Graffiti was my first chosen art form. As a Black kid in Brooklyn in the late1970s and 1980s it seemed like all of my piers had aspirations to become a DJ, Rapper, Writer, Dancer, or a Fly dresser. That was the culture of our young world. My homeboy, Curtis was and is still, an excellent draftsman with a lot of style. When He started doing “throw-ups” I developed a “tagging” (CEE II). I was kind of “Biting” but it felt cool to be working in the same genre as my friends or artists I respected. I wasn’t tagging for long but, I did manage to get arrested for the first time when I was caught carving my tag, with a "Chinese Star", on one of the beams at the DeKalb Ave. subway station. I guess I was attempting to be original amidst so much amazing art within the transit system. The Cops however, were not interested in encouraging the ambitions of a 10-year-old street Sculptor.
In those days New York City trains were completely covered with the funkiest art in world. The stations and trains had many large “Pieces” and “Throw-up” with “Tags” all between them. And, inside the train, the passengers had an endless amount of things to read and observe. Armed with some decoding skills you would have no need for a book or newspaper during your train ride.
Most of the Artists avoided writing or paint on top of someone else’s work because it's like “Spitting” on their Art. These multicolored moving mosaics both entertained and inspirited us. Through the strategic repetition of their work, some “Writers” would take over a neighborhood, a train, a station, all the trains and stations on a line, multiple lines, or ” All City”. If a writer was known for having large amounts of quality work in an area or on a train line we would look for more of their work, like a kind of street/subway treasure hunt.
I wish the Graffiti was still on the trains. Mayor Koch and folks outside of our culture just couldn’t catch the vibe. The city should have giving the Artists jobs, provided them with the safety, equipment, and management training needed to run a Transit Murals Project. Apart from some occasionally good “Showtime” the trains are boring in NYC now. Just the same advertisements, one after another, trying to take over your brain.
By Musa Hixson