Is Graffiti `Absolute Garbage’
Or Is It `Good Business?’
By Vinnie Rotondaro
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
DUMBO — “Right now, taxpayers’ money is being wasted by the police,” Alain Maridueña, better known by his tagging name “Ket,” told the audience at DUMBO’s powerHouse Bookstore last Thursday evening.
“Members of the Vandal Squad are videotaping this entire event. I find that to be a waste of people's money,” he said.
Before the audience, a mix of artists and graffiti-crazed hipsters could start shaking their heads in contempt, Steven Mona, the former head of the NYPD’s Vandal Squad, jumped in.
"Do you fish?" he asked Ket.
"Do I fish? No, I don't fish.”
"Good,” Mona said, “Neither do I. But, I've been told by fishermen, go where the fish are. Why would we be out there when you’re in here? Everybody who's anybody in the graffiti movement is in here tonight."
This was just one of many exchanges had between cops and graffiti taggers, who came to the Powerhouse to discuss ex-Vandal Squad Captain Joe Rivera’s controversial new book, Vandal Squad: Inside the New York City Transit Police Department, Thursday night.
The talk featured ex-Vandal Squad Lieutenants Rivera, Mona and Ken Chiuli, the squad’s original commanding officer, as well as graffiti artists Cope2, Ket and Ellis G.
Since its publication, Rivera’s book has rankled many in the graffiti community. Most contend that the former squad lieutenant used unscrupulous tactics to put graffiti artists in jail and is now trying to profit off the very same “criminals” he spent his career collaring — a claim the discussion’s moderator, street art blogger Stern Rockwell, quickly put to Rivera.
"There is nothing hypocritical about myself chronicling my career in the Transit Police Dept. Many individuals have written about their lives with no backlash,” Rivera told Rockwell and the audience.
Granted, said Ket, but “It's just one person's experience, and I think it’s a marginal experience."
"I don't think its necessary to hear another story from another cop. We get it every day in the newspapers,” he said.
The back-and-forths eventually went on to tackle the issue of police tactics, which the taggers viewed to be unscrupulous. They also argued that patrol cops are often clueless when it comes to the specifics of the law.
"I got arrested for drawing on the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk,” said Ellis G. "You don't arrest people for doing something that's legal."
Ket complained that the city’s legal system often resulted in the courts “parading me around the boroughs” in each of the city’s five counties— a humiliation, in effect. Ket further complained that the Vandal Squad unfairly singled him out, a claim Mona quickly addressed.
“I’ll say this,” he said, “when you write ‘Ket’ all over the place and ‘Cote2’ all over the place, we don't differentiate. But when you start making it personal... when you start putting up graffiti that says — and excuse me ladies — Mona sucks c**k or Rivera has AIDS, it’s like poking the junkyard dog with a stick. You're gonna get bit. And you got bit, and you have to live with it.”
Cote2, for his part, agreed.
"It is what it is. Don't get busted, and be smart about what you do. That’s point blank,” he said.
Is It Art?
Eventually, the discussion rolled around to the inevitable question: is graffiti art, and if so, should an art be prosecuted?
"There's nobody here who's going to admit that at least 95 percent of the graffiti on those trains is not in the least bit art ... it's absolute garbage,” said Chiuli.
Bunk, said the taggers. Plus, they said, graffiti is good business.
“The word that keeps being used is damaged,” said Ket. “Nothing is being damaged. It’s legal jargon. When you paint a subway train, it’s not being damaged ... it’s a legal thing to put people in jail, to give cops a job, to give the cleaners a job.”
Hearing this, Mona couldn’t contain himself.
“You know,” he said, squirming in his seat, “the thing that frustrates me the most about this is the thought that it’s OK to change someone’s property without their permission. That you’ve decided that my house would look better with the name “Ket” on the side of it.”
Ket then remarked that the ex-lieutenant’s house was probably pink, inducing a round of laughter from the audience.
“No, my house is not pink,” Mona said smiling and shaking his head. “But you know what the beauty of this whole thing is? We live in a country where we can agree to disagree.”
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© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009
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Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues. So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net
