What was the deal with the person who scratched his initials into countless thousands of doorways?

March 16, 2011 7:01 PM

Fifteen or twenty years ago, there was some mysterious person who was believed to have scratched his initials (or maybe it was his graffiti handle) into, the molding of just about every doorway in Manhattan, and perhaps beyond. Eventually, someone took notice (though the scratching was always small and fairly nondescript), and the story got some attention. Can anyone point me to details?
posted by Quisp Lover to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

You're not thinking of Revs, are you? Doesn't sound like it, but wanted to check anyway.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:19 PM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: No. Not an artist, nothing creative or wonderful. Just world-shaking persistence applied in scratching his initials/handle into literally every single doorway in Manhattan. Nothing but the scratching.

And he clearly wasn't trying to get "known". He just did tiny, low-profile, super easy-to-miss scratches, and it's actually kind of amazing that anyone ever noticed what he'd done.
posted by Quisp Lover at 7:32 PM on March 16, 2011

Best answer: There was a Spy Magazine photospread about somebody scratching the word "pray" into doorways all over New York, but Google isn't helping.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 8:39 PM on March 16, 2011

I remember an article about a person , who was presumed to be a messenger, who scratched their name into many many elevators in Manhattan. More recently there was a person who painted , but not scratched, "Pray" with a cross onto the fronts of a lot of bars in Hell's Kitchen. Google isn't helping me either.

I hope somebody finds this.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:57 PM on March 16, 2011

Best answer: Here's the Spy Magazine article about people who scratch "Pray" into door frames that Bernt Pancreas remembers.
posted by carmicha at 9:35 PM on March 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

scratching his initials/handle into literally every single doorway in Manhattan

This sounds an awful lot like an urban legend to me.
posted by Nightman at 10:46 PM on March 16, 2011

Not doorways, but in the 60's early taggers like 'Taki 183' and 'Joe 136' have been creditted with tagging virtually every New York subway car.
posted by sleepy boy at 5:13 AM on March 17, 2011

This sounds an awful lot like an urban legend to me.
I haven't had a chance but I am going to check some doorways.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:40 AM on March 17, 2011

About five years ago there was a story in the New Yorker about Neckface.
posted by Ollie at 12:51 PM on March 17, 2011

Response by poster: "Pray" is right. Great detective work, Bernt and carmicha!

carmicha, I'd double "favorite" you, if that were possible, for the additional revelation that old Spy Magazines are available via Google Books!


thanks!
posted by Quisp Lover at 2:39 PM on March 17, 2011

Response by poster: This question was favorited 19 times before the answer was even supplied. Shall I conclude that any sort of fervid obsessive-compulsive behavior is an instant hit here on MeFi? :)
posted by Quisp Lover at 2:44 PM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

The story I heard from the graffiti crowd of the early 80s was that "Pray" wasn't a graffiti artist at all but was instead an elderly homeless woman with a mental illness.
posted by cazoo at 2:20 PM on June 12, 2011