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Interactive Map: Bad Graffiti Is In LES, Good Graffiti Is In Bushwick
By
Aaron Marks
Published Jan 4, 2013
Modified Jan 4, 2013
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By
Aaron Marks
Published Jan 4, 2013
Modified Jan 4, 2013
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For today's map, we analyzed NYC's 311 data for graffiti complaints by neighborhood. As you can see, the Lower East Side sticks out like a spray-painted thumb. Other neighborhoods that reported a lot of graffiti include Williamsburg, Sunset Park, and Flushing.
For insight into what it all means, we turn to Gothamist's resident graffiti expert Jake Dobkin. Here are his penetrating observations:
This is actually a fascinating map you guys have assembled, especially when you contrast it to the GrafRank map that I've included below. GrafRank maps "good" graffiti and street art by taking every geo-coded graffiti image on Flickr and creating a heatmap. Since most people only take pictures of graffiti they enjoy or want to show others, this can be taken as a clue to where the better artists are going up.
By contrast, people tend to call 311 when some toy tagger has scrawled his name across their garbage can or caught a wack shoe-polish or paint tag on their storefront or gate. LES has notoriously been infested by wack-ass toy busters for several years now, so I'm not surprised that it shows up bright red in your map. By contrast, several areas that show up as good street art hotspots (SoHo, Chelsea, Five Points in Long Island City, and most of Bushwick) don't show an unusual number of 311 complaints. This indicates to me that citizens can tell the difference between good and bad graffiti.
Williamsburg, of course, is the exception—it shows up on both maps, because there are both a lot of good artists who live and work there, and a lot of stupid art school kids with markers they bought with their trust funds catching wreck to impress some girl with a nose-ring they met at a North 6th Street bar.
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Aaron Marks
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