Graffiti in NYC

 

“New York is one of the ugliest cities in the world,” declares Hugo Martinez in the no-nonsense, self-assured drawl so characteristic of the Capital of the World. “It’s a cacophony of fourth-rate architecture, all mixed up. It doesn’t have any grand buildings. What gives the city character is the immense fight between the classes – you can’t picture NYC without graf in the background.”

 

Contentious words guaranteed to strike a chord with some and a nerve with many, not least Lieutenant Mona of the dramatically-titled Anti-Graffiti Task Force. Spearheading the city’s zero-tolerance initiative – including a dedicated 311 graffiti-reporting hotline, although work in progress merits a 911 call – Mona’s official line is one of rigid condemnation. “I refer to them as vandals, because that is what they are. Make no mistake, they are not artists. Vandals are not interested in artistic expression, or social commentary, all they care about is getting their ‘ups’ all over the city.”

 

It’s statement that Martinez dismisses as “moronic” – although he doesn’t deny the core accusation. “Why can’t an artist be a vandal?” he counters. “I don’t trust art that’s legal. The world is fucked up – art is institutionalised if it’s legal. Art has to change something.” Dismissing the vast majority of the world’s graffiti as “bullshit”, Martinez argues that NYC remains the undisputed vanguard of the culture not only because the city gave birth to it, but because of the fiercely defiant attitude that still beats at its heart. He lists just four other cities worthy to share this kudos: Los Angeles, Rio, Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

 

Romanticising the situation a tad in favour of the underdog, it’s that age-old struggle between the trampled underprivileged and the ultra hard-line establishment – the former spraying their way back into public consciousness to re-appropriate a city that’s sold its soul to the high-rise fat cats; the latter scrubbing and scouring away their identities and clapping those “poor working-class schmucks” in the slammer.

 

But then battling the system’s no fun if the system rolls over and takes it. In January 2006, with the sale of aerosol paint to minors already prohibited – and merchants obliged to keep it locked away from potential shoplifters – Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. developed controversial legislation that would make it illegal for anyone under 21 to possess spray-paint or permanent markers. This sparked outrage from fashion mogul Marc Ecko, who sued Vallone and Mayor Bloomberg on behalf on art students everywhere. They backed down in May.

 

Bring it on, eggs Martinez. “Repression leads to aggression,” he asserts, exposing the core of any self-respecting class struggle. “Republicans are really good for graf – they believe in repression, and hard-line measures have made graffiti boom. Writers are inspired by being erased, and come up with quicker, more unusual ways to do it.”

 

“There are 11,000 train cars and 140,000 buildings in New York,” he goes on, clearly having done his research. And the advent of ‘the buff’ in the early ‘80s – a chemical wash that stripped the paint off trains every night – didn’t stamp out graf so much as fire it up further. “When they attacked the subway system and brought in graffiti-free trains, it moved onto the buildings,” he observes. “In the last twenty years, graf has blossomed again. Everyone’s killing the streets; they erase them much more often than the trains.”

 

Now in his mid-50s, Martinez has been immersed in the culture since his days as a philosophy student in 1972 – when he shuffled some Puerto Rican teenagers painting trains into a loose collective called United Graffiti Artists. Now, as part of his All City Project – the phrase ‘all city’ designating a writer with visible tags in all five boroughs – he’s invited an eclectic group of graf writers from teens to middle-age to spray their multicoloured mark all over the regulation décor of a low-income 1960s apartment.

 

And he has no qualms about sharing his views on the rest of the art world. “I didn’t want to turn it into a latrine for the wealthy, like every other gallery,” he scowls. “The art world is fifty people, and it represents their culture. Art’s a commodity.”

 

“There’s no such thing as a graf artist,” he continues, building up steam now. “That describes beautifying private property; figurative art. That’s not graffiti. It’s like Pat Boone is to rock ‘n’ roll – a dumbed-down version. A true graf writer will wait for a muralist, and then go over it. They have no love for private property – it’s more like punk rock. NYC is all about fighting and appropriation. Art doesn’t have to be legal – on some level, it’s all against one institution or another.”

 

© Nick Carson 2006. First published in Issue 5 of TEN4 magazine

 

Sawdust, incense and electric candlelight

Strolling down bright cobbled terraces past intricate fountains and facades, we could have landed in a Renaissance Mediterranean town rather than poverty-stricken Guatemala.

Once a booming cultural capital, Antigua was crippled by a great earthquake. But beneath its crumbling plasterwork the city still beats with grandiose colonial pride, and its Semana Santa celebrations rank amongst the best in Central America.

Before long the bustling centre was packed with vibrant costumes, thudding drums and swirling purple silk. And the rich, ceremonial aroma of Frankincense filled the air whenever an intricately-sculpted effigy slid solemnly past to the tune of its own brass band.

Hours of delicate stencil work were poured into the colourful palm-and-sawdust carpets that lay on the cobbles, through which the processions had to trample – only for the designs to be painstakingly rebuilt for the next, and the next. Before that Thursday night was done we would soak up the infectious spirit and lend a hand ourselves, scraping knees and staining fingers bright festive shades in the early hours.

Good Friday saw jubliant purple give way to sombre black, and besuited men marched mournfully through the curling wisps of Frankincense that still lingered in the air. As evening drew in the finale was a great white tomb of Christ, flickering by electric candlelight and borne by forty men. Attendants hoisted telegraph wires out of its path while another trundled behind with a portable generator to power the piercing flames.

Antigua, Guatemala – 28th March 2005

Jungle ruins and howling monkeys

Last week saw a five-day mission from Teguc in southern Honduras to the incredible Mayan ruins at Tikal in northern Guatemala. To heighten the adventure we were chased by Hurricane Adrian, which hit El Salvador with all its might but luckily (for us) fell apart before Honduras – we escaped with heavy downpours.
 
After stringing together various meandering bus-routes we chartered a small launch to Livingston. Accessible only by sea, this small Caribbean village bounces to a chilled reggae beat and is laced with the aroma of fine fish curry. After sampling its delicacies we were soon chugging inland down the stunning Rio Dulce, through steep-sided, jungle-fringed gorges squawking with parrots and herons.
 
From there it was another bus up to Flores in the north, a quaint colonial island town in the middle of a lake, linked by a long causeway to the mainland. This was another hour’s minibus ride from the ruins at Tikal, a huge complex with multi-tiered temples rising out of the jungle canopy and howler monkeys bellowing from the treetops, leaping from branch to branch with an mighty crash.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras – 28th May 2005

Scuba, hammocks and palms

Completed my training as a PADI Advanced Open Water Scuba diver in Utila, one of the Honduran Bay Islands and among the cheapest places to do so. Accompanied by an equally-qualified ‘buddy’, I can now dive to 30 metres anywhere in the world.

Highlights: gliding alongside a pair of turtles; eyeballing a resolutely evil-looking barracuda, hovering in the cabin of a seaweed-draped wreck; surviving an encounter with an irritable porcupine fish, rottweiler of the ocean. Still holding out for dolphins and the ongoing goal for all the dive boats: snorkelling with a whale shark, the biggest fish in the sea.

Open Water kicked things off with crucial skills like removing masks, sharing respirators and navigating underwater, followed by a series of recreational dives. Basics duly mastered, Advanced could offer a 30-metre deep dive; a wreck dive; a night dive by torchlight, jostling with phosphorescent creatures of the deep; and peak performance buoyancy, not unlike an underwater obstacle course complete with hoops, weights and giant hollow cubes.

Just returned from a night on Water Caye, an (almost) deserted island of fine white sand, just 100 metres long, off the coast of Utila. We chartered a friendly local captain to ferry us across in his tiny launch, slung up hammocks between the palms and built a campfire to barbeque fresh red snapper and bake potatoes by twinkling starlight.

Utila, Honduras – 19th May 2005

Milk, thieves and cloud forests

Had my first contact with Honduran street crime. I was returning from a singularly unimpressive ‘milk festival’ in Olancho, a bleached and dusty region reminiscent of the Wild West. But it wasn’t until returning to Teguc that the gun-toting bandits arrived.

After a draining four-hour journey by rattling chicken-bus, I emerged from the taxi and had the key in the lock when I felt a hand on my back, hot breath on my neck and the cold steel of a revolver against my head. Rattling the muzzle, my assailant’s initial greeting was dinero; solo dinero. But after I’d fumbled with my wallet for what seemed like an eternity, he changed his request to todo, snatched it and ran into the night.
 
I’ve since convinced myself that it was an empty threat – we were right outside the door of the apartment, and bullets are expensive. It probably wasn’t even loaded. But it’s only money, and it’s just not worth the risk.

Catacamas, home of that infamous fiesta de la leche, had at least provided some humble rustic appeal. Hundreds of steps ascended the hillside to a white cross, affording magnificent panoramic views over the sprawling plains below. But its charms were scraped somewhat thinly over the eight-hour round trip, capped by assault at gunpoint.
 
Last weekend was spent in the incredible cloud forest of La Tigra National Park. Spread across several mountains, its rambling trails snake past mines, rivers and a 40-metre waterfall. As we set off for an early trek at 5am, the clouds descended over the jungle canopy and laced the valleys below with thick white mist.

Venturing off the track, we followed a brook stained red with iron ore, accompanied by toucans, roadrunners and a lizard or two as we swung from Tarzan vines and took deep, grateful breaths of the pure mountain air. Incredible beauty, but not unspoiled: the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Mitch was all too evident, the sheer valley sides irrevocably scarred by landslides that cut great swathes through the trees.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras – 19th April 2005

Thunderous waterfalls and apricot ale

Spent a weekend at Lake Yojoa in the middle of the country, and stayed in the Honduran version of Royston Vasey on Friday night. According to the Rough Guide, Pena Blanca is a ’shabby overgrown village’ – we were inclined to agree.

Grinning locals supplied us with an assortment of conflicting directions as we struggled to track down the micro-brewery that’s recommended in all the guides, purportedly run by Robert, a guy from Oregon with a penchant for real ale.

Requesting la cervecería que se llama D&D in my finest pigeon-Spanish unearthed a barrel of red herrings, and it took a clued-up taxi driver to drop the pieces into place. As it transpired, asking for el gringo que hace cerveza would have cut out the leg-work. It was a well-deserved night by the pool-side sipping Robert’s selected fruity brews: mango, apricot, raspberry.
 
Trekked along a dusty track to the lake shore through miles of flat, palm-fringed marshland, misty mountains in the background. An unmarked trail lined with straw weaved through the shrub, then suddenly burst into a secluded bay where handmade boats rocked in the breeze and a grizzled Honduran fished peacefully, soaking up the view.

The following day we paid a visit to Catarata de Pulhapanzak, an incredible waterfall some 10km from Yojoa. Clambering over slippery rocks you could duck underneath for a feeling like a thousand power-showers. Jutting four metres above a natural plunge-pool was a rocky overhang, and after watching the local kids flinging themselves into the murky unknown we were inspired to follow suit.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras – 10th April 2005

Rivers of steam and mountains of fire

Tried my hand at horse-riding in the mountains around Copán this weekend: having scaled the gravely slopes we plunged through a river, kicking up spray, to take in a ruined Mayan village deep in the forest.

Later that evening, a group of us piled on the back of a pick-up to some hot springs in the mountains. Two man-made pools – one lukewarm and pleasant, the other bubbling in a frothful frenzy – sat side-by-side, while a scalding natural waterfall plunged straight into the river to form a natural Jacuzzi ripe with sulphurous fumes.
 
It took six hours by minibus to reach Antigua, across the border in Guatemala. Suitably rested, we set off to scale the active volcano Pacaya the following day. After trekking up a winding mud track, the suspense grew as we picked our way over tell-tale chunks of malformed black rock. Then we reached the cone itself, a towering mass of smouldering gravel.

Scrambling up this steep bank of sliding ash was not unlike tackling a hill caked with fresh snow, feet sinking to the ankles with every step, except its blackened antithesis was spiky and hot to the touch. Our guide proudly informed us that following an eruption the previous Saturday, we were the first to walk on the freshly-hardened lava.
 
Nearing the summit, a definite phut-phutting began to grow louder. Plumes of smoke rose from the rocks beneath our feet, little more than a crust over the furious furnace. Rounding the last corner the source was revealed: twin chambers of fire, pumping bright-orange molten fragments far into the air. They pattered down some 50 metres from where we stood, agape. No velvet ropes here.

Antigua, Guatemala – 24th March 2005

Football, fireflies and frijoles

Olympia (Honduras) played Pumas (Mexico) at the national stadium in Teguc last week. Electric atmosphere, including four appropriately Mexican waves going round the stadium: an explosion of flares, confetti and fierce national pride.

Spent the weekend in La Esperanza, a small village in the mountains: properly local with traditional dress, cowboy hats, horses. Cut into the mountainside was a beautiful shrine to the Virgin Mary, and we climbed above it for panoramic views of the pueblo.

Flagging down one of the ubiquitous pick-up trucks that billow clouds of dust in their wake, I asked the driver if he could take us to the nearest beautiful waterfall. We weren’t disappointed: a great cascade plunged into the forest, a shimmering rainbow at its base.
 
A fistful of Lempira never seems to go down; in fact it swells immeasurably when you break a 500 (about £12.50). Food is largely frijoles (refried beans), tortillas and meat.

I’m now working at Lancetilla Botanical Gardens in Tela, on the Caribbean north coast. We hitch a pick-up into town every couple of days for beautiful sunsets and palm-fringed golden-sand beaches. The gardens are in the middle of the rainforest and we live in huts on stilts, surrounded by jungle.

A lizard lives behind our curtain to filter out more offensive insects, and we’ve befriended a loyal pair of dogs, christening them Monty and Python. Monty tends to trot quietly behind us; Python prefers to slobber like a thing possessed and try to eat Monty. At night the grass glitters with thousands of fireflies as if sprinkled with fairy dust, and the forest chirps and twitters.

Tela, Honduras – 17th March 2005

First impressions

I’ve managed to find an Internet café just down the road in Teguc. It’s basically a living room with three computers in it, but it does the job.

Literally everyone has a gun here. Someone ran across the road in front of us with a massive shotgun, and the banks and even some supermarkets sport their share of armed heavies. But it feels safe enough, so long as you don’t wander the streets alone at night.

I haggled a taxi driver from 50 to 40 Lempira for a twenty-minute ride. To put that in perspective, there are 39 Lempira to the Pound. God, this place is cheap. I felt chuffed in Miami when I knocked the guy down from $33 to $30 – here we’re talking pennies either way. The taxis are literally falling apart: our one had a cracked windscreen, and most of the interior was held together with masking tape. But it all adds to the fun.
 
Addresses seem to change daily: there are no street-signs, so you rely on landmarks. The best we could find near our house was a man washing his car. There’s a Rio-style statue of Jesus overlooking the city. Equally visible beside the Messiah is a vast Coca-Cola logo, emblazoned on the hill Hollywood-style. Which just about sums up the influence that global branding has had on this country.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras - 8th March 2005

Night climbing Fuji-san

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Japan’s greatest natural landmark, Mount Fuji attracts some 200,000 climbers every year, concentrated around the official season of July and August when snowfall is minimal and conditions are mild.

Camaraderie amongst hundreds of like-purposed people may counterbalance the fact that at peak times there are literally queues in some places. But purists can try tackling the 6 hour hike up the volcano at night: if you time your arrival at the summit to coincide with sunrise you’re in for a spectacle.

This snippet was published in June/July 2006 as part of Lastminute.com’s Smart Summer Stuff booklet, distributed with a 3 million print-run through various publications inc. The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire