XN: Billy RIP

Published on: October 8th, 2020 | Last updated: October 6, 2020 | Written by: Bad Guy Joe

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What’s The Goss?!
Unfortunately, the gossip this week ain’t great. Billy 167, an NYC area graffiti writer who got up back in the ’70s and helped reinvigorate the NYC freight tagging scene passed away unexpectedly last week.

Billy was the kind of guy who would find some crazy new way to insult you every time you saw him. He’d do it while cracking a goofy smile on his always-clowning face. He was an acquired taste, but surprisingly well regarded by writers who never met him. His straight out of the 1970’s style was one you just don’t see much anymore, unless you’re watching a freight roll off Hell Gate, that is. Barely a day goes by when you won’t see Billy up on those trains, right next to Bobby. Together they pumped new life and interest into bombing freights in this town.

It’s an honor to be a an OQB crew mate with this man, and I’ll miss his ridiculous antics.

ASS: Assorted Subway Shenanigans
LA’s silly little transit system is striving to be carbon neutral someday. The MTA still has no serious effort to install solar panels on outdoor stations, or across all of their vast real estate holdings.

That New Tunnel Smell
The Atal Tunnel in Rohtang (India) finally opened. It is the highest altitude tunnel in the world

ACAB & Co.
Human Rights Watch has published a report that outlines what we all already know: NYC Taxpayers will now be on the hook for millions of dollars in justified lawsuits against the NYPD, for their literal attack on FTP4 protesters in the Bronx on June 4th.

One might argue that the NYPD, whose senior leadership is composed mostly of suburban dwelling republicans, is actively working to Defund all of NYC. They are stealing money from our classrooms. Taking money from EMTs, taking money from trash collection… We can either defund the virus known as the NYPD, or we can sit back and watch as they destroy NYC. That’s my ‘extreme’ hot take. I’m sure many will disagree with it, but their union chiefs literally came out in support of Trump. They campaign for him. They actively want to destroy this city, believing somehow that they’ll still be employed afterwards. It is surreal.

Shorty’s Short Shorts
THIS is the rebranding that wet wipes deserve.

Cops in Cleveland are still trying to figure out the identity of a corpse they found in a chimney in an abandoned storefront twenty years ago.

You’re going to want to bookmark this article about bandos deep into the frontier of Alaska.

Fire up the Sad Trombone: The YMCA thought they could get $1.5M for a bando in Lockport. They ended up getting just $25k.

OH COME ON! Someone painted a pretty mural on some rolldown gates in Brooklyn and was ‘heartbroken’ that someone tagged it less than 24 hours later? WELCOME TO NYC. It’s barely even a scrawl that would take 5 minutes to fix. How is this even newsworthy?

Speaking of tagging, a former youth home where kids were abused in Witchita Kansas was tagged alllll the way up.

Bando BBQ
Shocking but true: I didn’t see one report of any major Bandos burning up last week. This is probably the first time in this newsletter’s one year history that no one lit up a bando.

International Update
Want to see some leftover german WW2 bandos? Of course you do.

And that’s a Wrap:
We’re living the story line of The Masque of the Red Death.

Claudia Conway is a political prisoner.

Subway Bread isn’t Bread.

And The Pope is now a socialist.

Good times.

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You really want to sign up for the newsletter version of these updates. It comes out Mondays or Tuesdays, while we post this web version online on Thursdays or Fridays. This week I’m making a rare exception, considering how absolutely fast news is breaking.

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