Graffiti artist PINZ was arrested yesterday, the second graffiti arrest this week. This confirms Gothamist's suspicions that anti-graffiti vandalism is a top PR initiative with the NYPD and that this is Mayor Bloomberg's third attempt at stifling all kinds of seedy culture (the other two being smoking and noise). We expect to see about one graffiti story a week for the next month or so, then maybe the Mayor will take on illegal file sharing.
It's sort of funny how the NY Post explains the graffiti subculture to its readers; Larosa was an "All City" tagger, "the title other taggers give people who have achieved the highest level of recognition among their underground peers." But what Gothamist must get our hands on is the NYPD's Citywide Vandal Task Force book.
The book holds some 70 of the most prolific taggers in town, and is being used by cops all over town in a new crackdown. The 70 in the graffiti rogues gallery include four woman and several tourists, who cops say come to New York simply to spray their tags. One of them is French national Raoul Perre, who goes by the tag HOW.
Well, that's not so bad - Gothamist thought the mayor wanted foreigners to come to New York!
Flickr's graffiti photos and, of all things, an eighth-grade lesson plan on how to design your own tag. Really. Oh, and we're using the Hitchcock stencil just because.
