FAQ & Resources

In our graffiti workshop, there are three options. Participants can paint a mural directly on the wall, participants can paint the wall and get an individual sized canvas (20″x10″) or participants can receive a large canvas (5 ft x 4 ft) to create.

1. Mural on the Wall

2. Mural + Individual Canvas

3. Large Canvas Option

We recommend wearing comfortable clothing and things you wouldn’t mind having a little paint decoration on. We provide gloves at all of our workshops to prevent overspray. You can always bring t-shirts to cover nice clothes and we do have some smocks for people as well.

Roberta’s Pizza is the most famous Bushwick establishment, but the Village Voice has put together a comprehensive list here. We also recommend Pearls Bar as our favorite drinking establishment.

Currently, we recommend only two spot that still have a Banksy in NYC. First, on 79th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, you have “Boy with Mallet.” Second, inside the Ye Old Carelton Arms Hotel, room 5b has an entire room painted by the artist.

Yes. Our public graffiti walking tours do require reservations. You can reserve your spot online by credit card.

Tickets are emailed after purchase. Go to the tour you want to take and click on date you want on the calendar. Then select the number of tickets you want and complete your purchase.

We offer a variety of tours, from walking excursions to car tours and everything in between. Many people ask us which they should take. We have explained our two most common tours in depth here: Downtown Manhattan, Bushwick Brooklyn. These descriptions will give you an insight into what you are going to see on each tour. In general, Bushwick is more large-scale murals and is a tour of the Bushwick Collective. Downtown Manhattan is more about seeing local projects and spontaneous street art.

Our payment system accepts international credit cards.

All graffiti tours are available for private bookings tailored to your needs. Private tours can be scheduled morning, afternoon, or evening.

Only by taking a tour will you be able to know the history and story behind the art and artists and have an opportunity to try it yourself.

Graff Tours start at $20 for adults and $15 for seniors, full-time students, and members of the armed forces.

Most tours last approximately an hour and a half. We walk between 1 and 2 miles during this time. We maintain a moderate walking pace, stopping at various sites along the tour.

Graffiti tours and lessons are held rain or shine. In the event of inclement weather, please call us at 201-397-9138. Graff Tours reserves the right to cancel activities in the event of potentially dangerous weather.

Gratuities are always appreciated, but never expected. Typical households leave $5 per person.

Graff Tours has a strict 48-hour cancellation policy. Tours cancelled prior to the 48-hour deadline will be entitled to a refund. No refund will be given with less than 48 hours’ notice. Thanks.

Brooklyn Street Art

The most important street art blog run by Jamie Rojo and Steven Harrington. Straight outta Brooklyn, BSA tracks the new creative spirit that runs in the streets, the artist studios, and galleries of New York and around the world. New hybrids, new techniques, and new mediums are expanding the definition of public art, street art, graffiti, and urban art; each vying for the attention of passers-by.As trends develop in the street, we watch to see how they affect popular culture and the rest of the art world. Check it out here.

Vandalog

Vandalog began in October 2008 as the place for people to keep up to date on what’s going on with street art. Today, we focus on coverage of street art, graffiti, and viral art that you won’t get anywhere else. Stories on Vandalog are analytical, opinionated, investigative, exclusive, under-reported, and sometimes a bit overly-intellectual. Run by RJ Rushmore, Vandalog is an importnat resource to keep up with today’s street art scene. Check them out here.

Street Art News

StreetArtNews is the definitive guide to the Street Art Scene. Since 2009, StreetArtNews has exhaustively covered cutting edge murals and the artists that powers them. As we enter our fifth year, we’re looking beyond the murals themselves to explore how they impact our lives. Most popular is the Street Art News Instagram page. As a note, most of the street art and graffiti scene happens on instagram as opposed to FB or twitter. Check them out here.

Street Art NYC

One of the most active blogs to date on the NYC street Art scene. Check it.

The Street Spot

The Street Spot is a street art and graffiti blog founded by Brooklyn-based photographers Becki Fuller and Luna Park in 2009. As an independent, advertising-free site, it is our editorial policy to blog our own, original content only. Our focus is primarily on artists and events in the New York City metropolitan area, but we occasionally post about other places we’ve been.

• Os Gemeos – OSGEMEOS (b. 1974, São Paulo, Brazil), translated as “THETWINS”, Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, have worked together since birth. As children growing up in the streets of the traditional district of Cambuci (SP), they developed a distinct way of playing and communicating through artistic language. With the encouragement of their family, and the introduction of hip hop culture in Brazil in the 1980s, OSGEMEOS found a direct connection to their dynamic and magical world and a way to communicate with the public. Guided mainly by their willpower, together they explored with dedication and care the various techniques of painting, drawing and sculpture, and had the streets as their place of study.
• Shepard Fairey – The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as “the process of letting things manifest themselves.” Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation. The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker. Because OBEY has no actual meaning, the various reactions and interpretations of those who view it reflect their personality and the nature of their sensibilities.
• Space Invader – Who are you Invader? Where do you come from? I define myself as an ULA, an unidentified living artist. I chose Invader as my pseudonym and I always appear behind a mask. As such, I can visit my own exhibitions without any visitors knowing who I really am even if I stand a few steps away from them. Since 1998, I have developed a large scale project, code name: Space Invaders. What is the Space Invaders project about? It is first of all about liberating Art from its usual alienators that museums or institutions can be. But it is also about freeing the Space Invaders from their video games TV screens and to bring them in our physical world. Everything started the day I decided to give a material appearance to pixelization through ceramic tiles. I first wanted to create a series of “canvases” but I soon realised that tiles were the perfect material to display these pieces directly on the walls. I then had the idea of deploying my creatures on the walls of Paris and soon after in cities around the globe. Each of these unique pieces become the fragment of a monumental installation.
• Banksy – There is a lot of fact and fiction when it comes to the biggest name in street art. He is originally from Bristol in the UK, and was part of a graffiti crew DBZ. Banksy did a residency in New York in October 2013 producing 30 works in 30 days. There are still a couple of these lying around if you know where to look. The easiest one to find is the piece that is being preserved on the upper west side near Zabars. There is a hotel that also bears his stroke near Murry Hill where lucky patrons and actually sleep beneath a Banksy work.
• Some great local artists worth a look:
  • Dasic
  • Cake
  • Swoon
  • Phetus
  • Sonni