In October 2011, several dozen red goats appeared in Uptown Kingston overnight, spraypainted on the big, blocky, ugly and out-of-place white planters that had been installed during a controversial restoration project. Surveillance video captured two local artists using stencils to apply the goats. Both were charged with felonies, each facing four years in prison.
The community, for the most part aghast at the charges, came out in support of the artists. The incident sparked a local movement, with the red goat becoming a mascot of creative defiance and personal freedom. Red goats popped up everywhere, taking the form of tattoos, “Save the Goats” signs, merchandise, Christmas ornaments, sculptures and stickers. Remanants still adorn some Uptown businesses. The goats had their own New York Times feature, a Facebook page with 1500 followers, and a dedicated Wikipedia page.
Local politicians were initially not as supportive, to put it mildly. Mayor James Sottile said he hoped the graffiti artists would be forced “to remove all graffiti from the city with a toothbrush should they be convicted.” Alder Tom Hoffay offered a ludicrous gang connection, saying, “Bloods, Crips, goats – it’s all the same.”
City authorities seemed to interpret the graffiti as an embarrassing rebuke to the Pike Plan restoration, a $1.6-million project plagued by its own controversies of poor execution and litigation. In any case, most reporting indicated the graffiti was artistic, not political, in its motivations.
Luckily, cooler heads prevailed. The creative and political communities reached a tentative consensus of sorts to support the cultural movement that had rallied around the goats. Though the planters were painted over, the red goat icon endures to this day. Once you start looking for them, you’ll see red goat stickers all over the city.
Kingston has been an art city for a long time. Local musicians and artists have kept numerous independent venues and galleries in business. For decades, waves of creative city folk have been coming to the area — though nothing like the Covid-era megatsunami. Our vibrant, independent underground art and music scene has waxed and waned.
Something big changed in 2010. Members of the art and music community teamed up with local health care and wellness providers with the novel idea to “exchange the art of medicine for the medicine of art. They called it the O+ Festival.
Soon there were massive and visually stunning murals going up all over the city. O+, in part propelled by the red-goat movement, created momentum for artists to make their mark, and today one can see dozens of murals in prominent locations throughout the city. These epic-scale works are now central to Kingston’s creative character.
With so many towering works of art, it can be easy to miss the other street art growing like weeds through the cracks in city infrastructure – graffiti in Kingston never died. In fact, the red goat and O+ movements created an environment where graffiti and street art flourished. Over time, graffiti became concentrated in several particular areas of the city which served as massive canvases. The densely decorated walls of these unofficial street galleries sprouted everything from bus-length works of spraycan art to jumbles of amateurish tags.
These hand-sprayed and painted works of art range from commissioned and curated to unsanctioned and ostensibly illegal. By concentrating graffiti and street artists’ efforts to a few key hot spots (most of which are only in fleeting public view to passersby, Kingston found an organic way to embrace the art form while discouraging the defacement of more visible and valuable public property.
In honor of the spirit of the red goats, let’s tour a few of these unofficial street galleries:
Demolished parking garage
In 2008, Kingston’s crumbling multi-level parking garage finally succumbed to the wrecking ball, leaving an outdoor lot with lots of concrete walls exposed. Over the years, these walls would fill with graffiti, each year more impressive in scope, creativity and artistry. The city couldn’t paint them over fast enough. Dozens of artists were always poised to bomb the fresh canvas.
Today the walls are still alive with graffiti ranging from pop and street art to crude tags and messages. Though new additions come much slower than they used to, it’s an impressive tableau.
All these works (and their canvases) are currently slated to be permanently removed when and if The Kingstonian apartment complex is built. If you visit Uptown frequently, you’re already well aware of these works, but out-of-towners should swing through and check them out. Just remember not to let your paid parking space lapse. The enforces are known to be zealous, and free parking is a freedom the red goats were not able to push past local politicians and business owners.
Uptown Hannaford wall
You’ve probably seen this graffiti wall while doing 75 instead of 55 on Colonel Chandler Drive (I-587), the shortest interstates in the U.S. While driving between the fender-bender blenders – er, rotary circles – one can look out the window at the wall that stretches between the roadway and Hannaford (as long as the foliage isn’t overgrown).
From a distance, it’s a blur of shapes and forms. You really owe it to yourself to park in the Hannaford lot and get out on foot for a closer inspection. The scope of this lawless work of art is much more astounding when you’re standing in front of it, and is visually more interesting than anything you’ll see on the nearby linear park, a concrete trail that winds behind local homes and businesses with its own graffiti scene. You might find a few diamonds in the rough in terms of street art, but due to its largely out-of-sight nature you’re more likely to find drug-fueled defacement. In contrast, Hannaford wall artists can be quite skilled, and there are some nice pieces to be found.
Under the overpass by Aldi
You can’t miss the massive graffiti wall near the train tracks under the overpass at the far right of the Aldi building. Lording over the wall is a ten-teated pink wolf and a mishmash of traditional tags and scribbles.
Don’t miss the opposite wall, only visible from near the train tracks (don’t screw around here, though. More than one person has died under a CSX train).
Sojourner Truth State Park
A state park is an unlikely place for a graffiti gallery, but this area used to be occupied by an out-of-the-way, heavily wooded and abandoned cement factory. Those traits made it the perfect place for local teenagers and young adults to sneak off and do no good, including massive post-apocalyptic paintball games, lots of partying, and of course graffiti.
Today, the area is a vast state park, but luckily someone had the presence of mind to preserve at least a fragment of the past. Just south of the parking area stands the last ruins of the cement factory, razed to the ground except for one concrete-and-metal structure blanketed in graffiti. Unfortunately, the area is fenced off with a tall barrier (ostensibly for insurance purposes). There are a few picnic tables nearby as well, an odd choice of placement in the middle of a concrete slab in front of a fenced-off art exhibit. One wonders how many people simply hop the fence in the illicit spirit of graffiti.
Off the beaten path
I’ve seen other graffiti wonders seen in Kingston, but some are best left hidden, especially the ones that aren’t exactly safe or legal to visit. Some are popular skate spots – skateboarding and graffiti go together like peanut butter and jelly. If you’re looking for graffiti and are meant to find it, you’ll know where to look. You may even catch a glimpse of a surviving red goat.
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