If there’s one thing today’s taggers and graffiti “artists” have in common with vandals of generations past, it’s a failure to understand the principle of private property.
That central fact is clearly on display in the uproar over the recent whitewashing of the unused 5Pointz warehouse complex in Long Island City, Queens. The building’s exterior walls had become a mecca for graffiti artists over the last two decades after its owners, Jerry Wolkoff and his son, David, had allowed them to use their building as a canvas for their graffiti.
Now the Wolkoffs plan to demolish the place in favor of a high-rise tower for luxury condos. The City Council approved a redevelopment plan in October. And this month, federal Judge Frederic Block ruled that the family was well within its rights to do so.
The Wolkoffs’ decision has aggrieved the graffiti community. The pro-graffiti forces became livid when they awoke last Tuesday to find that the Wolkoffs — under cover of darkness — had whitewashed the buildings in preparation for demolition.
How ironic: Usually, it’s the graffiti artists who are the ones sneaking in to paint properties in the middle of the night.
Sure enough, as the week went on, several taggers attempted to “re-tag” parts of the whitewashed walls. Appropriately, they were arrested.
Alas, it says much about the dismal state of property rights in this city that the judge who authorized the Wolkoffs’ plans to demolish their building practically invited those who had painted on it to file in civil court for damages for the loss of their artistic works. He did so by suggesting that the US Visual Artists Rights Acts may well protect the “ephemeral nature” of graffiti on a building.
Translation: The owners may have to pay damages for painting their own building!
If it does come to pass that the Wolkoffs find themselves on the hook for whatever absurd figure a lawyer convinces a compliant New York jury to cough up, it will be a legal outrage. But there’s a moral tragedy here, too.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the city’s walls and trains were blighted by graffiti. This graffiti became one of the leading icons of an urban metropolis growing increasingly ugly and unsafe.
Lack of respect for property paralleled a similar lack of respect for life. It took much hard work for the city to recover from that period.
Ironically, the only reason the Wolkoffs find themselves in this position is that they had provided space where those with spray paint might express themselves. If that becomes the reason they find themselves fined or penalized for improving their own property, the city will have lost all sense.
Call it one of the unofficial laws of New York: No good deed goes unpunished.