Graffiti Related Posts
Wrapping up this week’s series is this set of photos from 2003 and 2004. As you can see, for some bizarre reason the NYC Parks Department wasted a lot of money and paint on priming the entire pool white, and then slapping another coat of deep red paint on the structure. It wasn’t long before people were tagging up here again though…
Even though the buildings at McCarren pool were sealed shut, the exterior walls became a whole new canvas for the next generation of graffiti writers. This is how the pool looked in 2001.
Deep below McCarren Pool, where only the most insane insomniac isotopic explorers dare wander, we came across still another batch of graffiti. These tags are much fewer than those of the locker room area, as these tunnels were likely pitch black in the 1980s when these guys hit this place.
This post is dedicated to the Ninja Team of the 80s. Deam, Mint, Finez, Gem, Ivette. If any of you are out there and want to relive your youth, give me a call!
When we first entered the former locker room areas of McCarren Pool, I was most pleased at this discovery. It is and was probably the most impressive graffiti discovery of 2010, period. While I know that is a huge, huge statement to make, you really must understand what we have here in these photos to truly appreciate the extent of the situation.
All of these photos were taken in 2010. All of the graffiti you see here (well, with one or two exceptions) was done inside the locker rooms of the pool during the 1980s. The date range of these tags runs from 1983 to approximately 1987. It is rather easy to conclude that during the years immediately after the pool was closed, the entire site was completely abandoned – doors left open, and vandals taking full advantage. At some point in the late 80s the buildings were sealed up with concrete and reinforced iron. From that point on, even while the exterior of the building became an illegal graffiti haven, no other graffiti artists gained access to the locker rooms.
This is most likely the last graffiti find of this variety in NYC to have survived until 2010. I can say this with a high regard of authority, having been in nearly every abandoned building within NYC over the last 20 years. The stock of abandoned buildings here was decimated during this time. Out of hundreds of such buildings the only intact walls of pure 1980s graffiti I ever found was the Graffiti Room in Greenpoint Terminal Market.
These photos represent a small portion of the dozens I took of this amazing graffiti find. Sadly, as of this last month, the locker rooms at McCarren Pool have been completely gutted. No trace remains of nearly all of this graffiti. These photos are the only proof it ever survived this long. I am of course, most pleased to be able to present them to you. Enjoy.
Stay tuned for tomorrows episode, where we go deep into the tunnels (!!!) and expose even more amazing finds.
“While the outside of this location provides some vivid visual input, we are convinced that the real treasury of this location remains undiscovered – and that is breaking into the locker rooms and or filtration rooms. They are likely exactly as they were when sealed, providing a potentially rare time capsule.”
I wrote those words in the spring of 2001. At the time I had no idea how long it would take for those words to be proven 500% true.
Located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, McCarren Pool has a rich history. Named after a state senator, It was designed by Aymar Embury II, and is apparently 3 times the size of your average Olympic sized pool. It opened in 1936.
After many decades of normal usage the pool was closed at the end of the summer season, labor day 1983. The NY Times picks up the story from here:
Flash forward to 1984: Some of McCarren Park’s neighbors barricaded the entrance to the pool, which had been shut down the previous summer. Employees of the city’s Parks Department preparing to restore the pool were turned away by a small group of local residents, who told city contractors to leave the pool in its crumbling state, recalled Julius Spiegel, the Brooklyn parks commissioner since 1981. Their complaint was that young people from other neighborhoods had been hanging out at the pool and destroying the place.
There were many allegations that the people of Greenpoint wanted the pool shut down due purely to racism. Tom Gilbert, writing for The Brooklyn Paper, refutes this idea in a two part article posted here and here. Personally, having grown up in NYC during that time span, I’m not sure I agree with Tom. Neighborhoods were a lot more territorial back then, very much based on race. This isn’t just opinion, it’s fact. Yusef Hawkings. Howard Beach 1986.. Crown Heights riots. These were not isolated incidents – they happened due entirely to pervasive racism and crime at the time. A white chick wouldn’t be caught dead walking down Kent ave in the 1980s. These days that’s not the case at all. To say that there was no racism involved in the closure of McCarren Pool ignores what the times were like back then.
Time marched onward though. And McCarren Pool sat abandoned for years. It became home to homeless polish squatters, drug abusers and degenerates. The exterior walls of the buildings were coated top to bottom in layers of graffiti. It became the sort of abandoned place one could walk right into on a Saturday afternoon and do whatever you pleased.
I enjoyed going there a few times, though with its buildings rather well sealed (with the exception of the lifeguard house at the southeast corner, which was home to the homeless), and a plethora of other abandoned spaces to choose from, it became generally ignored by urban explorers.
Wisps of life began to appear in the ’00’s. Clear Channel got the rights to hold outdoor concerts at the pool. The Beastie Boys played their first Brooklyn concert here in 2007. In 2008, Sonic Youth played the last concert to be held at this venue.
But what was to become of the pool? In late 2009 work finally began to recreate the pool as a year round recreational facility.
It was this work that finally unsealed the ‘rare time capsule’ of McCarren Pool, allowing me to go back and document everything that was left behind between the time the pool was shut down and the time it was sealed up until present day. I hope you enjoy this series of posts this week. After waiting 10 years to get in there, I have to say it was well worth it.
Not 12 hours ago word spread about a new Banksy being up (located in LIC – not an area natives want such stuff). It has apparently already been Demolished. Floydy McCrotchPants arrived at LTV HQ with a drive containing these photos…
Look at this MFer, he didn’t even bother to put his coffee cup down to destroy this shit.
I saw more of that nonsense in Metro today about banksy and said to myself, wow – since when is that newsworthy? And why no mention of OMAR?
As you may or may not know, We here at LTV have our own publishing wing cranking out the occasional underground completely DIY publications. We don’t do it so much for the profit as for the desire to document various exploring related aspects of NYC life in print form for generations to come. That said – here’s some 411 on our latest: Yard Job NYC
NYC: It’s where modern day graffiti went from chicken scratch to full blown art form during the most improbable of times.
Rail Yards: Much like the subway yards before them, the freight yards of NYC have become a proving ground for a new generation of writers.
Yard Job NYC is the only book that documents this relatively obscure through thriving graffiti scene. nowhere else will you find old school cats like Chino, Wolf, Smith, Trap, and Zephyr crushing cars illegally, along side newer writers – Noxer, Staer, Celf, Muk… Completely devoid of gay-ass hipster ‘street art’, graffiti exists on these rails in its purest form.
Documented over many months of persistent photographing, Yard Job NYC carpet bombs and crushes the myths, exposes the facts, and brings the fresh on. can you dig it motherfucker?
Loads of sample photos and fodder that didn’t make it into the print book can be found on the Yard Job NYC website, as well as in the LTV Photoscream… I mean Stream… Raaaahhh!!!!
Vancouver is a city of alleys, and it is here where most graffiti seems to thrive. While walls can be relatiely clean, the trash dumpsters most definitely are not.
