A dozen subway cars on multiple different lines were tagged by graffiti artists last weekend, who left in their wake a colorful assemblage of images featuring a naked Betty Boop, comically oversized mushrooms, leprechaun outerwear, flames and more.
The MTA confirmed to Gothamist that there were graffiti incidents on a total of 24 cars on the Q, G, M, 1, 6 and 42nd Street Shuttle. A source told The City that most of the hits came sometime between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.—overnight subway service has been suspended since late April because of the pandemic—either in tunnels or along stretches of out-of-service tracks used to store trains.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy for vandalism, which takes valuable time, resources and taxpayer dollars away from the system at a time when the MTA is facing the worst financial crisis in its history," Sarah Feinberg, Interim President of NYC Transit, said in a statement to Gothamist. "Our cleaners work around the clock to remove the graffiti when it is found so we can keep our full fleet in service and avoid disruptions for customers.”
Another subway car tagged with graffiti in November 2020
Altogether, the MTA says graffiti hits are down 34% since last year, with 183 incidents in 2020 so far compared to 276 total in all of 2019. This number was much higher in 2018, however, when there were over 750 such incidents.
Despite the decrease in incidents, graffiti experts say that taggers are feeling more bold these days. “Enforcement is obviously way down,” an "underground explorer" named Bad Guy Joe told The City. “Graffiti writers on a whole are way more confident than they were just three or four years ago.”
Of the 183 hits that have happened in 2020, 153—or over 80% of them—have been in layup areas (136) or on in-service trains (17), which are (supposed to be) monitored by the NYPD. The remaining 30 incidents happened in yards, which are secured by the MTA.
The MTA spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to clean trains that have been tagged. However, catching taggers in the act is a far harder thing to do, especially because many of the artists tagging the trains are from out of town, hoping to gain some international fame.
In early 2018, the NYPD arrested three Spanish nationals for allegedly vandalizing subway train cars with "European style graffiti" in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. One of the taggers insisted at the time he had no idea tagging was illegal: "In Spain, it is normal and not a serious crime." Subway graffiti expert (and Gothamist co-founder) Jake Dobkin has previously noted, "Europeans do love to come to NYC and try to get up on a train. Most New York writers don't, because they know how quickly the trains will get buffed."
