Greg Smithsimon

gs228@columbia.edu

December 1997

In the beginning, according to the lore of graffiti, there was Taki 183. A Greek American teenager whose job as a messenger took him, by subway, to all five boroughs of New York City, Taki 183 gained sudden notoriety when, in 1971, his moniker suddenly covered the city’s transit system. "Taki" was short for Demetrius, and 183 was the street on which he lived. "No one knows who started [graffiti]," writes Steven Haeger in a typical history, "We only know who made it famous: Taki 183." As a result of the fame Taki gained through his writing and the resultant press coverage, graffiti, "for hundreds of New York City teenagers… became a way of life with its own codes of behavior, secret gathering places, history and esthetic standards." Though styles and venues have changed, twenty-five years later this description of the graffiti subculture remains an accurate one.

Taki, like the writers who quickly copied him, wrote his name in pen or magic marker. But increasing difficulty being noticed on subway cars already covered with names and numbers (like Barbara 62, Eel 159, Yank 135 and Leo 136) required bolder advertisements. Soon young people were making their own, messy, three-inch wide markers out of chalk board erasers and deodorant canisters, and spray paint (introduced in 1948) was soon used as well. A piece by the writer Spin, given the Taki Award for Grand Design in 1973 by a tongue-in-cheek New York magazine, shows an intermediate stage in the evolution of graffiti style. Large spray paint pieces had arrived, but were much cruder than any piece done today. The connection to the "Taki"-era past can be seen not only in the name of the award, but also in the tags "Pat 91" and "Mike 207" seen on the same page (above the "P" in "Stop"). With so many graffiti writers using spray paint, some began writing their name in large, decorative letters, to stand out. By the mid 1970s, lettering styles, compositions, and graphic elements (such as stars, arrows, and cartoon characters) similar to those employed today had been developed. Ironically, it was Phase II, whose tag is visible to the left of Spin, who was to become an outstanding graffiti artist featured in numerous graffiti books over his decade-long career.

In the competitive environment of subway car surfaces, contemporary graffiti murals became symbolic capital, claiming a piece of space in the urban landscape so that artists could be noticed and declare their existence. Graffiti became the type of "highly specialized language, each appropriate in its own way to a different interpretive community," that urbanist David Harvey observed in the postmodern city. As such, writers used the language to "carve out at least one knowable world from the infinity of possible worlds."

I began seriously examining graffiti two decades after Taki, well after the last graffiti-covered cars of the New York subway system had been cleaned in the late 1980s. As an artist, the brightly colored murals had attracted my attention. But only when a friend, half in jest, suggested that graffiti was the perfect marriage of my interest in art and urban studies did I begin photographing the work and interviewing writers. Begun as an independent study in the spring of 1994, my senior year in college, the study was cut short when I fell off a bicycle and spent the closing weeks of the semester recovering from a concussion. Armed with a small grant from my university’s art department, I continued to observe and photograph graffiti on a cross-country trip, and in San Francisco, my new home. Following graffiti informally since that time, I have been particularly interested in writing on the subject because the graffiti literature had not been significantly updated since the waning days of the New York subway car era.

Arriving in New York presented its own challenge. Generally regarded (though not with complete accuracy) as the capital of graffiti, the City offered the opportunity to meet and speak with more writers. But locals also expect an observer to be familiar with the "big names" in graffiti, including both "old school" writers, whose subway car work was featured in the wave of books and movies in the seventies and eighties, and younger writers, whose skills and style, publicly displayed, garner the attention and respect of the city’s graffiti artists. The Phun Phactory, a space in Queens where writers paint with permission, seemed an ideal place to enter the scene and see the work of a range of artists.

The Phun Phactory’s Long Island City neighborhood is awash in striking views of commanding buildings: most streets point toward the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, or other midtown landmarks across the river. A Citibank office stands like the Eiffel Tower, visible above the three-story residential and commercial buildings in the area. Rising out of its tunnel onto elevated tracks, the seven train presents an equally striking view of the Phactory: to the left, one can hardly help but be struck by the wild array of explosively colored murals that cover every flat surface on the decrepit, multi-level factory. The train first sweeps around the building’s southern end, providing an unobstructed and unavoidable view of a 150-foot-long mural-in-progress and smaller pieces on the roof level above. The train then moves close alongside the building, displaying, like a gallery on wheels, the second-floor murals recently done at an "old school" (or "old timers") day by artists who first painted trains twenty years ago.

It was just this view that drew three employees from the nearby Citibank tower to the Phun Phactory during their lunch break one afternoon. Seeing it every morning on their way to work, they had wanted to see the artwork up close, but knew nothing else about it. Coming upon them as I photographed the latest murals, they asked me what the Phun Phactory was.

I had first read about the site in a magazine shortly after arriving in the city. The Phactory, I explained to the three of them, was the work of Pat DiLillo, a laconic community projects coordinator. Five years ago, Pat had started a program to paint over graffiti for neighborhood businesses. But when the futility of fighting illegal graffiti without giving graffiti writers any other options became apparent to him, he augmented his abatement strategy. Pat gained permission from local business owners to let writers complete large mural-sized pieces, which added color to the neighborhood and kept the walls looking neat, since young taggers wouldn’t deface high-quality mural work. When he first came to the present-day Phactory, a warehouse of sweatshops, it was covered with a palimpsest of tags and quick, sloppy pieces. ("It was completely bombed out," said Pat, describing not an aerial attack, but a sustained siege by writers layering the walls with tags.) He painted over a few walls, with little success. After securing permission from the building owner for a handful of murals, Pat proposed enlarging the project to include most of the building. Now the owner is thrilled. "It’s his most run-down building, but he tells me it gets more notice and more press than anything else he owns," said Pat.

The Citibank workers nodded with interest, and asked about some of the murals. I showed them one done by writers visiting from Switzerland, pointed out the cartoon characters of another, and went back to photographing the pieces.

Pat DiLillo is about the least likely dedicated graffiti advocate one could imagine. When I called for directions to the Phactory, his voice made it clear he couldn’t care less whether I visited the factory or fell off a bridge. Take the seven train to the third stop in Queens. "Look out the left and you’ll see us," he said, and couldn’t be moved to provide more description.

So after leaving the train station, I made a few wrong turns, passing the newly renovated PS 1 art space on the way. Incredibly, their block-long, bare concrete wall had neither tags nor the ghostly remnants of sand-blasted graffiti on it. I had never seen a clean wall this large anywhere in the city, yet someone in the PS 1 gallery confirmed that they hadn’t had much trouble with graffiti. Evidently the Phun Phactory, which provides space on their building for three months at a time to writers who agree not to tag the surrounding neighborhood, has had an effect.

The boundaries of the Phun Phactory are colorfully demarcated by graffiti covering the building, leaping up on the walls of neighboring businesses, and coloring scattered walls around Queens where Pat has secured permission for Phun Phactory writers to work legally. Seeing the colors of the Phactory across the street, I walked down each side, taking in the murals and looking for an office or entrance. On the third side of the building, in the loading dock of the All Boro Moving Company, Pat was waiting for me. (Only after he met me on arrival several times, with surprising prescience, did I realize he watched me as I approached via the video monitors in his office. This unusual graffiti space was not without supervision and surveillance.)

Standing six foot four, Pat’s straight sandy red hair tops a face always on the verge of twisting into dismissive "I don’t give a shit" smirk. His opinion is often communicated not in his slow, deep, casual voice, but with just such an expression. "Yeah, the cops told me it wasn’t going to work," he said of the Phactory in its early days. "I says, ‘It won’t work huh?’" Then the smirk, a shrug, and a look around the building where hundreds of pieces have been completed.

Pat’s style left me with unanswered questions about his role in the Phactory. Fortunately Nick, who is in the office almost as frequently as he, was willing to fill me in on the details. When I asked Pat how the Phactory got started, he looked bored, and printed out a ready-made explanation, explaining that he was tired of telling everyone. According to the printout, the idea simply came to Pat while recovering from a back operation. Nick explained: Pat had begun graffiti eradication on nearby Skillman Avenue with a neighborhood group. Frustrated by the Sisyphean nature of graffiti eradication, Pat also began to be impressed by graffiti murals he saw. Convinced that graffiti couldn’t be cleaned up effectively without giving artists an alternative place to work, he developed the Phun Phactory. After the incorporation of legal graffiti into the graffiti eradication efforts, other programs followed. Today, in addition to the Phun Phactory, Pat runs five other programs out of a cramped, one-room office inside the Phactory building. Most of them provide work projects for recent convicts participating in work release programs or the community service projects to which first time offenders are assigned. Workers shovel snow for the elderly, clean up churches and schools and, of course, paint over graffiti. Revenue from these programs, in addition to private support, keeps the Phun Phactory going (as does a paint recycling program Pat runs, which provides a steady supply of paint with which to cover old graffiti). Public funds, Pat explains, come with too many conditions to make them worthwhile.

It was through such a work release program that Nick, an unassuming, friendly man in his mid-twenties, became involved with the Phun Phactory. Now finished his program, he helps Pat at the Phactory and directs work crews. When I asked when I should expect graffiti writers to be at the Phactory, Pat claimed that was impossible to predict. While I spoke to Nick one day over the phone, he looked at a schedule. "Well, we have three permit-holders who are scheduled to come tomorrow. And, you know, we’re closed on Monday and Tuesday." Actually, I hadn’t known that. Already, his knowledge of the Phactory is valuable; Nick’s ongoing involvement makes it likely that he will eventually share some of Pat’s gatekeeper roles.

Through Pat, I had gained entrance to the Phun Phactory. But I still needed to be accepted, as an observer, by the writers who work at the Phactory. As the consistently high number of visiting journalists illustrated, graffiti writers, ever seeking fame, will answer reporters’ general questions. But getting more honest responses and gaining more than the superficial understanding of writers and their work that is normally presented to journalists and outsiders would require more effort.

"When would be a good time to come by to meet writers?" I asked Pat over the phone.

"You never know. They don’t tell me when they’re showing up, they just come," he answered.

"Well, is the weekend a good time, because kids are out of school? Should I come on Saturday?"

"Sure. Why don’t you come Saturday morning," Pat said.

He didn’t explain why I should come at that particular time, but when I arrived, I found Jeremy and John, a reporter and a photographer for the London Times, waiting near the blue commuter van labeled "Operation Snowatch," in spray paint, the name of the program in which work release participants shovel snow for local senior citizens. Soon we piled into the van, and Pat took us on a tour of Long Island City graffiti, including pieces he had arranged to be painted legally by Phun Phactory writers.

In the van as well were Nick, Mike, and James. James (who met Nick at Rikers Island prison) and Mike, both just out of their teens, were completing their work programs at the Phun Phactory. Later, Pat showed me pages, like rap sheets, on the programs’ participants. Most of the kids had been convicted of possession of marijuana or larceny. A few for possession of other drugs, and a handful for or prostitution.

Mike, James, and Nick were dressed in the urban fashion of New York City youth of the day: loose-fitting jeans, hiking boots or work boots, sweatshirts and baggy jackets. The shaved-short hair that is part of this style minimizes the differences between black, Latino, Asian or white hair, and is one that all of multicultural New York City could adopt. John and Jeremy wore casual leather shoes and button-down shirts. Sure, they, too wore jeans, but more tight fitting ones that seemed to have nothing to do with the style the youth pursue.

I tried to fit in with what I had. My jeans were baggy and I wore boots, but I was sure neither were quite the right style or brand. Like Mike and Nick, I had a thin goatee and short-cropped hair. It helped, though it wouldn’t fool anybody: my sideburns were not pencil-thin, as hip New York’s were, nor did I have the brand-name labels that would have suggested I might truly have been an insider.

The three guys we rode with in the van made it clear that they weren’t graffiti writers. But Jeremy and John didn’t seem to notice (or care—perhaps they were just fishing for good quotes). While the reporter’s main interest was in finding European writers who painted at the Phactory while visiting the US (a graffiti holiday, he suggested, comparable to a skiing holiday), he also asked everyone in the van more general questions. Why do they paint? What happens when they get caught? Are they in gangs? What’s the inspiration for their work? Nick tried to be helpful, providing the information he had picked up from graffiti writers, but eventually Pat cut Jeremy short.

"Don’t ask these guys. They don’t know. Wait ‘til we get back, you’ll talk to some real writers," he said.

Back at the Phun Phactory we met a writer in his teens.

"What do you write?" I asked. After opening so many conversations with it, the question sounded pat to me. But in their 1984 paean to subway graffiti, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant claimed that this question (much smoother than the equivalent, "What’s your graffiti nickname?") immediately identified one as an insider when meeting writers. Probably because their book is still at the top of graffiti artists’ reading lists, the phrase still has that effect.

"I write Hasp," the artists answered. As with many inventive names, the transaction is not completely smooth, since Hasp has to spell out his name for us.

Jeremy asked if he could try his hand at graffiti, so Pat told Hasp to take us up to a corner on the roof—where Jeremy’s first attempt wouldn’t mar the more visible walls. While Jeremy joked with John about "Worm," a nickname given him by an old girlfriend, and tried to write his own tag, Hasp asked me if I wrote (meaning, of course, paint). I explained that I only wrote about graffiti. Hasp tried to improve upon Jeremy’s lettering, and Jeremy asked him about the nicknames graffiti artists use.

"Why Hasp?" Jeremy asked.

"Why Hasp? Why Stevie?" answered Hasp, referring to his given name. "It’s just a name." Hasp, like most writers, simply chose a name that appealed to him. Occasionally, someone just starting out in graffiti will be given a name by older writers, a form of respect bestowed upon an apprentice writer. It was in this way that Doña, who we met when we return downstairs, got her tag.

Noticing the tilde over the "n" in her name, I had assumed Doña was Latina. But when Jeremy asked, Doña denied that that was necessarily true: she didn’t choose the name because it was Spanish, it was given to her by someone else. The name Doña is also unusual in graffiti because it is female: almost all writers are male. But Doña said she knew four other women writers, including Icon, with whom she frequently paints.

Posing for John in front of a stylized figure that she estimated took only half an hour to complete, Doña observed one drawback of being able to paint without fear of arrest at the Phactory. "On legal walls you get a lot slower. Which is a problem when you go back and do other walls," she laughed. "That’s why, if I really want to spend time on a piece, I’ll do it on canvas." A graduate student in art, she would be having her first show in a few weeks.

Jeremy, realizing the value of her work, became interested. "How much will you sell your paintings for?" She hadn’t thought about it. "Hundreds? Thousands?" he asked. Doña squirmed slightly at the question. "I really don’t know." Having just viewed twelve-foot high pieces by Doña on walls that will be painted over in three months, it was obvious that selling work was not of primary importance to her. It’s an attitude implicit in graffiti art which others, like Jeremy, have difficulty appreciating in the midst of a modern, highly commodified society.

Hasp and some friends of his offered to show us other, illegal graffiti on the walls lining the adjacent railroad tracks. But he refused to go onto the tracks while a truck belonging to the railroad was parked between the Phactory and the rail yard. John, the photographer, suggested that the railroad employee in the truck probably wouldn’t care if we walked down the tracks, but Hasp explained that the Phun Phactory has had repeated problems with the railroad and the transit authority. A spray painted sign mounted on the Phun Phactory near the train and subway lines read "This IS NOT M.T.A. Property. Private Property. No Trespassing. Admission by Permit Holders ONLY." As the sign suggested, transit police and others have harassed writers while they have worked, legally, at the Phactory. Here, "no trespassing" is directed not at graffiti writers, but at transit authority officials.

Before we could learn more about the tension between graffiti proponents and opponents, the truck moved and we traipsed down the tracks, looking at murals. As I spoke with Seac and Ker, they pointed out well-done murals along the walls. Since much graffiti is indecipherable to most viewers, being able to read the work is expected of other writers, and respected in non-writers. Fortunately, a writer who has completed a complex, difficult-to-read piece will often print their name in small, clear, capital letters at the bottom of the piece, a key to deciphering their highly stylized letters. "That’s a nice piece by Hope," I would comment, trying to show that I could read pieces. In turn, Seac and Ker would tell me about the artist, offer their own critique, or describe the challenges of painting along railroad property.

Jeremy and I were photographing the pieces, completed by artists who don’t do work at the Phun Phactory, when we heard a shout from a nearby overpass.

"Get away from there!" yelled an angry voice. Someone on the bridge glared down at us, then dashed away.

Hasp and the other writers told us it was someone from the MTA’s vandal squad, which focuses on pursuing graffiti artists. We started heading toward the Phactory to get off railroad property. We were about three blocks from the street the Phun Phactory was on, and the row of warehouse walls and razor wire fences along the train tracks meant that if a cop were to get to that street (where the MTA truck had been parked earlier) before we did, we would have been trapped. Realizing this, the pace of the group increased from a brisk walk to a run for the opening in the fence.

We reached the break in the fence next to a garage that services yellow cabs, and entered the Phactory’s street. Walking under the elevated subway tracks, Hasp was telling a story to his friend, who was walking next to me. I was still catching my breath. Hasp was talking about graffiti, perhaps about special caps. A painting technique? Meanwhile, I opened my notebook and wrote down the names and descriptions of the writers I had met during the day.

"You writing this down?" asked Hasp.

"What?" I asked.

"What are you writing? This story?" he asked me.

"Oh, no. I’m just writing down everybody’s names, and stuff like that." I flashed a nearly blank page of the notebook toward him, too quickly for him to read much.

"Oh. OK. Cause I thought you were writing this down. Don’t write down this," he said. Suitably alerted that what he was saying should not be recorded but should be listened to attentively, I put the notebook away and continued to keep pace beside them, looking at the pieces on the walls.

"…yeah. So I got a whole box off them. Those German thin caps, the real nice ones." It turned out Hasp had been talking about having stolen a bunch of special spray paint nozzles, a type favored by muralists for fine, detailed lines. After escaping the cops with them, I had been invited to hear more lurid tales of the outlaw graffiti artist.

Running from the cops, using the right language, wearing the right clothes: like other ethnographic studies, the right signals and actions, even by an outsider, help gain access to graffiti writers. As a result, respondents are willing to share information, show their work, and discuss some of the lawbreaking that accompanies graffiti. And greater openness on the part of writers, who very often hide behind the street-tough persona of the outlaw graffiti artist, helps the observer get closer to what motivates writers: why they spend years risking repeated arrests, beatings, and injury to paint murals which are often in locations few people will see, and are always temporary.

Graffiti writers often promote an image of themselves as fearless, tough outlaws. And while violence and run-ins with the police are elements of the subculture, the notion of graffiti writers as dangerous criminals is a distorted image presented both by graffiti writers and by their most virulent opponents. In reality, writers are "good kids" whose first interest is painting, and who (like members of so many other communities) use elements not normally associated with graffiti—like computers and notices of incorporation—to further their art. While writers occasionally make explicitly political statements in their work, the most political component of the work is the act itself, that of claiming space to express one’s self and declare one’s presence amidst urban anonymity.

I had already visited the Phun Phactory several times, but this trip was different. It was dark by the time I get off the train. Pat, the "local chief," as Schatzman and Strauss would call him, would not be around, and his tiny office, like the rest of the scattered auto repair shops that border the Phactory, was closed. The person ahead of me on the sidewalk was obviously uncomfortable that someone was following him down this abandoned street. The familiar, bright murals along the wall offered me little comfort. I turned into the desolate lot behind the Phactory, which abuts train sidings and abandoned warehouses. Music throbbed from two parked cars, their headlights pointed at me, like the gathering of a vigilante posse in the movies. The silhouettes of four or five people clustered between the cars, behind the headlights. I had no entrée, they didn’t know me or expect me, but they could see me, and should have seen that I was nervous and unsure.

I asked if Vee, my contact, was around—though I wasn’t even certain that was his name!—and was met with mumbling static and no recognition. I explained: He was from Stress magazine? The others pointed to one person, evidently with Stress, a hip hop publication founded by a graffiti writer, who said Vee wasn’t there. I mumbled something about being right back, and went to buy cough drops, even though I already had some in my bag.

My nervousness was not without foundation. The association of graffiti writers with other crimes and lawlessness is generally the result of anti-graffiti propaganda. ("The link between graffiti and real crime is just in our rhetoric," one New York City district attorney agreed.) But the subculture of graffiti, being premised on establishing and defending a reputation—as a prominent, skilled, daring, or respected writer—inevitably includes fights, grudges, and challenges. Even in the relatively supervised space of the Phun Phactory, tempers can flair.

On his first day painting at the Phactory, for instance, a high school-aged writer named GM explained to me that he was returning to graffiti for the second time. He had been writing three years ago, when he attended another school, but regularly got into fights, and was beaten up by other writers. When he began attending a new school in SOHO, he stopped writing and told no one of his background in order to avoid more violence. Only after other writers at the school found out about his graffiti past did he start writing again. He had come to the Phactory in part, no doubt, because it was a safer space (though he had already completed two pieces on vacant buildings in Brooklyn that day). But he had barely begun working on his latest piece when some "old school" writers who were also painting at the Phactory, believing that he had used the tag of a friend of theirs, began hassling him. "Now they want to beat me up," he explained.

On the same day, another old school writer had faced a similar problem. Star, well-known from early subway graffiti documentaries, was finishing up his piece when Pat called him into his office, where I was sitting.

"I’ve got that writer that’s been using your name on the phone," said Pat. "Why don’t you talk to her."

Over the phone, Star explained the problem to the novice. "Look, I’m not gonna go over your pieces [covering someone else’s work is a serious insult], or come after your work or any of that. I’m thirty-two years old. I’m a man with a family and responsibilities to consider, so I’m not going to go running out at night, bombing your pieces. But I think you should reconsider. Because back when I was bombing, this is going back twenty years, you know, things wouldn’t have happened like this."

After a long conversation, Pat asked Star the result. "I told her I really wish she’d reconsider, and that if the police show up at my door because somebody’s been writing ‘Star,’ I’m not going to be happy. But she’s a girl. What am I supposed to do?" He shrugged and dismissed the problem.

"What if it was a boy using somebody else’s tag?" Pat asked.

"If it was a guy, somebody writing, say, Stan 153 [a well-known old school writer], I’d say to him ‘Wow! You write Stan 153? You’re the real Stan 153? Then I want to do a piece with you. Let’s do a piece together. Meet me. And bring paint. Bring lots of paint.’" Particularly in the days of subway graffiti, disagreements could be settled in payment of paint, though Star’s tone of voice suggested that the ambush that led up to getting the paint might not be peaceful.

Riot 208 suggested another cause of violence in graffiti: "bombers," who focus on writing their names as frequently and prominently as possible, might get jealous when they see that someone who has been writing for a shorter time than they have, intent on painting murals, has become a more talented artist. But Riot 208 also agreed with GM’s assessment: "There are some people who just want to fight, and they use graffiti as an excuse."

So as I returned to the dark, nearly empty parking lot, I worried about how I would be perceived by insiders. Would my presence be accepted? Or was my intrusion an offense?

When I returned to the parking lot, little had changed, including my unease. The smell of marijuana floated through the air, and someone held an incongruous bottle of liqueur. From the darkness of the lot, someone from Stress approached me. "What’s your name?"

"I’m Greg. Greg Smith. I’ve been writing about the Phactory, and I…"

"How you doing, man?"

In my nervousness I rambled on "…heard about this mural Stress is putting together and wanted to—uh. Fine. I’m doing good."

Someone crushed out the tiny embers of the joint, and people started walking over to the wall, sizing it up. I began talking with Bio, one of the artists, and we walked away from the crowd, toward a van. Trying to win friends with flattery, I told him about how I had seen his crew’s work three years ago and was very impressed.

"Well, some of us been writing, you know, sixteen, seventeen years," he said.

"How long have you all been writing, you know, in this crew?" I asked.

"Well, we’ve been incorporated for about three years."

Incorporated?

Tats Cru, Incorporated, aerosol sign painters and graphic artists. Time and time again, graffiti writers demonstrate not only (as Claude Levi-Strauss’ subjects did), that there are no isolated people untouched by other cultures, but also that writers are not the dangerous, street-tough outlaws they are portrayed to be both in the more vilifying popular accounts and in the writers’ own lore and self-presentation. Like other subcultures, they are part of, and integrate elements from, the dominant culture.

Watching as the Tats Cru painted their piece provided a particularly good opportunity to see many elements of the Phun Phactory at once: a crew of writers, the process of painting, and the journalists who often shadow Phun Phactory artists.

Nicer, Bio, and BG 183, the artists who make up the Tats Cru, were all dressed similarly in loose jeans, lightweight ski-style jackets, and suede construction boots. Under their jackets were sweatshirts with the Tats Cru logo. Only Nicer donned coveralls to paint; other than a few drops on their jeans, the crew demonstrated that somehow, incredibly, graffiti is a neat and clean art form. Writers are typically dressed in stylish clothes when they’re at a wall. After all, how can you create a positive image of yourself in your art work if you’re dressed like a slob?

The night couldn’t have be better suited to painting outdoors. "It’s a beautiful night. I mean, it’s a beautiful night. A perfect night," commented BG 183 to everyone. There was no wind to disrupt the spray of the paint, and the air was crisp without growing cold, even as it approached 10 o’clock. In the center of the wall, top-to-bottom, was the Stress magazine logo. Tats would paint their portion of the mural, people reading Stress on the platform of the legendary writers bench, on the right hand side. A young writer from Brooklyn had already begun sketching out his work on the left end of the wall. In it, police would fill the space behind an iron fisted Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, confronting City youth. Standing fifteen to twenty feet back to see the whole right section of the wall, the Tats Cru began planning the composition’s execution. A handful of people from Stress magazine and I stood to their side and watched the artists at work.

"So what are you saying, have them over there?" Nicer gestured to the right side of the wall section.

"Yeah. Look." BG 183 walked to the wall and spelled it out, illustrating as if he were in front of a blackboard. "The platform starts here, and that yellow line will be here," he gestured a long horizontal line, "so we get some of the tracks, then above, we have the bench here," he pointed. "It’ll be darker here. Then we have room for the 149th Street sign in the middle. And after, we can add the figures reading the magazine."

He looked at them for a reaction, then returned to the group looking at the wall. The two other artists took turns walking up to the wall, gesturing and making suggestions and modifications to finalize the design.

While the crew unloaded their paint, Nicer showed me their gear in the truck. As commercial artists working in a medium associated with illegal art, he explained, they had acquired other tools that made them look more respectable. Modeling the company after conventional sign painters, their van was filled with scaffolding, ladders, paint, paint scrapers, hammers, and other tools.

I asked about the days before all this equipment, when they were painting on trains and walls without contracts with business owners. Nicer changed the subject, showing me photos of their work in a portfolio the group uses to sell their services to clients. Now that they’re working legally, the Tats Cru distances themselves from the type of work people might find objectionable. "We’re not even calling it ‘graffiti,’ because people have an image, back to the sixties, of people writing on trains. If you look it up in the dictionary, it’s like scribbling, or writing on a bathroom wall," Nicer explained.

I asked BG 183 how long the piece would take. "Three of us, really working, not conversating? Five or six hours to do this part of it," he judged. After working on paying aerosol advertising jobs during the day, they would paint until two or three in the morning on this piece for Stress, a one-time graffiti magazine that has since expanded to cover a range of issues relevant to young people in the City. The magazine was founded by Ket, himself a graffiti writer, who had been involved with the Phun Phactory before. "Ket and Pat spoke, and had a relationship through people," explained a staff member of Stress. And it was through Ket’s connections to the Tats Cru (who he met at the gallery opening of a respected old school writer) that they got involved. "We don’t normally do this sort of thing," explained Nicer, having found it too bureaucratic. "You know, permission walls, it’s too, too," he searched for the word. "You got to show them your drawings, and get a lot of papers."

Holding a smaller paper sketch they brought with them, two of the artists drew lines on the black wall with white spray paint. BG 183 walked back from the wall to Bio, who was watching.

"That line’s pretty close there," he called to Nicer, who was still sketching on the wall.

"This one?" asked Nicer, pointing to the right.

"Yeah."

"So scratch this one," confirmed Nicer.

"Yeah. Scratch that," said Bio as Nicer drew a quick diagonal slash through line.

Finally Vee, my initial contact, arrived with the magazine’s photo editor. I asked him about the Tats Cru’s history, since Nicer had focused on their contemporary, commercial work, moving past questions about the graffiti they did before going professional.

"Those guys definitely got their props back in the eighties, on the trains," Vee assured me. Among insiders, they evidently retain legitimacy as real writers with experience on the street, but to outsiders and prospective clients they show only photos of the work that establishes their reputation as serious commercial artists.

Soon after, Jen, a Village Voice reporter Vee had been expecting, arrived. She looked perhaps even more out of place than I did, but no one cared. She was interested in the political element, and she and Vee walked down to the other end of the wall, where the Giuliani component was planned. The ratio of observers to artists was by then five-to-three, not uncommon at the Phun Phactory.

There are frequently more "observers" at the Phactory than graffiti writers. Part of the cause may be laziness: why should a journalist go on a difficult excursion in search of illegal graffiti when they can simply interview Phun Phactory writers on a Saturday afternoon? If graffiti is the subject, it’s infinitely easier to go to legal spots where artists will be painting predictably, be easier to find, and be less hesitant to answer your questions. Who wants to wander down deserted rail sidings or trespass into subway tunnels at every hour of the night with vandals you hardly know?

But why bother writing about graffiti at all? Certainly, there’s the allure of the illicit and the ability to report on the invisible artists who create such highly visible work. The number of journalists visiting the Phactory testifies to the fact that it holds a persistent attraction. This interest is in part caused by graffiti’s difference from other art. In almost all other artistic media, success is very nearly defined by commercial success: a band doesn’t receive praise and full-page reviews if no one buys their albums, and a flop isn’t a terrible movie, it’s one that doesn’t sell tickets. So how can graffiti be understood as art if it can’t be sold, and therefore can hardly be appraised? Graffiti’s failure to fit comfortably into this model leaves observers perplexed—and coming back for more.

As the Tats Cru demonstrated, writers have incorporated technology into the subculture in several ways. The mural painted by the Tats Cru for Stress magazine was publicized via email, and several writers, including GM and Riot 208, provided email addresses by which to contact them. Pat is hoping to expand the Phun Phactory’s web page. When I discussed the multimedia project I was working on, GM, who has a web page that includes information on graffiti, asked me questions about web page production. Some writers, it is said, even design parts of their intricately colored murals on computers before producing them on walls. Some graffiti artists know not only what one mural called the "code of the street," but computer code as well.

Writers are not simply the street-savvy inner-city outlaw artists they portray themselves to be, either. Hugo Martinez, an insightful chronicler of the earliest graffiti writers, observed that the most successful writers were neither "hard-core poor" nor the most dangerous of their peers. Writers were, concluded Martinez, "good kids." Such an assessment remains accurate twenty-five years later. Even Vase, a muscular writer who once punched another artist in the face when he failed to wait for Vase when they were to go painting together (thus showing Vase, the older and more experienced writer, disrespect) admitted that he had been a "mama’s boy." But Martinez’s observations are born out most dramatically at the Phun Phactory. Although the writers are often the same age as the "cons" (as Pat called them) performing community service, and although both are often waiting around Pat’s office, the two groups interact very little. Writers at the Phactory socialize more with other writers, including those of different ages, ethnicities, sexes, and neighborhoods, than they do with the community service and work release participants with whom they may share some of those demographic characteristics.

That graffiti writers and more hard-core trouble makers are typically distinct groups remains the case even though writers (including those working at the Phun Phactory) regularly have run-ins with the police.

Though they are adept at evading the police, most experienced writers have been caught. Fines, long community service hours, and punishments are harsh everywhere, and writers do their best to avoid detection. But writers in New York face a particular brutality. Although other writers didn’t describe the same violence, Seac described particularly harsh experiences.

"Well, I try not to get caught. Cause if the cops catch you, man, they beat you. They beat you bad! Cause what they gonna do? They know they can’t do nothing to me [probably because he’s a minor] so they just beat me."

"So you don’t get charged with anything, they just beat you up?" I asked.

"Yeah," replied Seac. "But I try not to get caught, cause the cops beat you hard, man."

Surprisingly, the decision to work legally doesn’t spare writers from police abuses. Doña reported that she had actually gotten "hassled" more while doing legal walls (where she is visible) than while doing illegal pieces. "The cops want to see your permissions," she explained, referring to the embossed, printed permission papers writers get from the Phun Phactory, whether working at the Phactory itself or on a wall provided by a business. "There’ll be a wall, and a whole row of writers working. You know, some of them got their kids there, friends, we got our lunches with us, people got their mini-vans parked there, everything, and they want to see our permissions," she says angrily.

Other Phun Phactory writers have had those permissions disregarded. In September 1996, Ovie and two other writers were arrested for vandalism, despite the fact that they had Amtrak’s permission (acquired through the Phun Phactory) to paint on a railroad retaining wall. After protests from Pat and Queens council member Walter McCaffrey, the charges were dropped. But other forms of police harassment continued.

"The cops come by and take videos of the participants while they are painting," Pat explained to the Daily News, "They sit across the street and watch us." Such activity is especially worrisome to graffiti artists, since similar techniques have been used in the past to arrest writers. In a 1994 San Jose sting operation, for instance, police posing as documentary filmmakers videotaped graffiti writers, then arrested forty-six of them, using the tapes as evidence. Police officials in Queens, however, denied ever having taped the writers. Lieutenant George Pillion, head of an anti-graffiti unit, insisted that he drove down the dead-end streets on which the Phactory is located not to harass writers, but to admire the murals.

The response by the police is not a reflection of opposition by neighboring businesses. To the contrary, those working on the block even suggest that they’re happy to have the murals around. When I first tried to view the murals covering the building, mechanics across the street pointed me to a flight of stairs from which I could see murals painted on a recessed second floor wall, and mentioned that both a Pepsi commercial and scenes from the film Sleeper had used the Phactory as a backdrop. They seem to agree with the owner of a new silk-screen shop inside the building which is home to the Phactory as well. "They paint them, and they’re basically there for us to enjoy," he said, adding that his customers seemed to take an interest in the work as well, and "as long as it’s not bad for business," he didn’t mind. Such a positive response is in considerable contrast to the police, who evidently still operate under the belief, often promoted by cities’ anti-graffiti programs, that anything painted with aerosol paint is contemptible.

The result has been ongoing animosity toward the police by those at the Phactory. Nick provided his theory of why the police had, since the Phactory’s inception, been opposed to the idea of legal graffiti. "Cops hate us. Hate us. Because arrests are down, and it’s harder to meet their quota."

More difficult because graffiti arrests are easy? I asked.

"Yeah, and because nine times out of ten, graffiti writers aren’t armed," Nick explained. (In fact, particularly on the East Coast, graffiti writers are armed far less frequently—if ever—than one time in ten.) Whether police attitudes come from the loss of easy arrests or inflexible attitudes about the proper (repressive) approach toward graffiti, tension between the Phactory and the police remains.

Writer’s confrontations with the status quo are not only on the level of the cat and mouse game played with police. Though the content of murals is normally more personal than political, occasionally the opposition to the status quo is more explicit, the message of graffiti more overtly political.

Stress magazine’s mural was to be such a piece. As Stress editor Virgilio Bravo wrote in an email publicizing the effort just before the November elections, "STRESS Magazine is in the process of painting a huge mural depicting Giuliani and the NYPD trying to silence youth...We did this as a reminder to the mainstream that although the press might paint him as a popular candidate, he isn’t popular with all of us, and the young people will resist."

As it was planned, the left panel of the Stress mural would have illustrated animosity between New York’s mayor and a multicultural crowd of young people. While such content is more common in other cities’ graffiti (San Francisco, in particular, has been home to pieces supporting migrant farm workers, the revolution in Nicaragua, Latino culture, and African American unity), New York murals rarely articulate more than allegiances to crews, thanks to friends, and boasts of artistic prowess, in compositions that rarely include more than an intricately lettered name and perhaps an accompanying cartoon character.

But while the rest of the Stress mural was completed before election day, the political statement remained unfinished. The Mayor’s vindictive reputation and notorious attacks against those who slight him prevented the piece’s realization. Nick explained that "Pat has enough trouble with the cops and the city, he didn’t want any more trouble." Fearing reprisals, he stopped the execution of the piece. "Personally, I would have let them do it," said Nick, "but I can see why Pat didn’t want it."

This attempt to create a mural with an overtly political message is much more the exception than the rule. Instead, the confrontational nature of graffiti is born of the efforts of young people, who generally lack property and power in the urban landscape to claim that rarest of urban commodities, space.

Space, both physical and social, literal and figurative, is needed by everyone. Graffiti provides one means for urban young people, who seem to be granted ever less of that precious commodity, to seize marginal space for themselves.

Writers are well aware that they are symbolically claiming space. Says Juan (not referring to the Phun Phactory), "If you got up [painted a piece] on a building, you own it—it’s yours." The director of a Northeastern city’s graffiti program agrees: "the message is ‘Hey! You don’t own this property, I do.’" For a group of people excluded from the urban public sphere due to age, race, socioeconomic status, or other reasons, graffiti provides another means of establishing one’s self and identity. This practice occurs both on the individual level, when a writer or crew paints a mural along the wall of a warehouse next to a rail yard, and at the level of the subculture, when a space like the Phun Phactory is claimed as a space for graffiti and graffiti artists.

The Phun Phactory is a particularly social space. It was after meeting at the Phactory, for instance, that Hasp, Doña, and Riot 208 began the crew TEAM (for The Eternal Artistic Mind), and began working together both at the Phactory and at other sites arranged by Pat. The Phactory serves as a similar gathering place for old school writers, most of whom would no longer paint if it meant running through subway tunnels and climbing through abandoned buildings. At the Phactory, however, they work together, talk, and meet others who drop by. In a rapidly privatizing city, such public space is rare.

It is this ability of graffiti to claim and create space for those who paint that makes the medium so enticing to both the young artists and the observers who frequent the Phactory. And it is this unusual function of graffiti art that outsiders can easily overlook when asking why. Graffiti, as it is normally practiced, cannot be commodified, priced, or sold. But its value is not in its sale, but in its central role in making a space—a studio, a gallery, a meeting place, a neighborhood—for the artists who create it.

The seventeen-year olds painting murals larger than Robert Motherwell’s canvases are contributing the space they create to the space accorded a twenty-five year old outlaw art form—no small accomplishment. Graffiti represents people’s desire to assert their presence in the world through pictures, words, and artistic interpretation. In a television-saturated society whose celebrated position is passive consumption, young people are announcing, in large, bold murals, their need to act and express themselves. Put prosaically by Doña to reporters, "Sometimes the point of the art of graffiti is just to do it." The foundation of graffiti is that it is one expression of people’s irrepressible urge to create physical and social spaces in which they can express themselves and communicate with others. Whether at the writers bench, along warehouse walls, or at the Phun Phactory, writers, and everyone else, will continue to do just that.