By George Capsis
In 1917 the City ruthlessly cut through the handsome historic townhouses of the Village to run the 7th Avenue subway through it and left ugly towering blackened backyard raw brick walls. A few months ago, after the Black Lives Matter incident, huge crude nonsensical graffiti messages appeared like “MAGIC TRICK” with the R in Trick painted upside down and an unreadable telephone number.
The graffiti is all of a comic book style and angry—very angry—ugly and crude and huge. Huge with in-your-face contempt and anger.
I called the Police Press office, DCPI, to learn if they were aware of these slashing outbursts of obscene graffiti – were they city-wide or just concentrated in certain areas like the Village, and had they identified any graffiti gangs, and if so where do these graffiti gangs hang out – Brooklyn, Manhattan, or the Bronx, and literally minutes before we sent the file to the printer, I got a concerned call from the head of police press office’s commanding officer Alfred Baker who knew of our publication, and was equally concerned, and promised to thoroughly investigate and report for the December issue
What do you do about something like this? So ugly, so huge, so unstoppable?
Well that is one reason why you have a community newspaper—first to show you this outrage, and then to get them to do something about it.
Just around the corner from the 6th Precinct on Bleecker, on the 50 foot mural of a coming restaurant, our full of hate graffiti artists have painted “Shit on God.” They liked it so much they did it again—“Shit on God.”
I have brought this to the attention of our new Police Community Affairs Officer and he stopped for just an instant and returned to smiling trivia.
Go, if you want, to that wall and you will see it—“Shit on God.” If it really offends you spray it over with a can of paint from Garber’s.
Your racism is disgusting. A month or so you published an openly racist poem. When we raised a fuss, you claimed you hadn’t read it before publishing it. Now this. I don’t disagree that the graffiti is offensive and ugly. But, why start your article by talking about the Black Lives Matter “incident:? First, it was not an indigent – its a movement and it remains strong. But beyond that – you cited absolutely no evidence that the graffiti had anything to do with it. Blatantly racist. The graffiti followed the BLM “incident.” Well, it followed the Fourth of July too, and you didn’t write that. You are a racist and you need to go. The West Village needs a newspaper but not this one, when it is permeated by racist filth. Maybe its time for you to go?
I have to agree with the commentator about the confusing association of the Black Lives Matter movement to the graffiti cited in your article. As a reporter to make such an allegation without there being any mention on the paint jobs of BLM, is quite a leap of faith. I find it strange that you conclude it is all “very angry—ugly and crude and huge. Huge with in-your-face contempt and anger.” given that you don’t even know what the Bleecker Street graffiti says (“What is it spelling out?”). Sorry but many of us likely prefer this to the ugly worn, green plywood – it’s pink and red, has hearts and stars, is visual and vibrant. You need to spend some time studying urban and contemporary art and Westview News needs to spend some more time editing your stories, or, as others have suggested, find another neighborhood writer.