New Source

In The New York Times I found an article about, titled “ ‘Taki 183’ Spawns Pen Pals”. It is about one of the first taggers in New York City. His name is Demetrius. A Greek-American teenager from Washington Heights who wrote, “Taki 183” his nickname and street address.  There he says how he writes his name wherever goes including subway stations, inside subway cars, all over the city, on walls along Broadway, al Kennedy International Airport, in New Jersey, Connecticut, and other places because it is something that he had to do. Thousands of people saw these tags and this sparked the interest of many young people to start their own “tagging”.  The goal was to get as many tags as possible. His says how their goal was to gain fame and recognition of how many tags they put up, where the graffiti is, and the size and style of it.

"'Taki 183' Spawns Pen Pals" . nytimes.com. 21 July 1971. PDF. 27 Nov 2017