In 1980, Lee Quiñones was 20 years old and had already become, to anyone who rode the subway, a household name. On 4, 5, J, M, and R trains, LEE was graffitied across whole cars in giant blocks of text, the letters sometimes cracked or slumped and molded into barely recognizable shapes. Quiñones often took inspiration from cartoons and comic books, painting dragons or, most famously, Howard the Duck. He and his art collective, the Fabulous Five, used graffiti as a kind of dialogue with the city, parts of which believed their work was, as Mayor Ed Koch put it, “destroying our lifestyle.” WHAT IS GRAFFITI ART? they wrote on one car. TAKE A LOOK FOR YOURSELF.
City leadership did not respond in kind. “If I had my way, I wouldn’t put in dogs but wolves,” Koch said in 1980 when asked about how the city would crack down on graffiti artists. A year later, his administration actually did build high barbed-wire fences and stationed German shepherds around a Queens train yard. Then the MTA launched a pilot program that was referred to as the “Great White Fleet,” painting roughly a dozen 7 trains completely white, apparently in hopes that it would discourage vandalism. “Can you believe that?” Quiñones says. “They actually created a canvas.” (The program was promptly discontinued.)
