Daily News: “Eurotrash Douchebags” Responsible For 70 Percent Of “Major Graffiti Attacks” On Trains

Krylon tourism*:

Most of the major graffiti attacks on trains are being carried out by twentysomething Europeans who want to leave their marks where the graffiti culture was born, experts said.

They come from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway to spray-paint their murals and elaborate tags — called “pieces” — on trains, fully aware that the Transit Authority will scrub them clean within hours.

The Euro-taggers don’t care that New Yorkers won’t see their work on the rails: their main goal is to take photographs and videos of their handiwork to bolster their reputations on the other side of the Atlantic.

“The majority of the heavy graffiti is being done by foreigners,” said recently retired NYPD Transit Bureau Lt. Steven Mona, who until September 2005 was the commanding officer of the Citywide Vandals Task Force.

“We’ve always had foreigners, but in the last five years we’ve seen an increase.”

When Mona and his team reviewed last year’s graffiti hits, they estimated that 70% were carried out by Europeans.

That includes the graffiti group “MOAS,” or Monsters of Art Scandinavia, which painted its initials on trains stored on “layup” tracks on Utica Ave. in Brooklyn.

Another tag spotted on a train hit on Utica Ave., “Biser,” is identified on the Internet as being from Germany.

*A business opportunity emerges . . . Marc Ecko should invest in some special graffiti camps upstate!

12/12 Update: Current transit bureau chief gets smacked down by the tourism board, forced to downplay report.

And What Better Way To Make Him Seem More Human And Less Ego-Driven Than A Photo Exhibit At Grand Central Station?

He won by a landslide, so what more can he want? Why not immortalize the campaign in a photo exhibition for posterity:

Eliot Spitzer will take over Grand Central Terminal next month with a photo exhibition of images from his campaign.

“The Making of a Governor” will chronicle the stump speeches, handshakes, autographs and exhaustion of running for office — in a series of large black-and-white photos intended to evoke the iconic images of the Kennedy years.

The exhibit is to run Jan. 7-23 at Vanderbilt Hall and may then tour the state.

Photographer Marius Muresanu said he approached Spitzer with the idea after seeing one of Jacques Lowe’s famous images of President Kennedy campaigning.

. . .

He said he spent eight months on the campaign trail and was granted full access — even though the governor-elect has been “known not to love photographers.”

Muresanu is still scouring through thousands of negatives to decide which prints make the cut.

MTA officials said the Spitzer campaign paid $37,500 to rent the space.

So I Guess That’s Not Really Funny After All

The high school student who attended school dressed as Hitler on Tuesday returned to class, jackboots in tow. I think “chutzpah” is the proper term here:

Flouting a possible suspension and the scorn of Jewish groups, a Brooklyn high-school student ejected from class for dressing as Adolf Hitler on Halloween donned the controversial getup again yesterday on campus.

A spokesman for the city Education Department said that Leon M. Goldstein HS will pursue disciplinary charges against 16-year-old Walter Petryk for insubordination, which could result in a 10-day suspension.

. . .

The junior honors student dressed again as the fascist butcher outside the Sheepshead Bay school yesterday for a gaggle of reporters, and dismissed the prospect of suspension — as well as the ridicule of onlookers.

“I’m not worried about it that much,” said Petryk, whose mother delivered the costume to him yesterday and stood by his side.

“I’m not a Nazi. It’s a Halloween costume,” he declared. “People have taken it too seriously . . . I’m not going to go around and kill Jews or anything.”

At one point, the gathering was interrupted by area resident Michael Loweth, 50, who shouted at Petryk, “You’re pathetic!”

“This is ridiculous, kid. Grow up!” he yelled. “Millions of people died for a schmuck like you.”

And I guess “schmuck” is an equally appropriate term.

What, That’s Not Funny?

A costume-provocateur at a Brooklyn high school was removed from class yesterday for dressing as Hitler:

A student at a Brooklyn high school named for a prominent Jewish educator faced a blitzkrieg of trouble yesterday when he arrived dressed as Adolf Hitler for Halloween.

Walter Petryk, 16, insisted his masquerade was a lampoon of the Nazi dictator — but administrators at Leon M. Goldstein HS declared autumn for Hitler and detained Petryk as their “prisoner of war.”

The junior honors student, who grew a moustache for the occasion, was pulled out of his second-period English class and told to remove his beige coat bearing a red swastika armband or risk spending the day in the office.

You would think that people who had family who perished in the Holocaust would refrain from facile Hitler comparisons, but then there they are:

His mother and stepfather, who is Jewish and lost ancestors in the Nazi genocide, defended Petryk’s stance. They rebuffed pleas by the dean to advise their son to remove the costume so he could return to class.

“This is a matter of artistic free expression and a school not being stupid,” said his mother, Diane Petryk-Bloom, who picked her son up at school. “[The dean is] offended by a parody of Hitler — and he’s acting like Hitler.”

Then there’s the issue of “talk the talk/walk the walk”:

Petryk said he didn’t set out to push the envelope as Hitler. But he acknowledged that he made a decision to disguise himself as Charlie Chaplin with a bowler hat and cane on his way to school to avoid ruffling feathers on the street.

“I wasn’t going to get on the subway in a Hitler costume,” Petryk said.

Pussy!

Bring On The Gigantic Tattooed Elephants!

I can’t believe they found a way to make Coney Island classier than it already is but somehow they have:

Architectural renderings obtained by The Post show a grand vision of the famed summer amusement area’s rundown streets being transformed into a glitzy year-round playground and public attraction.

In one image, Stillwell Avenue becomes a fantasy-filled boulevard marked by larger-than-life street furniture, such as a mermaid swimming in a martini glass and a gigantic tattooed elephant.