It seemed like everyone in NYC was dressed up in costume riding the subway on Halloween night, and even the trains got into the spirit of the thing. One D train was spotted coated in bats, flames and Dracula himself on Halloween night at Norwood-205th Street station in the Bronx, as you can see in the photos above and below. It's impressively-done graffiti... so of course the MTA hated it and swiftly took it out of service.
“There’s nothing amusing about graffiti that takes train cars out of service, takes cleaners away from ensuring the spaces millions of riders use every day are sanitary, and costs thousands of dollars that could otherwise be used to help provide reliable, efficient and safe service,” the MTA said in the statement, adding that they are cooperating with the NYPD investigation into the vandalism.
The City reporter Jose Martinez, who was sent the pictures from a tipster, said that the graffiti was discovered just before the train went on a scheduled run to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue, and instead got sent to be scrubbed.
"This one clearly took some time and effort," Martinez told Gothamist. "It's quite intricate—just look at that Dracula. Whoever made the hit knew what they were aiming for, since just one car was tagged. And whoever tagged that train knew their way around 205th Street, to the point where they could have enough time to hit a train while it was laid up there...It can't be easy—there is a lot to watch out for, including a live third rail. Cracking a yard or layup tracks is no joke."
Martinez added that according to internal MTA reports, there have been at least three graffiti hits at the 205th Street (which is the end of the line, where cars are stored) this year; there have been approximately 245 such hits on trains year-to-date in 2019, which means we are on pace for a much lower amount from 2018, where there were over 750 such incidents.
As The City reported earlier this year, NYC Transit spent over $600K on cleaning graffiti from trains in 2018. They added that many of the artists tagging the trains were from out of town, hoping to gain some international fame.
That seems to check out: 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."
You can check out some more tagged trains from recent years here, here and here.
