Graffiti Artists Hold Panel With Old Nemeses in Blue
Friday, March 20th, 2009
Back in the day, Cope2, a Bronx graffiti legend as big as a linebacker, usually found himself in proximity to police officers only when they were tracking him in the metallic darkness of a subway yard or when they finally caught up to him and hauled him in.
But on Thursday night he sat willingly within reach of three officers — or at least three retired ones — on a comfortable couch at the powerHouse Arena, an art gallery and bookstore in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn. The officers, one of whom had arrested Cope2 several years earlier when he was leaving his house to walk his pit bulls, sat on another couch across from him and two fellow graffiti artists.
For the next hour and a half, in front of a packed room, all six were guests on a kind of bizarre hip-hop “Dick Cavett Show,” featuring profanity, accusations of police brutality and lots of memories from the days when both the artists and officers were younger and more agile, fully enlisted in the cat-and-mouse game of New York City graffiti in its heyday.
more….
