LTVSquad

Day: February 15, 2011

  • Maksim Gelman’s Graffiti Life

    Maksim Gelman’s Graffiti Life

    The story that Maksim Gelman, the man that went on a murderous rampage last weekend, was also a graffiti writer has been played up in the news a little – but what did he write? Many BK writers have pointed toward 3 tags: Wes, WS and Max.

    As it turns out, I have many photos of his tags and throwys from the day long hike of the Brooklyn freight tracks I took while shooting hundreds of photos for Brooklyn Queens Freight. Most of the photos showing the Wes, WS and Max tags did not make the cut for the printed book, though at least 2 or 3 crept in there. I’ve placed a set of these photos online here, along with some history about the spot he allegedly laid low after murdering the girl he was obsessed with.

    Most writers I’ve talked to in the last day or two tell me wasn’t much of a writer and had plenty of beef. It’s been a long while since any writer has murdered anyone. For anyone that doesn’t know, if writers have beef with each other, it’s generally settled in a fair fist fight.

    Breaking:
    Sources tell me he had a flickr stream!
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/23025603@N07/.

  • Maksim Gelman’s short lived life in Graffiti

    Maksim Gelman’s short lived life in Graffiti


    Maksim Gelman made an international name for himself this last weekend by going on a 28 hour murder spree, during which he killed 4 and attempted to kill many others. The story that the NYC press has mostly glossed over though is that this raving lunatic had prior arrests for Graffiti. This is definitely not to say that the graffiti artists of NYC ever embraced him as one of their own. Indeed, Maksim was known mostly as a toy – a wack bottom feeder with no style, little creativity, and an itch to start beef wherever he could. A quick survey of about a dozen writers yielded a universal response: Maksim sucked at life, and if his peers even knew who he was, they hated his wack handywork.

    When I inquired if anyone had photos of his work, some turned to me and said yo, YOU probably have photos of his crappy throw ups from the freight tracks of Brooklyn. And indeed, unbeknown to me, I did.

    In my documentation of the Bay Ridge Branch freight line for Brooklyn Queens Freight, I shot a few hundred photos of the graffiti along the tracks. Some of these photos contain Maksim’s scraw and throwys. The majority of the photos containing this rubbish graffiti never made the cut and were not printed in BQF. A few got in there though, usually with his scrawl going over someone else or pushed against better graffiti in a vain attempt to be seen next to such works of art.

    The most common aspect of his graffiti in these photos is that he has applied his tags over other writers, or has been crossed out by other writers. This is fairly unique across all of the photos I took on that day. No one on these tracks was jones for beef as much as Maksim (well, cept maybe another toy, but let’s not talk about him). I did no real editing/selecting of photos for this write up: what you see in these photos is how all of his graffiti seemed to appear on the freight tracks – either over someone else’s in an attempt to start a battle, or crossed out by people who hated him. For someone to go out of their way to try and start beef with other writers shows a lot of things about his personality. He wanted attention, bad or good. Full of hate and looking for a fight is the usual MO of such people.

    All of that said, Maksim will not be missed – in society or in the NYC Graffiti world. The tracks are better off without such people around.

    Props to BDPH, Vize & Indent for the 411. I wouldn’t have know I was sitting on this without the input…

  • How much does it cost to arrest a graffiti writer?

    How much does it cost to arrest a graffiti writer?

    Many Sunnyside residents were awoken in the early hours of Monday morning by a low-flying police helicopter.

    The helicopter was flying over 42nd and Queens Blvd at 2:00am as police were pursuing three teenagers who were tagging the building above Dunkin’ Donuts.

    The police tracked them down and arrested them at 41stand Queens Blvd at 2:30 am. The three—Jeffery Sanchez, Jonathan Aramis and Aileen Mahmoodi- were all charged with criminal mischief; making graffiti; and possession of a graffiti instrument, police said.

    According to our records, The NYPD has 6 helicopters. 2 – Bell 412EP’s, 3 – Bell 212’s and 1 – Bell 206.

    According to Conklin’s the average hourly flying cost is as follows:

    412EP – $1668/hour.
    212 – $1439/hour
    206 – $516/hour

    That’s not counting the officer overtime processing these kids, or the fact that the arresting officers were taken off the street probably for the rest of their tour to do the paperwork, etc. Call me crazy but in the grand scheme of things, we’re talking $1000-$5000 cost for these 3 arrests.

    Now you can argue like every other idiot on the internet does these days that ‘they did the crime and should pay the time, expense, etc’. But when you factor in the fact that NYC’s now the weed arrest capital of the US, and star tallying up how much it costs to arrest all these petty crooks (even if no ghetto bird is used) and you’re talking about perhaps millions of dollars, spent largely to keep minorities in jail or with criminal records that will hold them back some more in life. Millions blown on people catching tags and smoking weed – habits that people generally grow out of on their own as they get older. Seems like a huge, huge waste of money to me.

    Mad Props to GasAxe for the research on this one.