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Vice Blog

MEET THE NIERATKOS - WORST GRAFFITI ARTIST EVER

A lot of my friends have been making fun of me lately because of my photo in the latest issue of Vice. Two reasons: 1) my hair is bleached and b) I was arrested by the PATH Police. I wish that I could tell you the reason was that I tried to kidnap a...

A lot of my friends have been making fun of me lately because of my photo in the latest issue of Vice. Two reasons: 1) my hair is bleached and b) I was arrested by the PATH Police. I wish that I could tell you the reason was that I tried to kidnap a train like in The Taking of Pelham 123 (the original, not the one with Vinnie Barbarino) but that is not the case. It is not as embarrassing as being arrested for hopping the turnstyle but it's pretty bad.

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Back in 1994 I was a young fellow, new to Manhattan, and absolutely in love with the wheat pasting of two graffiti guys: COST & REVS. These guys were everywhere. And their graffiti was so unlike all the other graffiti that I hated: IT WAS LEGIBLE. They used paint rollers and wrote their name huge on the side of buildings in very simple fonts. They made cute little billboards that they glued all over New York like: COST EATS REVS and so on and so forth. They had my full attention and I eagerly looked for more of their pastings. As much as I disliked the illegible paint wasting scribbles of taggers I wanted nothing more than to be like COST and REVS posting silly, nonsensical words around the world.

Then I made a friend with a skater from Pennsylvania who was attending SVA. He wrote DOAP. "You know, like, soap." He'd say. My heart sang. It was the most beautiful misspelling I'd ever seen. I was in L-O-V-E. I thought DOAP could be the REVS to my COST. I just needed a name. I thought it would be especially funny if my graffiti name was CHRIS. Or better yet: CHRISTOPHER JAMES XAVIER NIERATKO. My disguise would be in my obviousness. But then I thought maybe I should try and be topical and at the time there was nothing more topical than The Juice slaughtering his wife and her lover. And so I chose to write OJAY.

The next day at my editorial job at Disney I printed up dozens of 11" x 17" copies that in a huge font just like this read:

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In my mind I was being so dastardly, so devious. I had an alter ego! By day I was a mild-mannered reporter for a Disney children's publication and by night I was the wheat pasting comic who made the world laugh with my social commentary.

IT WAS GOING TO BE GREAT!

I was so excited on my first outing that I neglected to mind the cameras that lined the 9th Street PATH Station. As I pasted every pillar, garbage can, passing train, and pedestrian the PATH Police were getting a good laugh at the dumb kid making fantastic television for the station house. Just as I put up my last sign I felt a tap at the shoulder.

Busted.

The cop told me how everyone laughed at me, THE WORST GRAFFITI ARTIST EVER, pasting directly under each and every camera. And in that sense, I was a success: I made people laugh.

The officer walked me back up the platform, having me remove all the still wet signs I'd just hung up. Then they took me to their secret lair and booked me. From the photo you can tell I thought it was as absurdly retarded as they did.

I was into graffiti for exactly 19 minutes and I sucked super bad at it.

Now I can't help but laugh every time I see any graffiti, anywhere and think to myself, "If I wrote that, I would've gotten caught."

SIDE NOTE:

I'm more than a little pissed at yous guys for not bidding on my semi-anti-Canadian skateboard, the proceeds of which go to help Canadians be less Canadian. You have four days left. Get your shit together, people!

(For more stupid go to Chrisnieratko.com)