It remained that way in the 18th and 19th century until bucket paint was added to the list of supplies used by kids who wanted to pronounce that they existed. With bucket paint one could roll out their name in six foot high letters, mostly ego driven, the names were interspersed with all sorts of smaller names around it. These were always crimes of opportunities, a stolen piece of chalk from school, some left over paint from someone painting their apartment. Kids found these mark making tools and used them immediately. The tools were not meant for long term activity. This would change in the mid-1960s.

The Evolution

Spray paint was developed in the late 1940 as a way to quickly paint aluminum siding silver. During the 1950s there were many variations of it — usually found in body shops to touch up car scratches. In the 1960s, spray paint started to mainstream its way into large stores, as well as hardware stores and hobby shops, where it was used to paint airplane models which was a fad at the time.

Felt tip magic markers had the same trajectory as spray paint. The brand Magic Marker was invented in 1944, and was streamlined into small stores by the 1960s. With the political upheaval of the decade — most notably the anti-war movement — protestors hit the streets with signs done with larger-sized markers. Peace signs and political sloganeering were now vying for space among the names done in chalk and bucket paint.

Before the markers and spray paint, a kid might venture two or three blocks away and write his name as an act of bravado. Johnny 99 might walk to 96th Street and impress the kids there by writing his name. The newer Johnny 99s could now roam the city with cans of spray paint and markers and write their names anywhere. Why settle for a three block fame radius when the entire city could know your name. That’s how the graffiti movement started in New York City.

TAKI 183

The first full time graffiti writer was a Greek kid from 183rd street named TAKI 183. He was different from his predecessors in two ways; instead of writing his name once on a street, he would write it ten times so you couldn’t miss it. Secondly, he left his neighborhood — specifically going to different boroughs — something unheard of at the time.

By 1971, with hundreds of kids writing across the city using the newly mainstreamed tools of destruction, TAKI was found and interviewed by a New York Times reporter on a slow news day. He seemed like a reasonable teenager, who cited the blight of political campaigns, with their stickers and posters wheat pasted everywhere, as the real vandals.

We learned a little about TAKI, but nothing about the burgeoning movement around him, one that had traded in small black markers for Krylon and Red Devil spray paint.

It turned out TAKI was an anomaly. The story surrounding the graffiti movement, with all of its rituals, and who’s who of major players, would have to wait until March 26, 1973. And by then, it had become quite a tale to tell.

Richard Goldstein

Richard Goldstein was born in 1944. After graduating college in 1966, he applied for a job at the Village Voice. They asked him what he wanted to write about and he said "music." He was hired and went on to create a new form of writing called rock criticism.

Goldstein was an openly gay hippie, who was proud of his role in the counter-culture, a subject he wrote about frequently. His writings in the '60s and '70s are found in most of the top magazines at the time. He was a writer's writer, who seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the changing tides in society.

In February 1973, he asked the publisher of New York Magazine if he could do a deep dive into subway graffiti. The publisher trusted his judgement and gave him the go ahead.

While Goldstein enjoyed graffiti, he had no connection to it. When he signed on to write the graffiti article he was teaching journalism at City College of New York, just blocks away from the train yard at 135th Street where so much of the graffiti writing was done.

He was introduced to a student named Hugo Martinez at the college. Martinez was a champion of graffiti who had put together a collective called United Graffiti Artists — featuring 21 of the best graffiti writers in the city. It was through Martinez and his organization that Goldstein was given an all-access backstage pass to the writing sub-culture.

Bill Ray

The photographer picked to interpret the graffiti movement was Bill Ray. Ray had worked for Life Magazine for fifteen years, producing iconic photos of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and President Kennedy. During the '60s he worked for other major magazines as well — including shooting forty covers for Look Magazine. The photographer mostly shot his graffiti photos in the Bronx and Manhattan. Ironically, he and Richard Goldstein had no contact.

New York Magazine’s “This Thing Has Gotten Completely Out of Hand” by Richard Goldstein, hit the stands on March 26, 1973. The issue featured an eight-page essay, and a cover of a woman, mouth agape, on a subway platform with graffiti spray painted over her. As a bonus, the magazine  decided to hand out the first annual “Taki Award for Grand Design.” with a SPIN 1 polka dot piece taking top honors out of all the images submitted by Bill Ray.

The information gleaned for the article came from the writers, vis a vis, City College student Hugo Martinez. Martinez gave the journalist full access to his roster of artists, as well as crash course in the history of the movement. Goldstein went on a long tour of Washington Heights with MIKE 171, and visited CCO 144’s apartment to speak to his parents, who were proud of their son's achievements.

The article opens with a passage on Taki 183, as most graffiti articles do, and goes on to discuss the various styles from the different boroughs and how they evolved. It talks about Writer's Corner 188, and the emergence of writing crews, and how they worked effectively painting in the yards. In a recent interview the author said:

Goldstein’s assessment of the writing culture was spot on. He understood that graffiti had graduated from a pastime — morphing into a sprawling urban competition. In order to compete, writers had to devote all of their time. Towards the end of the essay he says this about the kids: “It just may be that the kids who write graffiti are the healthiest and most assertive in their neighborhoods.” 

One of the big bonuses of the issue were the portraits of the writers, including: STAYHIGH 149, SNAKE 1, PHASE 2, and NOVA 1. Kids around the city who were following graffiti finally had a chance to put the names with the faces, humanizing them, and giving them hope that they too could be writers.

Also shown were sophisticated drawings by the same writers, and a dissection of STAYHIGH's unique tag — arguably the greatest tag ever. One of the contributions from Bill Ray was a fish eye photo of the 103rd Street station covered with hundreds of tags. Writers from the neighborhood spent hours scouring that one picture looking for their own name. The text, and the supplemental photos and art, combined for an amazing look into the beginning of what would become a world wide phenomenon. Fifty years later, it’s time to celebrate the issue, as well as Richard Goldstein and Bill Ray, who captured it so eloquently.