Vandal Squad, by Joseph Rivera… photographed in my kitchen. (Photo by C-M.)
Guy works for the NYC’s Vandal Squad for twenty years. Guy writes book. To promote the book, guy even does a panel in Brooklyn with a buncha graffiti writers. That is the story of Joseph Rivera, the retired Vandal Squad cop who has just issued the above tome, from powerHouse Books, about his two-decade-long career in the unit. The text chronicles his life cracking down on graffiti, but the book’s layout, ironically, resembles a celebratory graff book: page after page of burners, masterpieces and bubble tags.
If you were feeling conflicted about spending your unemployment check on a book by a cop, then here’s your chance to lay your hands on it for free. Leave a comment below and this little puppy (complete with a photo of Rivera clutching a can of spray paint inside Scrap Yard on p. 74) could be yours!
Really now, I know I’m part of this thing, but is there anyone at this moment who deserves this book more than the person who has convinced the American Academy in Rome to house and feed me for a year in Rome, plus pay me a stipend… to study ancient and modern graffiti?
Wouldn’t you love to help change the perspective of a hopelessly midwestern, unhip lady like me? I need to be educated about artz, too!
hey mang,
gimme dat book
oh, cop me a copy!
hey there. regalame el libro! plz?
teen librarians need graffiti too!
Yahtzee!
Need it for my child’s education.
Do. Want.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
Fuck the Police.
want.
I need this for um…research. I might be able to avoid getting arrested myself if I know how the guys with the cuffs are going to think and act.
I’m with James Christian on this one. Let me cut and paste the text out the book cuz there ain’t nothing about it save for pictures.
this looks very interesting.
I have never lived on the East Coast, especially during the 80s, no I was stuck in Texas. I need all the education I can get to school me
So send it to a fellow who wishes he was in NY in the 80s…instead of suburban wasteland….where we graffiti barns and cows out here y’know….
this would be a perfect companion for my book about New York city systems!
Your photo makes the book look like a riot shield. Hope it’s not too late to enter.
San-Suzie deserves it more than me… but I still want it.
i live in north carolina. give me this as solace.
contest is closed… stay tuned for the winner.