Designer throws graffiti block party despite NYC mayor's efforts to stop it

By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer

August 24, 2005, 5:59 PM EDT


NEW YORK -- It was a high-tech, pricey setting for what was once considered low-tech vandalism: Mackie speakers blasting rap while artists spray-painted graffiti on fake subway cars.

Fashion designer Marc Ecko, who earlier this week won a court battle against Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the right to host the stylish street party Wednesday, led a team of 50 graffiti specialists, wielding 600 high-end cans of spray paint with customized nozzles.

"Thank you, Mr. Bloomberg, for the promotion. You can't shut us up," said the one-time graffiti artist, referring to the mayor's battle to quash the event.

The mayor had claimed that the graffiti-fest could encourage New Yorkers to deface the real subway.

With a summer breeze carrying the acrid odor of paint and police barricades keeping order, eight subway car sides lined an art gallery-dotted street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. On one car, huge green and yellow zigzags crawled across the metal _ a more lighthearted splash of paint than the dense, violence-tinged images that once assaulted New York's subways.

Nearby, people young and old lined up for the video games Ecko had set up in a parked truck.

The city initially granted a permit for the event but ultimately revoked it. Ecko went to Manhattan federal court, where a judge on Monday ordered city officials to allow the exhibition, citing the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

Wednesday's graffiti team members, some wearing gas masks, included the Bronx veteran known as Terrible T-Kid 170 _ whose day job is city painting supervisor.

"It started out as vandalism," declared T-Kid, his finger ready to trigger the aerosol can. "But this graffiti is a positive force, an artistic outlet for kids."

Said the 44-year-old civil servant, whose real name is Julius Cavero: "If it wasn't for the cavemen marking trees, there would be no art today."

The daylong happening became an impromptu reunion for the original taggers who decorated subway tunnels for decades.

"This is not the original graffiti _ it's third-generation, watered-down," said Jeff Wilkins, who once served 30 days in Rikers Island jail for his Bronx underground career as Butch Two.

He's now a 45-year-old bicycle messenger who rolled in for a few hugs. He warmly clutched the arm of his friend Eddie Ruiz, 44, a doorman whose graffiti name was Hate168.

"For us, it was a way of life _ 24-7," Ruiz said. "When we weren't painting, we were home preparing the paint or out buying it."

Raul Gamboa, 39, a Los Angeles graffiti artist, said the event carried a serious message.

"This art saved me," he said. "It kept me away from worse things like drugs and gangs."

As Frame, he painted graffiti after dropping out of high school. He was caught spray-painting in 1984 and spent 17 days in jail.

"We're now mentors to kids like that. The programs cities offer after school are not contemporary enough, they don't always interest kids," said Gamboa, the father of two young children and owner of a financial services agency.

Nearby, some teenagers exchanged black books _ notebooks in which they collect tags, the smart urban names they use as graffiti creators.

"Graffiti is a way to get away from the problems of family, the problems of the world," said Lochlainn Burke, 13.

As Naik, he tags with his friends, especially in an abandoned upper Manhattan subway station.

"I never did a real subway car," he said, grinning. "But I'd like to."