By its very design, street art is ephemeral. Not necessarily made to last and furtively executed either in haste, overnight or under the radar, it is a guerrilla-style form of expression the very clandestine nature of which is to surprise its viewers and then, in most instances, vanish forever. I’d suggest that huge parts of its appeal are in its fleeting existences and outlaw status. You may not have expected it. You did not ask for it. You cannot control it. You cannot own it. The most you can do is paint over it.
Graffiti is loved and loathed in equal measures by the city’s residents. But despite New York’s own robust history of trailblazing street art, there isn’t really one, formal public record of it. Sure, names like Zephyr, Lee Quinones, Futura 2000 and Dondi are frequently cited by denizens — to say nothing of artists whose work went “legit” like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Richard Hambleton and Jean-Michel Basquiat — but, as far as I know, there is no single tome or collection that authoritatively documents the work of the most celebrated street artists and graffiti-writers. But, I suppose that’s the point. It’s a wild, organic art form. You’re not supposed to be able to institutionalize it.
It’s for this very reason that I’ve been so preoccupied with a certain quest — to find the Plasmatics wall.
I originally invoked it in this comparatively ancient post from a decade ago, but my actual search for the image dates back to 1982 or 1983, after first spotting the art on a wall in Spanish Harlem from within a southbound school bus on the northern reaches of Park Avenue.
It seemed sort of wildly out of place to spot an invocation of The Plasmatics — very much a downtown concern — on a wall up in Spanish Harlem, much less an invocation composed in the signature bright colors and stylized renderings of graffiti, which, in those days, was more steeped in the burgeoning culture of hip-hop than in punk rock. But, again, it’s easy to assign such meaningless parameters for the sake of neatly encapsulating an era. There, for whatever reason, was a colorful depiction of Wendy O Williams and the Plasmatics' logo on a facade north of East 96th Street. Why was it there? Who knows? Maybe whomever spray-painted it was simply a fan.
But, as mentioned in that post, when I sheepishly went back to find it after that school trip, pedaling nervously on my shitty BMX past the “the border” between the Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem at East 96th Street, I couldn’t seem to find it again or, more likely, I wimped out and did an about-face before getting too far uptown.
And that was basically that.
I cannot recall what prompted my penning of the post in 2010 about it other than that it’s always been something I was struck by and remembered. After a while, though, given that I never found any further evidence of its existence, much like that certain “punk” issue of New York Magazine (which I, of course, later found), I started wondering if maybe I’d imagined it, and started giving up the notion of trying to find any evidence of it.
But in already in a few instances this year, for whatever illogical reason, I have stumbled across beguiling bits of Plasmatics trivia that resulted in a series of in-depth posts (all collected here, for your convenience, if you care). in the spirit of same, I figured I’d revive my quest for Wendy’s wall.
For a start, I posted the entry on the Plasmatics fan page on Facebook, asking aloud if anyone else had remembered seeing it. Suddenly the thread came alive with remarks from commenters saying they’d recalled seeing it from the windows of a Metro-North train and speculating as to its possible whereabouts. The problem, however, is that like me, no one had snapped a pic of it. At the very least, I had corroboration of its existence.
Then I went back to the well and started getting creative with Google, entering in any number of combinations like “Plasmatics,” “Wendy,” “mural,” “Manhattan,” “80s,” “graffiti,” “Park Avenue” etc., but continually came up empty. I actually reached out over Instagram to fabled graffiti tagger Lee Quinones and photographer/graffiti-champion Henry Chalfant to see if either of those guys remembered it. No one got back to me.
I started feeling that old sensation of futility once again until I happened upon one article or another that made mention of an over-promisingly named strip of concrete called — wait for it — the Graffiti Hall of Fame. While not an actual “hall” of any tangible quality, this area was a designated street-art destination established in 1980 on — WAIT FOR IT, ONCE AGAIN — the northernly reaches of Park Avenue. Things were starting to add up. I started Googling “Graffiti Hall of Fame” and “Park Avenue” and scrolling through the ensuing images.
It was almost too easy.
Evidently painted by an artist named Dez, the whole wall came up via another promisingly named entity called Graffiti Database. I was genuinely astonished to have found it. Here’s a closer look at it…
Regrettably, I have no idea who took this photograph or when, but it’s definitely the mural I first saw, although the passage of time rendered the images in my head with way more nuance and detail. I’m still mystified as to the specifics of its backstory, but I can at least now rest, knowing I didn’t imagine it and that I’ve closed the circle on another inane quest.
Here in 2021, the Graffiti Hall of Fame is still a going concern, but the Plasmatics mural was painted over decades ago.
And, once again, for the uninitiated, these were the Plasmatics...
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