5Pointz
View of the front of 5 Pointz in Queens, NY. Ezmosis/Wikipedia Commons.
Leer en español.
A yellow tone like that of a fatty margarine square bubbling on a pan peered through the few spaces of the building that remained, almost completely, tattooed in art and narrative. The best view was from the 7 as it emerged from underground. I ache for this simplicity: the train rumbles out the cavernous tunnel, chugs and arches like a serpentine spine while I sip my Mucho Mango looking out. 5Pointz was becoming. What was a nineteenth century water meter manufacturing factory ripened into a concrete canvas where artists who operate clandestinely painted freely. Walking through its labyrinthian edifice the color crusted walls revealed evidence of time. Described by Jaime Rojo & Steven Harrington:
…the primary layers here must reveal something to us, like the rings of a tree as read by a dendrochronologist examining the stump; each line of color marks a moment in time, giving us news about the calm or harshness of the climate in that era.¹
Gerald “Jerry” Wolkolff purchased the warehouse in 1971 with zero inclination to redevelop. This lull in industrial functionality extended into the 1990s as graffiti artists found a home for their timely pieces. Unlike weekdays when few painted throughout the day, weekends were filled with conversation, snacks, supplies and friendship. Much credit belongs to Meres One, or as known outside of the graffiti community, Jonathan Cohen, who for decades curated the ephemeral walls. His formula, “skill level times effort times concept,” organized artists between professionals who sprayed the outside seen from the 7 and changed every few years, and amateurs who tasted permanency for 12 hours at a time.² Artists gained access after emailing Cohen; novices sent sketches and photos of their work and if proposing a big mural, a layout was required.
When the track curled around the block below and 5Pointz appeared like a mountain in the distance—fresh, vibrant, and triumphant—teenage growing pains subsided. There was the gargantuan tiger, the portrait of Notorious B.I.G., tags and shifting murals. Arguments with parents about skirt length, hoop size, lip stain, food choice or lack thereof, would dissipate at the view, distracted by the glamorous art. I’d ride while rotating the 21 songs stored poorly in my Blackberry Bold.
In November of 2013, 41 years after Neptune Meter Company vacated the warehouse, a year and a half before my high school graduation, Wolkoff stormed the building, police squad at his aid, to paint white over the aerosol mecca. Decolorizing and whitening the graffiti reflects the demographic shift of the area. Like Gantry State Park: the Great Gatsbian image of a tar-licked east river shoreline, ash heaps of production sustaining Manhattan and Long Island, is now pristine and neat. When I look out to the water the city looks utopian. The United Nations directly across the East river looks slick because of how the low side of the building scoops lightly. The willow trees in Peninsula Park line the rockside, the benches swivel across the dock, wild grasses mimic the endless feeling of midwestern plains. It’s weird to see so many white people in Queens clustered at picnic blankets and beach towels.
I think about this as I ride and listen to the lyrics, no soy de aqui ni soy de acá and memories of Papa ironing his shirts while listening to Facundo Cabral reverberate in my mind. Through childhood and adolescence the train presented a space to contemplate the change in neighborhood and in self. Here, I acknowledged my own ancestral anxieties and continue to reconcile them. I still find my gaze on the glassy building seen from the 7 nearing Queensboro Plaza. The grid windows are blue but reflect glints of yellow, red, and green from the passing train. If I squint and focus I see myself as voyager, reflection sweeping the façade and depicting the most realistic image of myself– fuzzy and fleeting. I consume my surroundings, allow myself to ambitiously hypothesize on traveler’s journeys and finding similarities between us. Something about body proximity and anonymity that makes intimacy. I observe caretakers returning depleted from late night shifts in a half slumber. It reminds me of when dad left for work at five in the morning and returned half past midnight after English classes at the local community college. I watch people enter, sit/stand, and click/touch their screens/buttons, and see their phones awaken to photos of babies with plump cheeks. Do they get home on time to see their children? Or must they leave before the children wake, completing incognito interactions? I wonder if the men in plaster speckled Levi’s, holding cylindrical and bunched-up paper bags, sip to forget or to remember why they’re here and who they’ve left. Or maybe it is just for fun. I recall Mamá’s ten hour weekday shifts, rarely scoring above a double digit hourly wage, and consider my Papa’s permanent “on-call” role limiting his personhood to superintendent, at least by contract. Always at the tenants’ service and available to the landlord, even at the emergency room or mid-kiss at 2 a.m. on a Saturday—¿Este es el sueño Americano?
Photo of skyline of Queens Plaza on May 26, 2017. Anthony Biondo/Wikipedia Commons.
Except for massive lots like the one by Flushing Meadow off Willets, trains live in limbo, seesawing from one location to another. As they move you, you eavesdrop and witness lives as they enter and depart in the safety of anonymity. It is an introspective space. On the 7 train I learned the word mestiza. First, I heard it from my mom and later studied it in weekly assignments. Readings were completed on the train while riding to and from class, work and home. I waded through the initial acceptance of the word, the disappointment around its complicated extrapolation, to my current embrace of it as a term representative of colonization and mutual indigenous empowerment. I felt that my complicated feelings were shared by train voyeurs, artists, and residents of the area whose art or reason for visit suggested similar identitarian qualms.
Before Wolkolff’s midnight stunt in 2013, 5pointz bustled. Nothing beats ruin like deep pleasure. Dancers and emcees gathered and before November’s lively rallies against demolition, gallery openings and break dance battles featuring the Dynamic Rockers, took place.³ Concerts included entrepreneurs and legends like DJ Kool Herc, Hip Hop’s founding father.⁴ In April, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) sponsored a collaboration between Tunisian artists eL Seed and Jaye, and 5Pointz regular SinXero, who together created calligraphy-style graffiti, murals, and stencils at 5Pointz. In Tunisia, street art is entirely illegal; thus, a platform where international artists showcase their talent is powerful.⁵ Most striking is the act of sharing artistic knowledge and craftsmanship with artists elsewhere, encouraging international allyship.
The whitewashing happened as 5Pointz artists announced their plan to seek landmark status. The paint job was not only unnecessary for demolition, but effaced the art needing protection a year before the date laid out for its destruction–it was an attempt to invalidate. In a Washington Post article, Samantha Schmidt reported that Cohen, 5Pointz curator and defender, sought a preliminary injunction against Wolkolff under the Visual Artists Rights Act. This happened after 5Pointz failed to acquire landmark status because of how recent the murals were. The court had promised an opinion within eight days of the injunction and it was exactly then that Wolkoff painted.
On the internet remains traces of 5Pointz. Jeremiah Moss’ blog, Vanishing New York, keeps square-framed photos of the whitewashing event with a slight blue-hued filter applied, producing a nostalgic and ghostly feeling.⁶ The comments are passionate and vary in length and disappointment. Five years after demolition, under the Visual Arts Act, federal judge Frederic Block ruled that Wolkolff must pay a total of $6,750,000 to artists.⁷ Block decided that 45 works of art achieved recognized stature and demanded $150,000 in damages, the maximum possible, for each. The money like the white paint does a meager job in covering the artistry that previously existed. The triple erasure, first by whitening then destroying and now by the high rise wearing its name, is representative of the developing area expanding at resident’s expense. At first I found the appropriation of the name profoundly disturbing, but now I think of it as haunting and find power in its lasting. I contemplate college translation classes where I learned about invocation, or the act of endowing life through voice. Like how “I do” officiates union at an altar because there is a witness of the verbal confirmation. When I read “5Pointz,” rather than imagining the current towers and futuristic lobby, I conjure the memory of the Biggie and the tiger; the image of aloof families who ignore the ruins they sleep on slip my mind. I disregard the minimalist entrance hall that by reducing detail and maximizing beige is considered elegant and current.
Mural of The Notorious B.I.G at 5Pointz. P.Lindgren/Wikipedia Commons.
Near the building there’s a Trader Joes but I like this and also the Michelin starred Mexican restaurant with salty, mezcal-heavy cocktails and the French sunflower spot with moules-frites. Now there’s a Book Culture I buy gifts in and an enoteca I avoid except for date nights. Walking in a cloud of contradiction I try to atone the nostalgia, the rage, and aim to perceive it all in cycles. There is the initial incongruity of the immigrant settler dynamic, the fragile duality invoked in the word mestiza, the mourning of the graffiti mecca and the enjoyment of the changes brought forth with its destruction. I view the residential building and ask myself if it indeed holds inhabitants. I imagine unoccupied apartments with unused dishwashers and a rent triple my own. Was it built to be barren?
Vacancies replacing the untenanted graffiti building confirms the industrial and revenue driven authority over a working class community. Before Wolkolff’s purchase in ‘71, the warehouse was home to a routine of oil-percolating furnaces that bore the Trident meter, which by calculating fluid velocity encouraged Queen’s modernization. The aforementioned Neptune Meter Company was famous for the designed-to-be-broken cast iron bottom cap which snapped when frozen over, made of cheap and replaceable materials. As the very value of Trident’s water meters derived from their being obsolete and disposable, the art-space of 5Pointz flourished because the building’s owner deemed it useless, unprofitable. Now, apartments wait for inhabitants who can afford the rising rents they demand. The sequence hinges on profitability and ownership, and both categories are monopolized by systemic greed willing to destroy culture for profit.
I pass 5Pointz with my boyfriend in the car he bought with my dad. We live together in a 6th floor apartment my brother helped renovate. Near a windowsill in the living room sits my stout and flowering Savila– la tengo desde los quince y me ampara. Es fuerte y hermosa y me recuerda a la casa de Caicelandia donde permanecí los primeros tres, casi cuatro años de vida antes de aterrizar aquí indocumentada. This year I am due to apply for American citizenship and on the precipice, I hesitate. In my rosy vision my rejection is in solidarity with “Lenapehoking” or the Land of the Lenape, original inhabitants of Brooklyn and Queens. Alongside them, formally Black neighborhoods like Corona where Louis Armstrong’s house has calcified into a museum with a Japanese garden. After a decade-long process and infinite amounts of penalties and service fees, refusing the blue passport would only invalidate parental sacrifices, and yet the temptation to refuse persists.
Mi savila reminds me of humid mornings in Palmira: the scent of lime trees, gasoline, and rainy asphalt. I hold these memories inside me closer than most thoughts. Regardless of shift in place or time their impression lasts. Like some walls in my current apartment, Mami and I painted their surface with a sea sponge, cutting the thick acrylic with water and glaze and pressing the wet sponge to the wall with a twist until layered and kaleidoscopic. The effect is foamy, soft and reflective. Like the white paint applied to 5Pointz, the sponge filters the past through. It reminds me of objects that wear in time and refurbish as entirely new things without losing what they were: stones and sand; caterpillars and butterflies; tadpoles and frogs. I think of my body in this way and language too. I’ve carried this phrase as I assimilate: preserva origen.
—
Notes
¹ Jaime Rojo, Steven Harrington, “A Layered History of 5 Pointz Currently on View,” Brooklyn Street Art, 2014,https://www.brooklynstreetart.com/2014/07/09/layered-history-5pointz/
² Dmitry Kiper, “Curator of an Urban Canvas,” The Christian Science Monitor, 2007, https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0724/p20s01-ussc.html
³ Tania Fuentez, “ART: Getting Back ‘To The Pointz’ and Roots of Hip Hop Culture,” 2013, https://taniafuentez.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/art-getting-back-to-the-pointz-and-roots-of-hip-hop-culture/
⁴ Tad Hendrickson, “Chatting With DJ Kool Herc, the Original Beat-Maker of the Bronx,” The Wall Street Journal, 2013, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324507404578595820992095786
⁵ “The After Revolution at 5Pointz” Time Out Magazine, 2013, https://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/the-after-revolution-at-5-pointz
⁶ Jeramiah Moss, “5 Pointz White-Washed,” Vanishing New York, 2013, https://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2013/11/5-pointz-white-washed.html?m=1
⁷ Alan Feuer, “Graffiti Artists Awarded $6.7 Million for Destroyed 5Pointz Murals,” The New York Times, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/nyregion/5pointz-graffiti-judgment.html
Born in Palmira, Colombia and raised in Queens, New York, María José Restrepo recently completed an MA in Columbia University’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies program. Concurrently, she was a Production Assistant at Unarthodox, where she curated an immersive space for blind-sculpting and intuitive painting. Before that, she taught English at two elementary schools in Paris, where her love for art, reading, and teaching converged. She now works as a Development Associate at the Center for Fiction. A staunch believer in cheese for dessert and an admirer of green, Sundays consist of snacking at Socrates Park, book in hand, or a bike ride to MoMA P.S.1.