Julio 204

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

JULIO 204 was one of the first graffiti writers in New York City and inspired early graffiti pioneers like Taki 183 and 'Stay High 149'.

Julio was a Puerto Rican who lived on 204th street and was a member of the "Savage Skulls" gang. He started writing his nickname in his neighborhood as early as 1968. His tags got noticed by Taki 183, who took the form (the adding of a street number) straight from Julio. In 1971 the New York Times published an article about Taki in which he said that he was inspired by Julio to start tagging. According to him Julio wrote for a couple of years but then got arrested and stopped. It is said that Julio got sentenced to jail time for vandalism, forcing him into early retirement.

Julio 204 never received the fame and credits Taki got probably because he didn't write outside his own neighborhood and didn't make his name as famous as Taki 183 did.

[edit] Further reading

• "Style: Writing from the Underground. (R)evolutions of Aerosol Linguistics", Stampa Alternativa in Association with IGTimes,1997. ISBN 88-7226-318-2.

• "Freight Train Graffiti", Roger Gastman, Ian Sattler, Darin Rowland. Harry N Abrams Inc, 2006. ISBN 9780810992498

• "The Birth of Graffiti", Jon Naar, Prestel 2007. ISBN 978-3-7913-3796-8

[edit] External links

• New York Times: 'Taki 183' Spawns Pen Pals (pdf)

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