When I was younger I would say like around 13 and 14. I would get on a train and as I would look out the window I would see a bunch of graffiti mainly tags. It kind of intrigued me later on like as I got older.

I wanted to do it too.

I go by Repos and I'm a Philadelphia graffiti artist.

Repos grew up in West Philadelphia. In high school he began immersing himself in the city's graffiti culture, learning everything he could.

He watched other artists as they painted.

I was just soaking it all in because they were focused on their piece.

I would just watch their arm movements the way that they

would use their body to like make certain lines, different techniques and stuff like that. That's

kind of how I picked it up.

But as repose would learn, not everybody sees the poetry and graffiti.

Where one person sees a liberating form of public art, another sees season nuisance, one that costs cities millions of

dollars a year.

Beauty's deny the beholder and my thing is that's great but you can't do

it on someone else's property. For the Freak economics radio network this is the

economics of everyday things I'm Zachary Krakit. Today graffiti.

Most graffiti artists have an origin story for their name and Repose is no exception.

When I was younger I used to do mischief stuff like going into abandoned buildings.

This one place was like an abandoned house and there was some spray paint in the basement and I started you know just tagging on the

walls and stuff and then we were taking some stuff that was left over or whatever so I was just writing repo because I felt like I was the repo man.

Repo started out by tagging his name, but soon he began doing what are known as pieces, which are larger and more

elaborate creations. He says that every city has its own unique graffiti style and in Philadelphia that style is called

wickets it was originated by a guy called notorious Bick he created this technique where you would have just a regular tag but you elongated to make it like a tall tag, right?

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