A post on Reddit recently called attention to graffiti that defies easy explanation. The black aerosol scrawl on the wall of a storm water drainage canal near the corner of Washington and South Carrollton avenues seems to be a salute to the so-called Gray Ghost, New Orleans’ legendary graffiti foe. Fred “The Gray Ghost” Radtke died in 2022, yet the painted memorial seems fresh.
“Fred Radtke used to buff this spot religiously,” the message reads. “Rest in Paint, the Gray Ghost.”
Trouble is, you can read the message either as a tribute or a taunt, since the Gray Ghost would surely have found it intolerable.
Fred Radtke, nicknamed the Gray Ghost, stands with a roller and a bucket of gray paint by the S Carrollton Avenue underpass in New Orleans, La., Tuesday January 31, 2016. Operation Clean Sweep, run by Radtke, was on a mission to eliminate and prevent graffiti in the city of New Orleans with a response team and graffiti hotline.
Congratulated by some and condemned by others, Radtke and a handful of like-minded assistants waged a tireless war on illegal painting for more than 20 years, starting in the late 1990s. His nickname arose from the concrete-colored paint he used to “buff,” or blot out, graffiti tags and unauthorized artworks wherever they appeared.
In Crescent City pop culture, the Gray Ghost was viewed as a sort of superhero/supervillain who fought against the forces of outlaw graffiti writers, such as the notorious Top Mob crew.
Ironically, Radtke’s single-minded zeal may have made illicit painting more alluring. He did his best to demonize the fad, which only added to its cachet.
And vice versa. The hip crowd so reviled Radtke that his name became as well known as HARSH or any of his pseudonymous enemies. He was so notorious that Banksy, the British graffiti superstar, produced two portraits of the Gray Ghost during his 2008 visit to New Orleans.
It was a comic book synergy. What would Batman have been without The Joker? And what would The Joker have been without Batman?
Banksy’s iconic 2008 painting of graffiti eradicator Fred ‘The Gray Ghost’ Radtke, painted at the corner of Clio and Carondelet Streets
In 2008 the tables turned when Radtke was busted for buffing a legitimate mural that was painted with the permission of the property owner. Suddenly the Gray Ghost found himself on the wrong side of the law, alongside all the other renegade painters.
A judge instructed the Gray Ghost that from then on, he had to receive permission to blot out graffiti on private property. He was no longer free to furiously patrol the streets, roller in hand, erasing all aerosol markings that appeared in his path, as he once had.
But Radtke’s reputation certainly lived on, even after his death at age 76, two years ago.
A message on a storm rain wall reads as both a tribute and taunt directed at New Orleans’ legendary graffiti foe Fred ‘The Gray Ghost’ Radtke.
Which brings us back to the text sprayed on the drainage canal wall. It’s tempting to think that it was done by someone celebrating a bygone era, maybe even one of Redtke’s old rivals—imagine a graying 1990s tagger clinging to iron hand-holds as he or she climbed down into a concrete chasm in order to write this commemoration.
But it couldn’t have been one of Radtke’s former enemies, because the paint handling is far too crude and cursory for that crowd.
As City Hall struggles to conceive an effective anti-graffiti strategy, the mysterious message in the canal seems to have particular resonance, though that may be pure coincidence. What it all means is open for interpretation.
The message may be a heartfelt tip of the hat to a cultural icon or a reminder that Radtke won many a battle but eventually lost the war. Either way, it would seem the Gray Ghost still haunts us.
The ‘Gray Ghost,’ New Orleans late, legendary graffiti eradicator, Fred Radtke
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