Graffiti revival threatens New York subway system

江西 邓玉梅

近年来，纽约市地铁上的涂鸦现象日益增多，这导致交通局花费数百万美元进行清洁并且调整地铁服务，更让人震惊的是，一些艺术家甚至冒着生命危险去为列车涂鸦。

主题语境：文化 篇幅：387 词 篇 建议用时：7分钟

1 The ten-car subway train was adorned at the end of June in a tunnel in Queens.The artists appeared to use paint rollers to cover it along one side, from top to bottom, in an awful shade of pink with a brown line.

2 Tagging (涂鸦) a train is often less about art and more about the prize of marking something that involves risk and echoes the original graffiti writers, who blanketed subway trains, including the windows and seats inside, in the 1970s and 1980s.

3 “Modern graffiti began in Philadelphia in the 1960s.But it became an art form in New York City,” says Eric Felisbret, author ofGraffiti New York.“Graffiti benefited from the popularity of hip-hop globally,”says Mr Felisbret.“Out of all the elements of hip-hop, graffiti is by far the most rebellious...Back then, all graffiti was illegal.”

4 In 2020, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the subway,spent $1.2 million on cleaning.By the end of May 2022 it had already spent$1.1 million.In all of 2021, 681 subway cars were “ruined”.In 2023, more than 700 cars have been “ruined”.More than one in ten subway cars had to be taken out of service for cleaning.

5 The recent spike in subway graffiti activity once paralleled the lifting of travel restrictions.The graffiti on trains usually gets cleaned or hidden quickly, so artists post images of their work on social media.Sharif Profit, who organizes the annual Graffiti Hall of Fame in Harlem, says he can always tell when the work is done by someone from another country: “It is not on the same level.”

6 Tagging on the subway is dangerous.The live third rail is lethal (致命的) and the tunnels are dark.Trains can appear with little warning, so trespassers (不法进入者) may have no way of avoiding them.Two French graffiti artists were killed by a train in Brooklyn in April.

7 The MTA removes any tagged train so as to avoid encouraging other people.Passengers then have to wait longer.“That was the case recently,” says Richard Davey, head of the MTA's New York City Transit system, when eight trains were ruined.The resulting delays affected thousands of commuters.“It's our goal to make sure we don't return to the 1970s,” he says, “whether it's in our stations or on our cars.”

8 Graffiti on the subway began to die out in the late 1980s.One former graffiti writer said it is almost shocking to see tagging there now.

Reading Check

Detail1.Why do graffiti artists tag a subway train?

A.For the prize of an art competition.

B.In pursuit of artistic beauty.

C.To express their dissatisfaction with society.

D.To imitate the early graffiti creators.

Vocabulary2.What does the underlined word“ spike” in paragraph 5 mean?

A.Increase.B.Participation.

C.Drop.D.Pause.

Inference 3.What can we infer about tagging from the text?

A.It helps people better understand the world.

B.It has brought inconvenience to commuters.

C.Modern graffiti was at its peak in the 1970s.

D.It is embraced by a majority of artists now.

Language Study

Ⅰ.Difficult sentence in the text

Tagging a train is often less about art and more about the prize of marking something that involves risk and echoes the original graffiti writers, who blanketed subway trains, including the windows and seats inside, in the 1970s and 1980s.涂鸦列车往往不是为了艺术，更多的是为了获得标记的奖赏，这涉及风险，也与最初的涂鸦作者不谋而合，他们在20世纪70年代和80年代在地铁列车上涂鸦，包括车窗和车厢内的座位。

【点石成金】本句中，that引导的是一个定语从句，先行词为something；who引导的是一个非限制性定语从句，先行词为the original graffiti writers。

Ⅱ.Text-centered chunks

benefit from 受益于……

take...out of service 停止使用……

on the same level 处于同一水平

die out 逐渐减少

make sure 确保