STOCKHOLM: It was the early 80'ies. Mum walked around in multi bleached tight jeans, dyed hair and black sun glasses. My sister's favourite dress was a pink wrinkled skirt and a worn out jeans jacket with a 'smile and be happy' emblem stiched onto the back. I was too young to have my own style of dress, so I had to wear whatever mum bought me from the cheapest mail-order shops. Everything was so 80'ies, until...
One day some Stockholm youngsters saw this movie from America about spraycan art, a cheesy dance and huge cassette decks. It introduced them to graffiti, break dance and rap in a way that made the them and their friends want to try the same at home. So they got some brand new adidas, a kangol hat, grabbed a can and hit the streets.
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The first piece of graffiti was done in 1983. When further movies like 'Style Warz' and 'Wild Style' were shown, the Stockholm kids were trapped in the new forms of art and adopted the entire culture. Some of the first books on graffiti that arrived were pretty much concentrated on the New York subway trains, and it was therefore natural to take graffiti to the Stockholm subway and also to the local commuter trains.
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In the mid 80'ies Danish writers visited Stockholm and had a big influence on the scene. Later in 1986-1988 French graffiti was well developed and gave inspiration to the style. In 1988-1990 many from the first generation of Stockholm writers had quit writing, but at the same time a new generation had grown up. The new styles was quite stiff. But in the early 90'ies several writers began experimenting with more spontanous kitchy styles wich among writers sometimes is called "ugly-beauty style". Today Stockholm and Sweden has a wide variety of individual styles that exist side by side. In the late 90'ies you might see that the style has been influenced by the humoristic Finnish writers.
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kaos hema skile
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khc
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licks
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moas
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"According to SL there was as much graffiti done as before, it was just buffed faster"
In the mid 80'ies both the commuter trains and the subway were badly bombed. Some cars were completely covered by tags on the insides. There were a lot of articles in the papers and people were quite upset about how the cars looked. In the late eighties the Stockholm transit company SL intesified the buffing. Their goal was simply clean trains. In the beginning of the nineties the trains were much cleaner and it appeared as they had succeed. But according to SL there was as much graffiti done as before, it was just buffed faster.
"SL started romours that said graffiti and drugs are close related, and started telling names official and to warn parents"
After many years of intensive anti-graffiti campains in media without success, SL tried the opposite; To ignore the writers and don't write or expose anything in any media. The papers almost didn't write anything about graffiti for a couple of years. But since graffiti didn't stop because of that, they started an even more agressive anti graffiti campain that still goes on today. For example they started romours that said graffiti and drugs are close related, and started telling names official and to warn parents. Many writers have been offended by the way SL describes them in media.
"The 'blue-painters' that go from yard to yard every night to find newly made graffiti."
Since some years ago SL uses lots of guards that sits in the lay-ups, so called 'civvare'. They also follow known writers where they walk and travel by train to prevent graffiti actions. On the commuter trains SL paint over pieces with blue paint before they go in traffic. This is done by the 'blue-painters' that go from yard to yard every night to find newly made graffiti. Today writers usually wait until guards and blue-painters has visited the lay-ups before they start painting.
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