Letter to The Village Voice, November 26, 1980:

In October 1980, Crash curated an exhibit at Fashion Moda called "Graffiti Art Success." I was privileged to be one of the artists in the show. The painting I exhibited featured a big red heart in the middle of the canvas. On the left of the heart was a clean train running straight into the heart. On the right side of the heart a train covered with graffiti was exiting.

The show was reviewed in The Village Voice by Elizabeth Hess, who described my painting in her article. The following week this letter was received and printed by The Voice:

Dear Editor,

Elizabeth Hess made a reference to a "painting" of a heart splitting a subway car in half-half clean and half dirty ("Take the A Train," Voice, November 12, 1980). That was done by Zephyr who (you claim) gets devious enjoyment from this. I am a T.A. car maintenance employee. My men and I have a big red pipe and we're ready to split Zephyr's head open (and anyone else). We are goddamn tired of burning ourselves with chemicals because of wanton vandalism, and until The Village Voice and others realize this and stop treating these two-bit assholes like heroes, this will never cease.

-Name Withheld, The Bronx

Wow! Although I never did find out if the letter was authentic or not, I felt it was so outrageous I had to respond. The line "wanton vandalism" didn't really sound like the writing of a car maintenance employee, but I figured I'd assume it was legit, and respond accordingly. The following is my reply, as it appeared on The Village Voice letters page on November 26th, 1980:

Dear Editor,

I wish that after trying unsuccessfully to combat dense subway graffiti for all these years, the Transit Authority would realize that the graffiti cannot be stopped, but only "legitimized." T.A. workers like "Name Withheld" [Letters, Voice, November 12] and his superiors alike who are fed up to the point of splitting youngsters' heads should remove their pipes long enough to realize that under controlled circumstances these "two-bit assholes" would make New York's grey and dirty subways the most exciting moving art spectacle the world's ever seen.

If the T.A., which chooses to view the graffiti situation as some kind of war, wishes to see it ended, they are going to have to at least negotiate for peace. Cleaning the cars will never end graffiti. A clean subway car gets recovered in a matter of days, or hours. The chemical warfare is a huge waste of time, energy and money. Graffiti writers won't surrender, and they can't and won't be beaten. If the T.A. wants the kids and their cans out of their trains, they're going to have to start thinking differently. We are a community of young people. An enormous group of people in a very loud city and we all want to be heard. We want to be seen. Our goal is not to vandalize or destroy, but to say "Hey you, look, I am here. I'm not just riding. I'm not just standing. I am on this machine. I am part of this machine. In fact, my name is carrying all you suckers to work!!

But not at the cost of creating chaos or huge financial waste. When the T.A. has exhausted all its money and energy, maybe they will try to negotiate with the ones out here responsible for all this "wanton vandalism."

-Zephyr, New York City, Nov. 26, 1980

Back then I was an idealist and an optimist. I figured graffiti on the subways would never go away. Boy was I wrong. Before the end of the decade New York subway graffiti was extinct. But as we know, it didn't die. It moved on...