Read time: 5 min.

I made my way out to the rail yard early this month to get a jump on the graffiti that began to pop up. Wandering around under the blazing sun is a miserable time, but the chance to catch some new artwork on the cars was enough to drag me out there. With that said, welcome to the twenty-fourth edition of railcar spotting! 

I’m the production planner for the North American branch of an Italian plastics company. Out of thirteen factories spread across four continents, ours is the only one set up to receive materials by rail. Our yard isn’t massive, but it’s busy, and that means a steady rotation of railcars. Each is a potential canvas. I make a habit of photographing my favorite graffiti, like this bold, oversized “SUBARU” tag that immediately caught my eye.

The most obvious tags, like that SUBARU piece, sit facing my office from behind a chain-link fence. If I want a full view of what’s hiding on the other two tracks, I’ve got to put in a little work: find the key, open the gate, duck under the first row of cars, and go exploring. That’s how I stumbled across this “RELAX” tag tucked into Row 2. I could’ve sworn I’d seen it before, but after digging through two years’ worth of archives, I confirmed that this was its first visit. Sometimes, déjà vu turns out to be a false alarm.

If decoding graffiti were like baseball, I’d be leading the majors with my batting average. But if we were talking free throws, I’d firmly be in Shaquille O’Neal territory. I’d guess I land about fifty percent, which is solidly mediocre. Take this blue-and-tan piece I spotted on another car in Row 2. I love everything about it -the dashed and dotted lines, the purple dots, and the overall color scheme- but I have absolutely no idea what it says. Its color palette reminds me of those vanilla Tootsie Roll variations, and those were always my favorite.

“CHEKO!” was one of those rare pieces I could actually read at first glance, but I had no clue what it meant. I did what any confused fan of graffiti would do, and I fired up Urban Dictionary. According to one entry, “Cheko” means “a handsome dude who gets” -well, let’s just say he does very well with the ladies. Amusingly enough, that definition was submitted by someone going by chekoofficial, which makes me wonder if the artist wrote his own self-congratulatory bio and slapped it on a railcar for good measure. If so, I respect the hustle.

I could also read this LERCH tag. That means I’m shooting eighty percent from the charity stripe this time around! Urban Dictionary offers a wide variety of definitions for “LERCH,” many of them stupid. I’m not convinced any of them apply here: maybe LERCH is a nickname, or maybe it’s a persona. Whatever it means, LERCH looks great splashed across a railcar in faded red and green.

I headed out to the yard later last Friday to scope out any new cars I hadn’t seen. The first I found was this simple scrawl promoting the East Coast Writers. I don’t know what that group involves other than graffiti, presumably, but I salute them!

I could have sworn this SERUM car had provided immunity from boring railcars in our yard before, but a search of my archives indicated I’d never seen it. Still, its purple-and-green contrast is an all-time classic reminiscent of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 90s Nickeloden, the aliens from Toy Story, and my childhood in general. The tiny flourishes within the lettering add even more! So does the rust.

The tags I spotted were fine, but my absolute favorite from June had to be this composite piece. It feels like a collaboration across time! I get the sense that the flowers were painted first before someone came along and added the playful, all-caps reminder to “STOP ‘N SMELL THE FLOWERS.” It’s such a simple phrase, but it’s the kind of piece that sticks with you long after the train’s rolled on.

Over the years, I’ve shared 166 of my favorite graffiti tags; each one spotted, photographed, and posted as part of this tradition I’ve built up. June didn’t bring the most exciting batch I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t a total bust either. Summer tends to be slower for traffic out here, so I wasn’t expecting a flood of new material. Still, much of the fun is never knowing what’s going to show up next.