I do enjoy when others paint their MTH subways, because my collection will go up in value with every paint stroke.


For Sale: Original R17 Proto 4 car set Silver/Blue <5> MIB and NO Graffiti!


But that is not what this thread is about. This started out as a serious sociological study concerning transit history for adults. Chris put a lot of effort into compiling a photo sequence documenting graffiti on subways in the 1970s. I think his effort is somewhat trivialized when someone uses the thread to display a model of an R42 with eighties style graffiti just for the heck of it. Have you any examples of 70s graffiti to offer?

I know what happened. everybody saw this and wanted to show their artistic talents as well as Barbi Benton did

Ben,
Sorry, I don't get it.

trains are fun,and not to be taken,seriously,serious = boring.you sound very serious. ,and a lighter note,i only know 80s graffiti that was my era.am old,but not a fossil.anyway the 70s had kindve funny looking graff styles.i can reproduce easily,but choose not to.

The bottom fell out in 1973. In 1971 there was little or no graffiti. I remember once waiting on a platform going home from a Yankee game on the 4 train and a train came in on the other side (probably around 1970) and the only thing I saw was "Free Calley" scribbled on one of the cars (reference to Lt. Calley and an incident in Vietnam). In 1972 the scribbles started with simple names usually followed by an arrow and a number indicating a street number (i.e. Tracy 161). In 1973 the graffiti became more "artistic" with large lettering. It took a little less than 2 years to go from clean cars to an out of control situation that lasted for more than a decade.

joe you forgot to mention. SNO.

Now that you all have had your theories expounded, why not take a look at the real story? TAKI 183 started it. The media glorified him and exacerbated his "artistry" in July of 1971.

Do a Google search for "TAKI 183" and you will get around a million hits. Here's one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKI_183

So I guess we should blame the writer of the newpaper article. Maybe without the pub, people wouldn've done it as much. Funny as soon as Ire ad TAKI 183 I thought of two things. The movie TURK 182 which when I went to the link it was mentioned at the end. ...and Chris 215. When I was a kid, I went to work with my parents on the subway, and our home stop was 215th St. on the 1, and we travelled to 50th St. There was a tagger that used Chris 215, and everytime we saw it on the platform or on the train, my parents would say, "We see you've been here" Joking of course (I was 4 or 5)

Funny though, because it took until May the following year to really take off. Now had that article been written in early 1972 then I could really pi it all on that. Thanks for the info though Arthur. I do believe that something like that definitely inflamed things.

Spring Fever. I was 15 then. Must have been something in the air.

[quote="Arthur P. Bloom"]Now that you all have had your theories expounded, why not take a look at the real story? TAKI 183 started it. The media glorified him and exacerbated his "artistry" in July of 1971.

As an eyewitness I have to disagree. I did see that type of tag long before 1971 on the walls of schools, playgrounds, apartment hallways etc. Sometime around 1967 names and initials were no longer enough to satisfy the vandals craving for attention and they would add something like LAMF after the nick name. Soon after the fad was to write their actual name followed by "as" but this did not last long. Some said at the time that it revealed a psychosis to believe you were actually someone else in a play. Example Allan as "Motorman" Then of course there are going to be so many idiots with the same name so they included a number like 183 after so they would be not be confused. Now that you had a unique name and you traveled it would be a good idea to put that unique name everywhere you went and then believe you were somehow famous. So now someone could be "famous" without even having to go to school, without having to excel at a job, have a physical skill, or athletic ability, musical or vocal talent, leadership ability, or any intelligence at all. That was about the time the phrase "15 minutes of fame" was coined, so I guess everyone with a marking pen wanted that fame.

Google does not reveal why it puts certain items to the top of the list or by what criteria, but they are in it for the big money. For that reason I put little weight on what comes up first when I google. Wilipedia has been proven wrong on several occasions and I would not use results to settle a large wager.
Kids don't read newspapers, but they do read walls and many copy what they see. However I don't doubt that the publicity inflamed the already bad situation.





Fossil 175

things happen,the trains are clean now,so let by gones,be by gones,and not fret over past tense,and focus on future aspects.