-----> NY OLD SKOOL (1969-1974) <-----

[itsmovinngroovin]

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[nxrto]

 

 

[nxrto]

 

 

 

[~>MooseKnuckle<~]

I don't think NY'ers HATE that (fiction) statement. I think it's all the lackies from everywhere else that are preocupied with trying to scvaenge whatever crumb of legitimacy they can muster up, in typical copycat/wannabe fashion.

 

Without taking it back any further than the 20th century,... If you want to count Gang Writing as graff, (which would be erroneus) then explore the fact that NYC had prolific gang graffiti dating WAYYY before the 50's. In fact it was so commonplace throughout those decades that by 1961 gang writing made it all the way to the sets and opening credits of West Side Story, a major hollywood release. (LA/ Hollywood imitating NY)

 

In 1971 TAKI 183 stated that HE began putting up his tag, away from his block, in the summer of 1971, but that he got the idea when he saw JULIO 204 (away from HIS block) a few years prior in 1967.

So already in 1967 JULIO 204 was bombing.

 

I'm not sure when Cornbread claims he started writing in philly, but to say it was before NYC, it has to be at least prior to 67, and with eye witnesses or documentation, or else it don't count. Anyway, to ME, if Cornbread is Graff, then KILROY is graff.

 

Many young people in many cities have wrote on walls for different reasons, but the youth culture of GETTING YOUR NAME UP is undisputably a New York Thang.

 

Zed, yes I conciously left out Philly cause I'm still not convinced, but I know you can shed more light.

 

my passion is trains. i dont really go after the walls with the same conviction - which is by choice. for the trains is where you really see the culture go from just "wall writing" to actual culture - which is not entirely true, but for me in my little world, that is the case. yeah the philly thing is a tuff nut to crack because there is very little photographic evidence. and of that very little, there is an even smaller amount that is readily available. but a few key resources that support the fact that philly predated ny are:

 

-Jack stewarts dissertation on subway graffiti. well its a dissertation so you know he exhausted the subject and he has a whole chapter on philly in the 60s. he states the trains in philly were drenched with tags when in NY they were still completely clean. he also states, and this is the missing link and what seperates our graffiti from all the other graffiti that predates it (well almost all), Cornbread and his contemporaries bombing but and el routes. literally walking the entire route and hitting the buildings visable from the windows. this was early - mid 60s. somewhere along the line (no pun intended) they decided to hit the actual vehicle (train or bus) because they figured the moving vehicle had a much larger audience that any fixed location. there is quite a good explaination of it all including who was involved, some poor photos, dates etc. if you dont already have it this shit is a must have. if you need info PM me and I can tell you how to get it.

 

- A little video that came out of philly about 10 years ago called repeat offender has an interview with cornbread. i havent watched it in a while but i know he talks about that era in detail and gioves dates, as far back as the early 60s kids were getting up in philly. but i dont think the trains got hit until 64 or 65. come to think of it i probably should transfer that shit to dvd.

 

- espo did an awesome job of discussing philly in taogo. again he puts the dates in the early 60s, and if i remember correctly possibly even the late 50s

 

-i forgot all about west side story. leave it to pharoah to keep me frosty.

 

but one of the best interviews i have ever seen was in videograff1 - the interview with pahse2he talks about how tags began to appear on broadway while all the other lines were clean. another must when it comes to train history.

 

i said "almost all" earlier because a brand of graffiti whose historic significance is almost always overlooked, even more than gang graffiti and even by Ph.D. Jack Stewart is hobo graffiti on freights which dates back to before the great depression. Hobos and rail workers were getting up on freights for decades before philly and la gangs. this is actually the first real 'getting up' graffiti because you had all the required elements. you had a personalized or styleised word written frequently in an attempt to gain noteriaty within a specific culture.

believe it or not i have friends that hold the notion that these hobos influenced the early philly heads. i dont tend to agree - but it is possible. just imagine all those old philly heads chillin at west falls looking at freights back in the 60s seeing tons of 'JB King Esquire' monikers. who knows, maybe it sparked something. and so the eternal quest for knowledge grinds on.

[Pharaoh145th]

Ahhh, if only all the posts were like this..

 

Thanks ZED.

 

* For some reason, I am unable to edit my previous post, but just wanted to clarify my typo..

TAKI 183 tagged up in summer of 1970, not 71. My apologies, typing too fast.

 

 

 

my passion is trains. i dont really go after the walls with the same conviction - which is by choice. for the trains is where you really see the culture go from just "wall writing" to actual culture - which is not entirely true, but for me in my little world, that is the case. yeah the philly thing is a tuff nut to crack because there is very little photographic evidence. and of that very little, there is an even smaller amount that is readily available. but a few key resources that support the fact that philly predated ny are:

 

-Jack stewarts dissertation on subway graffiti. well its a dissertation so you know he exhausted the subject and he has a whole chapter on philly in the 60s. he states the trains in philly were drenched with tags when in NY they were still completely clean. he also states, and this is the missing link and what seperates our graffiti from all the other graffiti that predates it (well almost all), Cornbread and his contemporaries bombing but and el routes. literally walking the entire route and hitting the buildings visable from the windows. this was early - mid 60s. somewhere along the line (no pun intended) they decided to hit the actual vehicle (train or bus) because they figured the moving vehicle had a much larger audience that any fixed location. there is quite a good explaination of it all including who was involved, some poor photos, dates etc. if you dont already have it this shit is a must have. if you need info PM me and I can tell you how to get it.

 

- A little video that came out of philly about 10 years ago called repeat offender has an interview with cornbread. i havent watched it in a while but i know he talks about that era in detail and gioves dates, as far back as the early 60s kids were getting up in philly. but i dont think the trains got hit until 64 or 65. come to think of it i probably should transfer that shit to dvd.

 

- espo did an awesome job of discussing philly in taogo. again he puts the dates in the early 60s, and if i remember correctly possibly even the late 50s

 

-i forgot all about west side story. leave it to pharoah to keep me frosty.

 

but one of the best interviews i have ever seen was in videograff1 - the interview with pahse2he talks about how tags began to appear on broadway while all the other lines were clean. another must when it comes to train history.

 

i said "almost all" earlier because a brand of graffiti whose historic significance is almost always overlooked, even more than gang graffiti and even by Ph.D. Jack Stewart is hobo graffiti on freights which dates back to before the great depression. Hobos and rail workers were getting up on freights for decades before philly and la gangs. this is actually the first real 'getting up' graffiti because you had all the required elements. you had a personalized or styleised word written frequently in an attempt to gain noteriaty within a specific culture.

believe it or not i have friends that hold the notion that these hobos influenced the early philly heads. i dont tend to agree - but it is possible. just imagine all those old philly heads chillin at west falls looking at freights back in the 60s seeing tons of 'JB King Esquire' monikers. who knows, maybe it sparked something. and so the eternal quest for knowledge grinds on.

[asdf_va!]

just imagine all those old philly heads chillin at west falls looking at freights back in the 60s seeing tons of 'JB King Esquire' monikers. who knows, maybe it sparked something. and so the eternal quest for knowledge grinds on.

 

I had respect for your posts, and flicks, before this post...

 

But now, I have an even greater respect (as much as one can

have over the internet, without actually meeting you) for this

statement you have made.

 

Very interesting, and extremely quotable.

Thank you.

[desism_ktc]

This thread keeps getting better, not to my surprise its probably due to people that respect graff and discuss its history with reverence and aren't all caught up in the drama that is internet graf.

Pharaoh & Zed keep discussing and broaden the minds of these young bucks whose history of graf is soley based on Style Wars.

[nxrto]

 

In 1971 TAKI 183 stated that HE began putting up his tag, away from his block, in the summer of 1971, but that he got the idea when he saw JULIO 204 (away from HIS block) a few years prior in 1967.

So already in 1967 JULIO 204 was bombing.

 

Are there any photographs of Julio 204's tags? Never seen one...

[mysticalninja]

bump that old school subway graffiti roots that shit will remain

[~>MooseKnuckle<~]

Ahhh, if only all the posts were like this..

 

Thanks ZED.

 

* For some reason, I am unable to edit my previous post, but just wanted to clarify my typo..

TAKI 183 tagged up in summer of 1970, not 71. My apologies, typing too fast.

 

no, thank you - true historians like yourself are few and far between. its always a pleasure to read your posts. most people just want to see fliks - which is a big piece of the pie, but research (cause thats what we do) even for graff history is so much more than fliks. dont get me wrong because a lot of the fliks posted here are straight foolish - a lot of them i havent seen, which is rare for me.

 

thanks ghost and asdf - the props are well recieved and much appreciated.

 

and pharoah - i feel you on the typing too fast thing. call me a nerd, but graff history excites me and i often fly through posts like this without regard to grammar.

[Mr.Maker]

thanks for expanding my visions of yester-year...

[KRISPY KREME 127]

[kksf]

 

Nice I've been looking for this one for a while!

Some how in all librarys out here this issue of Newsweek is conspiously missing...

Also for all diggers out there The Readers Guide to Perodical Litrature is great Reasource for looking up articles like these.

[~>MooseKnuckle<~]

^^^ good looks. ill make a note of that. also NYT microfiche. that has a lot of good articles on graff from the early 70s - with fliks. i spent a day in grand army plaza once and didnt even scratch the surface.

[nxrto]

That Newsweek article is great KRISPY KREME 127, thanks!

[nxrto]

[prawn laksa]

^super-doodle master!

thats what my missus calls me......

[nxrto]

This is the biggest copy i could find of the New York Times "TAKI 183 Spawns Pen Pals" article. Too bad it's ripped in half, would love to read the whole thing.

 

 

 

Interview with TAKI from 1989:

 

 

"When TAKI Ruled Magik Kingdom" By Joel Siegel Daily News, April 9, 1989

 

TAKI 183, the godfather of graffiti, made his mark on New York in a big way. Now, 20 years later, the Transit Authority is about to eliminate his legacy.

 

On May 12, the TA will yank the last graffiti-covered subway car from service. That's fine with Taki, now 35 and owner of a foreign car repair shop. He says he regrets his role in popularizing the graffiti madness that overtook the subways.

 

"When you think back, and saw what eventually happened to the trains, you feel bad about it," said Taki, who asked that his last name not be used. "I never thought it would be such a big thing." "But the subways were so lousy anyway...they were pretty filthy. I thought that kind of justified it." There were lots of kids on the graffiti bandwagon in the late 1960's, but Taki seemed the busiest. He certainly got the most notice, especially once he started defacing subway cars and East Side walls with his TAKI 183 "tag."

 

"I went through a lot of Magik Markers," Taki told the Daily News. Soon writers were calling themselves artists and turning the subways into their own studios, spray-painting car-long "pieces" with balloon-like letters and curvy three-dimensional designs.

 

The TA repainted all cars twice, put razor-ribbon barbed wire around yards, formed an anti-graffiti squad, threatened parents with lawsuits and had offenders clean cars. But nothing worked, and frustrated TA brass all but threw in the cleaning towel. "We did not have the resources to take it off. There were more of them than there were of us-literally," said Paul Pettit, general superintendent of the TA's 207th St. repair shop.

 

Soon after he became TA president, David Gunn began a multi-pronged attack in 1984. At that time, all 6,200 cars in the TA fleet were covered with scrawls.

 

Graffiti-free cars were gradually placed in service through new purchases, car overhauls and repainting.

 

And Gunn ordered that when any clean car was defaced, the scrawl had to be eliminated immediately to deny writers the ego-boost of seeing their creations roll through the city.

 

The TA also increased the number of cleaners to 1,600, from 600 in 1984, arming them with super paint removers like Go-Ghost 457. TA managers and transit police improved security.

 

There are only a few dozen graffiti-smeared cars left, on the C, L and M lines; they'll be gone by May 12.

 

Now, in an irony that would please city officials, Taki has his own graffiti problem, on his shopfront. "I am a victim," he said, smiling. "I painted it over and two weeks later it was all written up again. But I guess what goes around, comes around. It's justice."

 

He said he still occasionally has an urge to write his tag but gave up his Magik Markers three years after he started defacing trains.

 

"As soon as I got into something more productive in my life, I stopped. Eventually I got into business, got married, bought a house, had a kid. Didn't buy a station wagon, but I grew up, you could say that."

[oldnangry]

[oldnangry]

[oldnangry]

[~>MooseKnuckle<~]

those are dope. shit from the 7s is pretty rare. speaking of the 7s, you got any son and pro?

[oldnangry]