Thirty years ago—at the height of New York City's "War on Graffiti," and in an act of faith utterly incommensurate with the city's public demonization of graffiti writers—a group of teenagers named SHY 147, DAZE, MIN and DURO met with MTA official Richard Ravitch, and proposed a deal. Give the writers of New York City one train line to adorn with their vibrant aerosol murals, and they would leave the rest alone. Let them paint for six months, then let the public vote on the merits of their contribution.

Ravitch suggested that if the writers wanted to contribute, he would give them all brooms, and hostilities resumed. The subway's [...]

Hanksy is a street artist who puts Tom Hanks’ face on copies of Banksy’s art. His first show, which just closed at the Krause Gallery on the Lower East Side, and where the menu offered boxes of chocolates and Dr. Pepper, nearly sold out completely, according to the dealer. “I think what made it such a success is the genuine honesty in it,” gallery owner Ben Krause told me. “Hanksy really is a huge Tom Hanks fan and a huge Banksy fan.”

Images of Hanksy’s pieces, pasted and sprayed over walls in both New York and Chicago, gained momentum over corners of the internet, not just those [...]

"Action-artist Alexei Plutser-Sarno posted photos on his website of the most recent art-action by his group Voyna ("War")-the spray-painting of a giant cock on the Liteyny Bridge in St. Petersburg, next to the [Federal Security Service] building there. At night the bridges of St. Petersburg are raised, and so on the night of the action a giant cock was raised next to the FSB building. As Plutser documents on his site, young people and couples began to arrive at the bridge to have their photos taken next to the cock."

"When Wayne re-emerged some time in 2000, the story goes that he went to a gallery opening. It was if he’d been frozen for years. He saw that what he’d done for fun as a young man had turned into a cash cow. When folks figured out who the quiet blackman in the room was, the excitement in the air was thick like good pizza. It was if James Brown Moonwalked across the Atlantic Ocean straight to Sierra Leone, West Africa." —Awl pal Sacha Jenkins eulogizes graffiti legend Wayne "Stay High 149" Roberts for Mass Appeal magazine. Go there and read it, it's great.

It is unclear whether or not a rash of public vandalism in northern New Jersey is "gang-related," according to authorities. For the third time in less than a month, spray-painted graffiti was discovered in Boonton Township Monday morning: yet another display of swastikas, anti-police slogans and male genitalia, scrawled, perhaps frustratedly, in blue. "They keep drawing these swastikas and they keep drawing a picture of a fish with swastikas in it," said officer Tom Cacciabeve, of the Boonton Township police department. "The word VOODOO keeps appearing also."

Come on New Jersey. You can't be doing vandalism by knitting yarn cozies on lamp posts and tree trunks. Sure, it's pretty. And the little pink pom-pom is a nice touch. And yes sometimes I worry that trees might be getting too cold at night, too. And I can understand about getting "sick of knitting kitten mittens." But come on, there are better crimes to commit. Think about your rep, knitter-bro.

"Jean-Michel only wanted drugs, sex, and rock n’ roll. He didn’t have no science. He didn’t know what to talk to no critics and if he wanted to talk he didn’t have enough to say. When I talk everybody tells me to be quiet. [laughs] Do you know why? Because I have information that comes to you either from [science], or it’s from something that comes from other people – from my peer group. Whether it came down to rap music, hip-hop music – which is slightly different, or whether it comes to break dancing. After the fight and everything like that then everybody tried to say I was [...]

Sad news for hip-hop last night, as word spread that the groundbreaking graffiti artist and MC Rammellzee had died of as-yet-unknown causes. Born in Far Rockaway, Queens, a fixture of the fertile downtown New York scene of early 1980s, the mysterious figure known as Rammellzee is probably most famous for appearing in three films: Henry Chalfant's Style Wars, Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style (that's him rapping in Wild Style in the clip above) and, playing the role of "man with money," Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise. And for "Beat Bop," a song he made with his Bronx cohort K-Rob that was produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat