All language subtitles for Wall.Writers.2016.PROPER.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG

The Vandals were a tribe
of people who invaded Europe

in the 4th and 5th Century
and for no apparent reason

destroyed much of what
they found there.

Sometimes it seems as if
the vandals live again

and have invaded
the United States of America.

♪ [MUSIC]

[BREAKING GLASS]

[SIRENS BLARE]

ROCKY 184: I'm Rocky,
and I grew up here

in Washington Heights,
188th, 546, Apartment 3.

Washington Heights was
the birthplace of graffiti.

I haven't thought about it,
my God, must be 30-odd years

I have not thought
about graffiti

and now like everybody
wants to know about it.

Where did it start? Who did it?

It was like,

in a way, maybe it's the past
comes back to haunt you?

I don'’t know.

ROCKY 184: I was a tomboy.

I think I put my first tag on

the train going downtown
to school

and I did it
'cause I could do it.

You know.
If they could tag I could tag.

SNAKE 1: It started out as fun.

It was something to do
besides just sitting

on the stoop, bored.

MIKE 171: Washington Heights.

This is where the movement
kinda started.

This is the Mecca.

Working-class people,
mostly cliques of kids, gangs,

roaming around, having fun.

Gotta be the cool kids
on the block,

you know, go play hooky
the most, just see girls

and try to get things going.

We were young. It was fun.

You could be on
the basketball team,

you could be in a gang,

or you could go out here
and write on the walls.

THE JOKER: I can't say politics
were involved.

We were too young
and self-absorbed.

ROCKY 184: For me,
it was nothing political.

I understand it was
the Vietnam War and all that.

To me, it was expression.

I thought I was ROCKY 184
and I'm doing it.

We were not writing to make
any political point at all.

We were just vandals.

[PAINT CAN SPRAYING]

NARRATOR: Graffiti is
the largest art movement

in the world,
a global phenomenon

that can be seen on the walls
of every major city.

However, graffiti is no longer
relegated to the streets

and has made its way

into galleries and museums
around the world.

It can also be found
on commercial products,

from t-shirts to automobiles

and many of
the world's biggest brands

commission graffiti artists
to create special products

or design marketing campaigns.

There is even an industry
dedicated to the production

of graffiti supplies
which generates

millions of dollars each year.

But there was a time
before graffiti,

a time when marker tags
and spray-painted murals

did not exist.

There was a time when
the walls were bare,

the tile was clean,

and lampposts
were just lampposts.

Well these are the--
My tools of the trade.

What I first started out with

but these are not
the original ones like these.

These are from probably
1971, '72, I would say.

And I don't have any
of my old pilots

but these were
the pilots back then.

It was only tags and magic
markers, that's it.

This is one of the first brands
we started using, Red-Devil.

And then they had
the wet look paint.

And then this is
some cheap paint

from a store like Home Depot,

we used to get these also.

NARRATOR: As graffiti crews
evolved so did their supplies.

Most of the writers
were young and poor

so they acquired their tools
by any means necessary.

LA ZAR: Pearl Paint was
the Mecca where you could get

the large markers, the ink,

the pilots, the midi-wides,
the Niji wides,

and, you know,
all sorts of colors.

GREG 69: I had to buy it
and then if I could

I'd sneak one in my pocket.

The way we got the markers and
the spray paint

wasn't the usual way.

We actually went out
and stole that stuff.

No, you steal a car,
you don't steal a marker.

[CHUCKLE]

Steal a marker?

That's crazy.

NARRATOR: In the early days,

writers used whatever
they could get their hands on

from shoe polish to markers
intended for industrial use.

Now, they added spray paint
to their toolset.

COCO 144:
A marker was a lot easier

to go in a store and steal.

Spray paint, now, that'll
put you in a different division.

Long trench coats,
you put your hands in

and you take your hands out.

So you could take cans
of spray paint and fill them in.

They write their name around
so they could be known.

It don't make no kinda sense.

They want to be known,

they don't have to spray
their name around, you know?

HOST: So they're really--
You think

they're trying to be famous?

-Yeah.
-HOST: Yeah, you think it works?

Yeah, I think, yes.

HOST: What about you?
You use spray paint cans?

-Who, me?
-HOST: Well, anyone who does.

Yeah, I use spray paint cans.

CHILD: Or magic markers.

-HOST: Magic markers?
-CHILD 2: Or shoe polish.

-HOST: Or what?
-Or shoe polish.

HOST: Now, you seem to know,
are you an expert?

-Yeah.
-CHILDREN: Yeah.

We were like the celebrities

and if I hit a big clean wall,
30 names would follow.

TAKI 183:
Names tended to be clustered.

If you wrote underneath a wall

the next guy wouldn't
write around the corner,

he would probably write
right next to you.

And they became bigger.

They became more daring
and I was really amazed

at some of the feats,
at some of these kids.

The more dangerous
the situation was

the more your name
would be recognized.

COOL EARL:
It was a sign of the times.

It was a sign of our youth,

our lack of funds and possibly
the lack of paternal guidance.

We didn't care about people,
what they would say to us.

You know actually, some of us
wanted to be seen doing it.

We were trying to get
reputation that, you know,

oh my god, there's Henry161
writing his name again

or Mike171. We were very, very
reckless in the way we did it.

JOE 182: See, well,
my shit was hit and run.

Hit and run.

See, these fucking guys,
they are--

they had all the time
in the world, go at night time,

take their time
and shit, you know?

A lot of the times
I was in the fucking subways,

motherfucker be moving,

I was hitting the motherfucker,
you know what I'm saying?

And the girl,
she'll pull this shit out

and start tagging in front
of everybody.

COCO144:
But I felt that the women

that were out there writing,

whether it be Eva62, Barbara62,
Michelle62, Charmin65, SPat,

Rocky184, you know,

they had a lot more balls
than a lot of guys had.

When I was doing it, I was the
only female that I knew about

and as I faded out
Barbara62 was all over,

our crime partner was Eva62.

You couldn't see one name
without seeing the other.

My first impression
of other writers

and why they were writing it

and it was getting more popular,
it was like people were angry.

SJK 174: We wanted to be known.
That's why we wrote our names.

Anybody writing anything
like "Marty was here 69"

or "Joe was here 72," he wanted
to be known, he was there.

But we did it in a different way
we wrote our street numbers.

We didn't really realize that
we were developing a style

that nobody's ever done before

that would blossom
into more graffiti.

Seeing numbers behind tags
started from the beginning.

You see Taki183, I started
writing Snake1 88,

it was just
as simple as possible

where you could read it.

I used to write, "Snake1,
King of all snakes."

Because there were
too many snakes around

and I couldn't take it.

And one time I went
to Snake2 train station,

145th Street on number one
and we were good friends,

we went to junior
high school together.

But I went to where he lived
and I wrote on his subway wall,

"Snake1 king of all snakes,"
you dig? "You got that George?"

His name is George.

NARRATOR: There was a time
on the New York subways

when without a newspaper,

you could ponder
the advertisements.

Well, you can still ponder them

but you can hardly read them

because of
the graffiti covering.

It's even hard to read
the graffiti for the graffiti.

Now you'd think that
with all this effort

something passively important
or even beastly was being said,

or something clever
as some of the old graffiti

comments on life and the world.
No.

Now it's mostly just an attempt
to identify oneself,

with code names
and numbers. Coco4, K-55,

Super Kool 223. Sonic 53.
Friz171.

And much of it
in inglorious color.

Legibility was important

and the thing is you could
throw it up quick.

Simple, just black letters,
that's it, J-O- E.

JEC#*: I wrote JEC star
and those were just my initials,

J-E-C.

and the star was just
a squiggly I did at the end.

BAMA: The whole idea if you had
a nice handwriting

and they saw your name there,
there, there, there, there,

that meant you were there.

It was not all about being fancy
and that came later on.

Just spread all over
the place like a fungus,

bathroom stalls, buses,
inside subway cars.

Everything was pristine one day

then all of a sudden you see all
these names written.

You're wondering,
who are these people?

And the more I saw of it
the more intriguing it became.

HENRY 161: Graffiti was
entertaining for me.

When I used to see a clean wall
and I had a marker on me,

that was like, "Oh, wow, man!"

And I would go and start
writing my name.

COCO 144: The dynamic of
writing your name

of doing something
that's illegal,

of having other people guess
"Who's this person?"

is one of the many things
that attracted me.

We noticed that everybody
was talking about

Friendly Freddy,
Fantastic Eddie, Super Goldie,

and me and my guys

we wanted the girls
to gush over us as well.

At the time I didn't really
think that it was illegal,

I thought that
it was just fantastic.

I felt, "These people must
be just somebody special."

We were like movie stars
to some of these people.

I would see other people
tag there and go, "Oh, my god,

if my name was up there
with their names, man

that would be a great wall."

JON NAAR: They called themselves
"Writers."

I do not recall any of them
calling themselves artists.

FEMALE REPORTER:
And who are the culprits?

Not surprisingly,
they're kids, mostly male,

mostly around 15-years-old,

mostly poor,

and mostly what psychologists
would call "neglected".

The words are rarely
obscene or racial.

Mostly it's just
"Mike this" or "Coco that"

and the numbers are usually
the streets on which they live.

The first graffiti names,
Taki183,

Phil T Greek, Joe182nd,

Babyface86,
Stitch1, but Julio204....

NARRATOR: The writer in New York
who was thought

to have started it all
was a teenager named Julio204.

Most writers count him
as their first influence

but few actually knew him.

PHIL: The first graffiti
I remember seeing

was a personal mark,
the bottom of a lamppost,

his name was Julio, Julio204.

Julio204, yeah, he definitely
hit those lampposts first

Julio came out of the blue.
We started seeing about 1967,

it was nothing in big size,
it was just noticeable because

there was nothing
else up on the walls

and nobody really knew
what it was.

We thought something
was going happen

on July 20th at four o'clock.

Then we realized there's
a guy going around

writing his name
and his street number.

JAG: Julio was like
a little Colombian guy

and he says, "Yeah,

I can put Julio
on that but it's no big deal

so I'm gonna make mine
more known,"

so he started putting "204."

So the girls and everybody
would know who he was.

Well, when I kept seeing
his name, you know,

you hear the mythology of him
being perhaps a gang member

and just like a cat
marks its terrain,

Julio was marking his terrain
and his people's terrain.

You'd see him a lot up there
Fort Tryon Park,

Washington Heights area.

Columbia University
marked their C

for the football team
on this huge rock.

We were hanging around
there one day and

friend of mine said, "Let's
climb to the top of this thing."

So when I got up to
the top there,

I saw it, on a rock this guy
tagged his name, "Julio 204",

I go, "This guy is everywhere!"

You know? In my own childish
way I was impressed by that.

Felt, "I'd like to get my name
everywhere too."

NARRATOR: No one knows why
Julio 204 stopped writing,

or what happened to him after.

But by the late '60s his marker
tag had stopped appearing.

♪ [MUSIC]

In the 1960's America was
in a state of social upheaval,

caused by issues like

Civil Rights
and the Vietnam War.

Political leaders were
being assassinated

and it seemed like everyone's
lives were threatened.

In the midst of all the chaos,
the country's urban youth

started to speak up with
markers and spray cans.

Meanwhile, in Upper Manhattan,

in a neighborhood known
as Washington Heights,

a small community
of Greek teenagers

picked up
where Julio 204 left off.

I grew up in between Inwood
and Washington Heights.

I met Greg, Phil
and Taki because

I was affiliated with a Greek
Orthodox Youth Association

and we all played
basketball together.

That's how I met them.

So my father was self-educated
and he...

He exposed me to a lot of things

and part of that was, you know,

trying to be
an individual of some kind

and you know, I wanted to do
something different, you know.

I wanted everyone
to know who I was.

So my first name was "Phil",

my last name began with a "T"

so my moniker
was "Phil T Greek."

It was unusual, it was unique.
I wasn't Puerto Rican, you know,

I wasn't Irish, I was Greek.

So I wanted to make a
Greek mark, you know.

Julio 204 was very legible

and I wanted mine
to be even more legible.

I felt that it was necessary

for my name
to be in block formation.

I didn't want it to be script,
I wanted them to see it,

and see that it was done
almost mechanically.

When Phil started writing
in the Summer of '68,

it made it more personal

'cause all of a sudden
we knew who the guy was.

Once it was like
an inside thing.

LITTLE PHIL:
I saw Phil T's name

and my friends would ask me,

"Is that you writing that name?"
And I would take credit for it.

LITTLE PHIL: Even though I
wasn't even tagging at the time.

LITTLE PHIL: 'Cause it fit
my name so perfectly.

And then we just kinda
tagged along,

me and little Phil
started doing it too.

PHIL: I didn't like when
they started writing because

that's my thing, you know?

We kinda wanted to
be like Phil, you know,

in our regard
like with music

and graffiti, I guess.

Even the drugs.

I don't remember him being
unhappy about it,

certainly he didn't voice it

and what I do remember is how
we thought it was pretty cool

that we could both
write the same name

and get twice
as much traction for it.

He piggybacked on
my name and I didn't like it.

But I stopped by then
and Phil started

and he became known
as Phil T Greek, actually,

he developed more notoriety.

But there's no way
you can beat Taki.

He was everywhere, you know.

TAKI 183: I've always
been called Taki by everyone.

Taki is a real name,
it's derived from Demetrius

because when you're a little kid
it's hard to say Demetrius,

so you had to say Taki,

it's a very common nickname
in Greece

and it either sticks with you
or it doesn't.

But only a Greek would know
that it's a name basically.

I never thought of getting
anything out of the graffiti.

It was just something
you did for the summer.

I was either with Phil or Greg

and they were writing

and I said,
"Oh, let me try that."

And I just put Taki and I said,
"Oh, let me put 183,"

'cause they're putting the year,
they're pretty Greek,

I'll just put the number,
like Julio.

The graffiti was also
part of the friendship,

I mean, it was the sports,
it was the friendship.

TAKI 183: You moved as a group

so let's go up to
the bus terminal

that had nice smooth walls.

We'd hang around
the church steps.

We'd hit the church steps.

When we'd go to basketball
games we always carried a marker

cause you gotta tag
along the way.

You kinda-- You marked
your territory in a way.

But during the summer of '70,
I was working as a messenger

and the way you made
any kind of money is

they'd give you the car fare for
the delivery and you'd walk it.

So if I had to walk from
57th Street to 86th street

with a package
I would just zig zag

and every time it was
a red light

I'd stop, put my name on a pole,

you know how much you can cover?

NARRATOR:
Taki183 started writing his name

in neighborhoods outside his own

and people around the city
started to take notice.

Well, the first graffiti
that I noticed

and that I admired
a lot was Taki183.

Taki was top dog.

Taki took it to the max, I mean,

I think this kid lived
to write his name.

You started out with a marker,
right,

because Taki183
started with a marker.

Then I seen him hit with paint.
"Oh, look,

now that's not a bad idea."

I didn't start it but that
was just the next step.

WICKED GRAY:
The word got out.

There's no denying
that every place

you looked
you wouldn't see Taki.

All the neighborhoods
had Nazian graffiti

but especially in
a pristine neighborhood

it was much more evident.

You could walk for 40 blocks
and see my name on every pole,

Park Avenue, Lexington Avenue,
Madison Avenue, Sutton Place,

all the cross streets,
and I just hit them all.

And your name would be there
and people would say,

"How do you write it
and nobody saw him?"

That was the big
mystique of graffiti.

LITTLE PHIL: Taki was original

and to watch him
in action was funny.

He had a leather jacket
that he liked to wear

and he had a hole in the pocket

and he became good at being able
to put his hand in the pocket

and tag a door on a train,

you know, then he'd walk over
to another door

and do that one
and you'd never know he did it.

Part of the rationale

of not thinking you were
that destructive is because

politicians would put up
Nixon tags,

and you knew they weren't
gonna come back

and take it off at the
end of the campaign.

So I said,
"If they can do it I can do it."

My parents thought it was
pretty terrible

that I was writing everywhere

but then I think they
got the joke of it that

they knew who I was but
nobody else knew who I was.

NARRATOR:
Taki183 became an urban legend

and remained a mystery
to the public at large

until an enterprising reporter

fromThe New York Times
tracked him down.

In early '71, I was impressed

by an article
in The New York Times

about Taki183

being the first of
a new type of graffiti writer.

TAKI 183:
Taki183 Spawns Pen Pals.

When this was published
we really saw that

it was becoming a citywide news

and it was a good story
for a slow news day.

The Taki article gave what
we were doing credibility

'cause now we knew
we were being noticed.

I didn't have any hesitation
about speaking to the Times

because basically it was
all a goof to begin with

and over here you got this

legitimate paper
interviewing you,

you know,
they interview Kissinger

and they're interviewing me.

You know,
how ridiculous can it get?

BAMA: When I read that article
I was writing but I just thought

"Wow, they blew him up, yo!
I'm gonna do his wall!"

'Cause I wanted
to get an article.

I don't remember seeing

any article about Taki
in any newspaper

back then in those days.

All I remember about Taki

was a commercial
they used to show on TV.

It was filmed inside
the Statue of Liberty.

HENRY 161: And they would show
the persons walking

up the stairs inside
the Statue of Liberty

and as they were walking
by you see the name Taki183.

TAKI 183:
The Statue of Liberty commercial

was a result of editing.

Actually that was at
the A-Train station.

I think, on 181st,
with the long steps.

Whoever made the commercial

filmed the family
with my name in the background,

I have to hand it to this guy,
he like,

he gave me so much publicity.

When I was photographing
graffiti in New York

Taki was already a legend.

After Taki was everywhere there
was an explosion of taggers.

Summer of '71, they interviewed
me for Interviewmagazine,

Andy Warhol's magazine,
which was pretty cool,

told me to come down and meet
Andy Warhol, I said,

you know,
"I got no time for this guy."

[LAUGHING]

NARRATOR:
Taki183 was the face of

the graffiti movement
in New York.

But just 100 miles to the south,
Philadelphia had its own star.

♪ [MUSIC]

[SHAKING SPRAY CAN]

CORNBREAD: I was established in
1965 at a reform school

and Mrs. Swanson
was the head cook,

used to always prepare white
bread with our meals.

I used to always remember how my
grandmom used to bake cornbread.

So, I used to get outta line
and go in the back and say,

"Mrs. Swanson, how come
you don't serve cornbread

on the menu?"

And she gripped me by my shirt,

and took me out to my counselor
and told my counselor,

"Keep this cornbread
out my kitchen."

And all my peers at
the table started laughing,

"Cornbread, Cornbread,"

and throughout the institution,
which was infested with gangs

who wrote their names all over
the walls of the institution,

to recognize-- To be recognized
by their gang name.

I wanted recognition too.

So I wrote "Cornbread"
in real big letters

right by all the gangs' names.

But I took it a step
further than that.

I wrote my name
in the visitor hall,

in the chow hall,

in the bathroom, in the school,
in the church, everywhere.

When I came home in 1967,

I took that same concept
to the city walls

to establish our reputation.

And I wrote my name everywhere.

People started talking about it.
and it wasn't long before

other teenage juveniles began
to spray-paint their names.

NARRATOR: In North Philly,
Cornbread was joined

by the likes of Titty
and Dr. Cool,

while in West Philly there were
writers such as Chewy,

Cool Earl and Kool Klepto Kidd.

[FREEWAY TRAFFIC]

KIDD: My name is
Edward Leatherary,

A.K.A. Kool Klepto Kidd,
A.K.A. The Kidd.

When I first started
writing graffiti

it was I believe, in '67.

Small tags with magic markers

and it escalated
into spray paint.

It started out as
a small band of us

that hung together
and that was myself,

Cool Earl, Chewy,
we came from the hood,

so to speak,
the ghetto, you know,

rat, roach infested areas,
people not having very much

and we went out and pretty
much put our names out

and it was like, "We're here."

Well one particular day
Chewy, Kidd and myself

and a few other guys was writing
on an L's in Philadelphia

and Eddie decides to write
his name on the L's.

He wrote "Kidd".

And I'm sitting on an L,
on a seat,

and I'm looking at him
write "Kidd" and I'm thinking,

"Well, get me.
Write my name up there."

And to my surprise instead of
just writing Earl,

he wrote "Cool Earl".

So, Kidd was the first person
that wrote Cool Earl, for me.

I chose to use my real name

but because of that
little art flair in me

I knew I could come up
with something special.

So, you know, and to
this day it's only one dude

I know that could
really do it like me,

and that was my man, Joe Cool.

I got the name Joe Cool from
this cartoon character, Snoopy.

When I turned 13, my parents
sent me to Karate school

and, you know, at first
everybody used to tease me

and call me Karate Kid
and stuff like that

and as time went on, you know,
I just, I couldn'’t shake it.

And here I am now,
and still can't shake it.

I have people right now,
right now,

that, that they don't know
my name.

KIDD: It was just more of
a vandal type thing,

we were just on the subway

writing on
the cardboard advertisement,

you know,
like a Zorro type of a signet.

We were going over
South Philly, North Philly,

we was going all over the place.

Everybody wanted to be
cool just like us.

LEWIS: Everywhere,

I see these guys' names,
I say, "How did they do that?

How did they get it here?
How did they get up there?"

We were just having fun,
you know,

cops chase us,
they couldn't catch us,

you know, it was a
cat and mouse type of thing,

you know. When we were hitting
and they'd pull over

and jump out
and try to catch us,

all of us were pretty fast

and, you know,
we was having fun.

We went on excursions at night,
in the bus terminals.

When we thought that
no one would see us

and we hit every bus
we could hit.

KARATE:
I used to live with my aunt

and my aunt used to tell me,

"Look, if you're not in
the house by nine o'clock,

you gotta sleep in the hallway."

Every night we would go out

and write and I never got home
at nine o'clock,

so I slept in the hallway
for many nights.

COOL EARL: We didn't want to be
a part of the gangs,

that's why we broke off
into different clubs,

Delta Phi Soul, Cornbread was
a part of North Philly

and then in West Philly,
me and Kool Klepto Kidd

was a part of a club,
Odigma Experience,

meaning cool experience.

NARRATOR:
Writers from both sides of town

belonged to crews modeled
after fraternities,

with names like Phi Odigma
Experience and Delta Phi Soul.

The crew's main focus was to
throw parties at social clubs.

So, it was only a matter of time

until both groups
of graffiti writers met.

KIDD: Let's say we'd hit a wall,
a clean wall,

and we'd come back at a later
date and Cornbread and his crew

would have hit that wall.
So, we started leaving messages.

you know,
and finally we did connect.

We met at a dance hall,
Shanahan on Likus Avenue.

West Philly used
to fight North Philly,

so we knew that was gonna
be some trouble outside

when we went to North Philly.

So, I seen Cool Earl
in a cool cap

so I tagged him,
I said, "Cool Earl."

He said, "What's up, man?"
I said, "What's up, Cool Earl?"

He said, "What's up with you,
who are you?"

I said, "I'm Cornbread."

He said, "Nah,
you ain't Cornbread."

I put up my marker.

I got the felt with me
and I went to the wall,

"Cornbread."

And he just says,
"Yo, Chewy, Bobby."

He started calling
the whole gang.

"He called Cornbread."

And they're just hugging it.

we recognized each other,
by reputation.

COOL EARL: And we introduced
ourselves and it was like,

you know, it was great.

You know,
finally I meet Cornbread

and Titty and Dr. Cool and Took,

but when we met it was just,

"Let's go tag
some walls together."

You know,
that set the party in tune.

NARRATOR: With North Philly
and West Philly writers united

graffiti in Philadelphia
spread like wildfire

and the media picked
up the story.

SANDY: I think the name that
got me the most was Cornbread

because it was so unique.

It said so many
different things, you know.

All of us had good names but,
you know, Cornbread just was

a easy name to stick in
your mind and easy to remember.

And the more we got into it

the more publicity
we kept getting.

There was some imposters
during that period also.

So, I'm going
to work one day,

I got a job at
Nabisco Baking Factory

and I open up the newspapers
and I read about my own death.

"The fantastic career of one
of Philadelphia's

best known graffiti artists
came to a violent end,

Sunday, outside
a hotel and bar."

My reputation was
going to this guy's grave.

I had to do something

to let the public know
that I still exist.

So I had pondered
countless possibilities

and came to the conclusion

to spray-paint my name on a live
elephant

at the Philadelphia Zoo.

I went to the zoo,
spray-paint in hand,

climbed over the fence,
and came to his pit.

I walked up to the elephant.
I wrote "Cornbread lives."

I got locked up that day.

When the police officers learned
that I was in custody

all the cops started
coming to my cell

asking me for my autograph.

My name rang like Jesus Christ.

They talked about it in
the newspapers

and it just blew out of context.

Cornbread,
he's the most famous that was.

He's got his name on
elephants and stuff like this,

you know,
and that's pretty bold.

You gonna go to the zoo

and write your name
on an elephant?

You know, 'cause, again,
we were always trying to find

the wildest things
you could possibly find

that would get the attention
of other people,

you know. And, you know, this
of course this was really wild

so, I mean,
this was off-the-chart,

to go over a fence
and spray paint an elephant.

REPORTER: Vandalism is
one of our country's

biggest problems today.

Estimates for destruction
to school facilities alone

is over $100 million per year

and counting all acts
of vandalism

to public and private property

some experts push the figure
to over $1 billion every year.

Of course, a billion
dollars is only money.

But what about
the tens of thousands

of these young people

convicted of these crimes?

I had some sources in the Black
community in Philadelphia

and couple of them said

they could help me
find these guys.

So we set-up a meeting
at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I remember May 2nd, 1971.

Todaymagazine did an article

on "“The Aerosol Aerographers
and Why We Do It"”.

That was my mission as
a reporter, to explain it.

But when people read it
they took it the wrong way.

The Inquirer
received 400 letters

and people were genuinely angry.

They took it as an endorsement
and it was never an endorsement.

KIDD: I think at that point
things really blew up

and a number of other writers
came out of the woodworks.

LEWIS: See, see somebody wrote
up there "the crew,"

I don't know who put
"the crew" here.

And that happened a lot.

One person would put their name
on the wall

and then, in the long run,
everybody would hit,

especially the top names, and as
soon as the top names hit then,

you know, following bang,
bang, bang, bang,

with the names up on it.

But, you know, like when

Cornbread put his name up
on the wall

then everybody would hit.

SANDY: I looked at it as an
archaeological kind of a thing.

What are people gonna think

when they unearth
this civilization

and they see this stuff?

BAMA: New Yorkers
and cats from Philly

shared some kind
of symbiotic relationship.

Yeah, I don't know what
it was but it was real.

So, you know, guys from Philly
who say "we were first,"

God bless 'em.

Guys from the Bronx who say,

"No, we were first,"
God bless 'em.

Who's to say who was first?
It's not that important.

If it never went anywhere

it wouldn't have mattered
who was first or last.

It's only important because

you want to establish
how it started.

You know,
I know guys from other cities.

They're saying, "We were first."
Oh, that was good.

But, you know, there's kids that
never left their neighborhoods.

If they were first
in their neighborhood

and they had never been
to Washington Heights,

well then they were first there.

LSD OM: I lived on a commune
in 1970

up here in West Kill, New York

so after I came back from
that commune in 1970

and I landed back with
my own group of friends

in Central Park around
the Bethesda Fountain

that'’s when I started
writing really.

But I remember in '71 you could
go on the number one train,

or any station like that
on the way up,

every single piece of the White
tile would be tagged,

like, totally bombed.

I remember the first
time I went uptown

and, like, the doors opened up
on a station like that,

I thought, "Oh, my god."

If you never saw
anything like it, it was scary.

You didn't feel safe right away.
You felt like

if people could write
this much all over the place,

where are the cops?

Like, this is wild up here.

Our society has got
to a chaotic state.

That's when the odds are
the trains are getting hit,

and I mean, there were hundreds
of writers then.

I thought, "Oh, my god,

this is a scene,
this is a cultural explosion."

[DOG BARKING]

BOB: A dramatic scenario
staged by the MTA

shows what can happen
to a graffiti artist

as he decorates a subway car.

[DOG BARKING]

The trainers have
the guard dog

handled by a private detective

is programmed to attack
on command

and stop on command,
but not to kill.

Even the threat of violent death

has failed to keep
graffiti artists

out of subway yards and tunnels.

At least one death by fire in
the past year,

one by decapitation,

and two by electrocution
on the third rail.

Is it possible then that
such dedicated artists

will abandon
their natural habitat

to avoid being bitten by a dog?

For NewsCenter 4, Bob Teague.

NARRATOR:
With walls covered in names

legibility and street numbers
were no longer enough.

In order to stand out,
writers had to add style.

In my world, wearing a crown
meant that I became a king.

As we started adding crowns
and bubbles and squiggly lines

it became
even more entertaining,

more fascinating for me.

And I kept trying to so hard,
but I could never come up.

Like, I just,
I couldn't bring my skills up

and that's JK,
you know, Mike171.

These guys were like,

in my eyes,
they were like artists

and I couldn't bring
myself to that level

because my level of art
was taking a 45 apart

and putting it back together
while I'm blindfolded,

that was my art. That's it,
that's the old Henry161.

NARRATOR:
Writers all around the city

started to embellish their names

with arrows,
stars and even characters.

BAMA: You know,
style didn't become an issue

until like, end of 1970, '71.

Then all of a sudden it became
who had the best style,

who got this, who did this?
I might blow up.

Everybody had their own
unique style,

just like a signature
on a check or something.

After I started writing my name

I started putting designs
around it

because I kinda liked
these things.

I used to put like a little
flower on top of it

and the peace sign
underneath mine.

First, it started
with just eyebrows

and then if Earl hit on the wall

next to me I would draw eyes

like I was looking over at Earl.

It was an art form that "I got
your back, I'm watching you."

I definitely started the
eyeballs, the stars on the side,

and I may have
started the eyebrows,

I'm not really sure.
I don't want

to take credit for something

that I really didn't do,

but I really do believe that
I may have started that.

Yeah, I did invent the crown

and then other people
tried to portray that

and make their own crowns
but it wasn't the same.

I was the one
who first started it.

Babyface86 started the crown.

You know some other person
say it was him

but it was not, he lied.

Cornbread started hitting,
Cornbread King of the Walls

and started putting a crown up

and everybody
started following suit.

So no question Cornbread started
the crown, to my knowledge.

REPORTER: Commissioner,
what part of your manpower

and how much of your budget
is devoted to

cleaning up after vandals?

Well, the direct cost
of vandalism

we figure at about
$1,100,000 a year.

The indirect cost is very
much higher than that

because we're constantly
having to divert men

who could be doing
constructive work

in the green parts of the park

to doing--
To correcting antisocial

and often very vicious acts.

At the moment we are dealing
with it with a program

that tries to act on
the principle

that if you can catch
vandalism quickly

you prevent that further
deterioration which sets in.

And we've organized the squads
and trucks in each burrow,

which are going to be able
to go out

and do the minimal but necessary
repairs on the spot.

When that's done,
they leave a sign

saying "We've been here
in a preliminary way"

the vandals have done their work
but PRCA will be back.

I became attached to it,
it is like, a disease, I guess.

I never left home without
my magic marker.

I used to get home late at night
from the morning at school,

all full of paint. All hell over
my hands, you know, like,

then go home, eat,
take a shower,

back the same shit next morning.

It was an escape route.
I would forget the streets.

I didn't think of no violence,

I didn't think of my
mother getting beat up.

I didn't think of anything bad.

In my mind it was just
focused on the graffiti.

Well, you're treacherous,
you know what I mean,

you're like, Gulliver--
Gulliver-- Gulliver--

what is it, Gulliver'’s Travels,
you know what I mean,

you just wanna go on
an adventure, you know,

get outta your neighborhood,
see something different.

They know me as Mike171,
Mighty Whitey,

Downtown Mounty Maker,
Downtown Heartbreaker,

from the city
with no pity so nice

they have to name it twice,
New York, New York.

If you mess with me you will see
how much trouble I can be.

Always with .38 and .45.

But they were my spray cans,
that's how I express myself.

That's how we grew up man,
you know.

My father died
when I was 12 in '68,

October 19th.
Steve's father left his family.

Steve's the oldest of four kids.

And we had to go out
in the streets

and provide for our families.

You know, and this
is where graffiti came in

because we kinda
started to let loose.

You know,
I was angry at the government,

you know, my father taken away,

my younger brother
just died a few years ago.

I had an incident that happened
to me I really don't share.

I was pushing robbery,
guy pushed me in the hole,

when he beat me with the gun,

put me in the closet,
ransacked the house.

And what he did,
he undressed me and raped me.

And he put a knife to me,
gun to me,

he penetrated me,
I blacked out.

Thirteen years old,
and at that point in life,

you know, I share this
because this is something

that I have to reveal
of who I am today

because of that
made me close down,

I put a steel casing
around my life,

I put a brick wall around that.

And I just went on the suicidal
homicidal mission.

You know, I was graffiti
all the time out in the streets,

drugs, gang banging,
the whole nine.

And I don't care
if I lived or died.

You know,
the gangs came to us and said,

"Listen, you guys live here,

we got a gang,
you want protection,

you want nothing
happening to you,

you got to join with us."

The older guys that were
like 15, 16, 17 years old,

they were starting to
wear their gang jackets.

And that caught my attention
'cause it was more violent

and I liked the violence,
more than I did the graffiti.

HENRY 161:So I started
being a gangster

but a graffiti gangster
with my jacket.

NARRATOR: The new gangs
were more vicious

than ever and heavily armed.

Most writers
wanted to avoid them,

but others were ready to join.

SAVAGE NOMADS: They tried to
take over one of my divisions.

But they didn't quite make it
and we killed two of their guys.

They tried to burn down
my clubhouse,

we killed two of their guys

and five of their guys
rolled up on

one of the Savage Nomads,
know what he told them?

"Oh, we gonna
give you hell, baby,

we gonna get you hell."
And they didn't even kill them.

At that time
we had this little group

called The Latin Lords,

was me, Babyface,
a cousin of mine from the Bronx,

couple of other brothers though,
you know, he told me,

"Why don't you guys
become Savage Nomads?"

so I say, "Yo, Babyface,
let's became Savage Nomads."

And--

We can't be Savage Nomads 'cause
this was the beginning, you see.

This is a new club.
Then after we got established,

before you join the club

you gotta go through
some different shit.

Get initiated, get your
ass kicked and whatever.

I was affiliated with
the Hellafied Sisters.

It was a group of girls
and we would hang out

and a lotta times
we'd go to 184th Street

and we'd get together with
the Savage Nomads.

SPANKY 132: It was a good time
back then with the gangs.

Back then,
you'd get into your fights,

you'd have your stabbings,
you're fighting with the chains,

fighting with bottles and then
the next thing you know,

a month down the road you
guys are friends again.

UNDERTAKER ASH: When I was
kidnapped by the drug stompers

I was DJing a party and they
came to the party

and there were guns and knives
and they took me

to their headquarters, made
me sign a treaty to join them.

HENRY 161: Back then,
the initiation for the gang

that I was gonna get into,
the Galaxies,

was 10 whacks with
a Garrison belt,

Army Garrison belt.

And 10 people would
take one shot each

at your ass
with your pants down.

But in my case I didn't have
to do that because

the night before the initiation
I went out to a school dance

with Cay161 and we had to take
the girls to 125th Street

where they lived in the Projects

and we got approached
by some gangsters

called The Black Spades.

And even though we
didn't have jackets

they still wanted to beat on us

and one of them grabbed
an antennae

and swiped it across my face.

So, the next day when
I went for my initiation

I had to get walked
into the clubhouse

'cause my face, my eyeballs were
too swollen and I couldn't see.

So my friends
that walked me into

the clubhouse
to get my initiation

after they seen me
the president of the gang said,

'Oh, no, no, it's okay,

Henry doesn't need
to be initiated,

he got his initiation
last night."

NARRATOR: Just like we'll never
know if New York City

or Philadelphia was
first with graffiti,

we'll also never know
which had gangs first.

What we do know is the effect
the rise of the gangs

had on wall writing
in each city.

KIDD: '69 and up until the '70s
was really the hard gang era.

The drugs swept through
the neighborhoods like a plague

and it was the heroine

and all this social activity
went to the wayside,

a whole lotta my good
friends started dying.

JOE COOL:
Philadelphia was like Vietnam.

The gangs were so bad, it was,
it's a wonder I'm still alive,

a lotta guys that I grew up
with are dead or in jail.

Certain neighborhoods
you couldn't even write in

'cause the gangsters

didn't want you to write
in their neighborhood.

Gangs only wrote on walls
in their turf

to identify their turf.

LEWIS: That's one thing I didn't
mess around with,

I never put no gang stuff
on walls.

See, because that was trouble.

You asked for trouble
when you put--

You write gang stuff up there,

you rivaling a gang, and that,
then you get in trouble.

you know? You write gang stuff,
they're gonna that--

We got in trouble, remember,
we got in trouble,

yeah, when we was
on 60th and Market?

One day?

-When it was the-- Remember?
-Oh, right, right, right.

The Moon was chasing us
all over.

LEWIS: Oh, "we heard
you wrote your name

on our turf" and all that.

Yeah. [LAUGHS]

Oh, man, I told them,
remember, I say

I wrote my name
in a whole lotta turfs.

[BOTH LAUGHING]

One thing I didn't
back down from.

But I knew when to get outta
dodge and things got crazy

'cause you knew
most of the town

at night was gonna happen.

I could sense,
"It's time to go."

NARRATOR: Writers
who were also gang members

faced the difficulty
of a dual life.

This is our area, Young Galaxy's
area, this is our territory,

we still were gang oriented,

even though we were doing
the graffiti.

'Cause, yeah, thing is
you'd get busted, right,

then they had "Joe182,
Savage Nomad" you know.

This is the same
fucking guy, though, no?

I don't wanna get
no banged for bullshit,

get busted, Joe182,
it's a different story.

I get busted doing gang shit

it's a whole different story,
you know?

So I keep it like that,
keep it apart.

NARRATOR: Most writers
were not in gangs

and hung out
in small unnamed groups

that lacked organization.
But in the summer of 1971

that started to change.

SPANKY 132: If it was
in this book

it had to be before '74

'cause that's when I went
into the Navy.

SJK, the other Greek fella,
he's a nice guy too.

Writers Corner, that's a
very interesting corner,

that Writers Corner.

That corner right there is where
Snake1 used to live, my nephew.

My sister
had an apartment there.

Writers Corner was a corner
that was developed,

I believe by
Snake1 and Stitch1.

Stitch1 is the one who invented
Writers Corner because

his girlfriend used to live

about maybe 50 feet
away from the corner.

Before it was Writers Corner,
it was Stitch & Rocky's Corner.

Stitch and I were in love

and he was--
He treated me like gold.

His parents, I'd go over there

it was like Christmas anytime
I went over there.

They treated me really well.

There's where my father
had a problem.

He wasn't very fond of Stitch.

SJK 171: Stitch1 was
the tough guy,

the master at arms of the group.

He would take care of us.

Anybody messed with us
Stitch took care of them.

And I was so much a little
bit of that too also.

ROCKY 184: Stitch was tall, dark
and bow-legged.

His family came out of Cuba

and he just had that
face that'd just hang

and just wait to see
who came up.

Then SJK 171, myself,
and Jax5 met

Snake1, Stitch1 and Cat87.

They asked us to be members
of the Writers Corner 188.

Now that was kind of
a borderline

between the gangs
of Washington Heights.

Now this was a meeting place,
the safe haven.

Used to sit there,
spray painting that corner.

There used to be a Writers
Corner truck that everybody hit

and the guy didn't seem to mind

cause he gave up
cleaning the truck.

I don't remember
anybody's legal name,

we all knew each other
by our tag name.

After a while all the writers
from all around the city

from Brooklyn, Bronx,
they would all come up there.

JEC#*: We hung out there,
we'd go to Writers Corner

to see who else was
on Writers Corner,

what other graffiti writers
we could meet,

what other styles
we could pick up.

ROCKY 184: It would get packed
in a matter of seconds.

Their markers, their cans,
where they're gonna go,

what they're gonna do.

And we kinda
combined everybody together,

you know, like opened up.

BAMA: Number one question when
you met a writer was,

"Do you write?"

And when they said
"Yes," it was, "Let's go."

And it wasn't looking at them
for what they looked like,

or who they were
or how they spoke.

SNAKE1: So the gangs,
the colors started coming off

so graffiti kind of broke down
the barrier of the gangs.

BAMA: It was that unification
of "We are all writers."

ROCKY 184: It was our spot,
our moment,

it was a way for me and Stitch
to always be together.

I look back at it as people say

that you gotta be
a certain age to love and feel

I really loved Stitch.

I think I-- I put him so far
in the back of my head

but when we talk about him,
he was

one true love

and that's how
I look at graffiti.

Stitch1, Rocky184
equal graffiti.

That's how I look at it.

NARRATOR: Writers Corner was
the hangout spot in Manhattan,

but across the Brooklyn Bridge

writers Friendly Freddy,
Fantastic Eddie,

Super Goldie, Flowers Dice
and Undertaker Ash

as well as the gang,
The Vanguards,

developed a local style

complete with loopy
letters and lots of flair.

The Brooklyn writers that,
that I experienced,

seen the most and it was maybe
as I took several trips

down to Brooklyn were like
Flowers Dice, Undertaker Ash,

and their styles were
so much more unique

that it sorta created a--

A need to go
back to Brooklyn more often

to see what was happening.

I just, the best I can remember
Flowers Dice

as being something like that.

It was fairly simple 'cause
they were very, very early.

I just remember him
looping the F a bit

and, you know, Friendly Freddy
with a bit of a flourish

but not, you know, like
the subsequent Brooklyn style,

you know, 'cause Brooklyn style
was always very fancy,

you know, for example,
you can do a simple N like this

or you could do the,
I think the knoll N like that,

or the vanguard fancy
Brooklyn style N.

The style changing from straight
letters to script, if you will,

or designing was an evolutionary
process, I would say.

Sometimes you had
to write quicker, faster,

you start incorporating art
into it.

LA ZAR: Personally I love
the Brooklyn style.

It had much more flourish to it

and pizzazz than any other

before and since other than
maybe the Philadelphia guys.

There are no 120's or 161's

or anything like that
in Brooklyn,

you know, all the streets have
names and I think it's perhaps

a more individualistic place
than some of the others.

Undertaker Ash, Undertaker Ash
is a good friend of mine,

been a friend of mine
for almost 40 years

and at one point in time,
in Brooklyn,

and if you ask real people
who have real memories,

Undertaker Ash was everywhere
and probably was

the number one graffiti writer
in New York City.

My name's Undertaker Ash,
it's my tag name.

I started writing
from 1969 to 1970.

Well, everyone wanted
a tag name, that's original,

so I always look
at the undertaker

as a very mystical person

and, you know,
he never dies in the movie,

he's always the last
guy in the movie to live.

So I said, "Well, I'm gonna use
that name, the Undertaker."

WICKED GARY: It was
a social thing, you know,

but then hanging with the guys,

it just elevated
to another step.

There ended up being
a core group of us

that were hanging all
the time that were doing that.

And one Friday after school

we decided to go
to Dino Mars house

and sit down
and actually have a meeting.

There were
a lot of people there,

there were about 20
or 30 guys there.

and Dino and I had
had a brilliant idea

to try to bring graffiti
artists under a banner,

and the organization
was the Ex Vandals.

They would soon become probably
the most popular

graffiti name out there,
at least in the Brooklyn scene.

What he did
was convince everybody,

you know, also from
a marketing standpoint,

"Let's take a period of time,
you know, at night,

go to all the place that
everybody's going to see

and bomb the shit out of it.

But let's not write our names
next to Ex Vandals,

let's get Ex Vandals out
and create a buzz."

WICKED GARY:
For like the first month

we stopped tagging
our own names

and we strictly only
wrote the group name.

Ex Vandals was the beginning
and end-all of everything.

Our names came second.

WICKED GARY: The buzz was,
"What the fuck is an Ex Vandal?"

THE JOKER: People thought
the Ex Vandals was a gang.

They didn't realize that it was
just a graffiti movement.

So we figured out a way that
we could actually come out

and see what our reaction was.

So everybody painted
Ex Vandals jackets

and we had a plan where
the first day of the week

Nard would wear
his in the school.

The next day two more cats.
So by the end of the week

we had all revealed ourselves
and it was like, "Whoa!"

You guys are the Ex Vandals?

"Yo!" And just the reaction,
everybody went crazy.

Riders on New York City subways
are offended daily

by graffiti sprayed
on subway cars

and station walls in an
incredible profusion.

It's not funny. Cleaning off
the mess is expensive.

Over the years New York
has become known

for just about everything
a city can be known for

its crime, its wealth,
its filth, its slums,

its architecture,
its art museums.

And now it's rapidly
becoming known

as the graffiti capital
of the country

a title Philadelphia's
held for years.

Believe it or not
we had morals then.

A lot of these guys
just write on anything,

anybody's house, property,

I never wrote
on anybody's property.

That I know of, you know,

other than big businesses,
no one home,

I'm not gonna go up
on their door

and write my name on their door

and stuff like that, maybe in
the Projects and in the hallways

I might do it, you know.
I'm not justifying

but you know you did have some
morals about you.

Some guys did,
some of them didn't care,

they'd write on your dog if it'd
come by them, they don't care.

You know, but that dog oughta
walk from here to there

and they'll see, somebody'll
see that name.

We just wanted to get
in the paper.

So what would happen
we used to call, you know,

the paper and let them know
that we were gonna give it up.

So what we would do is,

you know, they would arrange
a meeting

and we would come down there

and we would turn over
our spray paint cans

and tell them that we retire,

you know, that's it,
we wasn't writing no more.

And it would be in
the paper the next day.

But just as soon
as we left out of there

we started writing again.

I mean, we never gave,
we never quit.

I mean, it was just a thing

where we just wanted to get
in the paper.

REPORTER:
People that say this explosion

is not clever graffiti,
just childish and ugly scrawl.

Whatever it is,
street art or vandalism,

it's costing
millions to rub it off.

SANDY: I do remember
this bubbling anger

in Philadelphia

at so many things.
There was anger at the police,

there was anger at
the police commissioner,

there was a tremendous
amount of violence.

NARRATOR:
At the height of wall writing

Timemagazine estimated

there were 10,000
more graffiti writers

in Philadelphia than New York

and this did not go unnoticed.

Then mayor Frank Rizzo issued
a full scale war on graffiti

with an anti-graffiti campaign.

His ultimate goal was to put

as many writers
in jail as he could.

The Philadelphia Art Museum
responded with the DUO,

Department of Urban Outreach,
which gave positive options

and brought new opportunities

for Philadelphia's
wall writers,

ranging from mural projects
to sponsoring a city bus

to be painted by the vandals.

CORNBREAD: The graffiti
attended the workshop

invited all these kids

to do graffiti in a constructive
way and possibly get paid

as opposed to doing graffiti
damaging people's property.

SEPTA gave us a bus to paint
and we had a multicolored bus.

We had paint-- you know,
there was a design

we put on paper first

and then we took this bus
and we painted it,

it rode through our neighborhood
and anytime that bus came

around we were allowed
to ride on it.

Free. Free of charge.

And the funny thing about it,

out of respect,
nobody never rode on that bus.

This is the graffiti
workshop's bus.

NARRATOR: There was
a certain purity

to what the first generation
of writers did

because there was no payoff
to it other than local fame.

That changed in 1972.

HENRY 161: What happened was
we're hanging out

at 174th and Fort Washington

and we're hanging out
on the wall,

there's this big wall

that we used to sit
on and the entrance

to the park was like
in the middle.

Well, here comes this old
gentleman, beard, glasses

and he's asking for
names of writers

and he comes up with my name.

He says, "I'm looking
for Henry161,

for Snake, Joe182."

And he's asking
do we know Stitch1?

Older gentleman.
Says his name is Hugo Martinez.

We didn't know who he was,
we maybe, you know,

thought he was a police officer
so we didn't tell him anything.

He told us he wasn't
a police officer

he said he wanted to do
some things,

wanted to get the graffiti
off of the street,

put the graffiti on canvases,

make the graffiti
known to people.

He called it art.

COCO 144:
My understanding is that

Hugo was a student
of Sociology at City College,

he wanted to mimic
what was going on

in the streets and the subways

in the college art room.

The word got around

that "We're gonna
meet this day at City College"

and so we still didn't know
if we should trust this guy.

So me, Stitch,
I guess Cat, Web2

we went to City College

but we couldn't find
the building

where this was taking place.

So we just kept walking
in all the buildings.

Finally we walked into
this one building

and all we smelled
was spray paint,

we said,
"Yep, this is the place."

It was like walking into Heaven

because we had all this
beautiful white clean paper

and all these markers.

And-- We used to have
to rob our markers

and our spray paint.

So, for us to see all that
there for free was fascinating.

And we just went to work

and started draw-- We spent
about two or three hours

in there just writing
and painting

and by the time we were done

Hugo was like,
"Oh, my god, that's beautiful!"

NARRATOR: Martinez organized 20
of the top graffiti writers

and founded
United Graffiti Artists,

UGA in an attempt
to take graffiti off the streets

and into galleries.

UGA included writers
such as Coco144,

SJK171, Phasetwo,
Snake1, Bama, and Mike171.

LA ZAR: UGA brought together
some of the best at the time

and enabled them
to start to transcend

the former criminal activity
into a accepted format

and started the movement
of so called "graffiti art."

COCO 144: It was actually
a creative environment

where you could
pretty much write, paint, draw

what you always wanted

to write, paint,
and draw on a train.

MIKE 171: Hugo works it
with big city

that if we stop hitting city
municipal buildings

and trains, buses,
they'd give us a workshop

and they would give us canvases
and spray paint

so we made a contract
not to go out there

and put our art on canvases.

REPORTER: This group is called
Graffiti Artists United.

They meet in the apartment
of a sociology student

who has encouraged
them to go straight.

Everyone who's a member

has given up subways
and public walls

and has turned instead
to canvas or paper

or the sociology
student's bathroom walls.

Although these particular
graffiti artists

paint legit now,

they still remember the good
old days, last week or so.

REPORTER:
Did you ever get arrested?

Once.

REPORTER:
Did you do it again after that?

COCO 144: Couple of times.

REPORTER: How come?

Because I just wanted, you know,
I wanted to get known

and, like, then I made
a lot of new friends.

You know, after you go out,

you know,
after you're in the yards

and you write your name on
every train like the day later

when they come out you just sit,
you know,

in the station the whole day

and just watch
the trains going by

in different colors
in your names.

WICKED GARY: Well I give him
a lot of props for his concept,

to put 20 of
the top artists together

and have it be formed
by the peers.

It took a lot of things
to conceptualize.

We had meetings, you know, we
decided where we wanted to go,

what we wanted to do,
what kind of materials to buy.

Pretty much everybody
took on a responsibility.

He started selling
a lot of our paintings

and he said that he
was selling our paintings

so that we could have
more materials to do this.

So we said, "Okay."

We agreed to it. We were young,

we didn't know
what was going on.

All we knew was that
we was getting free markers

and spray paint to do graffiti.

We were getting paid. We thought
we were getting paid.

He had people that wanted
their apartments graffit'd

but I don't mean people
from the Heights,

I mean people from Downtown,
Park Avenue, 5th Avenue.

People inviting us just to write
on their walls and stuff

while everyone's partying

and we're exposed
to like this high society.

UGA was the first group

to actually sell
graffiti on canvas.

UGA is what ground broke

the writing culture
into the art world.

BAMA:
Bill Hart from the Reza Gallery

walked up
and handed me my check.

And I went, "What? How much do
you get?" He goes, "I got mine"

I said, "Oh? This is mine?
Thank you."

When we did the Joffrey Ballet,

you know, here I'm a kid I'm
15, 16-years-old,

I'm getting a standing ovation

in the City Center,
New York City,

I'd never imagined this
was gonna happen.

And how good it made me feel
about myself and how good

it made everybody else
that participated in it feel.

I can't even explain it
in words, man,

it was just living,
it was grand.

NARRATOR: UGA introduced
graffiti to the world at large

and it was a positive experience

for many
of the writers involved.

Some, however,
have different opinions.

ROCKY 184: Hugo capitalized.

Nobody cared about the money,
but you know,

you talk about people
that we need money,

we're getting older,
want to do things,

so, yeah he caught your ear,
caught your eye, the green,

and I feel he sold
a lot of pipe dreams.

Hugo wasn't promoting them,
you know, the writers,

Hugo was promoting Hugo.

MIKE 171: But after you're doing
galleries, you're doing shows,

money's coming in
and we're not seeing a penny

red lights go up,
the flares go up, you know?

That he's not the one out
there spray painting,

he's not the one spending
the whole night up in the yard

getting paint on you.

Then we come back
all soaked

and peeling shit off for
hours off our hands

and faces and changing our
clothes, you know what I mean?

We're the foot soldiers
that did all this stuff.

And he comes over
and becomes a glory hound.

And he wants it all for himself

and you know, New York,
don't go that way.

So one day we confronted Hugo,

Russ and the guys, me,
Henry161, a few other guys.

We bum rushed inside and we
just tore the place up.

I told Hugo, "You got our money,
what are you doing?"

Blah, blah, blah, you know,
"You come in our neighborhood,

and you do this to us,
you can't do that,

we're not allowing this."

While everybody was trashing
the place I was trashing Hugo

because I didn't care about
none of the materials.

All I wanted was to crack
his head.

And I really did. Good too.

Henry161, myself, Joe all these
guys came with bats, chains,

stickball bats, stuff like that,
and they went upside Hugo's head

and a couple of the other
guys that stood in the way.

ROCKY 184: Yeah, I feel graffiti
lost a lot of its purity

with Hugo, yeah.

People were, you know,
saddened and, you know,

everybody just broke away.

NARRATOR: No matter what
the writers' experiences were

UGA changed graffiti forever.

It marked the beginning of
a multi-million dollar industry

but as some would say,
the end of graffiti's innocence.

Remember Kilroy the peripatetic
G-I of World War II

who was always there?

Well, he's not here now.

And anyway,
he'd never made his mark

where the graffiti experts
of today.

That's because he didn't have
a spray paint can

and a felt tip pen,

for these are the real villains
of the graffiti explosion.

Quick and easy to use
and difficult to erase.

REPORTER: It occurred to us
to interview

some of these people,
those who leave their marks,

but that would be giving them

too much of the recognition
they seek.

They have their medium and their
medium is perhaps the message,

a callous disregard for society

and a vain attempt
to be somebody.

WICKED GARY: Moments like
New York magazine are key

because cats were only getting
props from other writers

and the people
in their neighborhoods

who knew what the deal was.

The minute it came out
in the Magazine

it was like media coverage

and that took an awareness
to a whole 'nother level

and gave the press
that much more juice

and it became a whole
'nother ballgame after that.

The fame and the article
and once the newspaper

and television picked it
up really hurt the graffiti

because then everybody started
doing it and it got out of hand.

Graffiti is a fancy word
for an old custom,

writing things on walls.

The thing that really
made me crazy

is when they made Turk 182,

the movie, it was like,
you know, did the guy just said

"Let's call it Turk 182?"
I mean, he had to base it on me,

the name, obviously the movie
wasn't based on me."

Three weeks ago he hit
the Battery Park,

a week later the super train,
now it's everywhere.

GREG 69: I remember
the movieTurk 182

and right away
I thought of Taki,

you know.
And I hadn't seen Taki in years

but right away
I went right to Taki.

TAKI 183: WhenTurk 182

came out everybody said,
"They're using your name."

I want to talk to you, Turk.

Because it was
a subliminal thing.

People were reading Turk 182
but they were seeing Taki183.

I called up Taki when
the movie Turk 182came out

and I asked him,
"Did you consult

or did you get any money
on it or something?"

He goes, "No" and I go
"Oh, okay, whatever,"

we just laughed about it.

NARRATOR: Although Taki
could laugh

at a Hollywood movie
stealing his name

and inadvertently bringing
him even more fame,

not everyone else was willing to
take the commercialization

of graffiti so lightly.

The graffiti changed once
that dollar figure came in,

Joffrey Ballet and the first
painting were sold.

It took the purity
of what we were doing

out of it
'cause there was no value,

there was-- It was priceless.

It was like "Mona Lisa",

you know, this was our worth,

this was from our hearts,
this was our souls.

This is the life we were living,

the hardship that
I just shared with you guys.

CHILD: I think if they stop
placing names in the newspapers

maybe they would stop doing it.

REPORTER: And then maybe
even we shouldn't be here.

No, like, ya'll throw--
When they spray their name

they want it to be shown
on the newspaper,

but ya'll show it and they
get what they want.

But if ya'll stop,

if ya'll won't show it on
the papers no more

they won't do it, 'cause they
know it ain't gonna get around.

NARRATOR:
Although we'll never know

if Philadelphia or New York
started graffiti,

it should come as no surprise
that they both experienced

the bittersweet end of
wall writing's innocence,

the ideas that appealed to
the first generation of writers

to start writing in the first
place would ironically

be the same ideas
to sway the wall writers

as their opinions toward
graffiti began to shift.

TAKI 183: See, by 1972
I had stopped writing.

It just--
There was nothing else to do.

I was a writer of convenience.

If I was there and it was
easy I would do it.

But it was never
important to compete.

You know, I didn't want
to start hanging off bridges

and going into train yards

just like I never considered
myself an artist,

at some point,

the guys that were doing it,
they have such fancy stuff

and they're switching nozzles on
cans to get different effects.

And that was--
That was like, over my head.

LAZ ZAR: The fact that
graffiti has become

a multi-million dollar industry,

to me, is absolutely insane.

The commercialization
of anything and everything

is a particularly
American phenomenon

so I'm not surprised about it.

There is nothing that America as
a country hasn't commercialized

and seeing as that
I never made a dime

selling any canvas to anyone

I have always been a tagger,
wall writer, and agree

that if you want to do
this kind of stuff,

I wouldn't say break the law,

but if you want to throw
something up on a wall

and appreciate it

for what it does to that wall,
that's the essence of it.

You're not tailoring what you do
to satisfy a specific audience

that's external to yourself.

What we did as kids
had nothing to do

with anyone outside
of our world.

We were just being us,

which ended up starting
this movement,

which is now a culture.

Graffiti, to us,
wasn't just writing your name,

graffiti was an expression
of how you dressed,

how you danced

and how you reacted
with the youth around you.

If you think about this art
form from 1969 to 1972,

all the major innovations
happened in those few years

'cause it went from
simple marker hits

to massive spray
paint extravaganzas.

JEC#*: It all adds up
to one big story.

We were just--

Didn't have anything
to do at the time, you know?

Sports, if you weren't
good at it,

if you weren't
involved in a gang,

you didn't have
anything else to do.

"Let's go write on a subway."

And I look at it today
all these years later

and I'm fascinated by new names

and I wonder if
the reasons for why kids

did their writing
is still the same.

If I were a betting person
I would bet that it is.

So to all you people that

had to paint your walls over
and over and over

dot, dot, dot, dot, etc...

I-- I apologize to you
from the bottom of my heart.

TAKI 183:
Graffiti is attractive to kids

'cause it's a cheap way
to get notoriety.

If you're not a great athlete,

you're not a great scholar, you
can always be a great writer.

You know, you walk
into a places and say,

"Well, that's the guy that
scores the most baskets

and that's the guy
that writes a lot."

COWYBOY: Back then these were

the celebrities because
they were all over.

Everybody knew them. Even if you
didn't know them personally,

you knew the name.

JOE 182: Yeah, generally it was
an addiction of the fame.

Before I got the job.

For me, I just live for today,
you know, yesterday's history,

tomorrow's a mystery so
I live it to the fullest.

'Cause the worst already
happened to me,

the worse you could do
is cage me up, put me in jail,

whatever, you're not gonna
take away who I am.

You know, and so graffiti was
a way of me expressing myself,

putting it out as you see.
Mike171 to you with love.

SD Om: And I think the reason
why it was never legalized

or never sanctioned was because

they're afraid of freedom, you
know, not you, but, you know,

they're afraid of freedom
of speech and thought.

They don't really want
that to exist.

And there were no leaders

and there was no schools,
no institutions.

The people themselves developed
it and they got together

and found out that the
differences between each other

weren't so different after all.

ROCKY 184:
We were family to each other

and we made
each other feel important.

We showed each other love.
And graffiti did that.

LITTLE PHIL:
Phil went his way

and I haven't seen him
in 35 years

even though I do see Greg.

Taki we were friends, we grew up

but we didn't communicate
afterwards

so it's really neat,
I mean, 35 years later

I would have never imagined that

graffiti would bring us
all together.

-I'm glad you came out, man.
-GREG 69: Yeah.

-TAKI 183: Yeah.
-GREG 69: And was full circle.

GREG 69: It was fun, it was
a nice time in my life,

I cherish it, they
were good friends.

You're getting me to cry, man.
I'm a sensitive guy.

I'm glad that at least
it spawned artists.

That, to me,
I sorta like that.

JAG: And once everybody's
doing something,

you're nobody, you know,
you know,

even if you say "I was the first
one" people are like, "So what?

Somebody's doing it bigger
and better

and you're no longer
the celebrity."

I had a great time with it.

And I'm proud to say
I was an originator.

I was a, you know, the first
ones to do it, yeah?

Yeah, I made my mark.
And I did something new.

I-- We were crying out
to notice me, you know,

Here I am, The Kidd!

Stop the world,
let me off, you know,

or "Cool Earl is love,"

you know,
"Cornbread, King of the Walls."

I had put my time in,
I established my reputation,

I did things that no other
body's going to do,

so my time had expired, my time
is over, it's over for me.

I've been called a legend
in my own time

so you can't get
much better than that.

How many guys
get called legends?

That's pretty cool I guess
you can't get better than that.

REPORTER: What do you
think about graffiti?

-WOMAN: What's that?
-REPORTER: Writing on the walls.

WOMAN: I think it's pretty
over there, you don't like that?

Or to make their parents
pay for it.

Every one of them,
lock them up, lock them up.

REPORTER: What do you think
about the writing on the wall?

-I don't know. No.
-REPORTER: You don't know?

REPORTER: You like it,
not like it?

I don't like it.

REPORTER: You don't like it?
Why don't you like it?

WOMAN: Well, because it doesn't
look very nice.

WOMAN: I don't know what
they're trying to say.

MAN: As long as there's no
profanity around it's all right.

REPORTER: Usually there is
no profanity in it,

they're usually names
and...

Well, it's bad, yeah
you're right, I agree with you

I do think it would be
a good thing if they could catch

the culprit or the culprits who
are responsible

for desecrating the walls.

WOMAN:
I think it's entertaining.

I think they're very pertinent,

they're very catching
and they're very truthful

and they're presented
in a really good way.

WOMAN: It's conveying a socially
constructive message, isn't it?

The others get a message but
in order to understand it

you have to understand so much
more about the people

who wrote the message.

WOMAN: If it's not channeled,

the kids are just going
to continue to do it.

They have a lot of energy.

You know, take this energy
potential and put it to use.

MAN: It's already legal

as long as you don't write
on my wall,

you know, but it makes sense.

It does make a lotta sense.

I think that's the crux
of the problem.

[LAUGHING]

♪ [MUSIC]

My life post-graffiti is

I'm glad I don't carry
a marker around

because I'm always tempted
to write.

[LAUGHING]