Stop and take a moment to study the world around you. Strange, spray-painted symbols and numbers sprawl along wooden fences, and bubbled letters pop out of ancient, concrete buildings. The messages of these cryptic writings have no meaning to most people, yet it is the language of countless graffiti writers and gang members across the nation. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Graffiti has spread throughout our civilization, costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year to erase it. Law enforcement’s knowledge of graffiti and its culture “is only a fraction of what’s out there,” said Detective Ben Teed of Corpus Christi, Texas. “Graffiti plagues every single high school. Kids don’t understand that any graffiti on school grounds is an automatic felony.” Gangs, vandalism and obscenities are the components of graffiti that are widely witnessed, but there is another artistic side, caught between the worlds of law enforcement and the crime-plagued gangland. Immersed in Hip Hop culture, once popularized in the 80s (and now decayed by cultures of sex and hate), self-promoting graffiti artists battle each other in contests of skill, struggling to color their world. “We are thought of as criminals, but Hip Hop is not a crime,” said Zeus, a graffiti artist with over 12 years of experience. “Instead, it saved a lot of lives. It was made to prevent violence.”

Graffiti artists and writers feed off of fame, recognition and any type of publicity, said Teed, who uses illegal graffiti writers’ egos to snare them. Each graffiti writer or artist continually spray-paints a unique, signature “tag” that takes skill to create. “That’s how we track these guys and have a lot of success doing it, and it’s due to their mindset, which is to gain fame.” Novices of the Hip Hop subculture worship the more successful graffiti writers and aspire to be like them. Young and daring teen taggers are the most prolific, screaming for attention. “If a tagger is able to put a big tag up on the side of a building where everyone driving down the highway can see it, then he has achieved fame for himself in his own subculture,” Teed said. “It’s somewhat of a graduation.”

The famous 80s movie Breakin’ cast the elements of New York’s Hip Hop (break dancers, DJs, graffiti artists and rappers) into America’s mainstream. The movie’s opening song chanted “there’s no stopping us,” and its rebellion still resonates in today’s youths. Rather than exercising a form of artistic expression, Teed feels that graffiti writers use “art” as an excuse for their “rebellion.” “It gives them a rallying point,” he said. “It’s their way of thumbing their nose at society and saying, “you can”t stop us.’”

The very word “graffiti” casts negative connotations, yet the few who support graffiti prefer to think of it as art. “It’s not graffiti!” said bar owner Maria Melendez. “It’s art. They put a lot of work into it. I’d rather have a painting than a blank wall.” Over the last 2 years, Zeus and a graffiti artist known as Astro have contributed their talents to an outside wall of her bar. Even this legal use of spray paint drew attention from local police. “Last year, cops were passing by and stopped because they saw these artists with spray paints,” Melendez said. “They called me and asked me if they had my permission. These artists aren’t hurting anybody.”

Where graffiti writers choose to express their talent is the criminal issue. Many people either have been victims of graffiti or know someone who has. Whether the public considers graffiti as art or not depends entirely on what they see on a daily basis. “A lot of these guys are extremely good at graffiti and at their style of art,” said Teed, who’s 3 months of graffiti-tracking efforts paid off as he recently rounded up 15 graffiti writers in a growing effort to keep illegal graffiti off of the streets. “If they are able to keep it in their own backyard or on stuff that they own, fantastic. Nobody ever said that they couldn’t do their art or that their art had no artistic value. It’s where they’re deciding to put their art that’s the problem.” When police recently caught the 15 vandals that were defacing other people’s property, graffiti artists Astro and Zeus rejoiced. “When they busted all those toys (novices), they did us a favor,” Zeus said. “Those people gave us a bad name. Call them graffiti taggers, not graffiti artists.”

Twomajor types of graffiti, gang graffiti, which marks turf and disrespects rival gangs, and graffiti art, which not unlike the works of painters throughout the world, demands recognition. “Down Port and Ayers (Corpus Christi, Texas), you’re going to see huge amounts of Chula Vista and Suicidal Barrio tagging,” Teed said. “You can go in there and you can tell whose turf you are on, and you can tell that the 2 gangs have warred back and forth because there’s graffiti crossed out on top of other graffiti, on top of more graffiti. There isn’t any artistry about it. For them, the quicker you slap it up, the better. Vandalistic taggers “do things at night, in secret,” said Astro, who started graffiti writing to advertise himself as a talented artist. “Artists on the other hand, want to be seen, out in the open.” The artists, however, are the minority. “There are only a slim number of graffiti writers than are into their art for the love of their craft, Teed said. “It is this group of die-hard graffiti writers that must stand up for their right to express themselves by stopping the graffiti vandals from tarnishing their names and the image of graffiti writers everywhere.”

Do the people of the graffiti world want to be accepted or have they fallen under the socioeconomic landslide? Definite walls have been built between the haves and the have-nots, but artists like Zeus will take a chance to paint every time, no matter what the circumstance. “We need more legal walls and even commissioned walls,” he said. “Give us a chance. Give us a spot, some abandoned hangar, and it (graffiti) will stay off of the streets. We need our rush. Like a drug, we need our fix.”