At a chic, dimly-lit party held at a stage in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, a crowd of wine connoisseurs and artists cheered Brooklyn-based graffiti artist Michael McLeer, better known as Kaves, for his latest drawing—not on the side of a building, but on the label for this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau from internationally renowned winemaker Georges Duboeuf.
Kaves’s drawing combines images of a Parisian streetscape with an urban Brooklyn vibe, showing a lively scene at the corner of ‘Live’ and ‘Love’ streets. Putting a graffiti drawing on an elite brand of wine might represent a kind of establishment recognition, but in Kaves’s hometown of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Kaves’s art doesn’t get much respect.
Graffiti vandals have been striking at locations all over the Bay Ridge neighborhood, with lampposts, mailboxes, storefronts, etc. bearing the brunt of the onslaught, and the community frowns upon the attacks. In response, State Senator Marty Golden (R-Bay Ridge) has launched a new campaign using social media to clean up graffiti in Bay Ridge.
“We stand here to remind everyone that graffiti cannot be tolerated. I call on all citizens of our community to say something if you see it. Together, we can make our community a great, beautiful place to live, to work, and to raise a family,” he said, in a press release.
He encouraged residents to report graffiti in the neighborhood by taking pictures, posting them on his Facebook page, and alerting his office directly by phone or email.
Golden hopes posting the pictures on Facebook will help bust the vandals spreading graffiti in the neighborhood. He has also hired CitySolve, a non-profit organization, to remove graffiti that are reported by the residents.
John Quaglione, Golden press representative, said the senator’s action was prompted by a sudden spike in graffiti in the neighborhood between 70th to 80th streets in the past few weeks, primarily on the commercial streets on Third and Fifth avenues.
Residents who have had their walls or storefronts defaced by graffiti are welcoming the move. “It is an eye-sore, and I’m glad they are cleaning it up,” says Marianne Fitzgerald, who works at a printing shop on the corner of 81st Street and Third Avenue, whose wall has been scribbled with graffiti.
Kaves, however, shakes his head at the anti-graffiti drive in the neighborhood. Kaves, who became part of the graffiti phenomenon at the age of ten in the early eighties, says that by posting the pictures of graffiti on social media, the senator is feeding the desire for infamy that the kids who spread graffiti are looking for.
“The reason why kids get an adrenaline rush doing graffiti is because they are looking for some sort of notoriety, some sort of fame,” Kaves explains. “They [the Senator’s office] don’t understand… the more notoriety the kids get, the more amped up they get that they got their names on the most wanted list!”
Putting pictures of graffiti up on Golden’s Facebook page could lead to kids wanting to ‘bomb’ Bay Ridge more, Kaves warned. “If you’re going to give them fame by trying to make them ‘America’s Most Wanted’, then, they are going to get off on that,” he says.
Golden’s approach is just an “easy fix,” he said.
“It’s not as hard to fix as homelessness or drug addiction or prostitution. But this is something that children do, so it’s easy to go after children, and say that we’re going to fix this problem that plagues our community.”
Kaves runs a tattoo parlor, Brooklyn Made Tattoo, in Bay Ridge and admits that his storefront has been the target of graffiti as well. But Kaves still feels that penalizing graffiti writers is not the way out, and instead, a long-term resolution needs to be considered.
“Instead of smacking them on the wrists, my idea would be to build a park, or have a designated place where kids can come and paint their graffiti, perhaps competitively paint… The light at the end of the tunnel for these kids could be getting a scholarship to college, or high school, or some sort of an art program—some kind of help, you know? A kid would much rather fight for that, than fight to get his tag on a Facebook page.” Kaves says.
Kaves claims that he’s friends with Sen. Golden, and wishes Golden had discussed a more positive approach on the graffiti problem with him. He says he’d be happy to talk with Golden and discuss how kids writing graffiti could be helped to move in the right direction, perhaps by interning at his tattoo parlor. “But this is the dialogue that needs to happen, rather than shunning and looking down on graffiti,” he says.
Kaves sees his way of doing graffiti art as part of a million dollar business. The future looks bright for him. In January, he heads to Los Angeles to work on a painting for an art show for the rock band, Metallica.
“I went from being a Bay Ridge kid writing my name on a handball court to becoming the first American to paint his graffiti on a most prestigious, celebrated wine bottle,” Kaves says. “However, in my neighborhood, they look at my wine label and call it ghetto.”
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