffiti. With no more train cars to paint on writers moved to freight trains, scrapyards, highways and rooftops. In today’s time, rooftops and trucks are the most common for graffiti writer to mark up.