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N.Y. graffiti fans don't love him
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 1, 2006
NEW YORK - Pick a fight with graffiti artists and you can expect to see your name plastered all around town. New York's graffiti artists and their supporters have tagged City Council member Peter Vallone Jr. as their archenemy. And they are making their feelings plain by putting his name everywhere - in graffiti, on Internet message boards and in court papers challenging his crackdown. Vallone, 45, has made graffiti his signature issue since he was first elected in 2001. He has pushed through laws that raise fines for graffiti offenders - he calls them "punks" and "miscreants" - and penalize landlords who do not clean graffiti from their walls. The former prosecutor also won passage of a law that bars the possession or purchase of spray paint, broad-tipped indelible markers and etching acid by anyone younger than 21. "Art, I like. But this is not art; this is vandalism," Vallone said one recent evening as he drove through his district in Queens, where spray-painted angular scribbles and multicolored block letters wrap around buildings and underpasses. Several young artists who say they use the restricted art supplies for legal artwork filed a federal lawsuit over the new measure, saying it violates their First Amendment right to freedom of expression. It is a debate with a long history in New York. Those who have fought to erase graffiti over the years, including Mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Ed Koch, say it is a symbol of blight that invites worse crimes and is often a tool of gang communication. During the 1980s, the transit agency introduced paint-resistant subway cars, robbing graffiti writers of their preferred canvas. Graffiti artists - or graffiti vandals, as some call them - say their work is a legitimate form of art intertwined with city history and urban American culture. Graffiti is "the official visual dialect of a generation," and demonizing it "takes away their legitimacy," said fashion designer Mark Ecko, who has led the legal challenges to Vallone's laws. In January, on a giant billboard near the Manhattan Bridge, graffiti artists spray-painted in enormous bubble letters a four-letter insult followed by the council member's name. "My first reaction is that if I'm making criminals upset, I must be doing something right," said Vallone.
[Last modified June 1, 2006, 06:31:41]
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