Cynical Picture Emerges In 'Splasher' Mystery
Some Smell an Ad Campaign in the Case Of New York City's Serial
Graffiti Defacer
By David Segal
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 10, 2007; C01
NEW YORK -- For months, a minor mystery has beguiled the hipsters of
this city: Who is spla****ng paint on New York's highest-profile
graffiti?
Late last year, someone with nerve, time and a taste for vivid colors
began to deface walls where stars of the semi-underground world of
graffiti have left their handiwork. The aftermath always looks the
same: a piece of "street art," as it's called by fans, covered in gobs
of haphazardly tossed paint, with a pretentious manifesto pasted
nearby. "Avant-Garde: Advance Scouts for Capital" reads the headline.
Most the copy is mumbo jumbo like this: "A feti****zed action of
banality, your work is a trough for the gallery owners and critics."
Who would deface graffiti, of all things? And what is "feti****zed
action" anyway? Nobody has caught the Splasher, as he or she has come
to be known, leaving room for abundant speculation on local blogs and,
more recently, in stories in New York magazine and the New York Times.
But now a suspect has emerged: American Apparel.
Yes, the Los Angeles-based clothing chain that sells slim-fitting
"baby rib crop" T-****rts to 22-year-olds. To date, the company has
been known primarily for its hasty expansion -- there are two stores
in the D.C. area and more than 140 other locations in the United
States and elsewhere -- and for the saucy, amateur-**** style of its
advertising. That, plus the exploits of the company's founder, Dov
Charney, the randy 38-year-old chief executive who boasts about his
romps with employees and has been sued for ***ual harassment.
(According to a spokeswoman for the company, Cynthia Semon, one suit
was dismissed, one was settled and one is pending.)
The cloud of suspicion settled above American Apparel because a new
version of the Splasher manifesto popped up in the Williamsburg
section of Brooklyn, apparently on Sunday night. The text and font
were identical to the original, but there was a key difference: An ad
for American Apparel was stripped across the bottom. "Try this!" the
copy reads, next to a guy in a pair of American Apparel green
underwear and tube socks.
At first glance, this appears to be a freshly pasted-up manifesto,
along with an American Apparel ad, both splashed with bright blue
paint. But here's the twist: There are a bunch of these new
manifestos, and each one is splashed in exactly the same pattern, and
with exactly the same shade of blue. In other words, the image you see
at the beginning of this story is a color photocopy -- manifesto, ad
and fake splatter, all on one page.
You getting the picture?
Then you know it's time for a phone call to American Apparel.
"I can tell you this didn't come from us," says Semon. "We make ads
that are provocative, but we don't splash paint on graffiti."
Semon then says she'll call the company's advertising department, just
to double-check. Ten minutes later, the phone rings.
"They laughed," she says. "This has nothing to do with us. The company
loves art. Dov's mother is an artist. We've got photographs all over
our factory," which is in downtown Los Angeles.
So, any theories at all?
"I think someone is trying to implicate us," she says.
Aha! It's not American Apparel, it's an enemy of American Apparel. A
setup, if you will. Perhaps someone less than satisfied with its $18
forest/gold fine jersey ringer tank with contrast binding and generous
armhole openings, hmmmm? Or the disgruntled owner of a $30 nylon
tricot men's swim brief, front lined with durable stitching all
around, plus water-wicking Helenca lining.
Or it could be any of the locals who groused when American Apparel
opened a store two years ago in Williamsburg. We're talking about the
capital of boho cool, a place that's always been hostile to retail
chains of any kind.
"That store just seemed to open up one day out of the blue, and there
were plenty of people who weren't happy about it," says Billy Campion,
a rocker who performs under the name Vic Thrill. "I wouldn't put it
past someone around here to frame the place."
The inelegantly titled "I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin" blog discovered
and photographed the new AA-infused manifestos on Sunday night and
posted those photos Monday, along with some idle guesses about what it
all means. Theory No. 1: It's been American Apparel from the get-go,
no matter what they say.
"Naturally, they'll deny everything -- after all, graffiti in all
forms is still technically a crime, isn't it," the blogger wrote. Or
it could be someone is spla****ng the Splasher, as a blogger with the
Village Voice hypothesized on Tuesday. A way to say, "You've got all
the street cred of a semi-****d bozo in an American Apparel ad." Or
words to that effect.
Then again, it could be that American Apparel wasn't the Splasher from
the beginning but now is trying to leap on the Splasher bandwagon with
a little guerrilla marketing. Maybe the company pasted up a bunch of
manifestos that incor****ate AA ads, hoping that it would turn up on
blogs (as it did), then be amplified in newspapers by nitwit re****ters
(gulp).
This required closer inspection. A couple of the ad-festoes were
examined up close Monday afternoon on North Sixth Street in Brooklyn.
It was clear that these are digital photos, not originals. (They look
kind of grainy, for one thing.) These particular examples were on a
wall one block from that aforementioned American Apparel store. So it
seemed like a good idea to head inside the place and accuse the
employees of graffiti spla****ng.
Oh, like they cared. Staffers in this place greet every customer, it
seems, with a look that could only be described as "get it yourself,"
and re****ters are treated no differently. The store manager was Pete
Ruppert, a young man s****ting a bunch of colorful tattoos, including
one that read "Be Your Own Boss," next to an image of a handgun. He
said he had not heard of any Splasher-American Apparel connection.
Really, cross his heart and hope to die. He then agreed to take a walk
and look at the faux splatterings on that North Sixth Street wall.
"That's Glen," said Ruppert, as he studied the evidence. "I went to
school with him."
For a moment, it seemed like he was saying, "Glen did this," but it
turned out he was referring to the dude in the green undies. Okay, Mr.
Ruppert, you know a male model. But any idea whether AA is actually
behind this paste-up?
He shook his head, on which rested a Detroit Tigers cap, tipped
sideways for a hint of hip-hop flava. "If this had anything to do with
our advertising, I'd know about it," he said.
Case unclosed, it seems. Which might be better than the alternative.
American Apparel ****lls, in the street, with color photocopies and
paste-- frankly, this urban game of Clue deserves a better ending than
that.
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