Life: Graffiti Artist

The Godfather of Graffiti

At nine o’clock on a Saturday night, Mick’s Office, a Moorhead bar, is fairly quiet. A few people seemed glued to barstools, and couple guys gripping cues stalk around a pool table. I have come to meet the Godfather of Graf, Fargo’s graffiti art boss.

Contact with the Godfather began as call between a friend of a friend of a friend. But the Godfather refused to meet. One night three weeks later, a text message arrived with the Godfather’s phone number. My go-between told me that it took heaps of obsequious praise, threats of speaking with weaker artists (also called “buttheads”), and assurance of anonymity. After two phone conversations with him, the Godfather reluctantly agreed to a sit-down.

At a half-moon booth sit two men drinking dark beer in plastic cups. It feels appropriate that the booth, walls, lampshade, ceiling tiles, nearly every inch of open space surrounding the men is covered with scrawl, sloppily written names, drunken witticisms, sexual innuendos, and spring break references. As I join them at the booth, one man says, “This is completely irresponsible of me.” He is the Godfather: I recognize his voice. Outside a train roars through downtown.

Graffiti art’s primary canvas in the 1970’s was the New York City subway system, where crews, groups of three to seven artists, painted. It marked the first time that graffiti was solely about identity, not a territorial gang mark, social political commentary, or advertising appeal. To assert their identity, graf artists, called writers, employ three major styles. A “tag” is the simplest where a writer uses pens or markers to sign a name, most often a pseudonym. A “fill-in” is a writer’s name in large bubble style print that is then filled in with at least three colors of spray paint. Lastly, a “piece”, short for masterpiece, is a sophisticated, full-color, three-dimensional painting.

After cities declared war against graffiti by buffing, or cleaning, cars and increasing patrols of subway yards, writers moved above ground, tagging walls, rooftops, underpasses, and, eventually, freight cars. Once on the surface of the world, graffiti art quickly spread across the U.S. But Fargo is a special case.

The Godfather says, “The way we make our mark is the way we gain respect, but the culture here in Fargo is not based on that.” Fargoans pride themselves on their low crime rate. With fewer violent crime investigations, the policing of property crimes, like graffiti, escalates. “We live in a very big small town,” the Godfather says, “So you can’t be known as a writer. Nothing goes on here, no commotion, no drama. In other cities where people turn an eye, graf here is noticed. People care.”

One of those people is Dale Stoll, a Fargo Police Detective who has investigated graffiti crimes over the past decade. “What happens on the East and West coasts eventually comes here,” Stoll says. He nabs about three or four crews a year, but this year he has already caught two groups on Fargo’s west edge. Stoll says that activity, which comes in waves, “has picked up considerably at this time.”

The two groups grabbed this year lacked sketchbooks, so Stoll labeled them “not organized, not crews.” For these groups, graffiti is not an artistic release. According to Stoll’s profile for graffiti artists, real writers practice their skills, filling sketchbooks with “pre-drawn diagrams.” Using a sketchbook separates the artists from the vandals. So the groups nabbed this year, as Stoll notes, “were ‘buttheads’ in need of something to do, something to identify with.”

Even as he protects residents and business-owners, Stoll seems careful to walk the line between respecting artists and arresting criminals. About three years ago, Stoll busted a member of a local crew called Artic Xylene Experience, or AXE, after the leader JUNK posted his work and email address on international graffiti website. Stoll estimates that JUNK and the AXE crew did $3,800 worth of property damage, marking every bridge along the bike path on both sides of the Red River. “They were good artistic kids,” Stoll adds, “But there is not a lot of adulation around here.”

But that fine line disappears when Stoll talks about graffiti on the railcars: “It’s not our problem. If we’re familiar with the tag, then we’ll take it up with the BNSF detective, but other than that, we leave it alone.”

Terry Wood, Special Agent with BNSF, assured me that the rail-yards in Dilworth are safe. He said he has had no run-ins with graffiti artists at Dilworth. “Those cars are just moving through. They’re not here long enough,” Wood says. “Most [of the graffiti] on railcars is not applied in the Fargo/Moorhead area.” He points the finger at the larger metropolitan areas, like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Hearing that is good news for the Godfather, who calls the graf-art scene “a world of ghosts.” After the city closes down, these “phantoms crush, kill, and bomb the alleys, underpasses, and freight cars, throwing up their tags and fill-ins.” The Godfather wants to know that Fargo’s writers are indeed invisible even as their names blaze across the U.S. on the rumbling freights.

The Godfather is a watcher, an artist who no longer writes. Instead, he serves as an aficionado, ambassador, and historian. The Godfather knows who writes, where they write, with whom they write, and how well they write. He also seems to bump into many guest artists as they pass through town.

Then the Godfather pulls out the “Graf Bible.” Moving the beer cups out of the way, I open the cover of a large sketchbook. Six photographs fill the page, each one taped down at its corners. The Godfather keeps records, photographing tags and fill-ins before they are buffed. The first few images are crude fill-ins on concrete bridge abutments. These bombs provided the inspiration for a young Godfather, before he handled his first can of paint.

The bible continues with page after page of pictures, a history of artists: DAZE, CRASH, BG183, REVOLT and more. The Godfather reminisces, cooing at the tags like they were children he lost. In many ways they are. “Graf is love/hate because it takes over. You want to get better and be more original, so you work harder. It becomes an obsession,” says the Godfather. “Then you lose one, which at first is hard to take.”

That’s what makes this a war. As the city buffs over tags, the crews bomb again. If the city buffs one, the crews tag twice. When the city buffs those two, the crews drop three more bombs. On the war escalates, a ghostly insurgency.

All you have to do is walk north or south in the alley between Roberts St. and Broadway in downtown Fargo to witness the historical palimpsest — the alternating buffs and tags, buffs and tags. Either way you walk, you’ll end at a rail line, which frames the downtown with a rolling canvas of passing freight cars.