Gated Community: Graffiti and Incarceration

By Mickael Broth

Gated Community: Graffiti and Incarceration is a memoir detailing Mickael Broth's involvement in graffiti vandalism, and the ten-month jail sentence that it led to when he was twenty-one, living in Richmond, Virginia. Expanding on his personal experiences, the book addresses issues of wider relevance, such as delinquency, property rights, addiction, racism, class privilege, privatization, and mass incarceration in America, among other topics. It stands apart from glut of hero-worshiping graffiti tomes currently on the market, relating rather to the more honest, and societally significant story of a young person placed at odds with the justice system and society's mores. Praised by audiences as diverse as graffiti writers, art magazines, and even a MacArthur Fellow, this book is an insider's perspective on two worlds that the general public is only able to view from outside. Brutally honest and conveying a deep sense of remorse, while punctuated by a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, Gated Community: Graffiti and Incarceration will transport the reader into worlds they may be lucky never to experience themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mickael Broth
• Release date: Sep 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311447005

Mickael Broth

Mickael Broth, also known as The Night Owl, is a Richmond, Virginia-based artist, muralist, sculptor, and writer. Mickael moved to Richmond in 2001 with the intention of painting as much graffiti as possible. His involvement in vandalism was halted abruptly with his arrest in 2004 and subsequent ten-month jail term for his crimes. Since that time, he has gone on to pursue an active (and legal) career in the arts. He was awarded a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship in 2008 for his studio work and has shown widely around the United States; from museums and galleries to alternative spaces and abandoned buildings. His work is held in numerous private and corporate collections. He has painted over two hundred public murals throughout Richmond, the United States and Europe since 2012, in addition to helping curate multiple public art festivals. Through his public art work, Mickael has been commissioned by all manner of clients, from small local businesses and nonprofits to municipal governments, museums, and Fortune 500 corporations. He has been an active member of the community, working with youth groups, as well as leading volunteer groups in the creation of collaborative public art projects. Mickael serves on the board of directors for the RVA Street Art Festival and has been instrumental in the curatorial direction of the organization since its formation in 2012. In 2013, he published Gated Community: Graffiti and Incarceration, a memoir detailing his experiences with vandalism and jail. In 2017, he was awarded a commission by the City of Richmond for the creation of an 15’ tall welded aluminum sculpture installed in front of the Hull Street Library in Richmond’s Manchester neighborhood. Mickael’s second published book, Murals of Richmond, which documents Richmond’s public art explosion, was published in November 2018 by Chop Suey Books and quickly sold out of the first printing. Mickael continues to live and work in Richmond, along with his wife and educational activist Brionna Nomi, their son Maverick Rosedale, and their shelter-dog Lil’ Nilla Bean.

Book preview

KIND THINGS PEOPLE HAVE SAID

Since there are countless titles of redundant, cliché books focused around the subject of graffiti, it’s easy to overlook something good when it comes around. Look no further, Gated Community is a book addressing graffiti and incarceration, specifically relating to the experience of former Richmond, Virginia based vandal, Mickael Broth.

Juxtapoz Magazine

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When Mickael Broth began serving a 10-month prison sentence for vandalism in July 2004, the graffiti artist and then-college student was forced to change the way he created art. Born and raised in Springfield, Broth, now 29, worked behind bars using four-inch ballpoint pens on notebook paper and M&M shells for color.

The Washington Post

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By his own admission he was not particularly good by artistic measures, but the thrill of breaking the law, of declaring his existence and his defiance was so habit-forming that even after promising the people he most loved, after promising himself he would stop, it took the reality of losing his freedom for nearly a year to force maturity on him...

Karen Hesse

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Rich in Richmond graffiti history with thought provoking conversations of what drives the vandals/artists that risk their health and freedom to do this stuff.

RVA Magazine

Gated Community: Graffiti and Incarceration

Mickael Broth

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Copyright 2013 Mickael Broth

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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I strongly encourage anyone interested in this book to

consider the print version, which is available at

gatedcommunitybook.com

Part One

COLD HOUSE

I woke up shivering under the insect buzz of cold, fluorescent lights. My body ached as I tried to stretch an itchy grey blanket over me, despite the fact that it barely reached from my feet to the middle of my chest. Strangers were milling around me, echoing guttural, animal noises. The realization suddenly set in that I had just spent my first night in jail.

I rolled onto my side and squeezed my eyes shut, accepting that this was just the first of many nights I would spend under these conditions. The room was quickly filling with the din of yawning, stretching, farting, and coughing. Sunburned white guys with leathery skin and long, scraggly gray hair scratched their equally scraggly beards, while angry-looking black boys held their arms tucked inside their shirts, hands adjusting their cocks. To me, everyone looked overtly threatening, and perfectly comfortable in their surroundings.

The space was coming into focus and I saw that there were about twenty or thirty people in the long, rectangular room. The walls were solid cinderblock, the coarse surface smooth with thick layers of institutional blue paint. The room was completely devoid of daylight. There was a large plate glass window looking into a dark corridor at the far end from where I lay on an impossibly thin mattress I had placed on the floor the previous night. I rolled over and saw that the room led into another darkened corridor, this one lined with doors, from which other inmates in navy blue jumpsuits were emerging. Back at the end of the windowed room, a large metal door clanked loudly and opened. In walked a short, heavy-set man in a black and khaki officer’s uniform followed by two inmates in brown jumpsuits. They wheeled a cart with compartments containing battered plastic trays from which breakfast would be served. Other inmates began forming a line. Feeling that I would most likely not be fed if I didn’t join the line, I anxiously put on my shoes and quickly joined the queue.

The previous night, I had taken off the soft rubber shoes (similar to Crocs), that I had been given with my jail blues, and placed them on the floor by my paltry mattress. That morning, it didn’t take more than a brief glance and feel to realize that something was wrong. The shoes that now lay at my feet, although the same make, were definitely not the same pair. The pair I was left with, aside from being at least two sizes too large, were brittle from use and chipped away around the heel, leaving a jagged edge. For a brief moment I thought to publicly protest, to demand that the pair of shoes I had been issued be returned to me. Surely the guard who had arrived with breakfast would help me. I might even be able to identify the person who had taken my pair. But as quickly as the thought came, I realized that would be the worst thing I could possibly do. By asking a guard for help, I’d be making myself into a goddamn snitch. And I wasn’t about to do that after having turned down a deal that would have spared me jail time had I turned on my accomplice in the first place. And of course, publicly announcing I had been victimized (even in the slightest respect) would be inviting a world of shit, possibly worse than anything I could imagine. Silently accepting what I had allowed to happen, I put my feet into the overlarge plastic clogs and joined the line, angry and frustrated that I was already being forced to think and act like a caged animal.

THE HOW

I was on a charter bus full of high-schoolers headed north to Canada for a snowboarding trip when graffiti first slithered its way into my life. My albino friend, Mikey, was sitting across the aisle from me copying letters out of Phantom #3, a graffiti magazine produced by a Santa Cruz, California skateshop called Bill’s Wheels. It was colorful and glossy and packed with pictures from all over the country. I’d seen some graffiti around my neighborhood before, but nothing like what filled the pages of Phantom. It was bursting with energy and power. I had no idea who SABER, REVOK, or NACE were in real life, but instantly I was blown away. All it took was that first glimpse into the thriving world of graffiti and I was hooked. It wasn’t a life plan, a career path, or something you’d major in for college. It was just something to do that looked like a good fucking time.

Unfortunately for me (and those who had to view it), I always sucked at graffiti. Lettering just wasn’t something that came naturally to me. Vandalism however, was something I got pretty good at. In fact, I was a prolific enough vandal, that when I was arrested in April 2004, the City of Richmond, Virginia decided to make an example of me. This book is my story of what happened.

***

I was born in a city; at George Washington Hospital in Northwest DC, to be specific. But without a doubt, I grew up in the suburbs; in a newly built subdivision down the street from the high school I attended. My parents are loving and supportive people who did their best to encourage an appreciation for the arts and culture. My father is a respectable and grounded guy, but he’s always had a certain disdain for authority; something that I think must be hereditary. My mom encouraged my interest in art from a young age, always displaying my work on the walls of her office at work.

I got interested in skateboarding and punk music early in high school, but it was graffiti that would have the largest impact on my life over the next decade. It was rebellious and artistic, two things that I felt differentiated me from my peers (something I, like most teenagers, felt was of particular importance). I started spending my time in class copying letters from graffiti magazines and trying my hand at using spray paint on the concrete faces of support walls under bridges on the weekends. My girlfriend, Brionna, seemed marginally intrigued; so I figured I must be onto something good.

Despite being introduced to graffiti by Mikey, I didn’t really have anyone to teach me the ropes, so I didn’t progress very far before my first run-in with the police. Poorly rendered paintings of even more poorly designed letterforms on the sides of long haul tractor-trailers led to a failed attempt to outrun a police helicopter. After picking me up from the police station in the morning, my parents made me give them an incredibly embarrassing tour of the art I’d been arrested for creating the night before. My encounter with the justice system resulted in little more than restitution, but was enough to make me second-guess my involvement in graffiti. I steered clear of law breaking for about a year (with the obvious exception of the constant trespassing that goes along with skateboarding), before discovering what I considered to be a loophole in graffiti; a backdoor, if you will.

Used by advertisers since the invention of the printing press, the concept of wheat pasting printed posters on city walls had entered the graffiti mainstream thanks in large part to Shepard Fairey’s Obey posters and stickers, which could be seen in virtually every major city through the United States by the late 90’s. REVS and COST, two New York City writers had actually paved the way with their prolific (and far more interesting) visual assault on lower Manhattan in the early 90’s, which inspired Fairey, among many others. By the time I took notice, wheat pasting and billboard liberation were established means of vandalism. Putting up posters and stickers of my artwork on public property all around DC seemed to be a safe way to stay involved in graffiti, while at the same time allowing me to feel like I wasn’t actually committing any real crime. After all, they were easily peeled off.

My friend Quinn and I were amused by the term, Refuse to be smart. The phrase seemed like a perfect way to both annoy the masses and simultaneously ridicule those who were cool enough to be fans of the posters. We began using it as a sort of slogan on the posters we were adhering to boarded up buildings and traffic control boxes in downtown DC. It was a good time! Sneaking around the fucked up parts of the city in the middle of the night was a thrill like I’d never experienced. For brief moments, we were completely invincible. Of course I knew there were risks; but with each rooftop successfully climbed, and each night winding down safely at home, I started to feel confident in what I was doing. I internalized the underlying ideas of what graffiti could stand for (and against) in society and embraced those subversive, although often hypocritical, ideas.

SOCIETY GETS WHAT IT DESERVES, NOT WHAT IT DEMANDS

People can justify all kinds of things to themselves, especially when it excuses their actions and beliefs. The graffiti subculture is full of these self-serving dismissals of guilt. Everything from shifting the blame to billboards and corporations for the visual pollution in the urban environment, to claiming that because America’s land was stolen from American Indians in the first place, there are no legitimate claims to property ownership. I always favored the theory that public property (such as traffic control boxes and sound barrier walls along highways) were unquestionably fair game since I, as a member of the public, am in fact a part owner of such surfaces. And while the Broken Windows Theory has been disproven time and again, for years I felt that absentee property owners actually deserved to have their property vandalized. After all, if they cared so little as to let their building fall into a state of disrepair, then why shouldn’t members of the community be allowed to seize it and do what they will? Hell, it was the property owner that allowed the building to get fucked up in the first place! And of course the obsession with owning property and putting up fences and gates around that property was just a symptom of a sick society that’s lost touch with what truly matters in life! Right?

Besides, it was up to me, a free thinking, free spirited prophet to point out to workaday commuters that human beings weren’t meant to sit in traffic for hours each day, only to slave away at a job they hate, in order to afford a new house and a new SUV that they don’t need. I intended to do just that; by painting my fake name (or silly saying) along rooftop walls that they would in all likelihood never notice on their daily commute. Yes, it’s illegal, but those are humanity’s laws, and humans are flawed. Therefore, their laws are flawed as well. And what’s the worse crime: painting one color over another, or upholding the rules of a morally corrupt society?

Artistic expression, fame, contempt for society’s laws, political motivations; there are all kinds of real reasons that people write graffiti, and for most people it’s some jumbled-up mix of motivations. In my opinion, at its core, graffiti provides some feeling of self-satisfaction and self-worth. What else would make a person scale the drain pipe of a four-story building or break into a train yard, avoiding all manner of security and danger in order to paint their name; the only tangible reward being a crappy picture, half blown-out by the camera flash reflecting off wet paint. Just like a mountain climber, you do it because it feels good to know you can; to conquer some seemingly unattainable peak. All the other reasons are just things you tell a shrink when you get arrested and think you can get off by having a doctor say you suffer from addiction.

TOMORROW'S DOCTORS AND LAWYERS AND ARTISTS

I applied to Virginia Commonwealth University’s art program primarily because they had a decent screen-printing lab and I already knew a few older friends at the school who did graffiti. Beyond that, college seemed like little more than an excuse to live in an actual city and do as much vandalism as possible. I was accepted and moved to Richmond, Virginia in the fall of 2001, as gentrification was just starting to take hold in the former capital of the South. As an added bonus, Brionna had been accepted to the University of Richmond, and had moved south as well. When I arrived, downtown was a virtual ghost town after five in the afternoon and decades of white flight had led to lost tax revenue and decreased services. Rows of old tobacco warehouses stood empty, while industrial parts of town were rusting