View source for Zoo York (Central Park)

{{more citations needed|date=July 2009}}
'''Zoo York''' is a style and [[social philosophy]] inspired by the [[New York City]] graffiti art subculture of the 1970s. Its name originates from a [[63rd Street Line|subway tunnel]] running underneath the area of the [[Central Park Zoo]]. This tunnel, called the Zoo York Tunnel, or simply "Zoo York," was a haunt of very early "old school" graffiti writers who hung out with the [[hippies]] around the Central Park Bandshell in the late 1960s and 1970s.

==Zoo York Tunnel==
Dubbed "Zoo York" by [[graffiti]] pioneer and [[rapper]] [[ALI (graffiti artist)|ALI]] (Marc Edmonds), founder of the Soul Artists, the subway tunnel provided a "scene" where crews of [[Manhattan]] graffiti artists gathered at night. The tunnel itself was a [[cut-and-cover]] construction project built through [[Central Park]] from 1971 to 1973. Extensions of the [[New York City Subway]]'s [[BMT Broadway Line]] and [[IND Sixth Avenue Line]], continued north from their former {{stn|57th Street–Seventh Avenue station}} (BMT) and [[57th Street station (IND Sixth Avenue Line)|57th Street]] (IND) stations, merged just south of the [[Central Park Zoo|City Zoo]], then snaked underneath the zoo grounds and out under [[Fifth Avenue]], where they connected to the recently completed [[63rd Street Line]] and [[Bellmouth (railroad terminology)|bellmouths]] for the [[Second Avenue Subway]].

During construction, the site was left unguarded at night. Unauthorized entry was discouraged by a tall [[aluminum]]-sheathed [[Zoo York Wall|wall]] erected around the open ground by the [[New York City Transit Authority]]—but this hardly deterred local graffiti writers from boosting one another over it and climbing down into the tunnel below. Down inside the tunnel, there were four subway [[Rail tracks|tracks]] (uptown and downtown [[Independent Subway System|IND]] and [[Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation|BMT]] tracks on two levels; downtown tracks on upper level, uptown tracks on lower level) constructed on two levels about {{convert|100|ft|m}} underneath the park, creating something of a subterranean monkey-house environment for invading street kids to climb around and scrawl graffiti on.

==Tagging the wall==
[[Graffiti artist]]s also marked their territory by "tagging" the wall which had been put up around the construction site. A photograph of the extinct [[Zoo York Wall]] is prominently displayed on the second page of ''The Faith of Graffiti'', the noted 1974 [[photo essay]] book on New York City [[graffiti]] (documented by Mervyn Kurlansky and John Naar, with text by [[Norman Mailer]]. [[Praeger Publishers]], Inc.)

==Origins of name==
A [[cynical]] social observer with a quick wit, [[ALI (graffiti artist)|ALI]] coined the term "Zoo York" to describe the absurdity displayed in the attitudes and actions of New Yorkers during what he called the "Sick Seventies"—particularly as exemplified by what he saw at the Central Park subway tunnel site late at night. The tunnel's naming occurred when a crew of graffiti artists calling themselves The Underground (UND) gathered at the site late one autumn night in 1971. Several of them, [[ALI (graffiti artist)|ALI]], FINE, KITE (aka CRUNCH) and ACEY (aka SIE-1), had just attended a showing of a new [[musical theater|musical]]-[[comedy]] review called [[National Lampoon's Lemmings]] at the [[Village Gate]] downtown. The show (which starred future comic notables [[John Belushi]], [[Chevy Chase]] and [[Christopher Guest]]) lampooned the [[Woodstock Festival]], which had taken place upstate two years earlier—calling it "[[Woodchuck]]" and equating the entire [[hippie]] generation with [[lemming]]s bent on self-destruction. The crew of [[teenagers]] made similar comparisons between themselves and the animals in the nearby zoo.

The [[Central Park Zoo]] at that time was a classical 19th-century [[menagerie]], populated by wild animals displayed in open-air cages, who paced the bars back and forth [[neuroticism|neurotically]]—always hoping for an escape, yet [[paradox]]ically blind to the world beyond their cramped quarters. [[ALI (graffiti artist)|ALI]] noted that by contrast, here were these [[feral]] teenagers, himself included, living in a free society, who sought nothing more wholeheartedly than to crowd together in a deep, dark hole in the ground. Marvelling at their perverse urban psychologies, [[ALI (graffiti artist)|ALI]] decided that all city people were insane for seeking [[imprisonment]] in tiny [[apartments]], offices, subway cars and the like, and declared that [[New York City]] itself was "not ''New,'' but a ''Zoo!''" He named the tunnel itself "Zoo York"—a perfect [[symbol]], in his mind, of the dark [[Psyche (psychology)|psyche]] of the inner city itself.

==References==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
{{Portal|New York City}}
* ''The Faith of Graffiti'', documented by Mervyn Kurlansky and John Naar, text by [[Norman Mailer]], New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1974.

{{Central Park}}

[[Category:Graffiti in New York City]]
[[Category:Central Park]]