VE, A Graffiti Legend in NYC
I met VE the street tagger/graffiti artist in class. I didn't know he was VE One at the time, but he sat down next to me in homeroom as I doodled in my notebook. I was practicing my art skills with writing letters and he mistook them for graffiti and said i was good.
He then told me that he tags everywhere and showed me his tag: a simple V and an E.
I'd not see him much after that, but I myself began tagging around my neighborhood. As I got to college and ventured off into other parts of the city, I'd notice his tag all over the place. Train tunnels, bridge walls, building rooftops. Everywhere.
I stopped tagging back in High School. That era for me lasted but a few months. But I saw those VE tags for a while until they stopped and I had heard in passing, sometime after college, he had died.
I remember thinking: 'How sad." Sad because he seemed lost and like a sad soul left alone to find his own way, all the time he was just trying to be found.
I get it now, all these years and decades later that he just wanted to be seen, so that he could know that he wasn't lost.
—CP'26
