"Like the allusions to a portentous sign in the old African American spiritual "Handwriting on the wall", the graffiti that began to cover virtually everything in New York in the late 1970s prohesied a sociological shift in this urban landscape, from an environment of suppressed disorder, to an atmosphere of virtual chaos and decline. But rather than being emblematic merely of society's ills, these ink, marker scrawls and spray paint "tags"-Produced mostly by Latino and African American youth-transmitted information, such as neighborhood boundaries, social ranlings, artistic nom de plumes, and even creativity itself."
