Zap! You've Been Tagged!

By Jonathan Beaty

A decade ago, New York City subway cars were the primary target for industrious miscreants who, armed with marker pens and aerosol paint cans, scribbled and sprayed themselves into a major problem. City officials elsewhere in the country smugly assumed that gang graffiti were a blight limited largely to the Big Apple.

No more. The stylized smears born in the South Bronx have spread across the ) country, covering buildings, bridges and highways in every urban center. From Philadelphia to Santa Barbara, Calif., the annual costs of cleaning up after the underground artists are soaring into the billions. The nationwide proliferation of juvenile gangs has added to graffiti problems, but most of the damage is done by a new subculture of wandering spray-can artists who see themselves as itinerant self-expressionists. "Gang-related graffiti mark turf," says ethnographic researcher Devon Brewer of the University of California at Irvine. "But hip-hop graffiti are associated with break dancing and rap music and just say, 'I was here.' "

The fanciful graffiti forms range from stylized signature "tags" to mural- size "pieces" that elaborately blend fanciful script, cartoon characters and messages with the artist's street name. In Los Angeles authorities are contending with organized teams of taggers who use sophisticated climbing gear to spray their signatures on overpasses or dodge high-speed traffic to emblazon murals on freeway center dividers. "They know their names will be up for months because the state department of transportation has to shut down the freeway to paint over the dividers," a harried official complained last week at a Los Angeles antigraffiti conference attended by representatives from 28 Western U.S. cities. Cost in Los Angeles alone of removal and such prevention measures as coating buildings with special paint: $28 million yearly.

After comparing notes, few conferees saw much ground for optimism. "Southern California cities are spending $100 million a year for cleanup, and the national cost may exceed $4 billion," says vandalism expert Jay Beswick, founder of the National Graffiti Information Network.

California politicians, dismayed that retailers widely disregard a state law outlawing sales of aerosol paint cans to minors, are churning out new penalties for taggers. A measure that would revoke the driver's license of anyone caught writing a graffito has been sent to Governor George Deukmejian for signing. Another bill would require store owners to lock up millions of cans of spray paint to prevent shoplifting by taggers. But it is unlikely that such supply-side measures will quench the tagging urges of the Los Angeles spray-can artist known as Chaka and his competitor Ozone, who have left their gaudy signatures some 15,000 times across the breadth of the Los Angeles basin.

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles