Graffiti Underground and Above


By JENNIFER BLEYER
Published: December 9, 2007
BEGINNING in the 1970s, city kids swept up in the new trend of scribbling graffiti on the outside of subway cars gathered on a bench in the 149th Street-Grand Concourse station in the Bronx to appraise each other’s work as trains rumbled by on the tracks. The site became known as the 149th Street Writers Bench, and it is legendary in graffiti lore.

“You would sit there watching for new talent,” recalled Freddy Miteff, 48, a former Bronx graffiti writer. “If you saw something real exciting, you’d chase the train to see who it was.”

Mr. Miteff was among the many young people who were arrested for defacing subway cars, and the spray painting of trains largely ended by the late ’80s. But two decades later, there is a continuing dispute over graffiti — and its center is at Hostos Community College, directly upstairs from the fabled 149th Street station.

The setting is a fall seminar on graffiti taught by James Cade, a graffiti writer who himself came of age spray-painting subways in the ’70s.

On Tuesday evening in the college’s white-walled art gallery, Mr. Cade explained the importance of teaching graffiti to today’s students.

“A lot of students are young and didn’t see the trains back in the day,” said Mr. Cade, now a graying man in his 40s. “This gives them a chance to learn about the first element of hip-hop, which is graffiti.”

Mr. Cade stopped spray-painting illegally in the ’80s. He has since been a tireless booster of graffiti as a legitimate art form, even urging that the subway bench be declared a landmark.

But in the eyes of some, like City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who has criticized Hostos for offering the course, graffiti is part of a ragged image that the borough is trying to shed.

Others say graffiti deserves attention — especially in the neighborhood that some consider its birthplace.

“It’s an important part of this area’s cultural history,” said Wally Edgecombe, director of the Hostos arts center. “Graffiti style has been appropriated by Madison Avenue. It’s in museums around the world.”