ABSTRACT
On July 1, 1971, The New York Times ran a story titled “Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals.” It discussed early graffiti writer Taki 183’s motivations for doing graffiti and claims that he has “spawned hundreds of imitators” (“Taki 183 Spawns Pen Pals” 1971, 37), implying that he began the graffiti movement in New York City, a movement the article described as centered in the city’s subway system. The article portrays graffiti as something of a harmless youthful novelty, but by the end of the 1980s, New York City would come to treat graffiti as one of the worst quality-of-life offenses plaguing the city. In 10 years, the city government positioned graffiti and graffiti writers as representing an ugly and pervasive criminal phenomenon. New York City reacted to what it saw as this graffiti scourge by redesigning subway storage and maintenance facilities, filing the largest lawsuit ever brought against graffiti writers, and tacitly supporting aggressive police actions that resulted in the death of at least one writer. The writers reacted too, reconstructing their identities as graffiti writers and shifting how they interacted with the city.
