THE NEWS HAS BROKE!!!

A graffiti vandal, making the second stop on what his lawyer called a “triborough tour” of the city’s courts, was conditionally discharged Thursday and was ordered to pay $5,000.

Alain Mariduena pleaded guilty in Manhattan in August to one count of third-degree criminal mischief for writing graffiti, much of it on subway cars, with his tag, KET. Conditional discharge means he must avoid future criminal conduct and pay his fine; the sentence differs from probation because it’s not court supervised.

According to his lawyer, Ronald Kuby, Mariduena’s tag has become known around the world.

Kuby said his client would be sentenced Friday for graffiti crimes in Brooklyn. In that case he is to be spared jail, fined $3,000 and ordered to paint a mural.

Last month, Mariduena, 36, was sentenced in Queens to probation and ordered to pay $1,274 in restitution and a $3,000 fine for graffiti offenses, Kuby said.

Mariduena, who lives in the Inwood section of Manhattan, said on his Web site that he pleaded guilty in all three cases to avoid prison. Kuby said Mariduena has retired from illegal graffiti.

Read More: New York graffiti vandal KET is fined $5,000
More: In Plea Deal, Artist Admits to Subway Graffiti in 3 Boroughs

New Pics coming soon! Yep! My homie Tipz shot a batch of pics at one of the local yards recently. Here’s a teaser. More to come!

QUEST

You know, I’ve never really hoped for someones incarceration for graffiti before. But this little kid takes the cake. There’s rules that you need to follow kid. Obviously you were never taught them or maybe you were just too stupid to follow them. Either way I hope they catch you.

A graffiti tagger struck the landmark Crystal Cathedral shortly after the church held a community festival, doing tens of thousands of dollars in damage, a church spokesman said Tuesday.

The tagger struck around 8:30 p.m. Saturday and damaged the base of the famous glass spire and other buildings at the church, said Ben Rhodes, a cathedral spokesman.

Church officials later determined that the tagger, who appeared to be in his early 20s, etched the symbol “B1R” into 11 spots. Repairs will cost at least $38,000, Rhodes said.

Read More: Tagger Attacks Famed Crystal Cathedral

My Notes: The news article above reported that the kid scribed “B1R”, but I analyzed the pictures and video they took and also noticed his full nick is “BATER”. So, whoever knows this guy please check him for the whole community.

They seriously don’t have lives way over there. Seriously.

You can adopt a child, a tree or even a highway. In the Bronx you can also adopt a mailbox.

All of the 60 mailboxes in an East Bronx neighborhood have adoptive parents who paint signature post-office blue or green over graffiti almost as soon as it is scribbled.

“If you wait a few weeks it’s easy for the graffiti vandals to gain notoriety,” said Mary Jane Musano, who gathers the paint from the post office, buys supplies and distributes them out of the Waterbury LaSalle Community Association to volunteers in the Schuylerville neighborhood. “We ask people to adopt a mailbox that is very, very close to their home, so they pass it on their way out and can paint it right away. That’s the only way it works.”

Read More: Volunteers tackle graffiti on mailboxes

There’s an odd sight on the Hollywood freeway recently that I’m sure you’ve either noticed in your commute or seen news stories about it. It’s a house! As of today though (Sept. 24) it’s been getting hit with graffiti because of all the publicity it’s been causing. MSK is tagged on the side facing traffic, an undecipherable throw-up is on the side facing traffic horizontally, and a few nasty tags in various places. Peep the article:

Motorists traveling Southern California highways are used to seeing all sorts of debris, from mattresses to luggage to clothing. But the ultimate in freeway flotsam has landed along the Hollywood Freeway: a house.

Read More: Drivers Zoom by Roadside Debris – a Home

UPDATE: The house has been moved to a storage yard in Santa Clarita.
New tags on it: META, TRIGZ, ICR, J4F (Just 4 Fun), MENSO

So, this girl from San Diego has recently been knitting seemingly non-random advertisements and placing them on sign posts around San Diego and Golden Hill, California. Kinda’ odd don’t you think? Well, her work has recently been noticed by members of the media and even reached as far as a news story about “guerrilla marketing” in San Diego, California by The Union Tribune.

The news article is a pretty good read. They go over how Shepard Fairey (originally from San Diego, CA) kind of started the whole guerrilla marketing concept with his Andre The Giant (OBEY) campaign in the late ’90s. The article is focused on how major marketing companies have recently been mixing street art concepts with their advertising in attempts of gaining street credit…and more sales.

Anyways, back to the girl. Her name is Natalie Holford. She documents all of her “hits” at her blog over at blogspot and she has nick-named her pieces “pole warmers.” She also needs to wake the hell up and realize that she’s, just like every other vandal out there, defacing property which is not hers…which is illegal of course. In the news article she stated, “The reason I do it is because I like to see something that I created in a public place.”; that sounds remarkably similar to common reasons graffiti artists/vandals say about why they do what they do. Oh, but it gets better. She further said, “I like that you can remove a pole warmer and it leaves nothing behind, unlike other types of guerrilla art.”; that doesn’t put aside the fact that you are still defacing property which is not yours!
Gotta’ love the new kids.

Update: (Oct. 16, 2007) Chick needs to learn respect…oh, and I found this related article: Off the hook street art <- Even funnier of a read than the above.

More to come later once I’ve studied this thing for a bit.

City officials want to fight graffiti and other forms of vandalism with bullet proof cameras about the size of a lunch box.

Watch Video: Bullet Proof Cams to Fight Vandalism

Heads up!

A big crackdown is underway in Delaware tonight on what state officials say is an even bigger problem – graffiti.

It’s a new anti-graffiti strategy officially unveiled today, after various schools in New Castle County were defaced.

Graffiti is becoming a growing problem in Delaware and that’s why Delaware State Police are launching a campaign that will reward those who turn the taggers in.

State police and Crimestoppers hope new posters that read, “Turn in a tagger, get a hundred bucks,” help put an end to graffiti.

Cleaning up graffiti in Wilmington is a 35-thousand dollar expense … that’s ten thousand dollars more than the city was forced to spend last year. The graffiti on William Penn High School in New Castle will take four thousand dollars to clean.

Today state police announced the arrest seven juveniles for committing the crime.

Read More: Delaware Police Wage War on Graffiti

Close to 300 cans of spray paint, hundreds of felt tip markers and countless spray can tips were among the tagging equipment Ontario police found early this morning in two homes where they served two search warrants.

In addition to the tagging materials police found a .40 caliber hand gun and marijuana for sale, police said.

Officers arrested two 15-year-old boys, one from Ontario and one from Pomona, on suspicion of felony vandalism and taken to West Valley Juvenile Hall, said Officer Anthony Ortiz of the Ontario Police Department.

But police are still looking for two Ontario men, Albert Fierro, 28, and Joseph Hong, 29, who police believe are the heads of a tagging crew has left markings not just in Ontario but all around Southern California between San Diego and Los Angeles, Ortiz said.

“It’s amazing these guys haven’t grown up,” Ortiz said.

Ontario police, along with members of the Montclair police department, served the two warrants this morning.

The first warrant was served about 7 a.m. at Fierro’s home in the 800 block of East D Street, Ortiz said.

About 20 minutes later police served a warrant at Hong’s home in the 500 block of West G Street, he said.

Police found the boys, who were both runaways, at the D Street address and were able to link them with the tagging crew, Ortiz said, adding one of the teens admitted to having taking part in a tagging spree the night before.

Wednesday morning’s activities were the result of more than a year’s worth of investigative work, Ortiz said, part of which kicked into a higher gear in July after a large tagging piece was discovered on the wall of a commercial building at 1445 W. Brooks St., Ortiz said.

In that instance the taggers marked up a wall 30 to 40 yards long and about 25 feet high, he said.

The investigation in that case allowed police to develop the information that allowed them to determine who was behind the vandalism that has included markings on building walls, freeway sound walls, utility polls and even railroad freight cars, Ortiz said.

Aside from the cans of spray paint, markers and spray can tips, police also found a number of books about the culture of graffiti and tagging in addition to books with taggers work.

Police also found four 5-gallon cans of paint, paint rollers and a fiberglas ladder that’s about 12 feet tall, Ortiz said.

Taggers will use paint to cover over other people’s work or to create clean surface to put up their own markings, Ortiz said.

But it’s when taggers paint over other people markings that can create other problems, he said.

“That can start a gang war,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz said Ontario police officer Jeff Zeen was able to collect a great deal of information on the case related to the vandalism the group is suspected of committing in the city which allowed them to secure the warrants.

The information Ontario collected will be shared with other law enforcement agencies and could lead to additional charges, Ortiz said.

Source: Two graffiti vandals sought by police

Holy ****!

Two suburban graffiti “artists” will spend the next five years cleaning up the property damage they and others have inflicted on Cleveland.

A Cuyahoga County judge ordered Danny Zhang of Seven Hills and Daniel Horvat of Wickliffe to perform 2,000 hours of community service each — 400 hours per year.

Common Pleas Judge Judith Kilbane Koch also told the two that they will be responsible for reimbursing the cost of any property owner’s cleanup of their “art.”

But the novel part of the sentence is this: The taggers must perform that community service in conjunction with a new neighborhood-based “graffiti task force” whose existence the two vandals helped to spawn.

Click here to read the entire article.