I’m not trying to rehash any old arguments about graffiti.
I’m just curious as to the time period / era when it started
taking over. I don’t recall any of this stuff back when I was
growing up in the Sixties. Gosh, I sure miss the good
old days !
It seems like everywhere you look, it’s there.[V]
I grew up in the 60’s as well, and I can tell you that graffitti was alive and well back then. Even more destructive forms of vandalism were popular back then, such as smashing windows on new cars in transit on open autorackss
I’ve also seen artsy graffitti on box cars in classic trains magazine dating from the steam era…
People should have they hands cut off like over Seas they do that stuff.[2c]
Ever see a NYC subway or Metro train circa 1975? Oh Boy was graffiti around then, and it could almost be called art, almost that is…same for freights about the same time. I would say as soon as the spray paint can was invented, thats when the graffiti began to appear all over everything, but it was mostly graffiti, not tagging, that came later when no talented numb-knuts got there hands on the spray cans.
I personally don’t recall seeing an awful lot in the 70’s around 71-74. I do remember the chalk type graffiti, but not the loud, colerful stuff we see now a days. Would be interesting to know when the cycle started to happen. I have yet to see any steam era graffiti, would be interesting to see what they did.
I’ll take a stab at this and suggest the late eighties or early ninties for the rail car covering graffiti. So much for the chalk drawings on the sides of cars. At least that was more conspicuous.
Well sure I have seen that, usually it was chalked on the car, that to me is harmless. The major waste of paint is another item all together.
The spray can was invented in 1949, and was improved in 1953. It took a while to take off as a popular form of vandalism. It wasn’t really common on railroad equipment until the late 70’ or early 80’s.
http://www.hiphop-network.com/articles/graffitiarticles/historyofgraff-arpone.asp
Whoever wrote the piece in the link above either doesn’t speak English as a first language, or has been smelling the fumes too long. Maybe both, but you’ll get the jist of the message.
I also do not recall massive graffiti prior to the late 70s. I think that, in addition to the spray can, it also took refinement of associated gang activity – a “mark your territory” sort of mentality. Perhaps I simply was not located in the right area. In some locations, presence of railroad police no doubt deterred some of that stuff, but roads running into financial difficulties probably had to cut back on cops with everything else, creating opportunities for the artistically inclined…
A few weeks ago I was looking at photographs I took in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I noticed that there was not nearly as much graffiti on freight cars as there is today.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=-1&TOPIC_ID=40680&REPLY_ID=423104#423104
What’s the difference between graffiti and tagging?
Massive vandalism graffiti seemed to get out of control starting in the early '90’s. I can look at slides from before that, and it doesn’t seem to be so bad. What really got me was when it started to appear on locomotives. No doubt about it though…it stinks no matter what it’s on!
In a time when rail travel by non fare paying transients (that’s Tramps, Hobos & Bums to you young guys) was a popular means of going anywhere to find work, there was a lot of very interesting grafitti. This was generally in scripted code and told of what and who to avoid and where there might be an offer of friendship and the ability to earn a dime or two.
Graffiti tends to be impersonal expression of idea or art,
while 'tagging" tends to be placing a personalized i.d. onto public places for recognotion
For instance there was this guy calling himself “Chaka” in the LA area, who had tagged over 400 public buildings and structures ranging from San Diego to oakland during his career. The State estimated he had caused over a million dollars worth of damage by the time they actually nailed him.
I used to see his ‘stuff’ ALL over, and it was amazing the places he would go, and the risk he would take, to plant his tags in mind blowing locations
Here is an example of his handiwork 
Moreover, graffiti is like “kilroy was here” while tagging is the modern day equivalent of carving your initials into a tree
You might want to search out an earlier Topic called “American Graffiti” for more experiences, opinions, and timelines.
Graffiti is much older than the railroads - I’m sure that the first “tag” happened not long after railroads came into being.
Seems like Trains did an article on graffiti a while back. Someone else can do the search. One “tag” that I remember is “Bozo Texino”, which included a face with a sombrero, IIRC. I think that was from the '40s.
Hey tree68, I thought “Bozo Texino” was George W. Bush!!
There was graffiti in the Roman Empire as well, so it’s not exactly new…and isn’t graffiti an Italian word?