A (2:25)

No, not Italian.

B (2:26)

All right, I'll figure it out then. We're talking graffiti, obviously, Chuck. I don't know if everybody knows that.

A (2:32)

Yeah. I mean, we covered some of this in our hip hop episode for sure. But this is one of the pillars of hip hop culture, as we'll see. But graffiti needed its own thing. And graffiti in the United States we basically think of as sort of a late 60s East coast thing. And this isn't one of those things. I do see where Livia put in, like, cave drawings, but I'm not even going to talk about that.

B (2:56)

Sure.

A (2:56)

Because I was like, come on, Livia. But very good point. Here in Mexico in, like, the 1930s, where mural art and sort of public art during the Mexican revolution was a big thing. And so Chicano kids in the 1930s sort of brought that same style to LA and other cities in the 1930s and 40s before the spray can was invented. But I feel like that is a genuine sort of precursor to what we know as modern graffiti.

B (3:25)

Yeah. Because they were. Well, they were writing on walls, sometimes they were using paint and brushes. Markers didn't exist. Spray cans didn't exist yet. But they were using what they had a lot of times just to tag their neighborhood. Is like, this turf belongs to this gang. But they added flourishes that kind of gave rise to some of the details and touches that are still around in graffiti today. So it is definitely a valid river that flowed into this larger river that flows into the ocean of graffiti that's on planet Earth, which would be the hip hop culture.

A (4:01)

I mentioned the spray can. That's obviously a vital part of graffiti that was invented in 1949 by a paint owner in Illinois, a paint company owner named Ed Seymour, and his wife and I tried to find her name. What's her name?

B (4:15)

Bonnie.

A (4:16)

Oh, I couldn't find it. You found Bonnie?

B (4:17)

I had to look really hard. Yes. But I found it. Bonnie. Isn't that a lovely name?

A (4:21)

Nice work. Yeah. I do love the name Bonnie. But they said they were trying to coat radiators with an aluminum coating, so they invented the spray can. And right away, like, you know, people that were protesting or maybe artists on the down low, because you can hide a can pretty easily. You can work with it very quickly. It works on a lot of different kinds of surfaces. So all of a sudden, spray cans really paved the way.

B (4:48)

Yeah. Potsy from Happy Days famously was a clandestine artist using spray paint.

A (4:53)

Oh, really? I don't remember that one. Hey, I could have seen that being a Happy Days episode.

B (4:58)

Yeah. But it wouldn't have been Potsy. Yeah, exactly. Maybe Ralph Malf might have gotten talked into trying it and then just flipped out.

A (5:05)

But probably would have been Richie.

B (5:07)

Yeah, I guess so. Man, that was such a good show.

A (5:09)

Like a real lesson learner episode.

B (5:11)

Yeah, yeah. And the Fonz, who you'd think would be like a spray paint graffiti artist, like Vandal is the one who talks to Richie's, like, that's not cool. So there's a lot of advantages to using spray paint. That's why graffiti really kind of started. This is like where its roots really took root. Markers are another thing that people use, and most people think of spray paint with graffiti, but markers are important, and they didn't come around until the 1950s. So you had spray paint before you had markers, which is surprising to me. And if you want a nice little trivia question, Magic Marker was the first marker for commercial sale starting in 1953.

A (5:55)

That makes sense because that's became sort of the proprietary eponym in a way.

B (6:00)

Exactly. Yeah. For sure.

A (6:02)

Not so much anymore, I feel like. But in our era, for sure.

B (6:05)

Yeah. Because it's fun to say.

A (6:07)

Yeah, it's a marker that creates magic.

B (6:09)

Exactly.

A (6:11)

I didn't really consider markers as graffiti, but then I was like, yeah, like every. Everything, like on the inside of a MARTA train or a New York subway car. Like, that's all marker.

B (6:20)

All marker. Yeah, it is. It's very important for what's called hand style, as we'll see.

A (6:25)

That's right. But we need to talk about cornbread, right?

B (6:28)

Yeah. So there's a guy named Darrell McCrae who will tell anybody who sits still long enough that he was the person who invented graffiti.

A (6:35)

Yeah.

B (6:35)

And he makes a really good case. Unfortunately, there's some other people who are doing the same thing at the same time. But you could still say Kornbread, which was his handle. His tag was one of the very first people who took up graffiti starting in 1965. Yeah.

A (6:54)

He was but a 12 year old. He's a Philly guy, and he was in juvie, and in juvie he said, I don't want this white bread. I want cornbread. My grandmother made cornbread, and I love that stuff. So he got the nickname Cornbread.

B (7:07)

I don't think he got the cornbread, though.

A (7:09)

I doubt if he got the cornbread. That's very labor intensive to make cornbread, for sure. Compared to just opening up a bag of white bread.

B (7:16)

You know, also, though, I think at places called youth development center, they don't give you your preferred food. They give you what you're going to eat.

A (7:24)

Yeah. Like Oliver Twist style.

B (7:26)

Yeah. No requests, please.

A (7:28)

No more. So he took that nickname, started writing it on the walls there at his institution that he was in. And then when he got out in 1967, he would take to the streets of Philly, writing his name, Cornbread. Especially, like, if he knew that his sweetie pie was on the bus, he would write it along the bus route so she could see that and be impressed.

B (7:51)

Sometimes running alongside the bus. Yeah.

A (7:53)

Like, while it was going. Other bus lines. And that was sort of the, you know, the beginning along, as we'll see. And, you know, which was already happening in Spanish Harlem of sort of the early point of graffiti, which is like a name, you know, later on, they would call it a tag. And the point was to get that out in as many places as you could. And, like, you were super cool if you did it in, like, a very risky or hard to reach place, like the wall in front of the cop shop or the top of a water tower or something like that.

B (8:25)

Yeah. And so you add in the flourishes that Chicano kids came up with in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s in LA with getting your tag out there, as many places as you can, that is definitely the beginning of graffiti. And this is where most people point to as the start of the whole thing. In the 60s and 70s in New York City, all of this started to blossom. All these things kind of came together, and just the right hands and graffiti became a thing. Just slowly but surely, like you said, some of the first people were just writing their names and they would come up with this tag. And some of the earliest tags came from Spanish Harlem, where you would have your nickname and then a number like Turk182. And Turk would be your nickname. 182 would be the street you hailed from. I think Turk182 was entirely made up. I don't think it was a docudrama. But one of the first two was Julio 204 and Taki 183.

A (9:27)

Yeah, Taki 183. Taki was a nickname, a Greek nickname for Demetrius. Still is. But Taki was a. This was in, like, 69 or 70, was a delivery worker. So Taki went all over the city. So it was a really good way to get the Taki 183 tag all over the place. And it got so far and wide that Taki was Actually part of a New York Times article in 1971. And all of a sudden, it inspired people saying, hey, like, this is the cool new thing to do on the street.

B (9:57)

Yeah. Or else they hated Taki 183 for defacing new York all over the place.

A (10:02)

Good point.

B (10:03)

That same year that the article on Taki 183 came out, there was the first graffiti crew kind of came together. Writer's Corner 188. They met at the corner of Audubon and 1 88th Street. 188th street, as they say in New York. And the crew is called WC188. And it was, like, one of the first ways that people started sharing different style tips and kinds of markers that did different things. It was just the first way that different people doing the same thing came together and figured out how to do it better. Yeah.

A (10:37)

And like I said, it was sort of a quantity over quality thing for a while. I think that's sadly kind of part of it now a little bit. When I see graffiti around Atlanta, there's some really good stuff and also some really kind of not so great tags that I see a lot.

B (10:54)

Yeah. And more often than not, it's the not so great ones. Right. Kind of like watching adults skateboard.

A (11:01)

Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, man, Atlanta just doesn't have the skateboarders. That's a West coast thing. I never see. I always see those guys trying to do the tricks, but they never land the tricks.

B (11:10)

Exactly. That's exactly like junkie tags, which is, I think, called toy in the graffiti world.

A (11:19)

Oh, really? Toy? If your tag is just sort of not great.

B (11:22)

Yeah. If it's just junky, amateurish graffiti, it's toy graffiti. Well, I wonder if these people are.

A (11:28)

Like, hey, man, I'm not such a great artist. Lay off. I'm trying.

B (11:31)

Well, they would say, stop doing what you're doing and go do something else then. Because the streets are made for good graffiti, not toys. Right.

A (11:42)

The subway was where things got really a little more, like, artistic, I guess. Riding on a subway train in New York, you could obviously get your name out to more people, because that subway's going all over the place. It's also risky. And as we'll see, risk is a big. I mentioned the wall in front of the police station. Risk is a big, big part of it. Because as you'll see, when they made great efforts in the seventies and eighties in New York to stop this stuff, it wasn't like they were like, oh, boy, we better stop doing this graffiti. It was Sort of like, game on, man. This is what we're looking for. Now we know they're after us, so it makes it even more sort of challenging and risky.

B (12:26)

Yeah. I mean, these early graffiti artists were, by definition, juvenile delinquents to a person. So the idea of adding more challenges to them just played exactly into their whole ethos. Ethos I could never remember.

A (12:40)

And to be clear with this sub, I just want to. If you don't understand, they're not spray painting the moving subway cars. They would break into the rail yards at night, and all of a sudden, you have this huge canvas just sitting there.

B (12:50)

Yeah, exactly. And like you said, a lot of people would see it because that subway car the next day would be traveling all over New York. So that was a big deal. And that's kind of what you think of when you think of late 70s, early 80s graffiti in New York. Subway cars is kind of traveling all over the place with really cool, colorful graffiti on them.

A (13:09)

Totally.

B (13:10)

Do you want to take an early break or you want to keep talking and get into some different kinds and styles?

A (13:16)

Maybe let's break down the styles first.

B (13:18)

All right, let's do it. So it turns out there's three categories of graffiti in order of easiness to increasing hardness. There's gotta be a better way to put it, but I'm leaving it there. There's tags.

A (13:32)

Yeah.

B (13:33)

Which Livia calls very sterilly. Basic identifying signs. I love that one.

A (13:39)

Well, tags didn't come along until 1990. The word.

B (13:41)

Right. But essentially, it's your signature. It's your nickname spelled out in a very stylized way specific to you. That's what hand style is. And then when you use your hand style to put up that nickname in a certain stylized way on the wall, that today, at least, that's a tag. That's one of the three kinds of graffiti.

A (14:05)

Yeah. And before they called it tagging in 1990, back in the day, as they say, they would call it hitting, maybe, or bombing or just writing throw ups. Terrible name is the next kind. It can incorporate your tag as, like, your signature, but it's usually more than that. It's tag plus. A lot of times it's multicolor, like two or three colors, maybe even more if you've got the time. It's, you know, it's more. It's just simply said it's kind of more artistic.

B (14:34)

Yeah. And they're almost always, like, bubbly letters, from what I can tell.

A (14:39)

Yeah. Unless it's the block style, which I like.

B (14:42)

Yeah. Blockbuster.

A (14:44)

Yeah.

B (14:44)

I Like those as well. Those are. It's a different style. They're not throw ups. It's a kind of a style that could be used in throw ups. And they're a lot of times used, done using rollers, but they're really large letters. A lot of times they're more straight than bubbly, which is the differentiation, like you were saying. I like Blockbuster too, Chuck.

A (15:02)

Yeah, me too. And then you've got the best kind. When you might get a whole subway car and many hours to decorate this thing or a whole wall. And those are called pieces, just like you would call an art piece a piece, because it is an art piece, for sure.

B (15:18)

They're way more detailed, way more colors. They have all sorts of crazy cool effects, like fades from one color to another. They might have sparkles on them. They might somehow have, like a chrome effect. There's a lot more decoration to them. They're just amazing. That's probably what most people think of when they think of graffiti or pieces. Yeah, and these all are. They get. They start out easy. Like, you just practice doing tags.

A (15:43)

The.

B (15:43)

Then you move on to throw ups, and then you move on to pieces eventually. And so they also take different amounts of time. Like, once you get good at tagging, you can do this in like less than a minute, maybe five if you're just starting out. It can take a minute if you're really, really good and have been doing it a long time. To put a throw up up can take 15 minutes if you're still figuring out your way. Those pieces, this surprised me. They can take days to do with multiple crews working on the same thing, and it can still take days. And if you're just one dude making a piece, a masterpiece, it can take months, weeks and months to get it done. Which, I mean, if you're doing this illicitly, like on a wall somewhere, having to go back like night after night to do this and not get caught. That's rather thrilling, if you ask me.

A (16:33)

Well, and just the time investment for something that a third of the way through or halfway through or toward the end could go away.

B (16:41)

I thought about that too. Man, that's gotta hurt.

A (16:43)

That would really suck.

B (16:45)

What about wild style? I referred to it early on.

A (16:50)

Wild style is obviously super stylized. It's where you get sort of the overlapping letter patterns. It's usually fairly bright. And like you mentioned, like, a lot of shading, maybe a 3D effect. A lot of times these pieces have wild style involved, right?

B (17:08)

Yeah, it's kind of like the. The most advanced form I guess just because it's so. It's just. It's really hard to do, and it's the most intricate, usually. But it's also kind of, like, gone beyond what most people appreciate as graffiti, where they have no idea what this thing says. Like, other graffiti artists can read it, but the average person is just like, oh, look at that mishmash of colors. It's kind of like how metal bands logos have kind of evolved, too, where you're like, I have no idea whose album this is. It's very much similar that wild style is. But one thing that stuck out to me, Chuck, Wild style, I'm like, that probably came around in maybe the 90s at the earliest. It's from the 70s, too. Like, all of this stuff is from the 70s. So in the 70s, in New York City, you. The general guidelines for what constitutes graffiti still today were laid out and established by those people. Like, it's still followed today. I think that's amazing. You know, I thought it'd be added piece by piece over the decades, but no, they figured it out pretty much right out of the gate.

A (18:15)

Yeah. That's cool. I love it. And then if you've ever seen, like, and this is a little more west coast, like, the old English style or, like, the Western saloon lettering that's known as cholo style, a word that, you know, is sort of associated with, like, gang culture, like Mexican gang culture, but that developed from that Chicano writing culture on the west coast and then spread around. Like, you can see that on the East Coast. But it's definitely. I feel like, more west coast thing. And that looks super cool, too.

B (18:44)

No, it definitely does. There's also. They use a lot of characters, cartoonish characters of, like, gangbangers with bandanas, like, almost over their eyes. That kind of dude. Yeah, they show up a lot. It just seems like there's a lot more cartoon figures in cholo style than, say, like, New York graffiti. There was one more style that I ran across called anti style or ignorant style. And essentially, it's like what most people would call toy. It's just primitive. It's amateurish. But it's done on purpose because it's done by graffiti artists, a lot of whom are actually really good, who are like, this has gotten totally out of control. Have you seen this wild style stuff? We need to, like, get back to basics and just have fun with this again. And so they're kind of trying to recapture what the earliest graffiti artists from, like, the 70s were doing as they. When they figured it out. As they went along. A lot of people hate it, can't stand it. They think it's just a dumb idea. But from what I can tell, if you're a good artist, doing purposefully primitive work is actually pretty cool looking.

A (19:46)

All right, should we take that break?

B (19:48)

I do want to take that break, Chuck.

A (19:50)

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A (22:43)

Want to learn about a pterosaur and call a pterodactyl how to take a perfect boob with all about fractals, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, the Lizzie Borden murders, and the cannabis. That's stuff you should know. Word up, Jerry. All right, so we mentioned markers early on and obviously like I said, inside, like on the wall of a subway car a lot of times, maybe not even inside, but if you just want to provide detail for a larger piece on like the exterior of a subway car or wall or something. Yeah, you could use a marker. And in the early days, a pilot Markzalot and Dry Mark DRI and Sanford King size were. They were very broad tip markers. So those were some of the early markers that were the most popular. And you could also refill a lot of those with different kinds of ink. So the felt was just sort of the instrument and you could put whatever color or mix colors if you wanted to, for sure. And they would also make their own stuff. It's a very sort of DIY style of art where they were making their own tools and components. Maybe like shoe polish bottles and stuff like that.

B (23:50)

Yeah, you also mentioned that it's one of the four pillars of hip hop. There's technically five as far as Africa Bombada is concerned. And that would be knowledge is the fifth pillar, like knowledge of self, knowledge of where you come from, your history, real KRS1 stuff, you know.

A (24:09)

Yeah.

B (24:09)

And so as being part of hip hop culture, I don't know if we said the other ones. Emceeing and DJing and breaking. Yeah, and graffiti and knowledge. Those are the five pillars of hip hop. And like the other stuff, like emceeing and DJing and all that and breaking in particular, there's a real competitive element to graffiti, like where you can go so far as you end up in a war with other artists where you're spraying over their stuff, you're spraying over your stuff. And that is not. You're not supposed to do that. Like, if you spray over somebody's stuff, it better be terrible work and you better be really good at it because that's a huge flex, I guess you would say, if it was 2024.

A (24:51)

Yeah, for sure. It is also intersected with other art forms over the years. In the 1980s, there was a comic artist named Vaughn Bode who was very influential to this culture. He had a couple of characters, Puck and Cheech Wizard. He came up with. I think he came up with these characters like in the 1950s.

B (25:14)

Wow.

A (25:14)

But then in the 60s, they were in like self published comics and then went a little more. And when I say mainstream, obviously not mainstream mainstream, but like 72 to 75. They were in the National Lampoon, so a little more mainstream.

B (25:27)

Right.

A (25:28)

And if you think you've heard that name before, that sounds familiar. You might have heard the song sure Shot by the Beastie Boys. I'm like Von Bode. I'm a Cheech wizard. Never quitting, so you won't listen.

B (25:40)

Very nice. Well said.

A (25:42)

Yeah, I knew I had heard that before. I was like, that's been in a song. I know it.

B (25:46)

Yeah. And Cheech wizard is essentially like a giant wizard hat with some legs coming out of it. It's Cheech wizard and he's like a wise, smart ass kind of, well, wizard hat. And I don't. I didn't see why, but for some reason, graffiti culture just loved that stuff. So Cheech wizard shows up and Puck the Lizard show up in a lot of graffiti from the 70s and 80s. And then one of the other influences, I saw that Cheech wizard or Vaughn Bode had his lettering for his comics. From what I can tell, he came up with bubble letters and that that made its way into graffiti directly from Vaughn Bode's comics.

A (26:25)

Oh, graffiti. And the book covers of math books of Gen X Kids.

B (26:30)

Yep.

A (26:31)

I was big into the bubble lettering.

B (26:33)

Yeah. Using those pins with like the five different colors that you can click down.

A (26:38)

Yeah. I was okay at it. I definitely use those pins. I remember G's giving me a lot of trouble and S's giving me a lot of trouble. Those are hard, but I tried.

B (26:50)

How was your passive bubble? Q?

A (26:54)

Oh, God. Is that a thing?

B (26:57)

It is a thing. That doesn't sound possible. I think I just laid down the gauntlet for somebody to come up with that.

A (27:02)

Oh, wow. So graffiti starts to spread around the world. Britain in the late 70s, Amsterdam in particular in the Netherlands, and their punk scenes in the late 70s. They started doing some of this stuff, and then it also helped spread because of media a little bit. I mean, most of it was fairly underground media at the time, unless it was some news report that had a scathing report. But there was a photographer named Henry Chalfont.

B (27:29)

Yeah.

A (27:29)

Who did a few projects, one of which I highly Recommend Watching on YouTube, a documentary from 1983 called Style wars, which is a really good watch.

B (27:37)

It's one of those ones where you're like, I feel cooler just watching this thing.

A (27:41)

Yeah.

B (27:42)

He just turned the. He turned the camera. He and the director, Tony Silver, who worked together, they turned the camera on these graffiti artists and just had them talk and show what they were doing and explain why they were doing this. And then Intersperse is like breakdancing from the Rocksteady crew when they were just starting out. It's just super cool. Like, this captured time capsule, like, moment in time where this is all starting. Henry Chalfont got it. He was like, we need to document this, because this is going to be important.

A (28:17)

Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, there's other things like photographs and this and that, but when you look at the birth of a new art form in sort of a burgeoning culture, to have this sort of one document so like, perfectly capture this moment in time like you were talking about. It's. I mean, that should be in, like, the Library of Congress, like, that kind of stuff for sure, or whatever. What's the film version of that? I can't remember the name of it.

B (28:41)

The Fiberi of Fumbus.

A (28:43)

Yeah. Wow.

B (28:46)

I know. That deserved a wow. I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here in year 17. Oh, so you said that it was. It was like a document. Right. It actually is kind of referred to in. In graffiti culture still today. Like, if somebody's starting out and they're like, what should I go? What can I learn from One of the things that people will refer them to, Style Wars. Because, again, these. These, like, essential guidelines were laid down at this time.

A (29:14)

Yeah.

B (29:15)

So you can still learn a ton from watching Star wars or. Henry Chalfont got into a couple of other projects, too, one with a photographer named Martha Cooper called Subway Art. I've also seen newbies referred to that book, too. And then another one with another photographer, James Prigoff, called Spray Can Art. So Henry Chalfont had a real impact on, like, documenting this stuff that still is important today.

A (29:41)

Yeah, he. It was kind of like. It made me think of the guy. I can't remember his name. But the famous photographer who captured the Southern California skateboard culture early on, because they seem like kind of the only people doing that in such a sort of artistic and profound way, you know?

B (29:57)

Right. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

A (29:58)

Good stuff.

B (29:59)

Two other things to call out. There's a photographer named Gordon Matta Clark who documented photo in photographs, just like tags all around New York City, has a pretty cool. I think they make showings of his photograph sometimes. And then the movie Wild Style actually came out a year before Style Wars, 1982. It's considered the first hip hop movie ever. I think it was a Fab 5 Freddy project, but it has the Rocksteady crew, one of the rare early woman graffiti artists. Lady Pink, she's in it. And then King Ad Rock is in it. Before he was called King Ad Rock before the Beastie Boys. Yeah, but there's a ton of, like, the whole premise of this. It's a. It's a movie, like a fictional movie, but the whole premise is this guy's being hired to, well, I guess put up some graffiti by this. I can't remember another dude or a company or something like that.

A (30:51)

All right, I'll check that out.

B (30:53)

Thanks.

A (30:53)

So, you know, we mentioned graffiti as art because graffiti is art. But as far as being accepted into, like, the legitimate art community, that sort of happened in fits and starts over the years. There was an. I guess the first academic article about Graffiti was in 1969 in the urban Review by Herbert Cole. Was called Names, Graffiti and culture. And then a few Years later, in 1972, a big deal happened when. Or a big deal for that culture, at least. Hugo Martinez is a student activist at City College in New York, and he helped start a collective called United Graffiti Artists with a bunch of Puerto Rican teen graffiti artists. And that was sort of the first collective where he was like, hey, do this stuff on canvas, because this is art. And they had an exhibition at City College and then the very first graffiti art gallery show at the Razor Gallery in soho that same year.

B (31:47)

Right. Yeah. They became really influential the next year in 1973, choreographer Twyla Tharp, she had the United Graffiti Artists do basically the scene decorations for her performance in Chicago. I can't remember what it was called, but weirdly, the dance was choreographed to Beach Boys music with graffiti in the background. It was a real mishmash.

A (32:14)

Did you say Beastie Boys music?

B (32:16)

No, I said Beach Boys. And the whole time she just kept going, twyla, Twyla, Twyla. While she danced. That's good.

A (32:25)

You're Getting better.

B (32:26)

Yeah, it comes and goes.

A (32:29)

We did mention, you know, obviously the other side of the coin is there is and still are people that think this is just vandalism. They think it's just like urban decay happening before our very eyes. And in the early 70s, New York got on board that line of thinking. At least the government did. When Mayor John Lindsay declared a war on graffiti that following year, in 72, the city council said it's illegal to even carry an aerosol can in a public facility. And then in 75, they created the Transit Police Graffiti Squad. And, you know, they're cleaning up subway cars. But like I said earlier, all this was. Was like, game on. Like, there's not a single graffiti artist that was intimidated or scared out of doing what they were going to do because of this. If anything, it heightened it.

B (33:19)

Yeah. Another example of that is they outlawed selling spray paint to teenagers in New York City.

A (33:27)

Yeah.

B (33:27)

And so graffiti artists were like, oh, okay, we'll just start stealing it. That's cheaper anyway. So stealing your spray paint became like just a part of. Of graffiti in New York in the. In the 70s and 80s.

A (33:38)

Yeah. Not condoning that.

B (33:39)

Well, I said they were juvenile delinquents, and I wasn't kidding.

A (33:43)

Ed Koch, famous New York mayor in the latest 70s and 77, was very anti graffiti and would razor wire the subway yards, had guard dogs. He had cops, like, staking out houses and following kids home from school.

B (33:58)

That's nuts, man.

A (33:59)

Yeah, that's just nuts.

B (34:02)

So I think. I don't know if Koch. Yeah, I think Koch was still mayor at the time. They came up with the Metro Transit Authority's clean car program, and this one actually had an impact. This was beyond razor wire and German shepherds. Like this was. If we find a train car has been hit overnight with graffiti, it's not going to go back out there until that graffiti is cleaned off.

A (34:23)

Yeah.

B (34:24)

So imagine like working all night or whatever and getting your. Your piece up and it gets cleaned off before it even leaves the transit station. So that actually worked. And by 1989, apparently, like whole car graffiti was just not around anymore in New York. Like, you can still see it on cars, but they used to use the entire car. There's a really famous one by Futura 2000 and Dondi, which is called Brake, and it's considered one of the greatest full subway car masterpieces anyone's ever done. It's beyond description. Just go look up Brake by Dondi and Futura 2000.

A (35:07)

What did you think of it?

B (35:08)

I thought it Was amazing because it just completely departed from any kind of. I know how just ridiculous I sound right now. It departed from any kind of convention. It used all sorts of new elements and stuff that I hadn't seen anywhere else. And you really had to kind of examine it in detail. And then also stepping back to kind of take the whole thing in.

A (35:29)

I didn't love it.

B (35:30)

Yeah, I mean, I could see that it's, you know. Yeah, exactly.

A (35:34)

Or let's say this. I've seen a lot other stuff that I thought was like, maybe it just appealed to me more. I was about to say it was way better, but that's again, it's just in the eye of the beholder, man.

B (35:43)

That was a really great way to put it.

A (35:46)

So thank you. I appreciate that. Again, I mentioned earlier that it was sort of a DIY community when I like figuring stuff out, sharing tips and tricks with one another. And from the beginning, they would use various nozzles from other types of cans or, you know, caps, they would call them from different products to provide different ways of painting. I know that, you know, when you spray that, I don't use this stuff, but that easy off oven cleaner, you know, sprays that big wide area. So they started using that to achieve the same effect with paint. And they, they, I mean, they were a real. I guess when they were buying the paint made a difference in the. The profits of Rust, Oleum and KRYLON over the 70s for sure.

B (36:28)

Yeah. But Rust Oleum and Kryon were. Krylon were specifically avoiding marketing or making their products attractive to graffiti artists.

A (36:37)

They couldn't do that.

B (36:38)

No, this was, this was. No, you did not want your brand being accused of catering to graffiti artists at the time. But it was still pretty good. It was useful. And one of the reasons why is because they were both chock full of lead up until the late 70s. And lead does all sorts of great stuff for spray paint. It makes it dry faster, it makes colors brighter, it's more durable, it's moisture resistant. So when the leg got taken out, that was a real bummer for graffiti artists. I mean, I could see that having a huge impact.

A (37:13)

Yeah. In Europe they did market. There were a couple in the 90s, Montana and Molotov brands of spray paint actually target street art markets and have all kinds of weather resistant paints and crazy colors and different effects with their caps. So they embraced it, basically said, hey, come buy our stuff.

B (37:35)

Yes, but if you're a purist in America, you probably are still using Rust Oleum or Krylon yeah. One of the other things that really kind of evolved, that helped things along was not having to take the spray nozzle off of easy off anymore and having nozzles that were designed and sold for graffiti art. Like all sorts of different kinds of nozzles that do all sorts of different kinds of things.

A (38:00)

Yeah, I mean, you know, fat lines and skinny lines. Different caps achieve those effects. They had calligraphy caps. If you've ever been in a paint store and looked at, you know, sometimes you can even spray a little piece of cardboard they have there on the wall.

B (38:15)

Lucky.

A (38:16)

But, you know, sometimes it's a little round pinhole, but sometimes it's a slot. And those are calligraphy caps, like a horizontal line. I never knew that.

B (38:25)

I think those are big in cholo graffiti too.

A (38:28)

Yeah.

B (38:30)

Needle caps, they make splatters. So if you want like controlled drips, you don't want uncontrolled drips or unintentional drips, but you might want your piece to have some drip look to it. So you would use needle caps. They also add texture to the lines because they. There's like a, like a splattery haze that when you step back, just kind of softens the lines a little bit from the needle caps. It's pretty cool.

A (38:53)

Should we take our second break?

B (38:55)

I think we should.

A (38:56)

All right, we'll come back right after this. Attention parents and grandparents. If you're looking for a gift that's more than just a toy, give them something that inspires confidence and adventure all year long. Give them a Guardian bike. The easiest, safest, and number one kids bike on the market.

B (39:25)

Yeah. With USA made Kids specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day with no training wheels needed. It's why Guardian is America's favorite kids bike and the New York Times and Wirecutter's top pick three years in a row.

A (39:39)

That's right. My daughter has a Guardian bike and she loves it. And that thing was really easy to put together. And get this. This holiday season, Guardian is offering their biggest deal of the year. Over 40% in savings on all bikes plus $100 in free accessories. Guardian bikes have become one of the most sought after gifts of the season. And inventory is going. So don't wait. Join over a half a million families who've discovered the magic of guardian. Visit guardianbikes.com to shop now. Support for the show Today comes from public.com. you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

B (40:22)

Yeah, that's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

A (40:38)

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves risk of loss including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by Zerohash complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures.

B (41:13)

Hey everybody. If you care about what's in your vitamins, you're going to love now. Now Foods employs over 150 scientists who all share an obsession with quality. Now does comprehensive testing for everything from pesticides and contaminants to potency. And their obsession with quality means they never settle for good enough. And when it comes to the vitamins you take, neither should you. And now B12 shots provide a full spectrum of B vitamins, including a 10,000 microgram blast of vitamin B12 in convenient on the go packets. They're sugar free and vegan in a delicious mixed berry flavor. Visit nowfoods.com stuff to learn more.

A (41:47)

Want to learn about a pterosaur and call a pterodactyl? How to take a perfect booboo $genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, the Lizzie Border Murders, and the Cannonball Runs don't explain everything. Word up, Jerry.

B (42:03)

So if you wanted to get into this kind of thing, there's a place to start and it's called developing your hand style. And that is your own personal way of writing your your tag essentially. And graffiti artists will come up with like their own entire alphabets that they just design themselves. And there's a really great website that's super useful if you do want to get into graffiti called bombingscience.com they have a post of 61 different graffiti artists and their alphabets essentially that they've created for their tags. And it's really cool. Some of them you're like, I have no idea what letter that is. But even still, they're just super neat that people have put this much thought into it and come up with A. A font, essentially their own personal font that they use for graffiti. And the way that you do that is by practicing to develop your own hand style. And that is essentially step one. And you do that not on a wall or any public place or even with paint. You start out with pens and markers. Figuring it out.

A (43:08)

That's right. And now we're gonna give you some tips.

B (43:12)

Oh, okay. There we go.

A (43:14)

You're gonna wanna shake that can up, guys. Gotta shake it really, really good. All kidding aside, you do wanna shake that can up, because that's what makes the paint flow really well. Don't shortchange that. Shake.

B (43:30)

I feel like I'm speaking for a lot of listeners in saying that. I can't help but feel a little forlorn that you're not doing this whole list in that voice.

A (43:40)

All right, I'll keep going. Okay, step two, guys. Can control. So this is how you're going to avoid those unwanted drips. Get a feel for that pressure. It's going to determine how quickly you're going to move that hand to achieve the end result that you're after.

B (43:56)

Very nice. Can control, it's called.

A (43:59)

And then finally, guys, you're really going to want to adjust that distance from the wall. If you're closer, it's going to be thinner. It's going to be more saturated. It's going to be great for outlines. You step a little further away, it's going to diffuse out. It's going to cover a wider area. It's just science, guys.

B (44:15)

Very nice, man.

A (44:17)

All right, and scene.

B (44:19)

So, yes, the upshot of all this is the figuring out the nozzle pressure and the distance from the wall are basically the two most basic things that you can understand and learn about graffiti. But it's also the things that come up the most.

A (44:35)

That's right. And some of the rules, which I kind of like to see, you don't tag churches. You don't graffiti churches, you don't graffiti schools. You're not supposed to. At least hospitals. You're not supposed to do this to someone's house or their car or certainly a headstone at a cemetery or nature. Like trees and rocks. You don't. Those big rocks in Central park, you don't tag those. That's not what you're supposed to do. And of course, you don't snitch, because you know what they get?

B (45:04)

They get a stitch or two, from what I understand.

A (45:06)

That's right.

B (45:08)

Yeah. There's a story of an artist named Cope2 who is still considered legendary, but he was accused of snitching and just like overnight, his reputation just went into the gutter.

A (45:19)

Oh, wow. Yeah, I imagine.

B (45:20)

Yeah. They don't take snitching lightly, for sure. And then there's other things, too. Like, we've basically been focusing on spray painting for good reason. I mean, it's the first medium, the most used medium, and then there's markers and all that. But there's other stuff you can do that's considered graffiti, too. You can get yourself some sort of poster, get some wheat paste and stick it up like an old timey handbill that you might see.

A (45:46)

Yeah.

B (45:46)

You can make stickers. A lot of people make stickers. You can come up with stencils like a real Banksy. And all of these things have, like, the advantage of most of the work being done at home in a studio, out of sight, not in public. And then you can throw them up pretty quickly and move on and not get caught. I think that makes it a different form of graffiti in that sense. But it's still. I mean, it's still street art at the very least.

A (46:13)

Yeah, I think so. And then Livia dug up this thing called reverse graffiti, which I had never heard of, and she used a very good example. Like when you use your finger to. Right. Wash me on a dusty car, you're using an inverse of something to create an image. So a lot of times it's like a political statement maybe, or maybe to call attention to pollution or the environment or something like that. And it's also one where they're saying, like, hey, I'm cleaning a surface, technically not defacing anything, so come at me.

B (46:48)

Yeah. And they'll still just come along and be like, oh, no, now we're going to clean this wall. Now that you've done this.

A (46:54)

Now that you put something beautiful up. Yeah.

B (46:58)

So over the years, some people have really kind of made the jump into, like, mega mondo fame, like art world fame, who started out as graffiti artists. One of them was Jean Michel Basquiat. A lot of people point to him as a wildly successful artist who started out in graffiti. Seymour was his tag. He started out in the late 70s with a friend named Al Diaz. By the 80s, his paintings were some of the most expensive in the art world. And he was friends with Andy warhol. And by 1982, he had a solo exhibition. This is like a graffiti artist. This is a huge leap for somebody to make. And I think he might have been the first. I think he came before Keith Haring.

A (47:44)

Yeah. Basquiat had A pretty good indie movie made about him. I think it was Jeffrey Wright that played him back in the maybe 90s.

B (47:52)

It was really good.

A (47:53)

But. Yeah, you mentioned Keith Haring, too. They were friends. We were just in New York for fall break, and the family went to moma and the Whitney, and we saw Basquiats and obviously Warhol's and some Keith Haring stuff in person, which is always a thrill. And Keith Haring, I know we've talked about before, but he started drawing in chalk on the. Like when they would take a advertisement down on the subway walls, there would be this, like, backboard there, and he would put his art up there and was very famous initially, at least for the Radiant Baby was kind of his tag.

B (48:27)

Yeah.

A (48:28)

And if you don't know the Radiant Baby, like, if you looked it up, you'd probably seen it somewhere before. It's very famous.

B (48:33)

Yes. Yeah. It's like a crawling silhouette with, like, light lines coming off of it.

A (48:39)

Yeah. And very sadly, Jean Michel Basquiat would pass from a heroin overdose in the late 80s, and Keith Haring died from complications from AIDS and HIV, I believe, in 1990.

B (48:52)

I read an interview with Basquiat. It must have been in, like, 1988, because the interviewer, it was like he got up no less than two or three times to go shoot heroin in this rather short interview. Like, he could not do it. He would have gotten sick like that quickly.

A (49:08)

Geez.

B (49:09)

There's also. Shepard Fairey is very famous for his Andre the Giant Has a Posse stickers that he made. And then also for his Hope poster of Barack Obama during the 2008 election.

A (49:23)

Yeah, Shepard Fairey. Good work.

B (49:25)

Yep. And we've mentioned Banksy, right?

A (49:30)

Yeah. I mean, do we have to talk about Banksy?

B (49:32)

No, there's a couple other ones that I want to call out that are still working today.

A (49:36)

Yeah, let's do that.

B (49:37)

So Dondi White, he's an overlooked one. He was the one who, with Futura 2000, did that full car called Brake. But he hung out with Keith Haring and Basquiat and Kenny Scharf and Futura 2000. Like, he was a. He never really made the leap to the major art world. He was like a old school underground artist.

A (49:59)

Yeah. And did you mention. No, you didn't mention Lady K. Who'd you mention earlier?

B (50:03)

Lady Pink.

A (50:04)

Oh, Lady K. Lady K is different. Lady K is French, I believe. Right. In Paris.

B (50:09)

I believe that's where she was born. And she might be working there still. Either Paris or New York.

A (50:14)

Yeah, Very cool stuff. There too.

B (50:16)

Yeah. And then also. So check out her stuff. And then check out Rens R E N S who's working in Copenhagen. It is mind numbing how amazing this work is. Like, I just can't even imagine conceiving of a lot of it, let alone being good at it.

A (50:33)

Yeah, it's beautiful, beautiful stuff. It's really like. I'm looking at some of them now. Man, that's amazing.

B (50:41)

And then there's one called Kid Ult, who is a vandal. Actually, like purposefully vandalizes luxury brand stores who have collaborated with graffiti artists for their brands. They don't like that. So they will like. It's not really like pieces that they're putting up. It's more like huge, huge vandalizations of. Of these stores.

A (51:06)

Oh, wow.

B (51:06)

Yeah.

A (51:07)

Oh, that's. Is that the one that's like stores that are kind of co opting graffiti is like the cool thing. He'll go, hit them, kiddolt. Yeah, but they're probably like, great.

B (51:17)

Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Oh, wait, you mean the stores.

A (51:20)

Yeah.

B (51:21)

I don't know. I've heard that they don't like Kidd Ult very much.

A (51:24)

Oh, really? Okay.

B (51:26)

And then lastly, I want to call out Apothecary, who never really got off the ground. That's Yumi's tag from when she got into this. She's always been interested in B boy culture, so of course she came up with graffiti, a graffiti tag. And I think she realized like, fairly early on, this is way too long. Apothecary to use as a tag. So I don't think. I think it kind of petered out fairly early on.

A (51:51)

I'm gonna have to tell Emily that. Cause I mean, obviously Apothecary is right up her alley, so.

B (51:56)

Yeah, for sure.

A (51:57)

That's funny.

B (51:58)

You got anything else?

A (52:00)

I got nothing else. I'm gonna work on my tag. I'm gonna come up with a tag and a font.

B (52:05)

Nice. Yeah. Get busy on your hand style, yo.

A (52:08)

Yeah.

B (52:09)

Since we were just talking about hand style again, I think that means it's time for listener mail.

A (52:17)

Yeah. This is from Ben in Connecticut, who's been listening for quite a while and recently heard our Selects episode, the Great Finger in the Wendy's Chili Caper.

B (52:27)

That's good.

A (52:28)

I remember that one. It was incredible. We were commenting about the way Letterman and Leno covered that, and that Letterman was funnier, you know, no surprise there for me at least. I assume you as well.

B (52:41)

Yeah.

A (52:42)

And then Josh mentioned Leno's well known love of cars to Differentiate the late night host. However, guys, David Letterman is well known for within the Indy car racing world as one of the owners of Rahal Lederman Lanigan Racing. The team won the CART Indy Championship in 1992, the year the team was founded, and has won the Indy 500 twice with drivers Buddy Rice in 2004 and Takuma Sato in 2020. So while Leno may be more well known for his love of automotive history and tinkering with race cars, David Letterman is also well known within the auto automotive world. And that is from Ben in Connecticut. So I think the takeaway there is Letterman owns Leno once again.

B (53:24)

Yeah. What was. Who was that? Ben.

A (53:27)

Yeah, and it's. It's so low hanging fruit to bag on Lino. So I don't think I'm original or cool for doing so.

B (53:34)

Oh, no, but it's. I mean, you still mean it.

A (53:37)

Yeah.

B (53:39)

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Ben. That was a very arcane fact that I definitely hadn't heard. And I also just realized that arcane would be a great tag too. Arcane?

A (53:51)

Well, you and. You and Yumi went out together and did this like arcane and apothecary together. They'd be like, who is this new power couple in graffiti?

B (53:59)

This crew is amazing.

A (54:01)

Wow.

B (54:01)

What hand style.

A (54:03)

I know. And I'd say, guys, you got it just right.

B (54:07)

Yeah. Thank you for doing that voice. You really. I think you saved the episode.

A (54:12)

I kind of stole that from Eddie Murphy when he used to do the white voice.

B (54:16)

Oh, is that who that was?

A (54:17)

Yeah, just a little bit.

B (54:19)

I was going to guess Johnny Carson on helium doing George W. Bush. Yeah. Go back and listen. You'll be like, oh my God. Well, I think that's it. Yes, Ben. Thank you very much for that email, Ben. And if you want to be like Ben and get in touch with us, we love that kind of thing. You can send it off to stuff podcast@iheartradio.com.

A (54:44)

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Attention parents and grandparents. If you're looking for a gift that's more than just a toy, give them something that inspires confidence and adventure all year long. Give them a Guardian bike, the easiest, safest and number one kids bike on the market.

B (55:14)

Yeah. With USA made Kids specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day with no training wheels needed. It's why Guardian is America's favorite Kids bike and the New York Times and Wirecutters top pick three years in a row.

A (55:29)

That's right. My daughter has a Guardian bike and she loves it and that thing was really easy to put together. And get this this holiday season Guardian is offering their biggest deal of the year. Over 40% in savings on all bikes plus $100 in free accessories. Guardian bikes have become one of the most sought after gifts of the season and inventory is going fast. So don't wait. Join over a half a million families who discovered the magic of guardian. Visit guardianbikes.com to sh. Support for the show today comes from public.com you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that.

B (56:11)

Yeah, that's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account.

A (56:27)

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds in a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provides by ZeroHash complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures.

B (57:02)

Hey everybody, I want to tell you about Now Foods. They're committed to providing the best quality at the best price because Quality is Now's healthy obsession. Now performs 31,000 quality tests each month to ensure their supplements are of the highest quality, purity and potency. And now B12 shots provide a full spectrum of B vitamins, including a 10,000 microgram blast of vitamin B12 in convenient on the go packets. They're sugar free and vegan in a delicious mixed berry flavor. So visit nowfoods.comstuff to learn more.

A (57:33)

This is an I Heart podcast.