Is Bloomberg To Blame?

The First Essential Scary Truth

In the fall of 1985, I took my youngest brother to see a film entitled Turk 182, starring Timothy Hutton, Robert Urich and a young Kim Cattrall.  The film, based on the true life exploits of graffiti artist (tagger) TAKI 183, centers around a tagger who embarrasses the mayor of New York by unleashing a torrent of graffiti during his run for re-election. Thereby doing something many folks would have loved to do to Furher Bloomberg before he bought his third term.

Although the movie wasn’t particularly good, I thought the premise was pretty interesting.  And when Hutton tags a subway being trotted out by the mayor as ‘graffiti proof’, brilliant.  These days when I mention Turk 182, people demur.  It seems mediocre 1980’s flicks don’t have much of an audience.  Then I found this bit in the Daily News:

Cans of spray paint were found near the body of a 20-year-old graffiti artist who was struck and killed by a subway in Brooklyn early Monday, police said.

The man, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was hit by a Manhattan-bound D train at the 59th St. station. Transit officials said the motorman tried to stop the train just after 5 a.m., but couldn’t bring it to a halt in time.

Police withheld the man’s name pending notification of his family. He was found in a tunnel. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man had already vandalized the interior of the tunnel or was about to tag it.

Service was stalled during the early part of the morning rush. Trains were diverted to the N line.

I hope this taggers death was simply an accident born of a stupid stunt not the act of a law and order Generalisimo posing as the Mayor of New York.